Theemile wrote: The only hulls I would consider taking back would be ones that either could hyper of their own accord or were in a repair ship that could move. And they don't have to move forever - I would drop off any ships you don't trust in deep space and return for them.
As for towing to a ballistic course, you have 23 SDs to tow with, you put a watch DD/CL in each towed group and a nuke in each hull - if the Peeps did see it, the hulls are as nuked if they were on a ballistic course or in their slips. Even if you are able to get 1 towed group out - that's ~20 more hulls than you would have had other wise.
Good idea on the impeller only ships - Once again, you can put a DD Shepard or 2 with them and move all the skeleton crews to the most complete ship. Once again, put nukes on them as remote demo charges and trigger it if the peeps see you. If the skeleton crews can't fit on the DD/CLs, they will have to get in pinances and surrender to the peeps.
Just checked my reference to WoH, and FYI Higgins had 23 SDs (7 SD(P) and 20 Gryphon or Sphinx SD's), 4 CLAC's and 19 BC/CA's, for a total of 46 ships.
Destroyed at the Grendelsbane yards were 27 Medusa SD(P)'s, 19 CLAC's and 46 Invictus SD(P)'s, along with 53 undefined 'lighter' vessels, a total of 145 ships.
Given two days, I'm sure Higgins warships could have tractored the most-finished (but not yet hyper-capable ships) to a mosey-speed of, say 4,500 KPS and set them loose with a couple of cruisers as escort. 36 hours (I figure it's going to take 12 hours to organize and tow)at that speed will get them about 900,000,000 KM away, which should be well out of any RH sensors. Using all his ships, he saves all the Invictus ships and if some of them can't be moved, goes on to the Medusa's and the CLAC's.
He's still going to lose the base, and quite probably the 40,000 people there (unless there is transport less than 2 days away), and he still will have to destroy the shipyard to 'cover his tracks' and destroy the ships he couldn't move, but I tend to agree that it would probably be the only thing he could do with only 2 T-days notice.