The Fall of Grendlesbane - alternative timeline

kzt wrote:Yup, would need a few weeks at least to improve the defenses. With 2 days you might be able to be most effective by towing the mostly completed ships out of the system with as much of the base personnel as possible.

This was one Item I always wondered about - Given a couple days notice, you may be able to get a handful of ships in the condition to be able to move on their own accord (and bug out with the rest of Higgen's forces), but what about towing all the rest of the 90% finished hulls and accelerate them on long term cometary trajectories? Maybe select a stealthed DD or CL to ride herd on each group as you accelerate a dozen or so at a time into deep orbits.

After the base is nuked, the Havenites are not going to atay around for more than a couple of weeks - repair ships could return 2-3 months later to gather the hulls.

The Base would be gone, but the bulk of the ships would be saved.

I suspect that it would take a fair amount of time to rig a partialy compleated hull for towing. there is also the question of what you need in the way of a ship to do the towing, particularly since you are talking about taking the hull into hyperspace which means keeping it withing the envelope of the field of the hyperspace generator of the tow vessel.

Based on at least the discussion in OBS, this is neither impossible or uncommon. One of the threads in OBS was the conversation about What-The-HELL was the Sirius doing for months in a Basilisk orbit as some kind of engineering casualty when it apparently had NOT tried to get anything fixed locally, contracted in a (civilian) repair ship to come and do the work or a tow to someplace that could handle a major problem.

While it would probably be possible (look at the sending of ships at several battles to stop SLN ships from heading out of system on ballistic courses with survivors on board or hitting planets etc in the systems from the same problem) to tow (with tractor beams) hulls into ballistic paths out of the system in normal space to keep them from capture or destruction, it would take a fair amount of time and you would have to worry about the attacker being able to spot the tow ships (all that heavy impeller work) or just pulling sensor logs and then following the tracks out of system and running down the hulls (with our without the tow ships) to deal with them. Not going to happen in two days from a standing start on a couple of million tons of warships lacking working engines.

If any particular hull had working impellers, you probably would be able to navigate out to the nearest point of the hyper-limit and then attempt to mimic a hyper-jump by shutting off the impeller and just coasting but then you need to deal with later doing a very low power direction change to get off the initial ballistic course. You also need to consider if you are going to be able to keep at least a minimal crew on-board with working eviormental systems and plan to recover people (and hull) in some kind of reasonable timeframe. Not something that is likely to happen when a fleet had just dropped in with no warning.

Brigade XO wrote:I suspect that it would take a fair amount of time to rig a partialy compleated hull for towing. there is also the question of what you need in the way of a ship to do the towing, particularly since you are talking about taking the hull into hyperspace which means keeping it withing the envelope of the field of the hyperspace generator of the tow vessel.

Based on at least the discussion in OBS, this is neither impossible or uncommon. One of the threads in OBS was the conversation about What-The-HELL was the Sirius doing for months in a Basilisk orbit as some kind of engineering casualty when it apparently had NOT tried to get anything fixed locally, contracted in a (civilian) repair ship to come and do the work or a tow to someplace that could handle a major problem.

While it would probably be possible (look at the sending of ships at several battles to stop SLN ships from heading out of system on ballistic courses with survivors on board or hitting planets etc in the systems from the same problem) to tow (with tractor beams) hulls into ballistic paths out of the system in normal space to keep them from capture or destruction, it would take a fair amount of time and you would have to worry about the attacker being able to spot the tow ships (all that heavy impeller work) or just pulling sensor logs and then following the tracks out of system and running down the hulls (with our without the tow ships) to deal with them. Not going to happen in two days from a standing start on a couple of million tons of warships lacking working engines.

If any particular hull had working impellers, you probably would be able to navigate out to the nearest point of the hyper-limit and then attempt to mimic a hyper-jump by shutting off the impeller and just coasting but then you need to deal with later doing a very low power direction change to get off the initial ballistic course. You also need to consider if you are going to be able to keep at least a minimal crew on-board with working eviormental systems and plan to recover people (and hull) in some kind of reasonable timeframe. Not something that is likely to happen when a fleet had just dropped in with no warning.

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.

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.

Hutch wrote:

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.

I don't know how easy or stealthy it would be, but the crews live in space habitats - who is to say that habitat or 2 couldn't have been towed out system as well? Of course to do so, you probably have to choose between people and hulls saved.

All of this PRESUMES that the system guard commander has 2 days-more or less- till the Peeps show up. What did happen was he found out they were comming when tthey came across the hyperwall. Don't recall if he was able to have ships which were in repair slips with impellers and hyperdrive intact crash launched with crew on-board and try to make it to hyper in the opposite direction from the incomming Peep attack.

All sorts of things might have been possible with two days warning including buttoning up ships that were in dock for other repairs and just scrambling them out stuffed with construction and other staff from various yards and stations.

Brigade XO wrote:All of this PRESUMES that the system guard commander has 2 days-more or less- till the Peeps show up. What did happen was he found out they were comming when tthey came across the hyperwall. Don't recall if he was able to have ships which were in repair slips with impellers and hyperdrive intact crash launched with crew on-board and try to make it to hyper in the opposite direction from the incomming Peep attack.

All sorts of things might have been possible with two days warning including buttoning up ships that were in dock for other repairs and just scrambling them out stuffed with construction and other staff from various yards and stations.

That seems unlikely. Even ships that had impellers and hyper drive installed would not have the generators fueled up.

SWM wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:All of this PRESUMES that the system guard commander has 2 days-more or less- till the Peeps show up. What did happen was he found out they were comming when tthey came across the hyperwall. Don't recall if he was able to have ships which were in repair slips with impellers and hyperdrive intact crash launched with crew on-board and try to make it to hyper in the opposite direction from the incomming Peep attack.

All sorts of things might have been possible with two days warning including buttoning up ships that were in dock for other repairs and just scrambling them out stuffed with construction and other staff from various yards and stations.

That seems unlikely. Even ships that had impellers and hyper drive installed would not have the generators fueled up.

Ships wouldn't have had to be fully fueled, but have just enough hydrogen for 1-2 days endurance. If you could get the ships out of the system, your options open up dramatically - even if you have to leave them float in space for 3 months.

Brigade XO wrote:All of this PRESUMES that the system guard commander has 2 days-more or less- till the Peeps show up. What did happen was he found out they were comming when tthey came across the hyperwall. <snip>

And totally true - It looks like Grendlesbane is at least 6 weeks from Manticore, and Hamish had a around 7-10 days to get the message and get back to Trevor's Star with the Grayson reinforcements, so there was really no way to notify Grendlesbane - even if Higgens would accept a private letter from Honor (or Hamish) as gosphel in 1919.

But the what if is always fun. Given a week or 2 Higgens had tons of options - given 2 days, a handful. 4 hours - 1 terrifying option.

Hutch wrote:
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.

I have to ask - what would be the point of towing the incomplete ships out into deep space to hide them? Higgins would still have had to abandon the system and the shipyard would still have been destroyed, so to complete the hulls the RMN would have had to either concentrate a huge number of repair ships for an extended period to serve as a pseudo-shipyard, or rebuild the yard itself. Fom what RFC's said in the Pearls about Grendelsbane, the RMN has likely realised that building the satellite yard there in the first place was a strategic error so they'd be unlikely to rebuild it just to complete those hulls, especially since the time to rebuild the yard then complete the ships would probably be not far off the time to build the ships from scratch in Manticore or Yeltsin.