The Fall of Grendlesbane - alternative timeline

Dafmeister wrote:

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.

You then need recover ships hat can swallow the cometary ships and fly them to Manticore in hyperspace. "cometary" means" "not hyperspace", and 4500 kps is I think "outbound from galaxy".

Dafmeister wrote:

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.

You don't need to complete them, you just need to get them (barely) hypercapable. Most of the ships were >85% complete - some almost ready to start their trials. It is possible to tow ships in Hyperspace and even a Grav wave. You probably could get most of the hulls out of the system within a month, if you had enough repair ships and the proper plans.

Yes, the yard would be lost, but the ships would have a chance of being rcovered.

Theemile wrote:
You don't need to complete them, you just need to get them (barely) hypercapable. Most of the ships were >85% complete - some almost ready to start their trials. It is possible to tow ships in Hyperspace and even a Grav wave. You probably could get most of the hulls out of the system within a month, if you had enough repair ships and the proper plans.

Yes, the yard would be lost, but the ships would have a chance of being rcovered.

Towing through a grav wave requires that the towed ship have at least one ring of functional and powered alpha nodes (and the warshaski sensors to know how to tune them to local grav conditions - though that might be able to be data-linked from the tow ship)

(Or a transporter ship large enough to swallow the hull being transported)


But if you avoid grav waves and keep the accel down to a few gs you could tow a semi-complete SD(P) back to Manticore or Grayson using something the size of a DD. It'd take a while; but you can do it. The hull would have to be complete enough to have structural integrity but it wouldn't need power, or a hypergenerator, or nodes.

Of course that doesn't do you a lot of good until you complete whatever is currently occupying the construction slips at your destination...



Actually thinking about it, the Python lump (which was all the partially complete hulls clogging up the construction slips in Manticore and Grayson only just got out before Oyster Bay hit. So in hindsight I don't think rescuing partially built ships from Grendelsbane would have gotten you more ships.

Either a) you complete the hulls currently in the slips; which means the Grendeslbane ships sit and enter the slips post python lump (and therefore get destroyed by OB); or
b) you pull the less complete hulls out to allow you to work on the rescued ships, which should get you additional SD(P)s sooner, but then you have to put back the delayed ships back in where they get destroyed by OB.

(With the rescued workers you can probably build some more slips, so you'd get some additional hulls completed but I'd bet the majority would still be destroyed. OTOH even with that hindsight giving Honor more SD(P)s before Apollo came out might have let Manticore hold the line without it and save Apollo for a Buttercup style knockout; thus avoiding the BoM...

This is a crazy idea, but what if they had loaded the ships with missiles, a ship yard would have stores there. That many more missiles would help keep the enemy at bay.

What model were their fleet ships? COuld the guy incharge justify finishing enought ships his force could man? A totally modern fleet could have helped the battle, or at least allowed some new construction to survive.

How much would the war change with 92 new construction? SOme of that would be sent to the talbot quadrant, some sent to silasia. It might just mean that Honors raiding force would be in a better position, or their allies would be better protected.

The thing is would mesa have gone after this shipyard as well.

SYED wrote:This is a crazy idea, but what if they had loaded the ships with missiles, a ship yard would have stores there. That many more missiles would help keep the enemy at bay.

What model were their fleet ships? COuld the guy incharge justify finishing enought ships his force could man? A totally modern fleet could have helped the battle, or at least allowed some new construction to survive.

How much would the war change with 92 new construction? SOme of that would be sent to the talbot quadrant, some sent to silasia. It might just mean that Honors raiding force would be in a better position, or their allies would be better protected.

The thing is would mesa have gone after this shipyard as well.

They didn't have enough time to do any of that. The speculation is stipulating only a two-day warning. How much do you really think you can do I in two days?

SWM wrote:

SYED wrote:This is a crazy idea, but what if they had loaded the ships with missiles, a ship yard would have stores there. That many more missiles would help keep the enemy at bay.

What model were their fleet ships? COuld the guy incharge justify finishing enought ships his force could man? A totally modern fleet could have helped the battle, or at least allowed some new construction to survive.

How much would the war change with 92 new construction? SOme of that would be sent to the talbot quadrant, some sent to silasia. It might just mean that Honors raiding force would be in a better position, or their allies would be better protected.

The thing is would mesa have gone after this shipyard as well.

They didn't have enough time to do any of that. The speculation is stipulating only a two-day warning. How much do you really think you can do I in two days?

If you remember SYED, there were forts covering Grendlesbane, but they hadn't had their firecontrol upgraded to handle large numbers of (or any) MDMs. I believe it was mentioned upthread, that given enough time, Higgens could have had the work on the least complete ships abandoned and had the firecontrol of the forts upgraded and ready for the threat.

The way thing happened, the forts were sitting ducks, and the few SD(p)s Higgens did have weren't used effectively due to the intelligence failure of knowing that Haven had MDMs, CLACS and Podnaughts of their own, but their loss did keep the rest of Higgens ships from being lost and Grenslesbane's secrets from falling into Havenite hands.

My postulation was what you could do if you had just enough time to do something in that position - but not enough time to do anything close to the optimal thing.

Given that, The most probable results probably would have been the survival of the SD(p)s which were lost in combat and the evacuation of more of the technicians. Of the possibles, Maybe some of the ships under construction or repair might have been able to be fired up and moved - maybe not. Or some of the unfinished ships could have been towed out system and hid.

No matter what, the yards were toast.

Theemile wrote:If you remember SYED, there were forts covering Grendlesbane, but they hadn't had their firecontrol upgraded to handle large numbers of (or any) MDMs. I believe it was mentioned upthread, that given enough time, Higgens could have had the work on the least complete ships abandoned and had the firecontrol of the forts upgraded and ready for the threat.

The way thing happened, the forts were sitting ducks, and the few SD(p)s Higgens did have weren't used effectively due to the intelligence failure of knowing that Haven had MDMs, CLACS and Podnaughts of their own, but their loss did keep the rest of Higgens ships from being lost and Grenslesbane's secrets from falling into Havenite hands.

My postulation was what you could do if you had just enough time to do something in that position - but not enough time to do anything close to the optimal thing.

Given that, The most probable results probably would have been the survival of the SD(p)s which were lost in combat and the evacuation of more of the technicians. Of the possibles, Maybe some of the ships under construction or repair might have been able to be fired up and moved - maybe not. Or some of the unfinished ships could have been towed out system and hid.

No matter what, the yards were toast.

If you've decided to abandon the system without sticking around to fight I wonder if there's time to convert part of the podbays of those retreating SD(P)s into additional, emergency, berthing. That might let you evacuate even more of the technicians...

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:If you remember SYED, there were forts covering Grendlesbane, but they hadn't had their firecontrol upgraded to handle large numbers of (or any) MDMs. I believe it was mentioned upthread, that given enough time, Higgens could have had the work on the least complete ships abandoned and had the firecontrol of the forts upgraded and ready for the threat.

The way thing happened, the forts were sitting ducks, and the few SD(p)s Higgens did have weren't used effectively due to the intelligence failure of knowing that Haven had MDMs, CLACS and Podnaughts of their own, but their loss did keep the rest of Higgens ships from being lost and Grenslesbane's secrets from falling into Havenite hands.

My postulation was what you could do if you had just enough time to do something in that position - but not enough time to do anything close to the optimal thing.

Given that, The most probable results probably would have been the survival of the SD(p)s which were lost in combat and the evacuation of more of the technicians. Of the possibles, Maybe some of the ships under construction or repair might have been able to be fired up and moved - maybe not. Or some of the unfinished ships could have been towed out system and hid.

No matter what, the yards were toast.

If you've decided to abandon the system without sticking around to fight I wonder if there's time to convert part of the podbays of those retreating SD(P)s into additional, emergency, berthing. That might let you evacuate even more of the technicians...

Interesting possibility. However, EoH established that a ship's life support capacity is dependent on its scrubbers and other enviro systems and those can only be pushed so far for so long. On the other hand, a Grendelsbane to Manticore trip looks to be shorter than Cerberus to Trevor's Star.

From the scene in WoH, Higgins speaking after his SD(P)s have been destroyed:
"We've got about a ninety-minute window to evacuate anyone we're going to get out, and we wouldn't have the personnel lift to take more than twenty percent of the total base personnel even if we had time to embark them all."

So Grendelsbane probably had about 50,000 personnel total. 10k divided over 16 comes out at 625, so it appears his remaining SDs were only able to take on an additional ~500, with the rest going aboard his other available vessels. That does seem a little low for ships of 5,000, but RMN/GSN design practice for enviro scrubbers(in IEH) appears to be the minimum plus one, with two spares carried in storage(one of the ships had somehow acquired a non-regulation third spare).

Unless SD(P)s have double or triple redundancy in those systems, the seven Higgins had couldn't sustain more than eleven or twelve hundred extra bodies.

However, it's not that difficult a problem if you have two or three days. You have thousands of shipyard engineers who you can tell "Grab the scrubbers from the warehouse and install them in the pod core or we can't take you out of here." Even if they are on the priority list.

munroburton wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:If you've decided to abandon the system without sticking around to fight I wonder if there's time to convert part of the podbays of those retreating SD(P)s into additional, emergency, berthing. That might let you evacuate even more of the technicians...

Interesting possibility. However, EoH established that a ship's life support capacity is dependent on its scrubbers and other enviro systems and those can only be pushed so far for so long. On the other hand, a Grendelsbane to Manticore trip looks to be shorter than Cerberus to Trevor's Star.

From the scene in WoH, Higgins speaking after his SD(P)s have been destroyed:
"We've got about a ninety-minute window to evacuate anyone we're going to get out, and we wouldn't have the personnel lift to take more than twenty percent of the total base personnel even if we had time to embark them all."

So Grendelsbane probably had about 50,000 personnel total. 10k divided over 16 comes out at 625, so it appears his remaining SDs were only able to take on an additional ~500, with the rest going aboard his other available vessels. That does seem a little low for ships of 5,000, but RMN/GSN design practice for enviro scrubbers(in IEH) appears to be the minimum plus one, with two spares carried in storage(one of the ships had somehow acquired a non-regulation third spare).

Unless SD(P)s have double or triple redundancy in those systems, the seven Higgins had couldn't sustain more than eleven or twelve hundred extra bodies.

However, it's not that difficult a problem if you have two or three days. You have thousands of shipyard engineers who you can tell "Grab the scrubbers from the warehouse and install them in the pod core or we can't take you out of here." Even if they are on the priority list.

Exactly. If you made the decision to bug out when the Havenite raid comes over the wall it saves the SD(P)s but you can only cram aboard those that the normal life support will handle.

With a few days notice, and a firm decision to abandon the system without a fight, you might be able to get more exotic. And I was thinking (but failed to spell out) that the emergency berthing they might knock together would have supplemental (or even totally separate) life support.

Jonathan_S wrote:Exactly. If you made the decision to bug out when the Havenite raid comes over the wall it saves the SD(P)s but you can only cram aboard those that the normal life support will handle.

With a few days notice, and a firm decision to abandon the system without a fight, you might be able to get more exotic. And I was thinking (but failed to spell out) that the emergency berthing they might knock together would have supplemental (or even totally separate) life support.

I mentioned before that the workers live in habitats - Self powered and supported living spaces - smaller habitats may be able to be towed into Hyper. You couldn't go very fast - I doubt their rad shielding would hold above .1 c, but you could use any smaller habitats as the evac vehicle (or just move the larger ones and hide them as we were discussing doing to the incomplete SDs.)