League Survival

Sigs wrote:Where would all the SLN personnel go to? What about their surviving ships?

Themiles signature:

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Duckk wrote:Since the idea of using the SLN ships has come and gone for several years now, I thought I'd solicit David's comments on this topic:
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As far as weapons platforms go, they’re pretty useless
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Emphasis mine

Surviving SLN ship will suffer from the same deficiencies as Byng, Crandall and Filarets's survivors-- they'll be pretty useless.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:Where would all the SLN personnel go to? What about their surviving ships?

Themiles signature:

**************
Duckk wrote:Since the idea of using the SLN ships has come and gone for several years now, I thought I'd solicit David's comments on this topic:
<snip>
As far as weapons platforms go, they’re pretty useless
**************

Emphasis mine

Surviving SLN ship will suffer from the same deficiencies as Byng, Crandall and Filarets's survivors-- they'll be pretty useless.

To be fair they're worthless to or against the GA or the Andies. They're fine for intimidating most of the current members of the League; or defending against them. A few SDFs probably have better tech. But probably not within shouting range of Manticore or Haven's front line hardware. So even those systems would have to worry about enough SDN battle squadrons.

So the remnants of Battlefieet are still worth having, in the short term, for plenty of systems that used to be in the old League. You wouldn't majorly refit them but they might let you keep your independence (or conquer your neighbors) until you could build more modern units.

Sigs wrote:Initially there might be major core worlds who ask for GA protection until they get on their feet, and that might be granted if they are important enough. The more systems they can secure in the short term, the more systems they send their Merchant ships to the more money they get. In the short term, any large group of systems could be worthy of GA assistance.

Sure will be. Life is hard.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
RFC -- As far as weapons platforms go, they’re pretty useless

Surviving SLN ship will suffer from the same deficiencies as Byng, Crandall and Filarets's survivors-- they'll be pretty useless.

To be fair they're worthless to or against the GA or the Andies. They're fine for intimidating most of the current members of the League; or defending against them.

I think RFC was being a bit more literal than you give him credit for -- especially if you exclude Frontier Fleet from the assessment.

Battle Fleet suffers from shoddy maintenance, poor training, bad tactics and unreliable intelligence assessments. Frontier Fleet is a little better across the board, but still sub-par in most cases. The SLN hardware was built for energy-range combat and only grudgingly upgraded to address laser-head missiles and that not terrible effective because of lack of realistic threat assessments.

Also, I'd expect all of the SLN to suffer from shortages and maintenance failures in very short order if the ships are permanently severed from their support structures/bases. Warships, especially SDs, are expensive to keep in service and combat capable. There is the crew's salaries for over-crewed SLN designs, fuel, maintenance, weapons, spares, etc.

Jonathan_S wrote:A few SDFs probably have better tech. But probably not within shouting range of Manticore or Haven's front line hardware. So even those systems would have to worry about enough SDN battle squadrons.

On a class-for-class basis, I suspect that any SDF ship could take a SLN ship more often than not. The SDF crew should be inherently better motivated and any upgrade in technology over stock SLN hardware is going to make the difference.

Jonathan_S wrote:So the remnants of Battlefleet are still worth having, in the short term, for plenty of systems that used to be in the old League. You wouldn't majorly refit them but they might let you keep your independence (or conquer your neighbors) until you could build more modern units.

They would be useful if you could maintain the illusion of SLN invincibility for as long as you could keep them in commission. Unfortunately, you'd only be able to maintain the illusion if you were never attacked. Battlefleet probably isn't even useful against a similar battlefleet formation that has some combat experience -- eg a leavening of returned POWs.

kzt wrote:Sure will be. Life is hard.

KZT, I think you need to make that your signature.

Weird Harold wrote:
On a class-for-class basis, I suspect that any SDF ship could take a SLN ship more often than not. The SDF crew should be inherently better motivated and any upgrade in technology over stock SLN hardware is going to make the difference.

This is where BF's quantity comes in. We know Haven was the universe's 2nd largest fleet, and somewhere around a dozen SDFs have a squadron of the wall or more. It doesn't matter if you can take a BF ship on a 1:1 basis or even a 1:2 basis, BF tactics are to roil right over you with a 5 or 10x numerical advantage, and no one outside the GA can put together enough wallers to blunt them.

Unless BF fritters it's remaining ~1900 "active and Maintenance" remaining ships against the GA, no SDF will be able to withstand the BF, if it decides to mass against it.

Now, if the Tasmania 2 force misses the withdraw order and attacks Manticore, AND Beowulf turns into abitoir, Then the BF will be gelded and unable to respond and mass against the actions of an SDF (especially if multiple SDFs are making waves).

Theemile wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
On a class-for-class basis, I suspect that any SDF ship could take a SLN ship more often than not. The SDF crew should be inherently better motivated and any upgrade in technology over stock SLN hardware is going to make the difference.

This is where BF's quantity comes in. We know Haven was the universe's 2nd largest fleet, and somewhere around a dozen SDFs have a squadron of the wall or more. It doesn't matter if you can take a BF ship on a 1:1 basis or even a 1:2 basis, BF tactics are to roil right over you with a 5 or 10x numerical advantage, and no one outside the GA can put together enough wallers to blunt them.

Unless BF fritters it's remaining ~1900 "active and Maintenance" remaining ships against the GA, no SDF will be able to withstand the BF, if it decides to mass against it.

Now, if the Tasmania 2 force misses the withdraw order and attacks Manticore, AND Beowulf turns into abitoir, Then the BF will be gelded and unable to respond and mass against the actions of an SDF (especially if multiple SDFs are making waves).

Plus we're told that most SDFs have nothing more than LACs and only a handful have even a single squadron of wallers.

Against somebody with nothing heavier than a light cruiser even a poorly maintained SD or two is going to be overwhelming; unless those CLs have a massive tech edge (and are backed by significant missile pods)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:
On a class-for-class basis, I suspect that any SDF ship could take a SLN ship more often than not. The SDF crew should be inherently better motivated and any upgrade in technology over stock SLN hardware is going to make the difference.

This is where BF's quantity comes in. We know Haven was the universe's 2nd largest fleet, and somewhere around a dozen SDFs have a squadron of the wall or more. It doesn't matter if you can take a BF ship on a 1:1 basis or even a 1:2 basis, BF tactics are to roil right over you with a 5 or 10x numerical advantage, and no one outside the GA can put together enough wallers to blunt them.

Unless BF fritters it's remaining ~1900 "active and Maintenance" remaining ships against the GA, no SDF will be able to withstand the BF, if it decides to mass against it.

Now, if the Tasmania 2 force misses the withdraw order and attacks Manticore, AND Beowulf turns into abitoir, Then the BF will be gelded and unable to respond and mass against the actions of an SDF (especially if multiple SDFs are making waves).

Plus we're told that most SDFs have nothing more than LACs and only a handful have even a single squadron of wallers.

Against somebody with nothing heavier than a light cruiser even a poorly maintained SD or two is going to be overwhelming; unless those CLs have a massive tech edge (and are backed by significant missile pods)[/quote]

Having said all that there must be some System Defence Forces that could give the SLN a fight. In Mission of Honor Kolokoltsov refers to a couple of system defence forces whose loyalty might have been less than total if the crisis with Manticore went on. And in A Rising Thunder he refers to Core Worlds being driven to build their own navies up to challenge the SLN. Some of the SDFs are reasonably large; Mike Henke knowing that several of them were as large as if not larger than the Royal Manticoran Navy's wall of battle from before Roger's build up.

Sorry! My last post did not acknowledge the previous posters accurately enough. My apologies; I am still new at this.

Rincewind wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Plus we're told that most SDFs have nothing more than LACs and only a handful have even a single squadron of wallers.

Against somebody with nothing heavier than a light cruiser even a poorly maintained SD or two is going to be overwhelming; unless those CLs have a massive tech edge (and are backed by significant missile pods)

Having said all that there must be some System Defence Forces that could give the SLN a fight. In Mission of Honor Kolokoltsov refers to a couple of system defence forces whose loyalty might have been less than total if the crisis with Manticore went on. And in A Rising Thunder he refers to Core Worlds being driven to build their own navies up to challenge the SLN. Some of the SDFs are reasonably large; Mike Henke knowing that several of them were as large as if not larger than the Royal Manticoran Navy's wall of battle from before Roger's build up.

A fight yes, but we know that only about a dozen have a 8 or more SDs, and none can have more than a hundred or 2 wallers. For the last 400 years, there has been no real need for any member of the SL to need to protect itself with the umbrella of the SLN protecting the Core.

Manticore's pre-buildup wall is not what you think - it was 11 2.1 Mton BBs (1 was mothballed and needing a refit), 11 3.9 MTon DNs (3 of which were mothballed and needing a refit) and 3 6.5 Mton SDs (all 3 mothballed and needing a refit). A total of 25 ships, 11 of which were obsolete BBs, 7 mothballed and not usable, and the rest undersized for their rate.

The entire pre-buildup wall would not survive an encounter with 1 squadron of 1905 Gryphon SDs.