(SPOILERS) Expected defeat at Beowulf.

cthia wrote:Is there any reason why the GA can't strategically position forces half the distance to the goal -- in stealth, as Fearless was when Honor pock shotted D'Orville in the fleet games?

kzt wrote:There will be a lot people killed when the SLN puts a frac C missile into Beowulf.

Silverwall wrote:This is the only way Weber can give the GA a defeat at Beowulf given the incompetant useless corner he has painted the SLN into compared to the GA fleets.

In a stand up fight the SLN can't win if there are GA forces in the system when they arrive. The only way they can win is basically though terminal stupidity at a strategic level of forbidding Manticoran forces at the terminus from interviening AND the commanding officer actually following these orders. No matter what her orders if Truman is still commanding everything we have seen of her says that when the SLN arrives she will go straight for them regardless of career repercussions so they have to redeploy her to make the attack succeed. The Beowulf defenders may get chewed up slowing the sollies down but they should be able to buy time for GA forces at the terminus to get there.

IF the SLN commits an edict vilation or appears to thanks to sharks from the MAN then the league probably won't last another 6 months as the GA will ruthlessly crush all fleet centres and there will be a political crisis of unimaginable proportions as the SLN comes appart at the seams as non mesan corrupted admirals mutiny at such a fundamental breach of everything they have been tought to believe in.

Theemile wrote:I Believe the Terminus is ~4 hours away from the Beowulf system. Until the publicite is completed, it has been agreed that there will be no alliance presence in the Beowulf system to combat arguments of forcible coercion- so RMN forces are located at the Terminus.

So - when the SLN does come calling, they will have ~8 hours before an RMN taskforce can respond. When defenses will be completed and available to the BSDF is in question.

We know the SLN force isn't leaving Beowulf space, the question is what happens in that 8 hours they have before the RMN response, and what really causes the loss of live David hinted at.

Somtaaw wrote:

cthia wrote:Is there any reason why the GA can't strategically position forces half the distance to the goal -- in stealth, as Fearless was when Honor pock shotted D'Orville in the fleet games?

During that event, Admiral Hemphill had been manipulated to take her evasion course in the general vicinity of Fearless and they just barrelled on past leaving no warning there was a ship there.


The better question would be whether they could do something closer to Honor's influence in the Battle of Hancock, using the battlecruiser sized fast minelayers, to make a sudden minefield out in the middle of nowhere. Honor didn't have to trick Admiral Chin into a new course, she made a minefield on the course the enemy was already using, which lowered their guard (slightly).

cthia wrote:I'm not considering that sort of pre-stealthed placement for anything other than to limit response time.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Another thought here: What exactly does "no combat forces" mean?

If I were the GA I would dump a bunch of Apollo pods in the system. Pods are quite stealthy, nobody needs to know they are there so they won't have any influence on the vote.

If the Sollies come calling the pods can be fired by the ships barreling in from the terminus. They won't work all that well but they don't need to--with some Ghost Rider drones (again, stealthy, what the voters don't know about won't change the vote) to provide basic targeting they should still devastate Sollie ships.

This provides no point defense, though--while the Sollies would be devastated it would be up to the locals to stop anything heading for the planet if they deliberately or accidentally committed an Eridani violation.

Somtaaw wrote:

cthia wrote:Is there any reason why the GA can't strategically position forces half the distance to the goal -- in stealth, as Fearless was when Honor pock shotted D'Orville in the fleet games?

During that event, Admiral Hemphill had been manipulated to take her evasion course in the general vicinity of Fearless and they just barrelled on past leaving no warning there was a ship there.

drothgery wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:During that event, Admiral Hemphill had been manipulated to take her evasion course in the general vicinity of Fearless and they just barrelled on past leaving no warning there was a ship there.

D'Orville was the one being manipulated; Honor was under Hemphill's command in that exercise.

On Basilisk Station wrote:Her mind begin to pick and pry at the problem. It was probable, she decided, that she could get away with it at least once, assuming the Aggressors hadn't cracked Hemphill's security. After all, the idea was so crazy no sane person would expect it! Suppose she arranged to join one of the screening squadrons? That was a logical enough position for a light cruiser, and the big boys would tend to ignore Fearless to concentrate on the opposing capital ships. That might let her slip into lance range and get off her shot. It would be little better than a suicide run, but that wouldn't bother Hemphill's cronies. They'd consider trading a light cruiser (and its crew) for an enemy dreadnought or superdreadnought more than equitable, which was one reason Honor hated their so-called tactical doctrine.

-snip-
"General signal from Flag, Ma'am. 'Preparative Baker-Golf- Seven-Niner.'"

Honor nodded acknowledgment of Lieutenant Webster's report without raising her eyes from her display. She'd expected the signal from the moment Admiral D'Orville's Aggressors settled on their final approach vector, and Seven-Niner was, in a very real sense, her personal creation. Admiral Hemphill's ops officer probably wouldn't see it that way, but Captain Grimaldi, Hemphill's chief of staff, had realized what Honor was up to and supported her hints and deferential suggestions with surprising subtlety. He'd even given her a grin of approval after the final captains' briefing, which had led Honor into a fundamental re-evaluation camp. Not that it took a mental giant to realize that no conventional approach would let a light cruiser, whatever its armament, survive to reach attack range of a hostile battle fleet.

"Admiral Hemphill's deceleration is holding steady, Sir." His chief of staff broke into D'Orville's thoughts with a fresh update from Tactical. "We should enter missile range in another twenty minutes."
"What's the latest on her detached squadron?"
"We got a good cross-cut on their transmissions about twelve minutes ago, Sir. They're way the hell and gone in-system." Captain Lewis's completely neutral tone almost shouted his derision for their opponent, and D'Orville hid a smile of agreement. Sonja was going to look mighty bad when they got done kicking her posterior clear back to the capital, and that was exactly what was going to happen to her if she tried a stand-up fight without those detached dreadnoughts. She should have gone on running until they could join up, not challenged this soon, but at least their absence explained her course. She was well off a direct heading for the planets she was supposed to be defending for the simple reason that it was the shortest route to the ships she'd forgotten to bring to the dance, and D'Orville was sadly tempted to ignore her ...-snipe-

Somtaaw wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm not considering that sort of pre-stealthed placement for anything other than to limit response time.

But that's what your original question consisted of. Fearless, during the wargames against Admiral D'Orville was pre-placed and stealthed.


And the battlecruisers during Hancock weren't picked up at all, until they'd finished laying their minefield, returned to base and picked up evacuee's, and then started running completely out of the system. Which implies they have pretty damned good stealth systems, that they could make an entire minefield, and scoot off without a trace.

Which means the minelayers could do, more or less, what you were asking, but without being forced to rely on the enemy being lured past your position, ala Fearless who had a net zero velocity during wargames. Sneak into the right place, drop a minefield in the middle of nowhere on the right course, and sneak away, and the first warning the Solarian's get is some radar tech going "hmm, that's odd?"

timmopussycat wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Another thought here: What exactly does "no combat forces" mean?

If I were the GA I would dump a bunch of Apollo pods in the system. Pods are quite stealthy, nobody needs to know they are there so they won't have any influence on the vote.

If the Sollies come calling the pods can be fired by the ships barreling in from the terminus. They won't work all that well but they don't need to--with some Ghost Rider drones (again, stealthy, what the voters don't know about won't change the vote) to provide basic targeting they should still devastate Sollie ships.

This provides no point defense, though--while the Sollies would be devastated it would be up to the locals to stop anything heading for the planet if they deliberately or accidentally committed an Eridani violation.

What's even easier is to have a Mantie news network dispatch boat (wink, wink) in orbit around Beowolf. Said dispatch boat goes up into hyper on the arrival of the Solarian fleet and meets a Mantie fleet waiting in hyper against just this event. Beowolf doesn't even have to know the fleet's there unless it's needed to resist such an attack. (Run the fleet through the wormhole, head a good ways in another direction from the Beowolf system, go up into hyper and come back.) Since Mantie home fleet now has reports from the battle of Spindle, not to mention their own experience defeating Filareta, this possibility will be staring them in the face.