Fortress Command

Sigs wrote:

Duckk wrote:David covers your arguments in his posts. Short version: the RMN doesn't want them to be able to go elsewhere. They didn't want the temptation to be there to use them elsewhere. It's much the same argument as arming the Nikes with Mk-16s. You can't be tempted to use the capability you don't have.

Doesn't make sense to me, the whole purpose of the fleet buildup is to 1) be a deterrent and 2) when war starts be able to fight it. Those forts are about as much a deterrent as the Maginot Line was for the Germans. Haven could have attacked and defeat all that firepower by avoiding it and capturing the Home planet instead.

But forts are cheaper per ton than SDs and they're also more effective per ton. So you get more defense out of Forts than you do out of SDs. Plus even after you control all the termini you still have to protect the Junction from attacks through hyper. (Hence why Home Fleet got stationed out there during the interval after they decommissioned the obsolete old fort and when the new podlaying, LAC deploying modern forts came online.

If You replaced them with an equivalent defense of SDs you'd have even less 'excess' SDs a alike for offensive operations. (Unless your real though is that the Junction was over-defended and more resources should have been freed for offensive ops. In which case it's still more economical to meet the lower level of Junction defense with forts. You just be able to afford more SDs because you scaled down your defensive requirements)

Sigs wrote:

pnakasone wrote:The Maginot Line did work the Germans did not attack it directly. They went around it or flew over it. It was perfect against the tactics and weapons of the first World War.

That's my point, the Germans went AROUND it. That sort of made it irrelevant. That is one of the major problems with fixed defences, unless they are covering the objective you need, people can generally go around them.

you can make a somewhat compelling argument that it wasn't the Maginot Line that failed. It succeeded in it major pre-war and war goals.

The pre-war goal was an military economic one. With the manpower and finances available to France she couldn't build a big enough mobile army to secure the frontier or to hold back probable enemy armies. The Line allowed a relatively limited number of fortress troops to secure the frontier and freed up manpower for mobile reserve forces. It met that goal.

And one of it major war goal was to funnel an attacker into a smaller front where the standing French army had a reasonable chance to at least hold a stalemate until fresh wartime troops could be conscripted and trained. It also succeeded in that goal. The Germans were funneled through the relatively constricted Belgium frontier.

What failed was the mobile French army. It didn't have the command and control, or cohesion, or doctrine to blunt or react to the armored blitzkrieg. But even so it was a very close run thing. There were a few points where a minor change in timing might have bogged the Germans down long enough for the French army to consolidate. The French had more, and better, tanks and in a less mobile fight wouldn't have been as hamstrung by their truly dreadful command and control.

Clearly the overall French strategy, which included their defensive forts, failed. But it wasn't necessarily the forts which were the failed component. Nor does it follow that, given the same financial and manpower commitments that they'd have been better off without those forts.

Sigs wrote:

pnakasone wrote:
Doesn't make sense to me, the whole purpose of the fleet buildup is to 1) be a deterrent and 2) when war starts be able to fight it. Those forts are about as much a deterrent as the Maginot Line was for the Germans. Haven could have attacked and defeat all that firepower by avoiding it and capturing the Home planet instead.

The Maginot Line did work the Germans did not attack it directly. They went around it or flew over it. It was perfect against the tactics and weapons of the first World War.

That's my point, the Germans went AROUND it. That sort of made it irrelevant. That is one of the major problems with fixed defences, unless they are covering the objective you need, people can generally go around them.

Haven did not want the Junction, they wanted Manticore and the Junction going after Manticore they fight the Mobile units of Home Fleet while the forts sit and watch, and once Manticore is forced to surrender so are the Forts or they will watch Haven bombard Manticore.[/quote]


In universe they did have arguments about the actual usefulness of the forts and how more SDs would have been more useful. But was politically unsupportable.

pnakasone wrote:Haven did not want the Junction, they wanted Manticore and the Junction going after Manticore they fight the Mobile units of Home Fleet while the forts sit and watch, and once Manticore is forced to surrender so are the Forts or they will watch Haven bombard Manticore.

Haven wanted the Junction more than the planets. Haven wanted to conquer Manitcore to shore up their economy, and the majority of Manitcore's wealth came from their control of the Junction. The planets were just a secondary target. Haven had to conquer the planets to retain control of the Junction, since Manticore wouldn't have stood for letting someone else control it. (I doubt that Haven would have stood for letting Manticore continue to exist after they had the Junction, either.)

Jonathan_S wrote:[quote="Sigs]
Doesn't make sense to me, the whole purpose of the fleet buildup is to 1) be a deterrent and 2) when war starts be able to fight it. Those forts are about as much a deterrent as the Maginot Line was for the Germans. Haven could have attacked and defeat all that firepower by avoiding it and capturing the Home planet instead.[/quote]
But forts are cheaper per ton than SDs and they're also more effective per ton. So you get more defense out of Forts than you do out of SDs. Plus even after you control all the termini you still have to protect the Junction from attacks through hyper. (Hence why Home Fleet got stationed out there during the interval after they decommissioned the obsolete old fort and when the new podlaying, LAC deploying modern forts came online.

If You replaced them with an equivalent defense of SDs you'd have even less 'excess' SDs a alike for offensive operations. (Unless your real though is that the Junction was over-defended and more resources should have been freed for offensive ops. In which case it's still more economical to meet the lower level of Junction defense with forts. You just be able to afford more SDs because you scaled down your defensive requirements)[/quote]

200-250 SD's would be able to defend the Junction and still respond to any threats to Manticore, 124 Forts may be able to defend the Junction but if the enemy whoever it may be decides to bypass the forts they have no bearing on the defence of the rest of the system. Manticore might be able to survive the destruction of the Junction Infrastructure, the Junction infrastructure on the other hand most likely will not survive the capture of Manticore... at least not for long. Even if you put a quarter of the Forts in service and reinvest the rest into SD's you still get a solid fixed defence backed by mobile units that can respond to threats against Manticore. If I knew that there was the equivalent of 250 or more SD's worth of firepower in essentially fixed position around the Junction, why would I attack when Home Fleet had 80+ SD's worth of firepower backed up by DN's?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Sigs wrote:
That's my point, the Germans went AROUND it. That sort of made it irrelevant. That is one of the major problems with fixed defences, unless they are covering the objective you need, people can generally go around them.

you can make a somewhat compelling argument that it wasn't the Maginot Line that failed. It succeeded in it major pre-war and war goals.

The pre-war goal was an military economic one. With the manpower and finances available to France she couldn't build a big enough mobile army to secure the frontier or to hold back probable enemy armies. The Line allowed a relatively limited number of fortress troops to secure the frontier and freed up manpower for mobile reserve forces. It met that goal.

And one of it major war goal was to funnel an attacker into a smaller front where the standing French army had a reasonable chance to at least hold a stalemate until fresh wartime troops could be conscripted and trained. It also succeeded in that goal. The Germans were funneled through the relatively constricted Belgium frontier.

What failed was the mobile French army. It didn't have the command and control, or cohesion, or doctrine to blunt or react to the armored blitzkrieg. But even so it was a very close run thing. There were a few points where a minor change in timing might have bogged the Germans down long enough for the French army to consolidate. The French had more, and better, tanks and in a less mobile fight wouldn't have been as hamstrung by their truly dreadful command and control.

Clearly the overall French strategy, which included their defensive forts, failed. But it wasn't necessarily the forts which were the failed component. Nor does it follow that, given the same financial and manpower commitments that they'd have been better off without those forts.

My point is that the Germans went around the Maginot line and removed it from the equation. If we look at the available forces to both sides during the Battle of France in 1940, we can clearly see that they were in fact closer to even than the result would indicate. How much money and how much manpower was tied down in the Maginot line? And how much of the French defeat was as a result of their over reliance on fixed defences?

Maybe if the French did not have the invincible Maginot Line in 1940, they might have been more motivated to modernise and reorganize their military.

cadastral wrote:

pnakasone wrote:Haven did not want the Junction, they wanted Manticore and the Junction going after Manticore they fight the Mobile units of Home Fleet while the forts sit and watch, and once Manticore is forced to surrender so are the Forts or they will watch Haven bombard Manticore.

Haven wanted the Junction more than the planets. Haven wanted to conquer Manitcore to shore up their economy, and the majority of Manitcore's wealth came from their control of the Junction. The planets were just a secondary target. Haven had to conquer the planets to retain control of the Junction, since Manticore wouldn't have stood for letting someone else control it. (I doubt that Haven would have stood for letting Manticore continue to exist after they had the Junction, either.)

Exactly, and why fight the forts in the Junction and risk the destruction of the Infrastructure there when you can force them to surrender? You don't fight them, you save your fleet and you might even end up with some forts with modern weapons. If Haven had wound up attacking Manticore directly at the beginning of the first war, a defeat of Home Fleet and the subsequent surrender of Manticore would have effectively ended the war. Those barely mobile forts would be next to useless, Haven will either have to wait them out if they choose not to surrender or they will move to free Manticore thereby leaving the junction defenceless or worse, splitting up and being defeated in detail.

Sigs wrote:Maybe if the French did not have the invincible Maginot Line in 1940, they might have been more motivated to modernise and reorganize their military.

The French did modernize their amy and airforce they just didn't use them effectively. Their tanks and fighters were actually better hardware than what the Germans used in their initial Blitzkrieg attacks.

The French high command was absurdly awful. Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat is worth reading if you want to know some of how awful. But, for example, they set up at a chateaux whose phone service depended on the town postmistress. When she took an hour for lunch there was no way to reach them.

When looking at this sort of expenditure you can't rule out politics. Generally a democratic system will favour defence over offence and it's a lot easier to sell the "We hate imperialism" Liberals and extreme conservitives on static defensive instalations than on the offensive weapons systems.