(SPOILERS) Expected defeat at Beowulf.

munroburton wrote:

CRC wrote:There are additional wallers available:

From Mission of Honor:

"Which is why the redeployment of our active wall is designed to concentrate no fewer than an additional five hundred wallers on Tasmania—this time with complete logistical support and a powerful Frontier Fleet screen—within two and a half months. In three months' time, that total will reach six hundred. Which means we'll be able to dispatch a second wave, substantially larger and even more powerfully supported, against Manticore within a maximum of five months—long before they will have been able to restore sufficient industrial capacity to reammunition their own ships."

David Weber. Mission of Honor (Kindle Locations 12336-12340). Baen Books.

So there are at least another 600 units around Tasmania. So where in relation to Beowulf is Tasmania?

http://www.gotshifted.com/honorverseglo ... %20ART.png

Tasmania is probably close to the Beowulf-Manticore bridge line, somewhere in the Shell. It could be in the Protectorates but that seems a lower probability to me. If so, that force is better placed to attack Beowulf than Manticore.

Brigade XO wrote:Just where is Kingsford going to find crews for 500 or even 100 SDs at this point?

If you pull trained people out of existing ships you are going to get some but at best you are going to be getting training cadre, not put the de-mothballed ships into imediate fighting condition. How many trained people do you need to fight an SD? If the crew is in the 4000 size you dam well better have more than 1000 to start moving them. Perhaps the new people could assist in the recommissioning work but perhaps not.

Does the League have 400,000 previously trained and current on their qualifications for the proper jobs on SDs waiting in the Reserve pool for the SLN? That's everything from engine room and power plant people to scan/tactical watch-standers to enviornmental crew, missle and lightspeed weapons tech and gunners. How about mess personel and cooks (though somewhat lower critical need for proficiency. Or medical?
If they have them with the abilities to step right from the civilian/reserve status to active duty in a combat zone, where are they and how soon can you get them from their present locations to where they need to be just to step aboard their "new" ships?

And all those "reservist" people who are still/already serving aboard civilian merchant shipping (which the League now desperatly needs both in civiilan and military shipping) are going to be somewhat difficult to grab from wherever they are and thrown back into the SLN to fill all critical knowledge and operations slots in even enlisted jobs and skils.

How long does it take to put ONE Reserve Fleet SD back into commission or even just functional to safely ( somewhat important) get into hyperspace and fire it's weapons at any target? What capasity does the Reserve Fleet depots have as far as working on multiple ships at one time? If it takes a month to make one fully operational, can they do five at the same time?

Of course, it is possible that you can take the ships as they come out of the reserve with the partialy (very ) trained crews and use them to sit in various "guard" positions to free up ships which are already on active duty to move to places where they might be able to function in cowing some system until they become dust bunnies when they finally face a modern GA force.

We are back to the time left before the SL fractures. That doesn't mean that perhaps even quite a few of the Reserve ships will get put back into some kind of fighting capacity. Can't tell you when the League will breakdown or when and in what form will the surviving SLN continue as even part of the SDFs of the fragments, but probably not long enough to make a difference.

ChronicRder wrote:There's very little text-ev on the SLN that I can find. Other than Battle fleet is comprised almost entirely of either DNs or SDs. Hugely outdated with a high percentage still using auto-cannons, but wallers all the same. This numbers somewhere around 15,000 according to the honorverse wiki page and a few things I remember from the books themselves. Combined with mode "modern" Frontier Fleet which comprises of everything up to battlecruisers and other screening elements. I don't remember anything about battleships in either. Then, there's the Gendarmerie of Frontier Security backed up by the Solarian Marines. Nothing really about fleet strength for Frontier Fleet or size of either of the ground force elements.
Then, I read somewhere that the League has 2,000 wallers being refit at any point in time. That's why I brought up the 2,000 number. As for where they'll get the people, I have no idea how many people they have to begin with, do you?

JohnRoth wrote:

ChronicRder wrote:Frontier Fleet is said to be chronically short of hulls for their mission of keeping the iron heel on the neck of the Protectorates and the rest of the Verge; a lot of the regular allotment have been siphoned off to form the screen for the 600 SDs at Tasmania, and more are being siphoned off to form the commerce raiding force.

Brigade XO wrote:We see Crandall get reamed at Spindle the Filerta looses that entire fleet at 2nd Manticore. So, in it's wisdom the SLN now has (or had) 600 SDs AND supporting screen /logistics units at Tasmania that was going to be the 2nd (and larger) attack if 400 SD couldn't take the Manticore System.
Who or what is minding the store back in the League?

Exactly what kind of system is Tasmania anyway? What is there that could support 1st 400 and then 600 SDs and attached screening + logistics units (and ships stuffed with Marines)?
Does Tasmania get ANY civilian traffic? That could be inconvenient if some freighter stops to offload and then load cargo and goes anywhere it could mention it was in this little out-of-the-way place and there was this gargantuan SL waller fleet sitting in the system. Would probably take a reallly piss poor sensor system to miss a fleet the size of Filerta's if you pulled into a system to do cargo transfer and there were , say, 500 warships, sitting with impellers on or even just anti-collision lights/beacons.

Too bad the Alignment doesn't have something that could slip into the system and shoot the crap out of the next best 600 SLN wallers and screen. Oh, wait, they do, and they know those ships are there.

ChronicRder wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Just where is Kingsford going to find crews for 500 or even 100 SDs at this point?

If you pull trained people out of existing ships you are going to get some but at best you are going to be getting training cadre, not put the de-mothballed ships into imediate fighting condition. How many trained people do you need to fight an SD? If the crew is in the 4000 size you dam well better have more than 1000 to start moving them. Perhaps the new people could assist in the recommissioning work but perhaps not.

Does the League have 400,000 previously trained and current on their qualifications for the proper jobs on SDs waiting in the Reserve pool for the SLN? That's everything from engine room and power plant people to scan/tactical watch-standers to enviornmental crew, missle and lightspeed weapons tech and gunners. How about mess personel and cooks (though somewhat lower critical need for proficiency. Or medical?
If they have them with the abilities to step right from the civilian/reserve status to active duty in a combat zone, where are they and how soon can you get them from their present locations to where they need to be just to step aboard their "new" ships?

And all those "reservist" people who are still/already serving aboard civilian merchant shipping (which the League now desperatly needs both in civiilan and military shipping) are going to be somewhat difficult to grab from wherever they are and thrown back into the SLN to fill all critical knowledge and operations slots in even enlisted jobs and skils.

How long does it take to put ONE Reserve Fleet SD back into commission or even just functional to safely ( somewhat important) get into hyperspace and fire it's weapons at any target? What capasity does the Reserve Fleet depots have as far as working on multiple ships at one time? If it takes a month to make one fully operational, can they do five at the same time?

Of course, it is possible that you can take the ships as they come out of the reserve with the partialy (very ) trained crews and use them to sit in various "guard" positions to free up ships which are already on active duty to move to places where they might be able to function in cowing some system until they become dust bunnies when they finally face a modern GA force.

We are back to the time left before the SL fractures. That doesn't mean that perhaps even quite a few of the Reserve ships will get put back into some kind of fighting capacity. Can't tell you when the League will breakdown or when and in what form will the surviving SLN continue as even part of the SDFs of the fragments, but probably not long enough to make a difference.

There's very little text-ev on the SLN that I can find. Other than Battle fleet is comprised almost entirely of either DNs or SDs. Hugely outdated with a high percentage still using auto-cannons, but wallers all the same. This numbers somewhere around 15,000 according to the honorverse wiki page and a few things I remember from the books themselves. Combined with mode "modern" Frontier Fleet which comprises of everything up to battlecruisers and other screening elements. I don't remember anything about battleships in either. Then, there's the Gendarmerie of Frontier Security backed up by the Solarian Marines. Nothing really about fleet strength for Frontier Fleet or size of either of the ground force elements.
Then, I read somewhere that the League has 2,000 wallers being refit at any point in time. That's why I brought up the 2,000 number. As for where they'll get the people, I have no idea how many people they have to begin with, do you?

CRC wrote:Don't forget there is also the 100 SDNs in Tsang's task force.

I suspect most core worlds has a local self defense fleet, like Beowulf's 30+ SDNs, so I would think that any SLN attack on Beowulf would be in the 500+ SDN range at least.

Theemile wrote:

CRC wrote:Don't forget there is also the 100 SDNs in Tsang's task force.

I suspect most core worlds has a local self defense fleet, like Beowulf's 30+ SDNs, so I would think that any SLN attack on Beowulf would be in the 500+ SDN range at least.

The crazy thing is that the sheer # of SLN ships we're discussing here:

71 Wallers at Spindle
429 Wallers with Tasmania 1
~600 Wallers with Tasmania 2
100 Wallers with Tang @ Beowulf 1

All told, the SLN (who never moves it's wallers around on deployments) has "silently" been moving 1200 wallers against Manticore to date, plus several hundred lighter ships. That's 1/2 the active and maintenance Battle Fleet. All without a Declaration of War. That's like the US sitting 5 carrier Battle groups off "where-ever"-istan and thinking no one would notice.