(SPOILERS) Expected defeat at Beowulf.

the Tasmania 1 force already scraped the entirety of the region for a screen, and still showed up in Manticore with a piddly, almost non-existant screen.

I'm digging through the books, trying to find exactly how much of a screen Filareta showed up with (not very much), or how much Tsang showed up with in Beowulf (almost non-existant), and even Crandall showed up in Spindle from an entirely different quadrant with virtually no screen.

Three different fleets, one even coming directly from an alleged 'major base'... none of those fleets of SD's had screens worth a damn.

In all honesty, Filareta's command superdreadnought was probably being 'screened' by other, lesser superdreadnoughts, who were also in turn being 'screened' by still lesser commanded superdreadnoughts. That's the only way I can possibly see how their cronyism and corrupt fleet of backscratching can work.

Well.... SD's screening SD's, and their Admirals not actually understanding the concept of a screen, because they haven't fought a major engagement against an opponent of near-equal power in centuries. Even Farley's Crossing was really just a giant turkey shoot, not a do-or-die Manticore vs Haven situation.

Theemile wrote:While it has constantly been stated that the FF is short staffed and under sized for it's job,

...

So the FF in those regions will have trouble just doing their normal jobs.

That's the point: it isn't constantly stated, it is TEXTEV that Frontier Fleet could NOT do its normal jobs without the perception of irresistable, invincible, reprisals.

Frontier Fleet was already having trouble finding enough ships to do "its normal jobs" BEFORE any wartime tasking from Battle Fleet or the Chief of Naval Operations.

To be fair, Manty patrols in Silesia operated on a similar expectation of inevitable retaliation. It's just not that hard to scrape up enough firepower to pot a destroyer or light cruiser. A squadron of battlecruisers or ships of the wall are a bit harder to beat. The threat of overwhelming reinforcements is implicit any time light units from a first rate navy are used to project power or influence against less capable navies.

The big difference for the Sollies would have been the ability to dole out innumerable reprisals. It didn't matter if half the protectorates started taking out FF patrols. They'd all get their own bespoke SD squadron. Prior to the pre-war build up, I don't think the Manties could have responded to more than two or three provocations at time.

noblehunter wrote:To be fair, Manty patrols in Silesia operated on a similar expectation of inevitable retaliation. It's just not that hard to scrape up enough firepower to pot a destroyer or light cruiser. A squadron of battlecruisers or ships of the wall are a bit harder to beat. The threat of overwhelming reinforcements is implicit any time light units from a first rate navy are used to project power or influence against less capable navies.

The big difference for the Sollies would have been the ability to dole out innumerable reprisals. It didn't matter if half the protectorates started taking out FF patrols. They'd all get their own bespoke SD squadron. Prior to the pre-war build up, I don't think the Manties could have responded to more than two or three provocations at time.

I think it's more a pair of differences: Frontier Fleet has been even thinner than the RMN in Silesia for most of the time, so that showing up with a DD or CL as a reminder has been tough, while what's behind them - Battle Fleet - has been so, so much more worrisome than what's behind that RMN destroyer in Silesia, just as you say.

Another factor may be area of operations. Silesia is incredibly dense, so nipping from one system to another to keep an eye on things it easy. A large portion of human explored space is League protectorate or otherwise dominated-without-representation. That's a whole lot of running around for FF to do.

I think SLN policy ossified long ago in another way - how much of the fleet would be BF and how much FF probably assumed a vastly smaller volume of space occupied by protectorates and a vastly smaller number of them. Frontier Fleet's duties expanded without their portion of funding, ships, and personnel growing along with it, possible in part due to what FF is doing is quietly undermining the ideals on which the League was founded. If not for the BF/FF fleet split, they'd've done well assigning even sole SD's to FF duty, just for lack of hulls. Ironically, the SD's screening SD's picture comes from the same top-heavy fleet distribution in a major wartime concentration.

Who needs a screen when the SLN BF could literally show up with 1500 SD's?

Two things:
1st, RMN was operating in Silesia as one of the two powers in the area that had modern - for the time- warships in addition to the ConFed Navy which was would have supposed to have been doing the patroling but was more often putting down system insurrections. Some of the systems had SDFs. The ConFedNavy doesn't seem to have had any SD. It was ineffective in dealing with pirates since it was either a) dealing with political problems like breakaway systems or b) just not good at any of its jobs. That would include catching or detering pirates since too often its people and certainly many of the varioius systems were working with the pirates.
Manticore and the Aldermani were patrolling and NOT BEING interfered with by the ConFed ships. Too many places to cover for CFN and not the will or inclination to do the anti-piracy job effectively. We don't see a pirate problem being talked about within the Core nor the wider area of League members, only out in the Verge etc. So it is FF that is doing the protecting (and the "Protection") often at request of or in partnership with various system governments. So BF mostly has only Capital ships and FF has , apparently, nothing larger than BCs.
Having a DD show up to support an OFS client or partner is a major force though not being able to land troops. Having a 50yr old SLN SD show up should be able to put a few hundred Marine boots on the ground and is going to give almost anything real fits for doing anything except "thank" them for the help being provided or run like hell if they showed up to make trouble for the planet.


2nd:
Back in the 1960's a WW II DE, the USS Coates, was stationed for a few years in New Haven, CT. It had been a training ship for several years and was posted New Haven to continue that. There is a Naval Reserve station there and it seems that many of the Reservests in the area were assigned to the Coates as crew. In the early '80 I worked with a guy who was attached to her and when the Reservests went on a 2 week cruse to the Carribean annually, he didn't get to go- he got to spend his two weeks of Reserve Training duty bringing the books and paperwork up to date and fully prepped so they could go- and his 2 weeks full time were spent on the ship or the Reserve site doing said paperwork.
The SL could certain afford to put a single or a couple of older SDs into a number of systems as Reservist Training Commands and run Reservests from that and a few nearby systems through whatever the required cycles each year. That would shorten the transit distance and time. It would provide actual experience and training. It would also make a nice bunch of contracts for various services and materials support available to hand out to friends in thoses sysetms.

Brigade XO wrote:Two things:

** first deleted **

2nd:
Back in the 1960's a WW II DE, the USS Coates, was stationed for a few years in New Haven, CT. It had been a training ship for several years and was posted New Haven to continue that. There is a Naval Reserve station there and it seems that many of the Reservests in the area were assigned to the Coates as crew. In the early '80 I worked with a guy who was attached to her and when the Reservests went on a 2 week cruse to the Carribean annually, he didn't get to go- he got to spend his two weeks of Reserve Training duty bringing the books and paperwork up to date and fully prepped so they could go- and his 2 weeks full time were spent on the ship or the Reserve site doing said paperwork.
The SL could certain afford to put a single or a couple of older SDs into a number of systems as Reservist Training Commands and run Reservests from that and a few nearby systems through whatever the required cycles each year. That would shorten the transit distance and time. It would provide actual experience and training. It would also make a nice bunch of contracts for various services and materials support available to hand out to friends in those systems.

Yep. There seems to be an assumption among some of the fans that there isn't an SLN Reserve that's intended to man those SDs when they're needed.

I know of no evidence one way or the other. I personally expect that there is one, and that it has a certain number of SDs to play with. What their level of training and readiness is, I have no idea. Probably fairly low.

Relax wrote:Who needs a screen when the SLN BF could literally show up with 1500 SD's?

Which six Manticoran SD(P) can wipe out in about 12 minutes.

The ISLN used to be considered the 800 pound gorilla. It has recently been unmasked as an 800 pound lemur pretending to be a gorilla.
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

Imaginos1892 wrote:

Relax wrote:Who needs a screen when the SLN BF could literally show up with 1500 SD's?

Which six Manticoran SD(P) can wipe out in about 12 minutes.

The ISLN used to be considered the 800 pound gorilla. It has recently been unmasked as an 800 pound lemur pretending to be a gorilla.
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

.... Looks at Subject tag line ....
.... Reads, Imaginos's post ....
.... Looks at Subject tag line ....

I've been catching up here and I know that the relavant discussion was several pages back on this thread...

But I do wamt to observe that I was not under the impression that those 10m casualties came from the SLN attack... I thought that they were the result of chemical or bio warfare being waged by the MAlign. I'll be the first to admit that my impression is a bit foggy here and I don't remember where it came from.

Don

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