(SPOILERS) Expected defeat at Beowulf.

It makes sense to see some losses coming at the hands of the MAlign, but not so much at the hands of SLN for reasons stated on the forums numerous times.

As I interpret the story arc, the clash with the League is more of a side show. The main thrust is dealing with the Alignment.

Don

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n7axw wrote:It makes sense to see some losses coming at the hands of the MAlign, but not so much at the hands of SLN for reasons stated on the forums numerous times.

As I interpret the story arc, the clash with the League is more of a side show. The main thrust is dealing with the Alignment.

Don

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Ok, "what's the thing," you ask? Well, here's the thing...

Something that I intensely hope RFC has been intentionally holding in reserve. The League COs thus far has failed to take their enemies seriously. League COs have allowed their deeply rooted arrogance and disdain for anything Haven Sector neobarbaric cloud their judgement. Along with their misplaced air of invincibility.

Never has the League dispatched a serious CO -- who knows what he's up against, respects his opponent, can find his ass in daylight without it being lit up by a wedge -- who has the tactical skills equal to at least a Tourville with several hundred SDs with screen.

Sure, the GA has an "alleged" insurmountable tech advantage -- but the proper numbers accompanied with proper tactics can circumvent some of the tech. NAMELY, when an opponent has a longer reach, you find a way to get INSIDE of his reach! At the Battle of Manticore that's what was planned for Honor's own Eighth Fleet. If the League can send enough ships, and can manage to mousetrap Home Fleet then the SLN has a chance. I'm not talking about a chance to win, but a chance to make the GA seriously bleed! I'm just saying!

Tactics! There has to be a worthy Solarian Admiral with a worn copy of the Art of War.

I mainly just want to see a Solarian Admiral who actually deserves the title! Who won't just blindly and predictably bore right in. Who'll make Honor scratch her chin and ponder the protagonist.

I'd like to see a SLN admiral who Honor can at least respect. Who shall give her a fitting tactical battle -- similar to what Bellefeuille or McQueen most certainly would have.

Overwhelming might doesn't always win. The Vietnamese knew that quite well.

cthia wrote:Ok, "what's the thing," you ask? Well, here's the thing...

Something that I intensely hope RFC has been intentionally holding in reserve. The League COs thus far has failed to take their enemies seriously. League COs have allowed their deeply rooted arrogance and disdain for anything Haven Sector neobarbaric cloud their judgement. Along with their misplaced air of invincibility.

Never has the League dispatched a serious CO -- who knows what he's up against, respects his opponent, can find his ass in daylight without it being lit up by a wedge -- who has the tactical skills equal to at least a Tourville with several hundred SDs with screen.

Sure, the GA has an "alleged" insurmountable tech advantage -- but the proper numbers accompanied with proper tactics can circumvent some of the tech. NAMELY, when an opponent has a longer reach, you find a way to get INSIDE of his reach! At the Battle of Manticore that's what was planned for Honor's own Eighth Fleet. If the League can send enough ships, and can manage to mousetrap Home Fleet then the SLN has a chance. I'm not talking about a chance to win, but a chance to make the GA seriously bleed! I'm just saying!

Tactics! There has to be a worthy Solarian Admiral with a worn copy of the Art of War.

I mainly just want to see a Solarian Admiral who actually deserves the title! Who won't just blindly and predictably bore right in. Who'll make Honor scratch her chin and ponder the protagonist.

I'd like to see a SLN admiral who Honor can at least respect. Who shall give her a fitting tactical battle -- similar to what Bellefeuille or McQueen most certainly would have.

Overwhelming might doesn't always win. The Vietnamese knew that quite well.

It's not just that Manticore outranges the SLN ships. It's also that Manticore's ships are quicker, that they're designed to deal with vastly more missiles thrown at them, and return vastly more missiles (fire control designed to control many more missiles).

At Solon a single pair of Invictus-class SD(P)s was able to just wipe away the stacked missile fire of 6 SD(P)s -- 1,100 missiles every 36 seconds. It wasn't until they went to a truely massive single 11,000 missile launch that some got through (172) and inflicted minimal damage to one and crippled the offensive power of the other.

A rough estimate, based on early war towed pod numbers, makes me think it would take roughly 9 SDs with towed pods to equal each of the small salvos, plus another 92 to equal the ~12,000 missile launch. So you're looking at something close to 200 SDs to equal 2/3rds the total firepower of 6 Havenite SD(P)s. (Those combined salvos shot off 2/3rds of their pod loadout)

If you ignore the ineffective staggered salvos and just concentrate on the one that got through it appears that the SLN needs to bring roughly a 50-to-1 waller advantage to have a reasonable probability of inflicting significant damage on a RMN SD(P) -- assuming the cataphracts are as capable as the RHN MDMs were. At that's probably an optimistic estimate. We know SLN designs were less missile combat oriented so they can probably control less pods than the pre-pod RMN SDs could; and the Cataphract is likely less effective than Havenite MDMs (lower terminal velocity for one thing; plus presumably more myopic sensors and less accumulated library of RMN ECM tricks to be programmed to handle).
So if you mousetrap a single squadron, 6 Invictus-class, you'd want to bring at least 300 Scientist or Vega class ships towing pods. Basically you need the majority of the ships dedicated to Raging Justice (400 SDs) to have reasonable confidence of injuring (but not killing) a single squadron of Invictus. That's pretty damned wide margin of inferiority. Oh and the RMN squadron will eat alive your ships once your towed pods are shot - and at least some of the Invictus are going to have fairly unimpaired offenses.

Now if you're lucky enough to mousetrap ships without Keyhole, older RMN units or RHN units, that would bring down the required numbers a fair bit. A rough off the cuff guess would be 4 times less. So only a 12-to-1 hull ratio; or 72+ SDs to damage single 6-ship squadron. Though if you're tackling an 8 ship RHN squadron better bring at least 92+ SDs. And you're still going to get ripped up, given your pitiful missile defenses. That's trading away a significant fraction of your remaining wall to inflict significant but not necessarily fatal damage to the ships of a single squadron.

The Scientist and Vega class ships just aren't even in the same ballpark as GA designs (and I didn't even realize quite how bad it was till I ran these numbers)

(Now if you pull of the miracle of englobing a GA formation within energy range; that's a whole different ballgame. You should be pretty close to parity until they managed to shoot a hole and get far enough away to interpose their wedge against all your ships. But jumping in within energy range doesn't help you if they can interpose wedge, so you need to be coming from enough different angles that it's impossible to interpose against all your ships. It'll be a mutual slaughter; but a much closer to even one)

cthia wrote:Never has the League dispatched a serious CO -- who knows what he's up against, respects his opponent, can find his ass in daylight without it being lit up by a wedge -- who has the tactical skills equal to at least a Tourville with several hundred SDs with screen.

Any serious League CO either surrenders or runs away. I'll grant you there are a few tricks the League could attempt that at least theoretically has the possibility of success given what they know. But none of them are war-winning tricks.

As for a Solarian CO of Tourville calibre - well, unfortunately, Tourville got there first. He's already punched out the RMN's weakest points and is now helping patch them up. All Solarian COs are fatally inexperienced - Roszak was probably their best and he screwed up at Congo 2, against the dregs of Haven's navy. Now with that experience and the small modern fleet he's prepared, Roszak is the League's best... and he's leaving.

The only way I see the SLN contributing to a GA loss is by being bait to draw a GA force into a position where the Detweiler-class spider ships can fire on them with cripplers, grav lances, grasers and energy torpedoes. That's a big if, can Detweilers get into range before the swarms of recon drones spot them?

cthia wrote:

n7axw wrote:It makes sense to see some losses coming at the hands of the MAlign, but not so much at the hands of SLN for reasons stated on the forums numerous times.

As I interpret the story arc, the clash with the League is more of a side show. The main thrust is dealing with the Alignment.

Don

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Ok, "what's the thing," you ask? Well, here's the thing...

Something that I intensely hope RFC has been intentionally holding in reserve. The League COs thus far has failed to take their enemies seriously. League COs have allowed their deeply rooted arrogance and disdain for anything Haven Sector neobarbaric cloud their judgement. Along with their misplaced air of invincibility.

Never has the League dispatched a serious CO -- who knows what he's up against, respects his opponent, can find his ass in daylight without it being lit up by a wedge -- who has the tactical skills equal to at least a Tourville with several hundred SDs with screen.

Sure, the GA has an "alleged" insurmountable tech advantage -- but the proper numbers accompanied with proper tactics can circumvent some of the tech. NAMELY, when an opponent has a longer reach, you find a way to get INSIDE of his reach! At the Battle of Manticore that's what was planned for Honor's own Eighth Fleet. If the League can send enough ships, and can manage to mousetrap Home Fleet then the SLN has a chance. I'm not talking about a chance to win, but a chance to make the GA seriously bleed! I'm just saying!

Tactics! There has to be a worthy Solarian Admiral with a worn copy of the Art of War.

I mainly just want to see a Solarian Admiral who actually deserves the title! Who won't just blindly and predictably bore right in. Who'll make Honor scratch her chin and ponder the protagonist.

I'd like to see a SLN admiral who Honor can at least respect. Who shall give her a fitting tactical battle -- similar to what Bellefeuille or McQueen most certainly would have.

Overwhelming might doesn't always win. The Vietnamese knew that quite well.

I'm not spending any time feeling sorry for the SLN for not being competitive. Given what they've done in the Verge, the attempt on Manticore, I'm glad they're not competitive. They've earned what's going to happen to them in spades.

The Vietmamese were competently led and not corrupt. I didn't and still don't like their bent toward tyranny, but I understand why they won, and quite frankly, they earned it.

As for worries about the story turning Mary Sueish, remember that the main act now is the tilt with the Alignment and I would visualize the possibility of some real setbacks there.

Don

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n7axw wrote:As for worries about the story turning Mary Sueish, remember that the main act now is the tilt with the Alignment and I would visualize the possibility of some real setbacks there.

Don

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Remember that RFC has said that he's planning to wrap it up in two more books, with the last one published in 2018 on the 24th (25th?) anniversary of the publication of On Basilisk Station. Whether he manages it or not remains to be seen, but that schedule doesn't give a lot of leeway for the tide of battle to shift back and forth a few times.

JohnRoth wrote:

n7axw wrote:As for worries about the story turning Mary Sueish, remember that the main act now is the tilt with the Alignment and I would visualize the possibility of some real setbacks there.

Don

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Remember that RFC has said that he's planning to wrap it up in two more books, with the last one published in 2018 on the 24th (25th?) anniversary of the publication of On Basilisk Station. Whether he manages it or not remains to be seen, but that schedule doesn't give a lot of leeway for the tide of battle to shift back and forth a few times.

That's for this story arc. I'm not expecting that to include the final defeat of the Mesan Alignment: maybe some setbacks for it, but mostly the dissolution of the League.

There are three sides here. There's room for back and forth between two of them, and how that goes will be an interesting read. For the third, it's just a matter of the details of how it all falls apart.

JeffEngel wrote:As for worries about the story turning Mary Sueish, remember that the main act now is the tilt with the Alignment and I would visualize the possibility of some real setbacks there.

Don

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JohnRoth wrote:Remember that RFC has said that he's planning to wrap it up in two more books, with the last one published in 2018 on the 24th (25th?) anniversary of the publication of On Basilisk Station. Whether he manages it or not remains to be seen, but that schedule doesn't give a lot of leeway for the tide of battle to shift back and forth a few times.

n7axw wrote:That's for this story arc. I'm not expecting that to include the final defeat of the Mesan Alignment: maybe some setbacks for it, but mostly the dissolution of the League.

There are three sides here. There's room for back and forth between two of them, and how that goes will be an interesting read. For the third, it's just a matter of the details of how it all falls apart.

I don't know what to expect, frankly. He's said that there are only two major battles left, which to me suggests the Battle of Beowulf and the Battle of Darius. That might not, of course, be correct. Whether he's going to obliterate the MAlign in this section or leave it for later is another unknown. He could create a new Big Bad - the Gremlins, for example, could be stringing people along the same way the treecats did for so long, and to a more malign purpose.

In any case, if there is a second story arc, it's supposed to start 20 to 30 years in the future, so it'll start after the political situation has settled down into a new pattern, with whatever technology he's chosen to introduce in the interim.

munroburton wrote:
As for a Solarian CO of Tourville calibre - well, unfortunately, Tourville got there first. He's already punched out the RMN's weakest points and is now helping patch them up. All Solarian COs are fatally inexperienced - Roszak was probably their best and he screwed up at Congo 2, against the dregs of Haven's navy. Now with that experience and the small modern fleet he's prepared, Roszak is the League's best... and he's leaving.

You are bit harsh with Rozark. the only people that had MDMs or DDMs were either Manties, Haven, Andermani Erewhonise or Grayson.

there was no evidence anywhere that messa or even someone like technodye had developed SHIPLAUNCDED DDMs or MDMs

the most advanced missiles anyone thought messa could have were basically the big ones used against Terekhov at monica and even they were still only SDMs. longer run time true, but still only SDMs.

I understand that a good commander plans even for the unlikely and given his range advantage he should have just hammered from further out, say 20 Mkm.

But given his limited ammunition and the fact that the core of the raiding force were haven built BCs that while not built to stand up to 2nd manty-haven war missile fire were still much more capable then anything built by the league which is what he would be most familiar with I can't really fault him for wanting to get as much damage out of each salvo as he could, which of course meant getting in closer.

cthia wrote:

CRC wrote:I don't believe the context of the overheard comment goes either way as to a "defeat". But in a planet as heavily populated as Beowulf, 10M people could easily be killed by a Fractional C missile that gets past the defenses. But only one as several would cause many more than 10M dead.

The author could conceivably allow two hits on planet, keeping the tally < 10M while also containing disbelief, just to make it more of a cliff hanger to us readers -- only to announce later in storyline that the two strikes were in relatively close proximity to each other and in the most sparsely populated of areas to boot. Too many more than that would probably funnel too much debris into the atmosphere.

Also, we must not overlook that amongst the dead could be a non-human tally as was the case with the treecats in the last planetary disaster. Gremlins on Beowulf are listed as slightly lower than treecats on the sentience scale.

At any rate, I wonder how much damage to Gremlins will be done.

And why is it so inconceivable that the GA could take one in the L column for once? Even if temporarily? My golly gumballs, let the League win ONE! Heck, with so many systems they could build LACs twice the size with powerful grasers. I don't know how they'd get them all there, but each system could build only 10 LACs and the League could seed a system with half a million of them running around like fireflies. LACs can be built quickly. They may not have time to duplicate the tech to make them smaller. But with those kinds of numbers and a powerful graser, would it matter?

USE that attritious margin!

munroburton wrote:Do you think the Yawata Strike wasn't a big entry under the loss column, then? For that matter, the first battle of Manticore was a big fat lose-lose for both belligerent factions now merged.

It's so inconceivable, because the deployed tech imbalance is so huge and the League hasn't got a proportionately vast military-industrial complex. For its size and wealth, it should have nearer to a million SDs rather than "just" 2,000 fully manned and 8,000 floating crewlessly. That is due to a constitutional prohibition on federal taxes - despite all that vast wealth, the federal government can only tap an infinitesmal percentage of it.

Solly built LACs would not have the beta-squared nodes. Their acceleration would be less than that of their own SDs. It doesn't matter how big a graser is squeezed into them, they'll never be able to get into range of anything the GA has deployed without first surviving the considerable anti-LAC defenses now built up.

The only thing the League has is sheer size. And that in itself is a serious handicap - all of Haven's defensive problems are magnified by about five or six times and an additional factor upon that with Manticore's seizure of the wormholes.

The so-called 800-pound gorilla has grown old, frail and his muscles turned to fat. Now the young bucks have tripped him up. The mighty alpha beast which used to dominate the universe stumbles and falls. Several bones shatter and the old beast lies on the ground, struggling and flailing as one of the younger and fitter males carefully steps up and brings down a heavy rock into his skull. Again and again.

They're not going to let the giant crawl away, heal his bones, get back on its feet and embark on a workout montage followed by a roaring rampage of revenge.

Like Napoleon said, ask for anything but time. Time, once passed, is forever lost. The Sollies had every chance to observe technological progress from Manticore and Haven's first war and learn how it ended - and then start quietly rebuilding their navy - exactly as the Imperial Andermani Navy actually did. And that paid off - the IAN weren't up to Manticoran standards but they did keep up enough to pose a serious threat in War of Honor. None of that happened back on Sol!

They've had since 1915 to do that. The New Tuscany Incident happened late 1921 and they've wasted all that intervening time doing nothing but moving their obsolete stuff into position for a war they would have won twenty years earlier, but now will only lose.

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Do you think the Yawata Strike wasn't a big entry under the loss column, then? For that matter, the first battle of Manticore was a big fat lose-lose for both belligerent factions now merged.

Yes I do. Loss. But the L column represents a Lost. You may win a battle with a sucker punch - see the Japanese and Pearl Harbor -- but you don't win a war that way. That way you only awaken a sleeping giant that opens up his big bag of worms and feeds them to you. The Yawata strike wasn't a lost. It was a loss. Subtle, yet very profound difference.

The rest of your post I take under serious advisement.

I'd just like to see the remaining wargames with the League fought with at least a deck stacked with worthy League opponents.

Your brain doesn't have to be as handicapped as the vessel it's in -- see Stephen Hawkings.