Honorverse ramblings and musings

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:I know I should remember this, but I don't. Please forgive...

What is the order of attack of Ferrets, Shrikes and Katanas? Or does it depend on the situation even if all three LAC variants are present?

Shrikes rely on Ferrets degrading the defenses and sensors. Otherwise they get slaughtered. See BoM.

Somtaaw wrote:The general order of attack was covered in Ashes of Victory I think. Find the point where Scotty meets Truman, and she gives him command of some LAC groups. Think it was some of their training exercises, and Scotty was mentioning it to.. Stu I think?

Generally speaking:
Shrikes are low on missiles due to the size of their graser. Their targets of choice are basically battlecruisers or above, because their graser is the only LAC sized weapon that can truly hurt capital ships.

Ferrets are missile boats, and feature much larger ECM suites than Shrikes. They also carry something like double the countermissiles of Shrikes, and their job is to cover the Shrikes with their ECM and CM loadouts against larger targets. Ferret missiles have sufficient power to destroy even heavy cruisers, if they can get past the active defenses. But Ferret missiles are too small to do more than scratch the paint of capital ships, so original doctrine was to have them break off before entering energy range of wallers.


Katana's are obviously anti-LAC, and with their trio of superdreadnought PDLC's, they also have superb point defense to aid in missile defense without being forced to launch Vipers in that role.


All Manticoran LAC's can operate in missile defense for the wall, but Ferrets and particularly Katana's are far more efficient at it. Shrike's are seemingly the weakest of the trio in terms of belonging anymore, they can't do missile defense and they're only scary initially (see Havenite response to Buttercup offensive). Yes their grasers can get quite a few kills on LACs, but Katana's kill LAC's even faster, and take less losses because they have smaller mass, higher agility and faster acceleration.

Thank you. I was almost sure that I read it somewhere.

Thanks for all of the info, everyone. Yet, against the SLN, who has yet to introduce a LAC, I imagine that all of the LAC variants are effective. Even the Shrikes, which has found new purpose against a weaker enemy?

Surely LAC doctrine against the SLN is profoundly different than it would be against Haven?

cthia wrote:Thank you. I was almost sure that I read it somewhere.

Thanks for all of the info, everyone. Yet, against the SLN, who has yet to introduce a LAC, I imagine that all of the LAC variants are effective. Even the Shrikes, which has found new purpose against a weaker enemy?

Surely LAC doctrine against the SLN is profoundly different than it would be against Haven?

Well Honor has been infusing more and more senior commanders with "train harder than reality", so they'll be designing their doctrine around assuming the SLN will be deploying LACs in the near future.

Apollo might cause the Grand Alliance fleets to go victory-crazed, like they did under Admiral White Haven during Buttercup. Splintering down to single squadrons taking out entire task groups, sort of thing. But they already had their day for LACs, so Shrike's might make a brief comeback until the SLN (or MAlign) starts deploying their own. After that, they'd return to second-tier LACs; still better than all the old-styles floating around, but definitely not the pinnacle.


I can imagine that Grayson, in particular has either scrapped all their original loads of Shrikes, or reduced them to almost non-existant in favor of only loading their Katana's and Ferrets onto CLAC's. They very nearly sent their Benjamin the Great flagship, simply because at all of 6 to 8 years old, it's already obsolete; they only kept it because it's CIC and fleet command ability is the absolute best in space. It was up for scrapping in that small era immediately pre-Buttercup upto Thunderbolt, we haven't seen her since so it might even be possible Grayson has already scrapped her to rebuild as a podlayer.

Of course, that is also an extreme, and while Grayson was tied to Manticore against Haven, they couldn't afford sentimentality in any form, so there just isn't a Grayson version of the HMS Unconquered. And they've jumped from fighting the largest navy in the Haven Sector, to the largest known navy in the galaxy. And it's very possible the MAlign might be able to field quite a sizable force themselves, we only know they couldn't build their Lenny Det's in time; which doesn't mean they don't have a very large cruiser fleet (all the RF factor systems, Mesa, and others).

cthia wrote:Thanks for all of the info, everyone. Yet, against the SLN, who has yet to introduce a LAC, I imagine that all of the LAC variants are effective. Even the Shrikes, which has found new purpose against a weaker enemy?

Surely LAC doctrine against the SLN is profoundly different than it would be against Haven?

BF is still very much energy range oriented. They are probably pretty damn good at this.

It's like deciding that the right way for a mechanized brigade to fight a Zulu impi is to dismount from their AFVs, unload their rifles and fix bayonets.

Somtaaw wrote:

cthia wrote:Thank you. I was almost sure that I read it somewhere.

Thanks for all of the info, everyone. Yet, against the SLN, who has yet to introduce a LAC, I imagine that all of the LAC variants are effective. Even the Shrikes, which has found new purpose against a weaker enemy?



Of course, that is also an extreme, and while Grayson was tied to Manticore against Haven, they couldn't afford sentimentality in any form, so there just isn't a Grayson version of the HMS Unconquered. And they've jumped from fighting the largest navy in the Haven Sector, to the largest known navy in the galaxy. And it's very possible the MAlign might be able to field quite a sizable force themselves, we only know they couldn't build their Lenny Det's in time; which doesn't mean they don't have a very large cruiser fleet (all the RF factor systems, Mesa, and others).

Uhh, the GSN has HMS Unconquered. It is the GNS Covington.

saber964 wrote:

Uhh, the GSN has HMS Unconquered. It is the GNS Covington.

Just checked the wiki, aside from having been in the fleet that was ambushed and Admiral's Yanakov and Courvosier died, and the Battle of Blackbird... it has no history, no battle honors, and isn't on the Grayson equivalent of the List of Honors

HMS Unconquered has battle honors of its own, but is particularly notable for having been the only ship ever commanded in active duty by both of the RMN's major heroes. That's a pretty big bit of distinguishing history.

Somtaaw wrote:

saber964 wrote:

Uhh, the GSN has HMS Unconquered. It is the GNS Covington.

Just checked the wiki, aside from having been in the fleet that was ambushed and Admiral's Yanakov and Courvosier died, and the Battle of Blackbird... it has no history, no battle honors, and isn't on the Grayson equivalent of the List of Honors

HMS Unconquered has battle honors of its own, but is particularly notable for having been the only ship ever commanded in active duty by both of the RMN's major heroes. That's a pretty big bit of distinguishing history.

I don't know about a Grayson list of honor but try the GSN's Covington class CLAC.

Also the GNS Covington is one of the last pre-allance ships left.

saber964 wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Just checked the wiki, aside from having been in the fleet that was ambushed and Admiral's Yanakov and Courvosier died, and the Battle of Blackbird... it has no history, no battle honors, and isn't on the Grayson equivalent of the List of Honors

HMS Unconquered has battle honors of its own, but is particularly notable for having been the only ship ever commanded in active duty by both of the RMN's major heroes. That's a pretty big bit of distinguishing history.

I don't know about a Grayson list of honor but try the GSN's Covington class CLAC.

Also the GNS Covington is one of the last pre-allance ships left.

Yeah, still nothing really there. No battle honors, or distinguished actions, or even notable commanders listed. The GNS Covington got turned into a museum, presumably on all of Grayson's space actions against Masada so their people wouldn't forget. Being one of the few/only pre-alliance ships left is about the only claim to glory the Covington has.

But the cruiser, the CLAC class, and the lead CLAC of the class, none of them really have anything notable aside from the mentioned pre-alliance thing. Compared to Unconquered, which is the original ship from 1649, was the first hyper command of Saganami, and it's last commander on active duty was D'Orville.

I'm not going to argue that the GNS Covington is a piece of history and a museum ship, but compared to Unconquered, it's the new kid. Which is kind of funny because normally it's Grayson lording about having age over that young whippersnapper Manticore.

Somtaaw wrote:

saber964"quote="Somtaaw wrote:Just checked the wiki, aside from having been in the fleet that was ambushed and Admiral's Yanakov and Courvosier died, and the Battle of Blackbird... it has no history, no battle honors, and isn't on the Grayson equivalent of the List of Honors

HMS Unconquered has battle honors of its own, but is particularly notable for having been the only ship ever commanded in active duty by both of the RMN's major heroes. That's a pretty big bit of distinguishing history.

I don't know about a Grayson list of honor but try the GSN's Covington class CLAC.

Also the GNS Covington is one of the last pre-allance ships left.

Yeah, still nothing really there. No battle honors, or distinguished actions, or even notable commanders listed. The GNS Covington got turned into a museum, presumably on all of Grayson's space actions against Masada so their people wouldn't forget. Being one of the few/only pre-alliance ships left is about the only claim to glory the Covington has.

But the cruiser, the CLAC class, and the lead CLAC of the class, none of them really have anything notable aside from the mentioned pre-alliance thing. Compared to Unconquered, which is the original ship from 1649, was the first hyper command of Saganami, and it's last commander on active duty was D'Orville.

I'm not going to argue that the GNS Covington is a piece of history and a museum ship, but compared to Unconquered, it's the new kid. Which is kind of funny because normally it's Grayson lording about having age over that young whippersnapper Manticore.[/quote]

IIRC the GSN is older than the MSN/RMN by a couple of centuries. They have fought with Masada for close to five hundred years and the Grayson's and Masadans fought one of the very few interstellar wars without FTL ships namely the Long Crusade.

Oh, no argument there saber, the GSN definitely has more age than the RMN.

But as a true memorial sort of thing, it'd be like Canada putting up a dinky assed destroyer from say the Gulf War, and saying that our museum ship is just as 'cool' or 'historical' as the USS Iowa (or the USS Missiouri? I'm afraid I'm not up on which US battleships are the truly respected ones) or the British and their HMS Enterprise.

Sure, it's a museum and saw action, but there's memorial museums, and then there's memorial museums. The RMN's HMS Unconquered is one of the latter, and the GSN Covington is one of the former. Both are definitely something to be respected, but the Unconquered gives you that little bit extra feeling about it.

edit: I might be explaining it badly, but to use another series, in Dahak there was battleship Nergal from the end of the Siege of Earth that they turned into a memorial. Shot to hell, battle damage obvious, it served with pride and inspires anyone who sees it.

Then swap the Nergal out for one that was from an Imperium's Emperor's Guard planetoid. Sure, they're both planetoid parasite battleships, but one served with honor and distinction, and the other is just something that happened to be there. From what I can tell, the GNS Covington was just 'there', but otherwise has nothing notable. So it makes for a museum, and because it saw active duty and survived some small engagements, deserves respect as a memorial. But it just doesn't have that same oomph to it.

I think you are being a little unfair to the covington. I see your point about unconqured but we don't know how many years the last covinton saw dervice, how many fights aginst masada it saw.

If its history is basiclly just what we sat in HofQ, then yes it does come off rather badly in comparison but the history of any of grayson's ships has not been explored anywhere close to the mentions of Nike or Unconquered