Honorverse ramblings and musings

You could also do what they did during WWII. These were stopgap measures but the were effective namely the CAM and MAC ships (Catapult Armed Merchant) and (Merchant Aircraft Carrier) The first placed a catapult, equipped with a obsolete Hurricane Mk1 or 2 on a merchant. The second was a tanker or grain carrier with a flight deck in place of the superstructure with a small air group of 3-4 swordfish TV's. IIRC the CAM were used about a dozen times and shot down 4-6 FW 200 Condor recon aircraft, the MAC's sank or damaged 12-15 U-Boats.

Theemile wrote:But you ned the LACS to protect the freighter inside the hyperlimit in normal space. If the Pirate jumps your freighter an hour or 2 inside the Hyper limit, you may as not have brought them.

Pirates won't attack if there are LACs at the edge of the system. If there's a hostile incident, the LACs will cross any territorial lines and they'll be positioned at the least-time points, which a freighter won't venture any further away from than necessary. Given that a freighter's acceleration sucks wind even against old style LACs, no pirate has the time to pull a successful capture and escape - especially as they'll need to match velocities with the merchant.

Which knows it just has to buy a little time before its LACs ride to the rescue. This is a big difference from previous instances of piracy in which attacked freighters would run for as long as they could, before surrendering to a warning shot, despite the possibility of aid being extremely slim.

So, I've got a cruiser and you have a LAC. How will that fight end? Also, I've got the crew of the ship plus all the logistics support people and stuff on my cruiser. You are in someone else system that obviously isn't a big fan and have no one who is going to haul you home, so your plan is to do what now?

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:But you ned the LACS to protect the freighter inside the hyperlimit in normal space. If the Pirate jumps your freighter an hour or 2 inside the Hyper limit, you may as not have brought them.

Pirates won't attack if there are LACs at the edge of the system. If there's a hostile incident, the LACs will cross any territorial lines and they'll be positioned at the least-time points, which a freighter won't venture any further away from than necessary. Given that a freighter's acceleration sucks wind even against old style LACs, no pirate has the time to pull a successful capture and escape - especially as they'll need to match velocities with the merchant.

Which knows it just has to buy a little time before its LACs ride to the rescue. This is a big difference from previous instances of piracy in which attacked freighters would run for as long as they could, before surrendering to a warning shot, despite the possibility of aid being extremely slim.

Pirates will attack if they think the defenders are out of range to see them. How mnay times have we seen references to a "scream and I'll gut you" threat by a pirate in a system with possible defenders, that are just out of range. Having LACs (And I'm going to assume that the Pirate sees the LAC as a plausible threat, which isn't necessary the case, as KZT pointed out above) at the Hyper limit pushes the intercept zone further system-ward, which poses escape issues in it's own right.

However, the hyper limit in most systems will be far enough from the planet where their is a significant "blind spot" where hyper limit and planet based defenders cannot see accurately what is occurring (Without Manty style system drones and gravity arrays in place).

I respectfully withdraw the "Q-ship for piracy " program. Hemphill warned me there would be days like this. Of course, that was prior to her infamously famous testbed fiasco. So, perhaps her warning didn't carry the weight that it could've. lol

Everyone has opened my eyes to my "erroneous, Hemphill-like, testbed" thinking. Although I appreciate everyone's response it was *Johnathan's that really hit home. I failed to consider that ECM can now be used to fool pirates. So that pretty much killed my "bait car" tactic and was the leading reason for my thoughts.

My only caveat, is that ECM can only fool pirates enroute. I was under the impression that there are always in-system stops along the way where pirates get a look at potential prey. Entering in-system with a convoy of known piracy-riddled systems, serve the purpose of dangling fresh meat. I thought that was one of the tactics used by Warniche and his band of misfits -- of in-system reconnaisance. And of even corrupt system governors informing certain elements of a convoy.

Johnathan_S wrote:*Destroyers and Cruisers have long been able to fool pirates into thinking them freighters. You really only need Q-ships if you're in a situation where the enemy could disengage successfully after getting visual eyes on the target.

Because all the really long ranged sensors (mostly grav sensors, but to a lesser extent radar) can be fairly easily fooled by ECM. That's why DDs and CLs were fairly successfully at piracy suppression in Silesia.

However, I must stress that after the GA's present priorities have been put paid to, the situation stemming from the fall of the League will result in piracy on steroids. Pirates are going to feel at liberty to wreak havoc. A much more aggressive policy, as has never before been seen, is going to be needed or piracy will have been born a new life -- a very profitable life. And the target is going to be GA convoys. Pirates are going to have to be drawn out. The GA is somehow going to have to seize the initiative, instead of simply reacting to attacks.

Remember, I have an affliction of carrying baggage from other sources. At the fall of the Kremlin as a direct threat against the US, many of its stockpiles of weapons fell into third-party hands and the concern for more of that rampant misappropriation of weaponry continues.

The same thing allegedly occurred with Haven's ships that somehow was mysteriously acquired by Masadans.

You very astute fellow forumites are correct in perceiving where I'm headed with this. That certain illegal organizations -- with their hand in the piracy cookie-jar may end up with SL hardware upon its fall.


Whatever accomplishes the eradication of piracy is fine by me. If you all remember, piracy is a very sore spot with me.

At the very least, allow me to submit a requisition order for the single development of the next generation of Q-ship, straight from the minds of (Shannon & Sonja) the She-Wolves of the S&S and sent straight to Admiral Bachfish.

Doesn't the RMN owe Bachfish a new ship anyways? Does he have enough crew for a pair of Qs?

P.S.
I really appreciate the responses regarding the suppresion of piracy. What happened on Blackbird seriously kicked me in the gut.

kzt wrote:So, I've got a cruiser and you have a LAC. How will that fight end? Also, I've got the crew of the ship plus all the logistics support people and stuff on my cruiser. You are in someone else system that obviously isn't a big fan and have no one who is going to haul you home, so your plan is to do what now?

If you've got an ex-SLN CA and I've got a Shrike? Quite likely it'll end somewhat badly for you.

And most pirates can't afford to operate CAs, they tend to be more in the frigate or destroyer size range. They're not there to fight convoy escorts (money losing proposition), and pretty much anything with pop gun is good enough to run down and capture merchants. A cruiser concentrates your expenses without a corresponding increase in your revenue. You'd be better off using that money and crew to put out 3-4 frigates each of which have about the same probability of successfully intercepting a merchant as the single heavy cruiser did. (So 4x the overall change of pulling off a score and continuing to fund your band of raiders)

pnakasone wrote:One of the major reasons that Andermani and Manticoran governments finally deiced to annex the Silesia sector was to deny the pirates safe havens from friendly governors in the area. Once the safe havens are gone the pirates will be forced to move out of the area or face destruction.

Without access to friendly governments (Mesa, corrupt Silesian governors, the PRH, etc.), it's all but impossible for pirates to be more than a minor nuisance. So if you really want to go on the offensive against piracy, the major objective has to be going after governments that support it or allow its support, not directly after the pirates.

drothgery wrote:

pnakasone wrote:One of the major reasons that Andermani and Manticoran governments finally deiced to annex the Silesia sector was to deny the pirates safe havens from friendly governors in the area. Once the safe havens are gone the pirates will be forced to move out of the area or face destruction.

Without access to friendly governments (Mesa, corrupt Silesian governors, the PRH, etc.), it's all but impossible for pirates to be more than a minor nuisance. So if you really want to go on the offensive against piracy, the major objective has to be going after governments that support it or allow its support, not directly after the pirates.

Exactly.

Lets take this to a point where the SL is in tatters and the remains of the SLN (actually it could be a lot of ships) is in the hands of various system governments and some "independent" groups that have gone mercenary or warlord.
One or two RMN or RHN LACs arn't going to stop a former SL CA taking a merchant that can be caught outside inside the hyperlimit of some low traffic volume system. One modern RMN or PRH DD is going to eat a current former SLN CA as a snack, could probably sneak up on it and almost scare it to death.

An actual Q-ship might work if you think you need to draw the buggers in and something like the Wayfarer would answer well - except you don't have any left. Agains your old fashioned "garden variety pirate with some old freighter with some weapons grafted on, a couple of Modern RMN LACs would do ok except that you end up at to tight a range and the LACS would have to kill the thing quick or end up loosing the essentially defenseless freighter(s) since they have nothing to stop missiles or energy weapons.

That is if and when you get to that point. It will end up taking a bunch of sorting out for surviving former SLN warships to find a home. Those that take up with systems will most likely not be sued for adventures against neighbors. The initial reaction is probably going to be defensive. Those that get sucked into the evential RF are just going to be local patrol boats. You are almost more likely to see systems that aquire or make deals with former warships to assist with system defence and then they (and the system) do some quiet local piracy picking off single freighters and making them vanish while shareing the profits of the deal. That takes a lot of discreet cooperation with whatever the system has as sensor watch since they would see their new home guard snatching ships.

Wayfarer was a mostly expedient move to purely kill what were though to just be regular pirates. Any sane pirate would just not engage with a warship- even a DD, and an older one a that like Hawking- but would slink away. Honor's job was not to scare the pirates off, it was to crush them, obliterate them and not just chase them away from the normal trade routes. Throwing DDs, CA, and BCs at the pirates would mostly have just moved them around, not killed them all. Nobody at Manticore realized that most if not all of the piracy they were throwing the Q-ships at was actual PRH warships. It they had, they probably found the Crusiers and BCs to deal with the problem. We were shown what happened to Honor's ship even with the help of the reasonably well armed and equipped Haupmann Star Liner which could at least try to both defend itself and throw missiles at the PEEPS along with the Q-ship.

Or you can build the Honorverse equivelent of Cussler's Oregon and activly go looking for trouble but now you are getting back into the Sirius's mission profile.

drothgery wrote:

pnakasone wrote:One of the major reasons that Andermani and Manticoran governments finally deiced to annex the Silesia sector was to deny the pirates safe havens from friendly governors in the area. Once the safe havens are gone the pirates will be forced to move out of the area or face destruction.

Without access to friendly governments (Mesa, corrupt Silesian governors, the PRH, etc.), it's all but impossible for pirates to be more than a minor nuisance. So if you really want to go on the offensive against piracy, the major objective has to be going after governments that support it or allow its support, not directly after the pirates.

pnakasone wrote:Exactly.

But how do you accomplish that, realistically? How can you prevent the revolving door of system governments? Piracy is like the drug trade. Kill one, another gladly takes its place. Piracy can be too lucrative a business hitting wayward convoys from rich systems like Manticore. And if Manticore tries to assimilate or handshake with as many broken League parts that I imagine will want it to, there's going to be lots of convoys long hauling. The GA simply doesn't have the necessary ships to adequately fight piracy in such an expanded area of influence. Does anyone doubt that pirates and corrupt system governors are privy to this fact as well?

With the guillotine swinging ever so closely to the League's neck, I imagine corrupt system governors are encouraging piracy on a whole new scale to be ready for "expanded horizons." Recruitment is at an all-time high. Even retired pirates are interested.

I'm curious as to the future state of the Cherwell Convention. It was one of the most stringent of the League's anti-piracy treaties. How will it hold up in the face of a fallen League? How will it be amended in the light of an absent signatory and amended to deal with piracy on steroids? I see the Silesian Confederacy morphing into an even worse hell-hole.