Attacking Earth

It's possible that in one or two cases, they could be used as an object lesson for the host system, without ticking them off by actually hitting their own infrastructure - this time. These would presumably be systems with a fairly large SLN presence, that may or may not have substantial SDFs, but the point is to get them to think about just how welcoming to the SL they can afford to be - or rather to talk about it, they'd probably already have to be thinking about it if the strike were to do any good.

Very hard for us to say, since we simply don't know a thing about the systems in question.

Jonathan_S wrote:

It's hard to see a likely upside to the GA to blow those away. Yeah, there's a chance in a thousand that demonstrating you can roll through any defenses and blow them up might cause sanity to break out on the Solarian side and cause them to seek a ceasefire. But even in that unlikely scenario I don't think is a win because it leaves the GA in the risky position that the League hasn't broken up; so if they come back to avenge that insult in 25 years or so they'll probably have sufficiently redressed the tech imbalance and be able to roll over Manticore...

I say leave it along to act as that millstone around their necks.

The E wrote:

Kytheros wrote:There's no point in destroying the Reserve. Actually
trying to reactivate it would break the SLN, and the League.
Nothing in it has any meaningful combat value, much of it is old and obsolete, even by the standards of the SLN, no real maintenance has been performed, and there's jack all for crew.
It would be cheaper and faster to design and build an entire new fleet than to reactivate the SLN Reserve. You'd almost certainly end up with better ships if you started from scratch, too.

Yeah, the SLN reserve is sort of a millstone around its neck. At the moment, there's probably lots of political types running around calling for its reactivation because some waller must surely be better than no waller. Destroying it would just drive home the need for new construction; as long as the reserve is still a thing, the temptation to throw good money after bad will still be present.

Plus some of Beowulf's silent friends in the assembly can put forward idea's that the SLN has to take somewhat seriously. Like "why can't the navy cut a SD in half and weld on a pod bay. FYI RW example the USN's first fleet ballistic missile submarines. The George Washington class was basically a Skipjack class fast attack sub that was cut in half and a 16 tube missile launch bay welded between the two halves.

Kytheros wrote:There's no point in destroying the Reserve. Actually
trying to reactivate it would break the SLN, and the League.
Nothing in it has any meaningful combat value, much of it is old and obsolete, even by the standards of the SLN, no real maintenance has been performed, and there's jack all for crew.
It would be cheaper and faster to design and build an entire new fleet than to reactivate the SLN Reserve. You'd almost certainly end up with better ships if you started from scratch, too.

The reserve is of no value against a GA fleet. That doesn't mean it doesn't have other value..

1) Commerce raiding. More hulls means they can be in more places at once.

2) Keeping a grip on systems that want to leave.

Loren Pechtel wrote:1) Commerce raiding. More hulls means they can be in more places at once.

SDs are terrible at commerce raiding though.

Louis R wrote:It's possible that in one or two cases, they could be used as an object lesson for the host system, without ticking them off by actually hitting their own infrastructure - this time. These would presumably be systems with a fairly large SLN presence, that may or may not have substantial SDFs, but the point is to get them to think about just how welcoming to the SL they can afford to be - or rather to talk about it, they'd probably already have to be thinking about it if the strike were to do any good.

Very hard for us to say, since we simply don't know a thing about the systems in question.

Which is what I have been suggesting from the start. Punch out Solarian forces, not the planet's infrastructure.

A planet that sees how easily the GA destroys the SLN isn't going to be too inclined to want to be associated with the SLN's attacking the GA!

The E wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:1) Commerce raiding. More hulls means they can be in more places at once.

SDs are terrible at commerce raiding though.

They're wasteful, not terrible.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Kytheros wrote:There's no point in destroying the Reserve. Actually
trying to reactivate it would break the SLN, and the League.
Nothing in it has any meaningful combat value, much of it is old and obsolete, even by the standards of the SLN, no real maintenance has been performed, and there's jack all for crew.
It would be cheaper and faster to design and build an entire new fleet than to reactivate the SLN Reserve. You'd almost certainly end up with better ships if you started from scratch, too.

The reserve is of no value against a GA fleet. That doesn't mean it doesn't have other value..

1) Commerce raiding. More hulls means they can be in more places at once.

2) Keeping a grip on systems that want to leave.

Both of those options actually require activating a noticeable portion of the Reserve, which the SLN is literally incapable of doing.

Assuming they could pull about 20% of crews from their current SDs (~1500) and a similar number of crew from the rest of the SLN, that's about enough crew to roughly make up the SLN's losses in SDs against Manticore thus far, but that doesn't cover reactivating the ships or providing the screening elements for them.
It would likely be cheaper, faster, and more effective to just build new ships.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

The E wrote:SDs are terrible at commerce raiding though.

They're wasteful, not terrible.

No, they're actually terrible, because they will invite a very quick and lethal response that they have little chance to avoid, while not being any better at raiding than the average DD or CL.

It doesn't necessarily follow that you should hit the Reserve. Some or all the systems where it's piled up may be so deep in the SLNs hip pocket that hitting the reserves is a strike at them whether you touch the civilian infrastructure or not. Sol, for example, probably has so much invested in the SL in general that the only consideration is the effect on the _rest_ of the race - you won't knock them loose until there's no SL left to cling to. [In fact, in 500 years there will still probably be a rump centred on Sol and calling itself the League] If the other reserve bases are also major Battle Fleet nodes, taking out the active facilities and ignoring the reserve is an even better way of making the point. But, again, you may only be making it for other people, because the locals are committed to the League, or because, other than the Fleet base, they really aren't all that significant. As I said, there's far too much we don't know for us to be designing strategies for the GA.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Louis R wrote:It's possible that in one or two cases, they could be used as an object lesson for the host system, without ticking them off by actually hitting their own infrastructure - this time. These would presumably be systems with a fairly large SLN presence, that may or may not have substantial SDFs, but the point is to get them to think about just how welcoming to the SL they can afford to be - or rather to talk about it, they'd probably already have to be thinking about it if the strike were to do any good.

Very hard for us to say, since we simply don't know a thing about the systems in question.

Which is what I have been suggesting from the start. Punch out Solarian forces, not the planet's infrastructure.

A planet that sees how easily the GA destroys the SLN isn't going to be too inclined to want to be associated with the SLN's attacking the GA!

Kytheros wrote:There's no point in destroying the Reserve. Actually
trying to reactivate it would break the SLN, and the League.
Nothing in it has any meaningful combat value, much of it is old and obsolete, even by the standards of the SLN, no real maintenance has been performed, and there's jack all for crew.
It would be cheaper and faster to design and build an entire new fleet than to reactivate the SLN Reserve. You'd almost certainly end up with better ships if you started from scratch, too.

I would disagree. Filareta in his attack on Manticore was boasting of the size of the reserve fleet as in incentive for the Manticore fleet to surrender and not antagonize the SLN. The SLN itself is just now coming to the realization of how useless the reserve SD's really are, how aware do you think the public is of just how useless it is? Having it destroyed would sociologically remove the "club" of the reserve fleet from the minds of the SL general public, not just the SLN.

Second, SD's would be lousy at commerce raiding but the thousands of smaller ships, destroyers and cruisers, which would be much easier to bring out of mothballs, would work great for the commerce raiding that the new SLN "Lord Admiral" is suggesting for a war tactic. Those smaller ships may not be a match for any GA ship of similar size but the shear number of them scattered about the universe would be in hundreds of places that the GA would not have the ships to cover. How many destroyers could they crew with the people from one active SD or called up from a reserve?


Third, how much of a shock would it be to the SL and the SLN to have a bunch of "insignificant" LAC's "ghost" in, unseen, until they go active, and start destroying things. The facilities for building/reactivating ships would also have to be destroyed on the "pass through" by the LAC's. The carriers for the LAC's would drop them off outside sensor range, then jump to the opposite side of the elliptic to pick them up after they have passed through and destroyed everything.

Use those LAC's to hit them hard like they did to Haven in operation buttercup(?). Their heads will be spinning so hard they won't have a clue as to which end is up!

Destroy as much military infrastructure as you can but leave the civilian stuff alone. The GA might even try some commerce raiding of it's own. Capture as much shipping as they can. The SL is already severely short on transports, make it even worse. If the GA ship doesn't have a prize crew for the freighter, space everything from the freighter but food, clothing and farm equipment. We don't want them to think that we are trying to starve anyone to death or kill civilian crews.

Leave civilian stuff as untouched as possible. Make it clear that the attack is only on the military as a reprisal for their attack on Beowulf.