Assuming you were in the position of Michelle Henke ...

JohnRoth wrote:OK, let's see what RFC has to say about this:

Sometime after 11-08-01 RFC wrote:
The overwhelming majority of Verge systems see absolutely no reason to own/build wallers, anymore than other nations on present-day earth are building super carriers and Ohio-class SBMs. They are expensive as hell, they are not necessary to maintain security vis-a-vis any likely threat in their neighborhoods, and the extremely limited numbers they could build/buy would be useless against the only real superpower on the block.

...

Trust me, there are not going to be very many (if any) squadrons of wallers wandering around the Verge.

Sorry about not having a more accurate date, but I wasn't capturing dates and so forth when I captured this snippet.

How is that relevant to an argument about Core/Shell SDFs?

You'd be better off digging up whichever quote it was that indicated there were approximately 25 navies/sdfs with more than a squadron of wallers, 25 with multiple wallers and 25 with singletons. Based on that, this is pretty much the entire battle wall of the whole Honorverse.

http://i.imgur.com/ljbbkPi.png (1920pd, RHN mislabelled as PRN)

Have to disagree JohnRoth, any member of the RF is part of the MAlign, they KNOW they're planning to dismantle the League. The core strategy involves seceding specifically because the League has proven to be incapable of protecting it's citizens, and they're taking action immediately to protect their systems.

Which means not waiting 2-3 years for their wallers to get built, and being Core worlds, they've been settled for longer than Manticore or Haven have been around and fully operational internal economies. So they've got the money to throw around, and being MAlign, they quite possibly have been getting stealth infusions of cash from Manpower's coffers to help defray costs.

And 40 or 50 superdreadnoughts plus screen clearly isn't hard, Beowulf does it and it only receives a tithe of the profits their Terminus of the MWJ actually makes for Manticore. And Beowulf has the agreement to provide the security for that same Terminus, rather than Manticore.

Logically, that means if Beowulf can afford a 36 to 40 superdreadnought fleet with only a tithe of a wormhole ownership, than Visigoth with an actual Junction is going to be similar in size. And again, logically if Visigoth is part of the RF and that Mannerheim is considerably more powerful (which usually means larger), than Mannerheim's SDF is larger than Beowulf's.

Exactly how much larger remains plenty of uncertainty, Harold's probably closer to being right in most of the RF is somewhere between 15-30% smaller than Beowulf and Mannerheim will be somewhere between 30-50% larger. All of the RF put together would then have almost as large a fleet as any Haven Sector entity you could name, but individually they're all still small fish.

Somtaaw wrote:Have to disagree JohnRoth, any member of the RF is part of the MAlign, they KNOW they're planning to dismantle the League. The core strategy involves seceding specifically because the League has proven to be incapable of protecting it's citizens, and they're taking action immediately to protect their systems.

Which means not waiting 2-3 years for their wallers to get built, and being Core worlds, they've been settled for longer than Manticore or Haven have been around and fully operational internal economies. So they've got the money to throw around, and being MAlign, they quite possibly have been getting stealth infusions of cash from Manpower's coffers to help defray costs.

And 40 or 50 superdreadnoughts plus screen clearly isn't hard, Beowulf does it and it only receives a tithe of the profits their Terminus of the MWJ actually makes for Manticore. And Beowulf has the agreement to provide the security for that same Terminus, rather than Manticore.

Logically, that means if Beowulf can afford a 36 to 40 superdreadnought fleet with only a tithe of a wormhole ownership, than Visigoth with an actual Junction is going to be similar in size. And again, logically if Visigoth is part of the RF and that Mannerheim is considerably more powerful (which usually means larger), than Mannerheim's SDF is larger than Beowulf's.

Exactly how much larger remains plenty of uncertainty, Harold's probably closer to being right in most of the RF is somewhere between 15-30% smaller than Beowulf and Mannerheim will be somewhere between 30-50% larger. All of the RF put together would then have almost as large a fleet as any Haven Sector entity you could name, but individually they're all still small fish.

Let's take a look at what RFC actually said. As I quoted above, from Chapter 50 of Torch of Freedom, Mannerheim's SDF is by far the largest of the RF SDFs. "By far the largest," to me at least, means that the rest of them are at most 10% to 20% the size of Mannerheim's SDF.

If we assume that Mannerheim's SDF is comparable to Beowulf's, then that means Visigoth's SDF has somewhere around 4 to 8 wallers. Max. And I wouldn't assume that Mannerheim's SDF is comparable to Beowulf's. What we've actually been shown as Mannerheim wallers is a single DN. We don't know if that's the top of Mannerheim's line, or the smallest waller they have. Everything else is an assumption that's based, as far as I can see, on a desire to plump up the RF's military might. And if they were that gosh-darn strong, why is the MAlign building that fleet of spider-drive SDs as backup for a scenario where there are lots of successor states, none of which amount to a hill of beans?

It doesn't matter whether they're in the Core, the Shell or the Verge. We have Word of God on the matter.

JohnRoth wrote:Here's the thing. The statement that the Mannerheim SDF is one of the largest in the entire SL comes from Chapter 50 of Torch of Freedom, while the statement that none of them are all that big individually comes from Mission of Honor. This is a definite contradiction. Which one is likely to be correct? I'd take the one from MoH rather than the one from ToF, simply because the intent of the scenes is different. Looking at that, I'm not at all convinced that projecting the mention of one dreadnaught into four complete dreadnaught task forces is all that justified.

There's no contradiction in both facts but only different bases to measure against. The first one compares the SDFs only against each other; the second one against navies, which are no part of the Solarian League. So, Mannerhein can simultanely have one of the biggest SDFs, but compared to, say, Anderman or maybe even Erewhon, they may be tiny. Or maybe not tiny, but at least not as big.

But nearly all SDFs, may they have as many vessels as you want, are tiny in one aspect: experience in actual warfighting.

JohnRoth wrote:As far as Visigoth is concerned, it has a junction to protect, not a bunch of neighbors to boss around. Protecting a junction is best done with forts, not SDs. That's the way Manticore does it. Big, bad-assed forts.

But forts are (more or less, at least) stationary. At least the forts Manticore had at the start of the first Haven war were the next best thing to stationary. And I don't think that that has changed for any fort outside the old manticoran alliance. If memory serves, they could accelerate with no more than 50g or so ... So you need a nonstationary element, too - and if you have a junction to defend, than that means at least BCs, maybe even DNs. Or as much trust in the local SLN-detachment (as long as there is one such thing available) as you like. But if you are a member of the RF, knowing at least a sniff about the capabilities Manticore, Grayson and Haven have developed, I think the trust you have in the abilities of the Invincible SLN is very limited, so say it polite. (And that was true even before New Tuscany)

Somtaaw wrote:Have to disagree JohnRoth, any member of the RF is part of the MAlign, they KNOW they're planning to dismantle the League. The core strategy involves seceding specifically because the League has proven to be incapable of protecting it's citizens, and they're taking action immediately to protect their systems.

Which means not waiting 2-3 years for their wallers to get built, and being Core worlds, they've been settled for longer than Manticore or Haven have been around and fully operational internal economies. So they've got the money to throw around, and being MAlign, they quite possibly have been getting stealth infusions of cash from Manpower's coffers to help defray costs.

And 40 or 50 superdreadnoughts plus screen clearly isn't hard, Beowulf does it and it only receives a tithe of the profits their Terminus of the MWJ actually makes for Manticore. And Beowulf has the agreement to provide the security for that same Terminus, rather than Manticore.

Logically, that means if Beowulf can afford a 36 to 40 superdreadnought fleet with only a tithe of a wormhole ownership, than Visigoth with an actual Junction is going to be similar in size. And again, logically if Visigoth is part of the RF and that Mannerheim is considerably more powerful (which usually means larger), than Mannerheim's SDF is larger than Beowulf's.

Exactly how much larger remains plenty of uncertainty, Harold's probably closer to being right in most of the RF is somewhere between 15-30% smaller than Beowulf and Mannerheim will be somewhere between 30-50% larger. All of the RF put together would then have almost as large a fleet as any Haven Sector entity you could name, but individually they're all still small fish.

Let's take a look at that "by far the largest" quote again. If, as I'm proposing, it means that the next largest SDF in the RF is 10% as large, then your proposal means that Mannerheim has an SDF with 400 SDs. This is a fifth of the entire ISLN active battle fleet.

Does something look a bit out of kilter here?

And if you want to question the size of Beowulf's SDF, then I'm beginning to question it myself. I'm wondering why a system that's deep in the Core would have such a large SDF. Unless they started building it when there was a real possibility that Haven might acquire the Junction.

Neither Mannerheim nor Visigoth has known enemies (well, known to us, anyway) that would justify that level of expenditure on naval hardware.

JohnRoth wrote:
Let's take a look at that "by far the largest" quote again. If, as I'm proposing, it means that the next largest SDF in the RF is 10% as large, then your proposal means that Mannerheim has an SDF with 400 SDs. This is a fifth of the entire ISLN active battle fleet.

Does something look a bit out of kilter here?

And if you want to question the size of Beowulf's SDF, then I'm beginning to question it myself. I'm wondering why a system that's deep in the Core would have such a large SDF. Unless they started building it when there was a real possibility that Haven might acquire the Junction.

Neither Mannerheim nor Visigoth has known enemies (well, known to us, anyway) that would justify that level of expenditure on naval hardware.

If you want to talk "out of kilter", we should be talking Grayson's Navy. They went from what, a dozen or two LACs and something like 4 cruisers and 8 destroyers to something approaching 50 SDP's (if you combine the GSN with Protector's Own), not counting their CLACs + broods or screen.

And they have no Junction, and the majority of their System Domestic Product, is coming from trade with Manticore, which means they're for all intents paying for their warships purely off Manticore, who is also straining every merchant sinew to build their own fleet.

I'm preeetty darn sure Visigoth (or any other member of the RF) can afford to build enough to be spitting at Beowulf's fleet.

But you are right, Beowulf's size of SDF is drastically over the top, because as a full Core World member of the League, until New Tuscany nobody, even Manticore, had a wet dream of thinking they could fight the league Navy. So even a single waller squadron was probably overkill to "protect" the terminus.

And I wasn't, and have never proposed Mannerheim has an SDF of 400 SD's, my guesstimate had them at a minimum of 32 DN's. But since that's not very powerful compared to Beowulf who is also not credited as being THE most powerful, means that Mannerheim must be competitive with them. This means we have to at least double their possible DN strength (would then become 64 DNs or thereabouts).

64 Mannerheim DN's against 36 (possibly 40) Beowulfan SD's, that's almost a level of balance, slightly favoring Mannerheim on tonnage, but we are making considerable amounts of WAGs here. Upto 64 DN's would definitely make them a powerful SDF, and also the single most powerful member of the future RF. Yet it's also rather small compared to any official known Navy, the size of a heavy task force, which is also about what Grayson is compared to Manticore, Haven or Andermani navies.

Eagleeye wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:As far as Visigoth is concerned, it has a junction to protect, not a bunch of neighbors to boss around. Protecting a junction is best done with forts, not SDs. That's the way Manticore does it. Big, bad-assed forts.

But forts are (more or less, at least) stationary. At least the forts Manticore had at the start of the first Haven war were the next best thing to stationary. And I don't think that that has changed for any fort outside the old manticoran alliance. If memory serves, they could accelerate with no more than 50g or so ... So you need a nonstationary element, too - and if you have a junction to defend, than that means at least BCs, maybe even DNs. Or as much trust in the local SLN-detachment (as long as there is one such thing available) as you like.

Actually forts are only "best" for protecting a junction in terms of firepower, they certainly aren't the best because how wormhole assault mechanics work. Manticore had so many of them because they knew they'd lose them in droves, even sitting outside beam range. And even in OBS, fully 25% of Manticoran forts were always at readiness, wedges and weapons active, and sidewalls active at all times on all forts. And that's a peacetime standing order, so they only got worse after HotQ and war was actively declared. That's a lot of wear and tear, even for a fort to take.

Any attack coming through a wormhole, has every element of surprise, whether it happens in peacetime or wartime conditions. And unless you're sitting outside of SDM missile range to save your forts, which then defeats the point because you'd have to travel at 100 gravs inwards just to get in range to start shooting, which enables the attacker to get a beachhead by moving between incoming ships (that are still using sails) rolling ship to interpose their wedges. Depending on how long it takes your forts to get into range to start slinging missiles, you could be looking at a couple squadrons of "screen" that interposed wedges and interlinked missile defenses, and big boys would be coming through right after.

Somtaaw wrote:
If you want to talk "out of kilter", we should be talking Grayson's Navy. They went from what, a dozen or two LACs and something like 4 cruisers and 8 destroyers to something approaching 50 SDP's (if you combine the GSN with Protector's Own), not counting their CLACs + broods or screen.

And they have no Junction, and the majority of their System Domestic Product, is coming from trade with Manticore, which means they're for all intents paying for their warships purely off Manticore, who is also straining every merchant sinew to build their own fleet.

A pearl of Weber info dump explains Greysons rapid industrial expansion and its ability to expand its navy.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/294/1

They really had no where to go but up economically.

Somtaaw wrote:Any attack coming through a wormhole, has every element of surprise, whether it happens in peacetime or wartime conditions. And unless you're sitting outside of SDM missile range to save your forts, which then defeats the point because you'd have to travel at 100 gravs inwards just to get in range to start shooting, which enables the attacker to get a beachhead by moving between incoming ships (that are still using sails) rolling ship to interpose their wedges. Depending on how long it takes your forts to get into range to start slinging missiles, you could be looking at a couple squadrons of "screen" that interposed wedges and interlinked missile defenses, and big boys would be coming through right after.

Except, if you read RFC's posts in the various wormhole assault threads you see that the incoming ships can't fire off missiles for at least a minute or so. They have to accelerate far enough clear of the terminus to clear its grav effects. Only then can wedges work without instantly being destroyed by that same grav effects.
So it's pretty safe to park many of your forts in missile range of the terminus because they'll recover from being surprise sooner than the attackers can get clear enough to actually be able to fire.

So an wormhole assault only works if you throw in so many ships that the defenders just can't kill them all while they're in that very vulnerable window. The defenders even have an energy battery advantage because they can use sidewalks while the attackers can't (unless refit with bubble generators). So that give something like a 400,000 km immunity zone from which a defender's grazers can smash the ships under sail, but those ships' fire simply gets shrugged off by the defenders' sidewalls.

(Or you assault through hyper as tried at Basilisk. So you need forts that resist that approach as well.

Somtaaw wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:
Let's take a look at that "by far the largest" quote again. If, as I'm proposing, it means that the next largest SDF in the RF is 10% as large, then your proposal means that Mannerheim has an SDF with 400 SDs. This is a fifth of the entire ISLN active battle fleet.

Does something look a bit out of kilter here?

And if you want to question the size of Beowulf's SDF, then I'm beginning to question it myself. I'm wondering why a system that's deep in the Core would have such a large SDF. Unless they started building it when there was a real possibility that Haven might acquire the Junction.

Neither Mannerheim nor Visigoth has known enemies (well, known to us, anyway) that would justify that level of expenditure on naval hardware.

If you want to talk "out of kilter", we should be talking Grayson's Navy. They went from what, a dozen or two LACs and something like 4 cruisers and 8 destroyers to something approaching 50 SDP's (if you combine the GSN with Protector's Own), not counting their CLACs + broods or screen.

And they have no Junction, and the majority of their System Domestic Product, is coming from trade with Manticore, which means they're for all intents paying for their warships purely off Manticore, who is also straining every merchant sinew to build their own fleet.

I'm preeetty darn sure Visigoth (or any other member of the RF) can afford to build enough to be spitting at Beowulf's fleet.

But you are right, Beowulf's size of SDF is drastically over the top, because as a full Core World member of the League, until New Tuscany nobody, even Manticore, had a wet dream of thinking they could fight the league Navy. So even a single waller squadron was probably overkill to "protect" the terminus.

And I wasn't, and have never proposed Mannerheim has an SDF of 400 SD's, my guesstimate had them at a minimum of 32 DN's. But since that's not very powerful compared to Beowulf who is also not credited as being THE most powerful, means that Mannerheim must be competitive with them. This means we have to at least double their possible DN strength (would then become 64 DNs or thereabouts).

64 Mannerheim DN's against 36 (possibly 40) Beowulfan SD's, that's almost a level of balance, slightly favoring Mannerheim on tonnage, but we are making considerable amounts of WAGs here. Upto 64 DN's would definitely make them a powerful SDF, and also the single most powerful member of the future RF. Yet it's also rather small compared to any official known Navy, the size of a heavy task force, which is also about what Grayson is compared to Manticore, Haven or Andermani navies.

Why would anyone be building dreadnaughts when they could be building SDs?

I'm serious. These people are supposed to be Mesan Alpha lines - that is, they're at the top level of normal human intelligence. If they're building a fleet for what they see as the coming chaos where they want credibility in extending a shield to neighbors, they'd want to go for quantity of something that could stand up to Frontier Fleet squadrons.

Hm. I seem to have answered my own question. A DN would be perfectly adequate to take on several Frontier Fleet BCs, and there aren't likely to be local satraps that have anything larger in any quantity to worry about. If there are, there are those "invisible superdreadnaughts" in reserve.

Although I'm still wondering where they get "plausible deniability" for building such a strange-looking fleet. What's their cover story? It can't be protecting Felix because, first, they don't want anyone to know they're interested in Felix, and second, the baselines that constitute most of the government, etc., didn't even know about Felix and the junction until a few years ago.