Discussions on raiding...

Duckk wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Haven had the same problem with system defense pods manticore did, thats why... I think it was Gaston? The initial two strikes of Cutworm hit systems that had one of the Havenite system defense staff bitching because (paraphrased because I can't find the exact quote) "chances are Supply would have been sending us their regrets to supply our pods again this month".

AAC, chapter 20:

He understood Inchman's frustration—and anger—perfectly. The additional pods they'd been promised would have increased their long-range missile power hugely. Then again, they'd been "promised" for quite some time.

"I know, Sir. It's just—" Inchman bit off what she'd been about to say, and Beach sighed.

"They're shipping them to the front line systems as quickly as they can, Sandra. Someone's got to suck hind teat when quantities are limited. And to be fair, if you'd been in charge of prioritizing deliveries, would you have predicted an attack on Gaston, of all damned places?"

Things are a lot different now than when Cutworm was launched. There's been an extended period of time where Manticore and Haven weren't shooting each other. That's plenty of time to emplace system defense pods to all their secondary and tertiary systems, not to mention decent sized LAC wings.

All hail the speed of Duckk, thank you for finding that particular quote I was looking for so quickly. I won't say it's totally certain both sides managed to get large sys-def missile shoals deployed to every hick system, regardless of importance but you're right it's certainly possible.

Personally, I likely would have continued the trend Haven appeared to be doing, and focus first on the military, economic, or politically sensitive systems and ensuring they were as close to totally secure as possible [prior to the revelation of Apollo anyways]. Then work down through the chains of importance, again aiming for as high security as possible.

And in Haven, that strategy works, because they had so many, for lack of a better term, tiers of systems. Manticore's Alliance was much closer to balanced, overall, so it didn't really matter where they stuck their defenses, someone else was going to scream they deserved it just as much, or more. *cough* Zanzibar *cough* Alizon *ahem* I can't think which systems constantly lost their defenses and scream for more and bigger defenses every time.

I'm glad this was able to strike up a good discussion. I had forgotten the numbers of ships in the Havenite initial battle against LACs, and the fact that they were the much larger BBs and not BC's. It seems to be the consensus that any small number, say fifty or less, of SLN BCs will be sticking their hand in a blender if they go after an alliance system.

How many times do you think they'll do that before they realize it's a loosing proposition? It seems a good idea, on first blush but it appears to me to just be a way to chew up ships and weaken the SLN. All without doing significant damage to the alliance systems. All the while Moriarty will be being deployed to more and more systems. I don't think that the SLN really understands what an alliance LAC can do. They don't appreciate it fully, both in terms of the grasers and missile defense, but how hard it will be to kill alliance LACs in general given the SLN hardware and software. They'll need to do a major reconfiguration to take on the alliance LACs.

munroburton wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Well, keep in mind that the original LAC strikes in Echoes of Honor hit 3 squadrons of (very old) Triumphant Battleships, with 100 LACs, and they were taking near crippling losses even before the idiot got command and ordered the Battleships to scatter. Battleships, and their smaller sisters the Battlecruiser are considered capital ships and would/should have screen which will aid in LAC defense after the first encounters.

[...]

Now if 3 squadrons of old-style Battleships can stand off 100 LAC's, even the totally inept Sollies should be able to send in a force of battlecruisers and come out, mission more or less successful with an acceptable loss ratio as a whole.

I'd guess that Haven's last battleships are technologically equivalent to earlier flight Indefatigable BCs on a ton-to-ton basis. Certainly, once the lethargic launcher cycle times of Solly ships are factored in.

2nd Hancock saw 4 BB squadrons, not 3. 33 BBs total, plus 18 cruisers or destroyers. So 2 million tons of LACs was able to shatter a 150 million ton fleet. For >50% losses granted, but that is still an unsustainable exchange ratio.

In order to replicate that defeat, the Sollies would have to shove between 100 and 200 BCs plus screen at any of those single systems. The BBs at 2nd Hancock even brought along pods - for all the good it did them, as the Shrikes got close enough to destroy the pods.

Accounting for improved Shrike-Bs supported by Ferrets and Katanas, plus system defense pods substituting for wallers, the potential slaughter becomes assured.

Solly raiding is riding a busted flush down in flames. All it will accomplish is to provoke the RMN into neutralising Frontier Fleet bases, if they aren't already on the way.

Which draws the question.... how many fleet bases are the Mandarins going to lose, before they realize they just stuck their reproductive organs into an electrical socket that the GA has a finger on the power switch?

Possibly all of them, at least in the Frontier. No doubt, they'd find out in a polite note from Ambassador Carmichael!

I don't think the raiding strategy works in the Republic or the Star Empire most of whose systems are well enough defended that old style BCs would be pretty much toast. That is the consequence of having been at war so long.

However, it is a reasonable approach to the SLNs problems in the Shell or the Verge where the odds against encountering modern GA hulls would be pretty high.

Don

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n7axw wrote:However, it is a reasonable approach to the SLNs problems in the Shell or the Verge where the odds against encountering modern GA hulls would be pretty high.

What would raiding verge or shell systems accomplish as a strategy for gaining victories against the GA?

The only "raiding" the SLN can hope to succeed at is commerce raiding, and with Lacoon in force, they would have to go into the Talbott Quadrant or Haven Sector; the Talbott Quadrant is much closer without access to Wormholes.

(NB: That may explain why there has been so much emphasis on events in and near the Talbott Quadrant.)

Jumping un-escorted or lightly escorted merchant ships is about the only way the SLN is going to get any "victories" for the Ministry of Education to spin into League Invincibility (tm). A division or squadron of FF BCs is still going to get a rude awakening if they run into a "lightly escorted" convoy with only a division of Rolands or a single Sag-C.

OK, working with the OP's hypothesis that the SLN decides to attack a non crucial system (meaning not Yeltsin or any of the Manty or Haven core systems) with a BC force.

The consensus is that they will most likely face a SDF made up of largely LAC's, right?

Sorry, but I don't think that system defense pods are going to be real prevalent in Manty space except for key systems.

Oyster Bay destroyed the production lines and the SLN seems to like the idea of feeding hundreds of SD's into the galaxy's ship sized Veg-O-Matic ("It slices, it dices, it even purees!") better known as the Manticore Binary System. System Defense Pods are going to be covering high value systems and probably in depth in key locations like wormhole junctions, home systems and sector capitals. I don't see places like Montana, for example, getting a compliment of system defense pods any time soon.

Here's a question, how does the SLN BC's sidewalls match up against those huge BC class spinal weapons mounted in the Shrikes? SLN doctrine already has their ships light on CM and PD and their sensors are pretty close to junk so how well could they stand up to a LAC 'mugging' (slip in close under stealth and make firing runs like they did against the Havenite BB's)?

jtg452 wrote:The consensus is that they will most likely face a SDF made up of largely LAC's, right?

Sorry, but I don't think that system defense pods are going to be real prevalent in Manty space except for key systems.

In AAC, places like Alizon and Zanzibar had multiple cruiser squadrons, some wallers, many discrete patterns of system defense pods, and hundreds of LACs. The second tier Havenite systems hit during Operation Cutworm had a couple hundred pods and a LAC wing, along with a cruiser or battlecruiser squadron, with the occasional battleship.

I don't see places like Montana, for example, getting a compliment of system defense pods any time soon.

Montana is one of the most exposed systems in the Talbott Quadrant, hence Tenth Fleet having a significant presence there pretty much all the time.

Furthermore, as Mike Henke explained in Shadow of Freedom, Tenth Fleet had pretty much completed deploying system defense assets composed of 4-5 LAC squadrons and and missile pods to each system. She fully expected them to stop or at least seriously maim any SLN raiding force that could possibly be dispatched to the Quadrant at this time.

"My point is that the problem in Manticore wasn't lack of combat power or lack of defenses; it was the inability to see the enemy coming. Scattering wallers around the Quadrant's star systems isn't going to appreciably increase our ability to detect these people. We can deploy enough remote sensor platforms — in fact, we're already in the process of deploying them — to give each of our systems more detection capability than an entire squadron of SDs could provide. The LACs will give us large numbers of manned combat platforms to chase down and prosecute possible contacts; the dispatch boats will be available to send for help in the case of an attack in strength; and we'll be deploying enough missile pods in planetary orbit to provide the long-range missile firepower of at least a pair of SD(P)s in each system. We won't have the sort of sustained firepower superdreadnoughts could provide, or the area missile defense they could offer, but we'll have enough to deal with anything short of a Solly battle squadron, assuming we see it coming."

Here's a question, how does the SLN BC's sidewalls match up against those huge BC class spinal weapons mounted in the Shrikes? SLN doctrine already has their ships light on CM and PD and their sensors are pretty close to junk so how well could they stand up to a LAC 'mugging' (slip in close under stealth and make firing runs like they did against the Havenite BB's)?

The LACs never quite made it into energy range undetected. When they first opened fire at Hancock, they were targeting missile pods, which are a lot easier to kill.

As for how tough they are, well, just look at what happened to the SLN BCs in SoV...

jtg452 wrote:Oyster Bay destroyed the production lines and the SLN seems to like the idea of feeding hundreds of SD's into the galaxy's ship sized Veg-O-Matic ("It slices, it dices, it even purees!") better known as the Manticore Binary System.

Adm Kingsford explicitly abandoned that strategy in favor of commerce raiding in ART. He is planning on relying primarily on Frontier Fleet for the raiders and FF doesn't have any SDs. GA systems are only going to be facing BC squadrons and my impression is systems are not going to be facing many attacks at all; "commerce raiding" is aimed mostly at shipping and avoiding convoy escorts with anything like parity to the attackers.

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:However, it is a reasonable approach to the SLNs problems in the Shell or the Verge where the odds against encountering modern GA hulls would be pretty high.

What would raiding verge or shell systems accomplish as a strategy for gaining victories against the GA?

The only "raiding" the SLN can hope to succeed at is commerce raiding, and with Lacoon in force, they would have to go into the Talbott Quadrant or Haven Sector; the Talbott Quadrant is much closer without access to Wormholes.

(NB: That may explain why there has been so much emphasis on events in and near the Talbott Quadrant.)

Jumping un-escorted or lightly escorted merchant ships is about the only way the SLN is going to get any "victories" for the Ministry of Education to spin into League Invincibility (tm). A division or squadron of FF BCs is still going to get a rude awakening if they run into a "lightly escorted" convoy with only a division of Rolands or a single Sag-C.

One of the objectives of commerce raiding as Kingsford presented it was to punish Shell or Verge systems inclined to defect. They can get around without the wormholes. It just takes l-o-o-onger...

That is more doable than raiding in Talbot where you have tons of Shrikes, Ferrets and Mark 23 pods scattered about.

And raid Silesia where Sarnow is already set up with lots of light units in place set up for pirate surpression.... That puts our raiders on the short end of the stick too.

Raiding the Republic would pit our intrepid Solly bcs against the defensive measures the Republic had in place against the Empire operating with a whole lot better gear than any piece of crap Solly bc.

What it amounts to is that the Alliance is pretty well covered. I won't go so far as to say there are no soft spots, but a Solly squadron operating in GA space would have a rather short life expectancy.

Don

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Fireflair wrote:I'm glad this was able to strike up a good discussion. I had forgotten the numbers of ships in the Havenite initial battle against LACs, and the fact that they were the much larger BBs and not BC's. It seems to be the consensus that any small number, say fifty or less, of SLN BCs will be sticking their hand in a blender if they go after an alliance system.

How many times do you think they'll do that before they realize it's a loosing proposition?

A while, I'd guess. Send off a task force with a rousing speech. A few months later, they reach their target system. A month or two after that you get word from the Manties, claiming another victory, with an appended list of captured spacers. And after that the surviving ships return.

n7axw wrote:One of the objectives of commerce raiding as Kingsford presented it was to punish Shell or Verge systems inclined to defect. They can get around without the wormholes. It just takes l-o-o-onger...

That is more doable than raiding in Talbot where you have tons of Shrikes, Ferrets and Mark 23 pods scattered about.

So raiding places that the GA has encouraged to secede with promises of defense from SLN retribution (and supplied with a squadron of Mk16 capable ships or LACs + system defense pods) is better than raiding directly against the entity you're actually at war with is a better choice?

I think the SLN is going to change their opinion fairly quickly about that.