Discussions on raiding...

blackjack217 wrote:I think they're going to figure out that they're screwed pretty much everywhere they go. Might as well go for a target like Bolthole on a suicide run. Though its not like they could find bolthole anyway. Unless... Uh, guys, is Amos Parnell still in the Solarian League? Because I think a bunch of people would like to talk to him about what the Manties and Havanites have been doing.

Already discussed in another thread I believe. Without being more; shall we say persuasive than normal, it's rather doubtful Amos Parnell will willingly pass along information that shafts Haven like revealing Bolthole's location, or general vicinity.

Parnell was really pissed off with Pierre's CPS, because they're the ones who betrayed and backstabbed Haven, and his Navy's honor smeared to stop them, not to mention throwing him on Hades for quite a few years.

He probably does not have any burning hatred of the Republic of Haven, because it's brought Haven's honor back, without being the conquistador he'd served. If anything, he'd be on the sidelines, slow clapping with a smile on his lips.

Somtaaw wrote:
I stand corrected on the BB ship count, I thought it was 3 but 4 isn't too much different.

And Jon, you're right that the Triumphant's are both larger, and tougher than the Indefatiguables, but it's also about the closest comparison we can really get. In theory, the League has enough BC's to throw a hundred or two BC's at a system under the guise of raiding in force. A raid is a raid, whether you send six ships, or six hundred ships if that's what it takes to complete the raid.

So let's say Frontier Fleet assembles 200 battlecruisers with associated screen with the objective of punching out a 3rd Tier Manticoran system.

We know that 3rd Tier systems have LAC wings, we know that they have a shoal of missile defense pods. We also know that Frontier Fleet seldom operates above the squadron level of battlecruisers with a light screen at most.

Sending 200 battlecruisers in against a "lightly defended" Manticoran sovereign system will be a massive learning experience for the raiders. They will screw up the first couple of times as they are not used to operating in large formations. And those screw ups will happen as 100 LACs emerge out of stealth 25,000 kilometers from the throat of an exposed squadron. Those screw ups will happen as 500 MDM pods are flushed and guided to target with at least idiot-Apollo capability (FTL drones cutting the control loop in half) to quasi-Apollo (Mk-23s with the E-birds in the cluster acting as a forward node on light speed links) to full Apollo/Mycroft.

We know that the ammo needed to probably kill a Solarian League battlecruiser is somewhere between 5 and 10 MDM pods.

So in the best case scenario, 200 Frontier Fleet battlecruisers enter the hyper limit of a 3rd Tier Manticoran System, 100 leave and most of those ships will need yard time.

That is a victory that can only be replicated a few times before Frontier Fleet runs out of battlecruisers, and even more importantly, it is a victory that can only be replicated IF Frontier Fleet's crews are willing to engage in human wave attacks and eat MDM's with their bodies. Human Wave attacks are a sustainable strategy only when there is either extreme committment, extreme discipline or extreme fear that you'll get shot by your comrades if you don't go over the top and run into machine gun fire.

I personally don't see that type of committment from Frontier Fleet crews. Ball bearings will be dropped into turbines when those types of orders are issued.

Finally, even if Frontier Fleet is willing to engage in human wave attacks trading 100 BCs to smash a 3rd Tier system that has no effect on Manticoran war making capability, the covering forces needed to keep the Verge and the Shell sending resources to the Core aren't there any more so the combination of a Grand Alliance offensive going forward into the Shell AND revolts succeeding will drain Frontier Fleet's ability to sustain their offensive(s).

Somtaaw wrote:Actually, we know from both pre-First War, and after Henke captured Byng's force at New Tuscany that Solarian ships actually aren't all *that* bad on the hardware side.

More precisely, we know that Frontier Fleet ships aren't horrible obsolete and can be made much more effective by even the former StateSec fanatics of the People's Navy in Exile. That's Cruisers and Destroyers, NOT SDs.

They need better missiles with bigger warheads to be really competitive, but they aren't worthless like Battle Fleet's ships.

Weird Harold wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Actually, we know from both pre-First War, and after Henke captured Byng's force at New Tuscany that Solarian ships actually aren't all *that* bad on the hardware side.

More precisely, we know that Frontier Fleet ships aren't horrible obsolete and can be made much more effective by even the former StateSec fanatics of the People's Navy in Exile. That's Cruisers and Destroyers, NOT SDs.

They need better missiles with bigger warheads to be really competitive, but they aren't worthless like Battle Fleet's ships.

There's also the point that the Havenite ships up against the LACs were actually pretty experienced and battle hardend, and they still got walloped initially. That is certainly is not true of the SLN and will take quite some time to recognise and overcome!

fester wrote:So let's say Frontier Fleet assembles 200 battlecruisers with associated screen with the objective of punching out a 3rd Tier Manticoran system.

We know that 3rd Tier systems have LAC wings, we know that they have a shoal of missile defense pods. We also know that Frontier Fleet seldom operates above the squadron level of battlecruisers with a light screen at most.

Sending 200 battlecruisers in against a "lightly defended" Manticoran sovereign system will be a massive learning experience for the raiders. They will screw up the first couple of times as they are not used to operating in large formations. And those screw ups will happen as 100 LACs emerge out of stealth 25,000 kilometers from the throat of an exposed squadron. Those screw ups will happen as 500 MDM pods are flushed and guided to target with at least idiot-Apollo capability (FTL drones cutting the control loop in half) to quasi-Apollo (Mk-23s with the E-birds in the cluster acting as a forward node on light speed links) to full Apollo/Mycroft.

First, given the energy range through a sidewall is roughly 400-500k km and more like 900k km without one there's no reason for Shrikes to close to 25k km - even if they could undetected.

Second Manticore doesn't necessarily have enough Mk23E pods to give them to every 3rd tier system - at least not yet. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them had standard Mk23 pods, or even Mk41 or Havenite MDMs. (Especially in Talbott, if Michelle was short she might have asked Tourville to dump some from his SD(P)s or ammo colliers to provide interum system defense - letting her save her Mk23E for the sharp end where they're more likely to see combat.


Still those two items don't significantly change your scenarios - even 100 BCs not used to working together, going up against defenses fully away of the BC's defensive capabilities (including Halo and Aegis), are going to get roughly handled. Even if they managed to win it seems it'd be a pretty Pyrrhic victory.

Though one possibility I could see happening, if a system had relatively few pods, they were deployed in obvious places, and FF independently comes up with something like Mistletoe that lets them unexpectedly knock out the pods before their BCs enter effective MDM range. That would turn it into a straight BC vs LAC fight with probably no more than 2:1 numeric odds for the LACs (or even less if they also manage to tag one or more stations the LACs are based on with the stealth strike). Still get a bunch of BCs mauled, but offhand it still seems their best chance to get some kind of victory.

The Alliance has enough wallers to station a division each in every third rate system.

The only viable strategy for Frontier Fleet is to conduct c-fractional strikes against infrastructure from way outside the hyper limit.
Like what Honor feared the Peeps would do during Fourth Yeltsin or what Tourville allegedly did during Second Zanzibar.

The Alliance has enough wallers to station a division each in every third rate system.

Sure, if they want to disperse all their combat power into impotence...

gee why not
Makes more sense than parking hundreds of the wall at Manticore doing nothing.
Of course they could also stop feeling sorry about the whole thing and start raiding the core worlds.

Duckk wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:Much already discussed about this. Depends upon how bad the Sollies want to win. Kinetic planetary surface strikes come to mind using kamikaze or robotic entire ships moving in stone cold/stealth ed condition at high fractional cee velocities.

Figure about 50 ships per core Grand Alliance planet. All time on target coming in out of the elliptic. The average or even superior planetary defense systems would be overwhelmed. It only takes one strike. Even debris would do the job. Uncivilized indeed.

1. This is a complete and utter violation of the Eridani Edict. There is literally no weaseling out of this like in SoV. This is exactly the kind of thing the Edict prohibits.

2. The vast majority of the SLN would mutiny if given such an illegal order.

3. In the face of a successful Edict violation, the Alliance would, regretfully but resolutely, launch reprisal attacks to make sure the League gets the message that they do not want to pull this shit.

4. The League has a lot more space to cover than the Alliance, with proportionally fewer ships to do it with, plus the Alliance already controls the wormhole network, thus the Alliance would be in a far better position to launch reprisals than the League can launch into Alliance territory.

5. The Alliance has far better ships than the League, so they're far more likely to succeed in launching their reprisals.

6. In the face of all of the above, the vast majority of the League members would quickly secede in order to prove that they didn't have anything to do with any Edict violations.

7. Finally, the Mandarins know all of this. It would be the height of monumental stupidity above and beyond what the League has already exhibited to execute Edict violations. Your plan guarantees the League's destruction, not save it.

I don't know... It seems like a pretty good and workable plan despite the immorality of it all; desperate men making desperate choices and all. Doesn't seem like it would be such a huge leap for the Mandarins to make and the REAL stumbling block for THEM might only be how they sell it to the Navy or more specifically its commanders and thereby make the the rest of the League unknowingly de-facto collaborators. As far as the long term repercussions within the League itself? "We'll deal with that when the dust settles..." History is ripe with nations committing war crimes and then assuming their prerogative as victors to write the history as THEY see fit. Whether the plan actually works and thereby gain that "prerogative" is another thing. It certainly worked for Rome as far as Carthage was concerned. Of course it didn't quite work out for Hitler's Germany either.

Star Knight wrote:gee why not
Makes more sense than parking hundreds of the wall at Manticore doing nothing.
Of course they could also stop feeling sorry about the whole thing and start raiding the core worlds.

You must have missed the part where they're actually doing things with their wallers.