SLN Logistics

Sigs wrote:I am not saying they don't have a fleet train remaining, I am saying the fleet train they do have will not be enough for the attack against the GA and the suppression of rebellious systems.


They might have the ability to support 500 BC or 8 squadrons of the wall but not both... so how would you go about deciding.

The SLN has more than 500 BC (and smaller) and more than eight squadrons of the wall. You'r suggesting that they have the ability to support maybe 10% of their total force? How do you propose they support the other 90%?

Once you get to the "not both" level, you're at a point where you have no logistics train for some of your forces. Where or how do you come up with the transport for a logistics train for the forces that would otherwise be without any logistics support?

For Commerce raiding, you need numbers rather than brute force. You therefore provide for the raiding forces going furthest from base or depot support -- your 500 BCs (and smaller.)

That decision leaves you with (at least) eight squadrons of the wall without support other than what those squadrons can provide for themselves. Luckily they have very big ships which normally carry large quantities of the kinds of supplies their squadron mates need; why not share out supplies from a quarter or third of your ships and send them back to a base or Depot to resupply and return? Since your SD squadrons are going to be mostly intimidating league members, they can resupply foodstuffs and other perishables from local sources.

Any way you allocate the available fleet train, there is going to be large portions of the SLN that are going to have to improvise logistic support from their own resources. Even commandeering every freighter they run across won't provide enough transport to fulfill the need for logistic transport. The SLN will have to use warships as transports or starve.

Weird Harold wrote:
The SLN has more than 500 BC (and smaller) and more than eight squadrons of the wall. You'r suggesting that they have the ability to support maybe 10% of their total force? How do you BBCode is ON | [img] is ON | [flash] is OFF | [url] is ON | Smilies are ON propose they support the other 90%?

By staying close to their bases in the core and having plenty of pre-stocked bases for FF ships... plus you know having the Fleet train that was lost in Manticore and Spindle...

Weird Harold wrote:Once you get to the "not both" level, you're at a point where you have no logistics train for some of your forces. Where or how do you come up with the transport for a logistics train for the forces that would otherwise be without any logistics support?

I don't know if you have read the series but Battle Fleet SD's rarely if ever leave their Bases in the core ergo they don't need a fleet train for those ships. Frontier Fleet has a network of bases and supply depots through it's territory and would likely be regularly resupplied by freighters going into the system... freighters that no longer do that because Manticore removed their ships and every available civilian freighter will be needed in the core.


And to be fair, the SLN probably lost 100% of the fleet train for about 500 SD's plus lighter units and I suspect that represents a large % of their total fleet train.

Weird Harold wrote:For Commerce raiding, you need numbers rather than brute force. You therefore provide for the raiding forces going furthest from base or depot support -- your 500 BCs (and smaller.)

True, but this is a rather unusual situation, and you are suggesting to send SD's to support and resupply BC's. If the SD's have more endurance and a larger magazine, then they should go instead of the BC's... after all 2 SD's are as good as 8-10 BC's.

Weird Harold wrote:That decision leaves you with (at least) eight squadrons of the wall without support other than what those squadrons can provide for themselves. Luckily they have very big ships which normally carry large quantities of the kinds of supplies their squadron mates need; why not share out supplies from a quarter or third of your ships and send them back to a base or Depot to resupply and return?

-And can those ships carry the supplies that the BC's need?
-Can they carry and unload the kind of spares the BC's need?
-Can they assist the BC's in repairs?
-If they have similar endurance as the BC's who is going to supply the SD's? After all some of the targets are 6 months+ away from the core bases.
-How do you keep the rendezvous point a secret when you are sending a ton of SD's to the rendezvous point?
-What is to stop the GA from sending a Squadron of SD(P)'s and some LAC's to use against the raiding force and it's "SD fleet train" for target practice?

The GA can get to almost any place in the League faster than the League can... so their only remote chance of success in this endeavour is to send the BC's with their supply ships and get their orders directly from Kingsford as they leave so that the only people that know where the task forces are going are the Task Forces themselves and Kingsford... otherwise you might as well send the coordinates to the GA yourself.

Weird Harold wrote: Since your SD squadrons are going to be mostly intimidating league members, they can resupply foodstuffs and other perishables from local sources.

You realise resupply involves a lot more than just food and other perishables? There is enough space in each ship from Destroyer to SD to stack up millions of boxes of rations... that is not the problem. The problem is when those ships need munitions resupply, spare parts, reactor fuel if needed, and a million and one other things that a warship would need... plus all done by a organization that has not had to 1) fight a war or 2) resupply large deployed formations far from their bases for probably 600 years.

Weird Harold wrote:Any way you allocate the available fleet train, there is going to be large portions of the SLN that are going to have to improvise logistic support from their own resources. Even commandeering every freighter they run across won't provide enough transport to fulfill the need for logistic transport. The SLN will have to use warships as transports or starve.

The resupply in the core is less problematic because there is likely not going to be much if any combat and if there is it will be very one sided and with an unhappy ending for the SLN force in question. Resupply would be required for a few of the units that are picketing systems far from their bases not ALL SLN ships just a fraction. But still nowhere enough of a fleet train to support occupation pickets and task forces attacking GA shipping.

They logically have thousands of BC. We see entire squadrons on multiple times out the back end of nowhere. So far they seem to use BC squadrons where the RMN would send a single CL. Obviously they can support them.

Why are all of you trying to shoehorn this in the hard way?

Why not have your shipyards whip up some crates with tractors and just limpet them to the hulls like missile pods? Then your SDs could carry significant additional supplies and the transfer would be relatively simple. Pull up alongside or on the same vector tell pod THX 1138 to detach, use your tractor to give it an appropriate vector, receiving ship catches it, container limpets on and away you go. Control the size of the container to make it compatible with the desired ship types' wedge parameters and one SD could carry a lot of cargo. Nothing would stop you from limpeting containers on over the broadsides either, since returning fire is rather pointless with ship board tubes anyway.

As a bonus, since you are probably carrying a lot of missile pods anyway, having them limpeted on also frees them for the SD's use as needed.

kzt wrote:They logically have thousands of BC. We see entire squadrons on multiple times out the back end of nowhere. So far they seem to use BC squadrons where the RMN would send a single CL. Obviously they can support them.

How many of them go back to base to resupply? I seriously doubt that they would have the fleet train to resupply all those BC's. And I believe it was mentioned in the books.

TimberwolfD wrote:Why are all of you trying to shoehorn this in the hard way?

Why not have your shipyards whip up some crates with tractors and just limpet them to the hulls like missile pods? Then your SDs could carry significant additional supplies and the transfer would be relatively simple. Pull up alongside or on the same vector tell pod THX 1138 to detach, use your tractor to give it an appropriate vector, receiving ship catches it, container limpets on and away you go. Control the size of the container to make it compatible with the desired ship types' wedge parameters and one SD could carry a lot of cargo. Nothing would stop you from limpeting containers on over the broadsides either, since returning fire is rather pointless with ship board tubes anyway.

As a bonus, since you are probably carrying a lot of missile pods anyway, having them limpeted on also frees them for the SD's use as needed.

Because the crate fusion reactor can only run for a week, and power cords are forbidden by honorverse physics (or something).

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:For Commerce raiding, you need numbers rather than brute force. You therefore provide for the raiding forces going furthest from base or depot support -- your 500 BCs (and smaller.)

True, but this is a rather unusual situation, and you are suggesting to send SD's to support and resupply BC's. If the SD's have more endurance and a larger magazine, then they should go instead of the BC's... after all 2 SD's are as good as 8-10 BC's.

Two SDs can only chase down two ships of an eight to ten ship convoy. Eight to Ten BCs can run don most if not all of them. Adm Kingsford is sending Frontier Fleet commerce raiding, not deep infrastructure raiding.

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:That decision leaves you with (at least) eight squadrons of the wall without support other than what those squadrons can provide for themselves. ...

-And can those ships carry the supplies that the BC's need?

What BCs? That paragraph was addressing specifically the eight squadrons of SDs my decision to send 500 BCs raiding would leave without logistics support.

Sigs wrote:The GA can get to almost any place in the League faster than the League can... so their only remote chance of success in this endeavour is to send the BC's with their supply ships and get their orders directly from Kingsford as they leave so that the only people that know where the task forces are going are the Task Forces themselves and Kingsford... otherwise you might as well send the coordinates to the GA yourself.

Adm Kingsford isn't going to micromanage the commerce raiding, he's simply going to send a general order to all units to "Implement Case Buccaneer," or whatever the code word for the contingency planning for wide scale commerce raiding might be.

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote: Since your SD squadrons are going to be mostly intimidating league members, they can resupply foodstuffs and other perishables from local sources.

You realise resupply involves a lot more than just food and other perishables? There is enough space in each ship from Destroyer to SD to stack up millions of boxes of rations... that is not the problem. The problem is when those ships need munitions resupply, spare parts, reactor fuel if needed, and a million and one other things that a warship would need...

Of course I realize that perishables is probably the least of a warship's logistics needs. But every single item that can be obtained locally is one less thing that too few transport hulls have to transport.

Sigs wrote:plus all done by a organization that has not had to 1) fight a war or 2) resupply large deployed formations far from their bases for probably 600 years.

The lack of experience probably led to larger fleet trains than Crandall and Filareta actually needed. That in turn suggests that a larger percentage of Fleet Train assets have been lost (captured) than most estimates account for. Also, I believe textev says that the SLN didn''t have all that many fleet-owned logistic/support ships to start with; they relied on civilian contract shipping which is in extremely short supply.

Sigs wrote:The resupply in the core is less problematic because there is likely not going to be much if any combat and if there is it will be very one sided and with an unhappy ending for the SLN force in question. Resupply would be required for a few of the units that are picketing systems far from their bases not ALL SLN ships just a fraction. But still nowhere enough of a fleet train to support occupation pickets and task forces attacking GA shipping.

Even with all that taken into account, there is NOT enough shipping available in the Solarian League to fulfill the requirements. Somebody, somewhere is going to have to "improvise, adapt and overcome."

TimberwolfD wrote:Why are all of you trying to shoehorn this in the hard way?

Why not have your shipyards whip up some crates with tractors and just limpet them to the hulls like missile pods? Then your SDs could carry significant additional supplies and the transfer would be relatively simple. ...

If the designer can solve the power-duration problem, this would be a good idea. The crates wouldn't even have to be very high tech -- even wooden crates or just cargo nets.

The main point is still that SLN flag officers are going to have to swallow their pride and let their SDs become "trash-haulers." Any other ship type can haul less whether internally or strapped to the hull.

Weird Harold wrote:

TimberwolfD wrote:Why are all of you trying to shoehorn this in the hard way?

Why not have your shipyards whip up some crates with tractors and just limpet them to the hulls like missile pods? Then your SDs could carry significant additional supplies and the transfer would be relatively simple. ...

If the designer can solve the power-duration problem, this would be a good idea. The crates wouldn't even have to be very high tech -- even wooden crates or just cargo nets.

The main point is still that SLN flag officers are going to have to swallow their pride and let their SDs become "trash-haulers." Any other ship type can haul less whether internally or strapped to the hull.

If it's stuck to the hull and inside the compensator field you hardly seem to need to use something as high tech as a tractor beam to hold it in place. The outside if the hull is basically in constant micro-gravity, being inside the compensator 'bubble, but outside the effect of and grav plates. So it's not subject to ship acceleration forces. You could hold the thing on with glue, or welded some tie down points for straps.

That should let you move the bulky supplies that a warship needs periodically that won't fit in the hatches of the same warships.
Though moving spares for major engineering systems us only part of the solution; you still need the repair ships able to perform the necessary field repairs - to get the ships patched up well enough to either return to action or to limp back to a real yard.

Noticed a mention or two of Filareta/Crandall's fleet trains being captured. If it happened, it is not in the books.

Certainly, Filareta wasn't stupid. The KIA & POW numbers given for 2nd Manticore also suggests the half million Marines he had with his fleet train never entered the system at all.

As for Crandall - there is no mention of her fleet train during the Spindle sequence. However, I may finally have an explanation for the slightly odd numbers of her screen - 24 BC, 12 CA, 23 CL, 18 DD. I bet she detached 1 CL and 6 DD to keep an eye on her fleet train.