SLN Logistics

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:Besides, Filareta jumped from a staging base, but was that staging base a Battle Fleet base that could support those SD's or was it a staging base outside the core that usually saw a few dozen light ships at most? If it was a major base in the core then Fleet train would be small, if it was a minor base then they would still require the fleet train.

Filareta was conducting a forward deployment to the shell/verge exercise similar to Adm Crandall's. There was no base to speak of at his jumping-off point.

Therefore he needed a fleet train... my point exactly. Weather he was deployed in a small FF base or no base at all he needed a fleet train and a pretty substantial one at that. Weather he brought it with him or not, is immaterial because if it was in one location close to the Manticore System the GA would have done everything in their power to grab that fleet train ASAP to deny it's use to the SLN.

kzt wrote:Huh? You park your freighters somewhere both convienent and out of the way. Preferably somewhere easy to get into hyper, like around some piece of rock a few AUs out in a red dwarf system. Space is big, nobody is going to trip over them.

In Spindle they went in KNOWING not thinking but KNOWING they will be the once delivering the beatings so I don't think they would have worried about the possibility of their freighters being Damaged.

As for The second BoM they could have done that but if I am not mistaken Filareta stated he did not post any ships outside the Hyper limit for another reason but that leads me to believe that there is no one to warn the fleet train that the Battle was lost, all the GA needs to do is find out where the fleet train is. They have millions of new POWs and a few hundred ships some fully functioning some not so functioning to gather intelligence from.

munroburton wrote:
Yes, I concede it's an assumption either way. I just don't believe the Sollies are stupid enough that they'd blithely drag a horde of freighters into a shooting combat zone.

In Spindle they went in fully expecting to force the local government to surrender. They didn't think that the RMN would fire on them and they definitely didn't think that the local forces were any threat whatsoever. The institutional arrogance combined with stupidity and lack of combat experience might very well have caused Crandal to move in with her fleet train in tow.

munroburton wrote:My point is, Crandall almost certainly had more freighters, since Filareta's force only had a voyage half as long without an extended exercise component at the end of it. And it was expected he would be able to use the Beowulf terminus to resupply/return.

Problem with that is that even if he won the Battle of Manticore, his fleet would be out of Pods and would have suffered damage. There is no guarantee that even if he won the Battle of Manticore, he would be able to return through the terminus or even be ressuplied until such a time as he defeated the forts guarding the Junction itself.

munroburton wrote:And that, launching from a staging base, Filareta could have left behind any freighters his fleet had emptied during their wait for the Cataphract missiles. They'd have to anyway - to support the 600-ship second wave converging on the same base.

But the fleet train involves a lot more than just freighters to haul supplies for the fleet. That is a part of it but they involve anything from Hospital ships, repair ships, maybe ships with workshops onboard and any number of other ships dedicated to the maintenance of the fleet. Then you get to the freighters with the pods. Granted he might have send back the empty freighters but the likelihood is that he has more pods stored in the freighters.

munroburton wrote:Granted there's no textev for it, but I imagine it is at least a minor Frontier Fleet base. Not even a Hancock or Grendelsbane, but more like Sidemore before the High Ridge ceasefire - somewhere that never had waller visits before, mainly set up to support cruiser patrols.

If it was not a base that could support a few hundred capital ships, it wouldn't even enter the equation. He would need to bring everything with him since if a base was capable of supporting a few dozen BC's and below it likely would be greatly overwhelmed by 300+ SD's.

Sigs wrote:

munroburton wrote:
Yes, I concede it's an assumption either way. I just don't believe the Sollies are stupid enough that they'd blithely drag a horde of freighters into a shooting combat zone.

In Spindle they went in fully expecting to force the local government to surrender. They didn't think that the RMN would fire on them and they definitely didn't think that the local forces were any threat whatsoever. The institutional arrogance combined with stupidity and lack of combat experience might very well have caused Crandal to move in with her fleet train in tow.

Maybe, but I doubt it. Even expecting the enemy to surrender without firing a shot, there's no reason to risk the fleet train if you're wrong. You may have no doubt that your wallers can roll through anything the outnumbered and outmassed defenders at Spindle can throw. But you'd have to be insanely arrogent to assume that, should they fire in insane (or at least misguided) resistance, that you could stop every single missile before it reached attack range. And even one missile could shred the freighters, repair ships, and other auxileries of the fleet train - you wouldn't want to keep them with your wall.
But if you brought them into the system and then detached them with a light escort there's a risk that the defenders will, realizing the hopelessness of stopping your wall of battle, cowardly pounce on and devastate your auxiliaries as they either flee or picket the outer system.
Even people who've put as little thought into how to fight a naval war as the SLN should have worked out that it makes more sense to detach the fleet train, with it's escorts, at some nearby uninhabited system or even in an arbitrary point in deep interstellar space. If you do that there's virtually no chance that an enemy could stumble over them, but they'd be close as hand once you'd achieved your victory -- you could send destroyers back to quickly summon them forward to resupply and patch up your fleet.

They might not have brought them to the system, left in a near buy system or the closest friendly port. They never truly expected a true battle. So they might be lost amongst other merchant ships.

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
You REALLY need to work on your reading comprehension.

try: "Luckily squadrons of the wall have really big ships..." That whole paragraph referenced ONLY the "eight squadrons of the wall" which does NOT include any BCs.

And who are those big ships that can carry supplies their squadron mates need? Are you reefering to Freighters?

A "squadron of the wall" consists of 6 or 8 DNs or SDs -- logically, one DN or SD carries the same sort of supplies that the rest of the squadron's ships would need.

Cross-load every bit of supplies not needed to go back to base and resupply from one DN/SD to as many other DNs/SDs as you can, and you have a big, nearly empty, ship with spaces designed to hold the kind of missiles and other supplies needed by other ships of that type in the squadron.

It's really a simple concept.

Sigs wrote:But the fleet train involves a lot more than just freighters to haul supplies for the fleet. That is a part of it but they involve anything from Hospital ships, repair ships, maybe ships with workshops onboard and any number of other ships dedicated to the maintenance of the fleet.

The SLN either does, or does not have the specialist ships needed for a proper fleet train. They may have a repair ship at every SLN base, only major bases, or they may contract on an as needed basis from the civilian sector. They probably use some mixture of all those options.

The thing is that we have no idea what the arrangement is for ANY navy in the Honorverse. The only thing we have any basis for speculation about is the freighter availability. We know that because of Lacoon, the Solarian League only has about 20% of the freighters available pre-lacoon and Manticore has a bunch of unemployed civilian freighters.

Actual "Fleet Train" assets -- those directly owned by a Navy -- are mostly unknown for anyone except Manticore. We know they have dedicated transports of the JMTS(?) class that are smaller and faster than typical civilian freighters. There are some revelations about other logistics support in SoV but this is NOT a spoiler thread, so I'll say no more.

As far as SLN "Fleet Train" assets other than freighters, they are no better or worse equipped than they were before Lacoon and the (presumed) loss of Filareta's and Crandall's fleet train. It is the freight hauling capacity where the SLN is bound to fall short, because there are no freighters to be had in the League -- every league registered freighter has ten times as much cargo available as they can carry.

The only way the SLN can acquire those freighters is to commandeer them which is going to cause a lot of bad feelings in League members and the Transstellars that own the ships and finance the Mandarins.

tl;dr

We don't know enough to talk about any "fleet train" except freighters.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:But the fleet train involves a lot more than just freighters to haul supplies for the fleet. That is a part of it but they involve anything from Hospital ships, repair ships, maybe ships with workshops onboard and any number of other ships dedicated to the maintenance of the fleet.

The SLN either does, or does not have the specialist ships needed for a proper fleet train. They may have a repair ship at every SLN base, only major bases, or they may contract on an as needed basis from the civilian sector. They probably use some mixture of all those options.

The thing is that we have no idea what the arrangement is for ANY navy in the Honorverse. The only thing we have any basis for speculation about is the freighter availability. We know that because of Lacoon, the Solarian League only has about 20% of the freighters available pre-lacoon and Manticore has a bunch of unemployed civilian freighters.

Actual "Fleet Train" assets -- those directly owned by a Navy -- are mostly unknown for anyone except Manticore. We know they have dedicated transports of the JMTS(?) class that are smaller and faster than typical civilian freighters. There are some revelations about other logistics support in SoV but this is NOT a spoiler thread, so I'll say no more.

As far as SLN "Fleet Train" assets other than freighters, they are no better or worse equipped than they were before Lacoon and the (presumed) loss of Filareta's and Crandall's fleet train. It is the freight hauling capacity where the SLN is bound to fall short, because there are no freighters to be had in the League -- every league registered freighter has ten times as much cargo available as they can carry.

The only way the SLN can acquire those freighters is to commandeer them which is going to cause a lot of bad feelings in League members and the Transstellars that own the ships and finance the Mandarins.

tl;dr

We don't know enough to talk about any "fleet train" except freighters.

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Also keep in mind that one of the reasons Lancoon One was a hard first hit is that a LOT of trade in the League traveled in Manticoran merchant ships -- that's the reason the Sollies were irritated about Manty ships crowding Sollie shipping lanes.

-- Stewart

But the Invincible Solarian League Navy IS insanely arrogant! So why shouldn't it bring the fleet train with it, knowing that the barbs would simply roll over and surrender?
Cheers, John
[quote="Jonathan_S
Maybe, but I doubt it. Even expecting the enemy to surrender without firing a shot, there's no reason to risk the fleet train if you're wrong. You may have no doubt that your wallers can roll through anything the outnumbered and outmassed defenders at Spindle can throw. But you'd have to be insanely arrogent to assume that, should they fire in insane (or at least misguided) resistance, that you could stop every single missile before it reached attack range. And even one missile could shred the freighters, repair ships, and other auxileries of the fleet train - you wouldn't want to keep them with your wall.

John Prigent wrote:But the Invincible Solarian League Navy IS insanely arrogant! So why shouldn't it bring the fleet train with it, knowing that the barbs would simply roll over and surrender?
Cheers, John

Jonathan_S wrote:Maybe, but I doubt it. Even expecting the enemy to surrender without firing a shot, there's no reason to risk the fleet train if you're wrong. You may have no doubt that your wallers can roll through anything the outnumbered and outmassed defenders at Spindle can throw. But you'd have to be insanely arrogent to assume that, should they fire in insane (or at least misguided) resistance, that you could stop every single missile before it reached attack range. And even one missile could shred the freighters, repair ships, and other auxileries of the fleet train - you wouldn't want to keep them with your wall.

I still don't expect them to be so arrogent that they inconvenience themselves by bringing big, slow, vulnerable freighters into combat situations. It's actually less hassle to leave them nearby than to haul them all the way into the system.

Plus what arrogant Admiral wants to be tied to ugly slow transports? The warships can put on a much more impressive show if they aren't trailing a gaggle of support ships behind them