SLN Reserve

munroburton wrote:
We don't know the SLN's exact defensive arrangements. I'll point out that two ready squadrons of BCs at each site secures it against 95% of possible attackers. If it's upgraded to two squadrons of SDs, the site was secure against all but a concentrated effort by one of the other top ten navies in the universe.

And I am going to assume that:
1)Not all SLN officers are idiots
2)The SLN had at one point competent leadership
3)They value the reserve thus they would want to safeguard it.

At some point someone would have come to the conclusion that there was in fact a need to guard the reserve since they(The SLN) place great value on it...after all even the one of the oldest SDs in the reserve was one of the most powerful warships in existence.

How long would it take to reactivate a warship? Not upgrade or make combat ready just make it able to travel under it's own power with skeleton crew?

The SLN must as an institution know that any attack on the League however unlikely will have to strike the reserve and since the reserve is co-located with main SLN ship yards an enemy could cripple the SLN with a few attacks before they can even think of victory. In one move an enemy can destroy your reserve, destroy 13% of your active wall which is in refit as well as most of your naval yards. So as little as the SLN thinks someone will have the nerve to attack them, I doubt that they are not protecting their numerical advantage no matter how useless it actually is.

munroburton wrote:Why should the distance between the yard and the reserve be significant?

Two far away and you require separate defence forces as both targets are equally important. If an attack comes and you have two objectives to defend what would you choose, 15% of your shipbuilding capabilities or 15% of your reserve? I would always choose the shipyards and thus before I have to make that choice in battle I would make sure that the reserve has it's own reserve.

munroburton wrote: If the SLN's yard complex is in orbit of the planet along with Battle Fleet's manned ships, then the Reserve units orbiting that planet's moon are still deeply within the planetary security umbrella.

Assuming a core or a well developed shell world, having 1,000 or more warships parked in the vicinity of the planet might be a bit crowded since after all any system that boasts a major SLN yard will also boast a large population, well developed industry and busy orbit. Do you think that Earths moon at the time of the Havenite wars would be a good place to park 1,000 SLN reserve ships? Since likely it will be populated and industrialized all on its own?

Sigs wrote:Assuming a core or a well developed shell world, having 1,000 or more warships parked in the vicinity of the planet might be a bit crowded since after all any system that boasts a major SLN yard will also boast a large population, well developed industry and busy orbit. Do you think that Earths moon at the time of the Havenite wars would be a good place to park 1,000 SLN reserve ships? Since likely it will be populated and industrialized all on its own?

Star Systems are big places though. Given the technology available to the Honorverse, there's always going to be a Lagrange point or two that can safely be declared off-limits to civilian traffic even in a heavily populated system like Sol (Without impeller drives, Lagrange points are natural transfer points for traffic going to and from a given planet; Impellers remove the benefits of using them since they are immeasurably more efficient in terms of using reaction mass than any chemical rocket could ever be). Even traditional orbital slots are available in abundance; if you put a thousand SDs into geosync, they're not going to take up enough space to be a navigational hazard.

The E wrote:

Sigs wrote:Assuming a core or a well developed shell world, having 1,000 or more warships parked in the vicinity of the planet might be a bit crowded since after all any system that boasts a major SLN yard will also boast a large population, well developed industry and busy orbit. Do you think that Earths moon at the time of the Havenite wars would be a good place to park 1,000 SLN reserve ships? Since likely it will be populated and industrialized all on its own?

Star Systems are big places though. Given the technology available to the Honorverse, there's always going to be a Lagrange point or two that can safely be declared off-limits to civilian traffic even in a heavily populated system like Sol (Without impeller drives, Lagrange points are natural transfer points for traffic going to and from a given planet; Impellers remove the benefits of using them since they are immeasurably more efficient in terms of using reaction mass than any chemical rocket could ever be). Even traditional orbital slots are available in abundance; if you put a thousand SDs into geosync, they're not going to take up enough space to be a navigational hazard.

Right. Our moon's gravitional sphere of influence is approximately 65,000km. You could park the SDs in a single identical orbit at 25,000km high. The circumference of a 25k km orbit is 157,079km.

With 500km between each SD, in each orbit you could fit 100 SDs.

Then you go up to 25,500km and add another belt. 101 SDs in this one. Maybe you go to 24,500km and add another ring of 99 SDs.

Congratulations. You've parked 300 warships around one moon using an orbital belt only 1,500km wide. No Reserve unit is ever more than 50,000km away from another one. None are closer than 500km.

I did not say the SLN used Earth's moon - textev is that they clearly used Mars as the gravitional anchor for the SLN's Sol facilities and base. This actually exposes the units more, since Mars has long been colonised... and is much closer to the hyper limit. I'm saying the SLN should have been looking for something with a similar orbital configuration in their other Reserve systems.

If the SLN had had smart planners, they would've put the Sol reserve somewhere like Mercury(assuming sun damage isn't a factor) or Venus. The deeper inside a hyper limit, the better. At Mars, they're dangerously close to the hyper limit.

My point about the guard force is, you don't need 100 constantly ready SDs to guard 1,000 mothballed SDs if there are only five other naval powers capable of launching a 100-waller assault.

It's like saying Fort Knox needs more round-the-clock security because additional gold is being stored there. Nope. It should damn well be secure regardless of how much gold is there.

The E wrote:Star Systems are big places though. Given the technology available to the Honorverse, there's always going to be a Lagrange point or two that can safely be declared off-limits to civilian traffic even in a heavily populated system like Sol (Without impeller drives, Lagrange points are natural transfer points for traffic going to and from a given planet; Impellers remove the benefits of using them since they are immeasurably more efficient in terms of using reaction mass than any chemical rocket could ever be). Even traditional orbital slots are available in abundance; if you put a thousand SDs into geosync, they're not going to take up enough space to be a navigational hazard.

I can see putting the reserve around an uninhabited planet, but putting it around a Manticore like planet or even a more industrialized/heavily populated planet? Not likely. There is absolutely no need to put 6 billion tons of warship around one of your core systems or it's inhabited moons. There are 2,000 SD's in regular commission with the SLN, there is absolutely no reason why they cannot detail 5-6 SD squadrons to each reserve formation. If there is 8 formations there would be 320 SD's deployed to cover those 8 Reserve formations which represents 16% of the available hulls. Throw in double that many ships for defence for the yards and you still have over 50% of your fleet available for a fleet around Earth and fleets around major core worlds/bases.

munroburton wrote:
I did not say the SLN used Earth's moon - textev is that they clearly used Mars as the gravitional anchor for the SLN's Sol facilities and base. This actually exposes the units more, since Mars has long been colonised... and is much closer to the hyper limit. I'm saying the SLN should have been looking for something with a similar orbital configuration in their other Reserve systems.

From what I understood about the reserve from the passage in a rising thunder about Hyperion One, it has some of the mothballed ships at the installation but not a lot since it was the HQ of logistics command. So maybe the newest and most modern ships were docked there but I doubt that the Solar system would be home to a large segment of the reserve.

Keeping billions of tons of ships around heavily populated planets or moons is begging for trouble, any one of a thousand unlikely scenarios might very well lead to tens of thousands if not millions of deaths. Having your reserve close to a heavily industrialized system makes little sense since as I mentioned above the SLN has the ships to spare when it comes to defending important objectives. Since we know that Battle Fleet rarely ventures outside the core, and since we also know there is really no reason for the SLN to picket every core world since they have been at peace for centuries, that leaves a few concentrations of SD's which means there are plenty of ships to go around for the few truly critical objectives.

munroburton wrote:If the SLN had had smart planners, they would've put the Sol reserve somewhere like Mercury(assuming sun damage isn't a factor) or Venus. The deeper inside a hyper limit, the better. At Mars, they're dangerously close to the hyper limit.

They did not necessarily put the reserve around Mars in any meaningful numbers... that was the HQ for their logistics command, there might be some SDs of most recent construction but not likely to put a thousand or more SDs in or near the single largest Construction and Service Platform of the SLN.

munroburton wrote:My point about the guard force is, you don't need 100 constantly ready SDs to guard 1,000 mothballed SDs if there are only five other naval powers capable of launching a 100-waller assault.

And I am not suggesting you need 100 SDs as purely reserve picket, what I am suggesting is that putting 100-140 SDs in system picket with 40 being specifically dedicated to the Reserve the other 100 for the system makes sense. The Reserve should ideally be placed around a major construction or service yard which means a juicy target you have to protect anyway. And since there are only half a dozen locations outside the sol system and the SLN has 2,000 SD's in active service I don't see why they would be stingy protecting one of the few places they seriously need to protect.

How would it look to the public in general if the SLN managed to lose a few dozen SDs to an unknown party because they did not provide an adequate security?

And before you state that no one will go in an capture those ships, think about how many times in our history someone has made a statement like that... How many times in our history has someone made a statement that something is impossible only to be proven wrong?

munroburton wrote:It's like saying Fort Knox needs more round-the-clock security because additional gold is being stored there. Nope. It should damn well be secure regardless of how much gold is there.

If Fort Knox holds 1% of the US gold reserves it requires serious security. If on the other hand it hold 50% of the gold reserves of the US it requires significantly more security.

The bigger the percentage of the nations wealth it holds the stronger the security force it needs. If it has a billion dollars worth of gold, defending it with an infantry division might be an overkill, but if it holds 50% of the national gold reserves and they are valued at say 5 trillion dollars having that division there to back up the regular security apparatus might make sense.

Sigs wrote:If Fort Knox holds 1% of the US gold reserves it requires serious security. If on the other hand it hold 50% of the gold reserves of the US it requires significantly more security.

Consider how you go about stealing 10,000 tons of gold. That's like 500 semis full of gold. Give me some idea how many people you need in your conspiracy to pull this off and how long you think it will take carry it out. Like how long it will take for you to load 20 pallets with a fork lift on each of 500 trucks.

You have to have some security, but not absurd amounts of security.

Sigs wrote:
If Fort Knox holds 1% of the US gold reserves it requires serious security. If on the other hand it hold 50% of the gold reserves of the US it requires significantly more security.

The bigger the percentage of the nations wealth it holds the stronger the security force it needs. If it has a billion dollars worth of gold, defending it with an infantry division might be an overkill, but if it holds 50% of the national gold reserves and they are valued at say 5 trillion dollars having that division there to back up the regular security apparatus might make sense.

That is false logic. If the security is sufficient to keep 1% safe, then essentially the same force will still be sufficient for 50%.
Because you don´t want that 1% to be stolen in the first place, so you MUST have ENOUGH to prevent that as well.

You cannot say "oh it´s just 1% so we just make sure NEARLY all thieves can´t steal it".

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:If Fort Knox holds 1% of the US gold reserves it requires serious security. If on the other hand it hold 50% of the gold reserves of the US it requires significantly more security.

Consider how you go about stealing 10,000 tons of gold. That's like 500 semis full of gold. Give me some idea how many people you need in your conspiracy to pull this off and how long you think it will take carry it out. Like how long it will take for you to load 20 pallets with a fork lift on each of 500 trucks.

You have to have some security, but not absurd amounts of security.

You would need Honorverse countergrav to load a semi trailer full of gold. Gold is so heavy that it will make the frame of a semi trailer collapse from the weight of the gold well before the semi is even barely full.* When Fort Knox was receiving gold via railroad, the railcars had the same issue of being weight limited rather than volume limited.

* 80,000 lbs of gold is 66.46 cubic feet--a cube 4.05060703191 feet long on each edge.

40,000 pounds per semi is "full". That's why you need 500.

kzt wrote:40,000 pounds per semi is "full". That's why you need 500.

A semi trailer (in the United States) can hold a maximum of 80,000 pounds. A semi trailer 53 feet long contains 3,816 cubic feet of space.