SLN Reserve

Tenshinai wrote:

No, the oversized missile launchers that are known to be in use by other nations for system defense.
As was used by a certain Masadan clandestine base in the Grayson home system, if you recall.

And the LACs are the utterly useless version of 1905?

Tenshinai wrote:
And this is relevant because? You keep moving the goalposts all the time.

Tenshinai wrote: How many mothballed ships are guarded are irrelevant when there´s barely anyone that can even think about contesting the area at all. And again, that´s before accounting for fixed defenses and a few squadrons of LACs and probably a few squadrons of cruisers and lighter ships that are attached to the base and system.

The whole question rests on technological equality or at least being within shouting distance of technology. So 1905 is a logical step but any point in time for the 100 years before that is just as useful. You states a couple of squadrons of LACs would be useless for combat in 1905 against a first rate navy even by another first rate navy.

Tenshinai wrote:
The SLN didn´t know they´re useless, and have not had a chance to improve matters since they got any information in that direction.

Everyone knew they were useless…that’s why they keep saying it’s only LACs…

Tenshinai wrote:
And against >90% of forces in the known universe, they´re NOT useless.

That would be a great point, if the LACs were an offensive weapons. For them to be an offensive weapon you would have to build a carrier and when the LACs of 1905 and before that were so poorly armed it made no sense.

Tenshinai wrote:
Why? We already know that´s pure rubbish, as it has been stated that there are 7 locations.

I was trying to make another point… I was not arguing that the reserve was in 100 locations. It’s not my fault you missed the point.

Tenshinai wrote:
Uh... Yeah because nations always prepare for the nonexistant unknown threats?

The good once do… They prepare for the likely and unlikely. Those that don’t pay the price.

Tenshinai wrote:
Seriously? If defenses can stop dead all but the top 5 navies known and make the rest pay for getting anywhere, why would they bother having more defenses than that?

Because anyone not in the top 5 could be stopped by a couple of cruisers. What navy not in the top 5 can attack the SLN reserve even if it was undefended? I am not talking about not willing… I am talking not able. Most navies not in the top 5 don’t have enough missiles in stock to do much damage even if they wanted to.

Tenshinai wrote:
That´s just wasting resources uselessly.

Yeah because having 500 SDs defending the reserve is more wasteful than having 500 SDs sitting around a major base doing nothing.

And if someone decides to attack the big bad wolf they will stack the deck in their favour or lose quickly. In this case stacking the deck in the favour of anyone with ill intentions against the League is not too hard since the intelligence apparatus is not exactly top notch. It might not be easy or likely it is still possible.

Tenshinai wrote:
Yes? And? SLN didn´t have a clue about that until recently, and haven´t had a chance to make much changes since.

That is why you take precautions beforehand? See how that works? If you plan properly before trouble starts even if it comes from nowhere you can react better than if you don’t take precautions. And as far as the SLN is concerned, I don’t think that they are totally incompetent or stupid maybe arrogant as hell but not necessarily stupid/incompetent.

How do we know that the systems where the reserve is based are heavily defended?

Tenshinai wrote:

*facepalm*
*headbang*


All reserves are stated to be in systems with MAJOR FLEET BASES. This has only been mentioned a few dozen times in the thread so far. Guess you managed to miss that all the times. Somehow.

That means what exactly? They may have a couple of hundred SDs in the system but that is by no means a prepared defence force. If the reserve is in major bases IN the core, what are the chances that those systems would be heavily defended? As in what are the chances that those couple of hundred SDs would be combat ready on short notice? The SLN is the strongest most numerous force in known space, no one even approaches their size or strength and those that might be a threat are OUTSIDE the League. They have zero reasons to expect an attack in the CORE of the League.

Tenshinai wrote:
Major fleetbases are always defended, AND they are usually established in systems that have a strong economy, which means massive populations, which in turn means even more probability of defenses, potentially even local system fleets adding to the whole, even if they are likely just "nearby" rather than part of the defenses around base and reserves.

The SLN has had no reason to defend against anyone for hundreds of years, those systems are the in the core of the League which means that the defenders would correctly expect that if someone wants to attack them they will have to cross hundreds of light years of League territory before attacking. Those bases might have tremendous firepower but what are the chances that firepower would be combat ready in a couple of hours or even days?

Whereas someone capturing 1600 SDs automatically places them in the top 2 position after the SLN.

Tenshinai wrote:



Mothballed. You will need either a ship capable of towing an SD for every one, which would make you having the 2nd largest navy around, making a theft like this ridiculously irrelevant anyway, or you will need about 300-1000 crew for each ship, probably taking at least a few weeks of work to get them in working order.

Uh yeah, because that´s just so logical and smart.

What do you think happens if someone attacks and captures a major SLN base? Yes the SLN will be seeing red but the local commander would likely ensure the security of his own area before going forward to retake the base. Chances are the SLN wont be able to respond quickly enough since they are not and have not been at a war footing in a long time if ever.

But so will the attacker…

Tenshinai wrote:

No, i meant the commander will be torn to pieces by his own superiors for being such an utter fuckup that he fails in a very simple and basic protective duty.

I don’t have the slightest idea what you are replying to… maybe spend a little less time on emoticons and more time figuring out what you are answering.

easier to go through 50 SDs in 10 individual pickets of 5 than it is to go through a concentrated force of 50 SDs.

Tenshinai wrote:



You think so?

Ok lets think about it then!
Defeating 5 SD, ok the attacker will likely need an absolute minimum of 8 SDs on their own to be reasonably certain of success.
Except any and all reserve sites WILL be placed so they have support from fixed defenses(anything else would be stupid and incompetent far beyond what is acceptable from ANY military), add a squadron of cruisers and another 4 SD to be certain of being able to deal with that without too much losses.

And then there´s probably a minimum of 3-4 squadrons of LACs insystem, add another 4 SD and a squadron of DDs and you can probably manage.

Oh, and then there´s the likely minefield placed around the reserve. Another squadron of DDs to sweep them with without taking too long.

So, now your attacking force consists of 16 SDs a squadron of cruisers and 2 squadrons of DDs, and your probability of success is likely somewhere in the 2/3 to 3/4 range.

I sail in with 50 SD’s into the fleet base, crush the pitiful 5 SD picket destroy the reserve units and hyper out before the local base defenses can do anything. And then I do it to the other 9 bases. It would be much easier to use 50 SDs to attack 50 SDs in 10 groups of 5 than it would be to attack 1 fleet of 50 SDs with 50 SDs.

Tenshinai wrote:
Unless the base or system happens to have additional forces. Which is reasonably likely for at least half.
Or a battlefleet squadron or five of SDs popping in for a port call.

So you are going to base your strategy on luck? Hoping that when someone attacks you a squadron or two of SDs would be visiting to lend a hand to the defenses?

Tenshinai wrote:
So, you need 160 SDs, 80 cruisers and 160 DDs, and in half the places you´re still going to get whacked unless you double up on your own forces. You´re probably going to lose a minimum of 20 SDs of your own, even if you assume none of the attacks runs into any additional forces.

Or I use 50 SDs with fleet train, hit one system destroy the 5 SDs and the reserve units in it, move on and hit the next one and the one after that rearming after every attack. By the time you react I could have gone through half your reserve and 10% of your fleet.

Tenshinai wrote:
Aaand then you´re going to do what exactly?

Blow up the reserve? Steal ships if I want to? Occupy the system? Whatever helps me meet my goal/

Tenshinai wrote:
Just nuke the reserve ships? Right, so you just killed 800 SDs, less than what the SLN has operational at great costs both in material and personnel to yourself.

Don’t forget the picket ships, and don’t forget the fact that I can hit systems one after another and do so before you have a chance to redeploy to cover the pickets.

Tenshinai wrote:
Keep it up and you´re pretty much guaranteed to get smacked down hard and lose very embarassingly.

How so? The SLN depends on the reserve to make up the shortfall in their ship construction for the first few years. If I was planning on fighting the league I would kill the reserve and its picket quickly. If I am calling the timing for the war I would prepare my ship building industry to provide me with fresh ships quickly while the SLN would ideally depend on the reserve to provide the fresh ships for at least the first 5 years of any war.

Tenshinai wrote:
To perform this operation without heavy losses to yourself, your going to need over 300 SDs, 200 cruisers and 300+ DDs.

Tenshinai wrote:
Or the same 50 SDs plus another 80 Cruisers and destroyers with a large supply train.
At that point, seriously, if you have THOSE kind of forces to spare, you should use them for something that actually makes sense instead.
And you´re already a top 10 navy, why bother with those reserves at all?

You have to destroy battlefleets squadrons of ACTIVE ships first.

If the reserve remains, every ship the SLN loses can be quickly replaced. Any damaged ship could be thrown aside for future repair while quickly replaced by a recently reactivated SD. So in the opening phases of the war, you destroyed a significant portion of reserve SDs plus a few dozen active SDs at this point anything you kill the SLN would be hard-pressed to replace quickly.

Tenshinai wrote:
In case you missed it? NO, attacking several less defended positions is NOT automatically easier than attacking fewer places with more defenses.

In case you missed it, using 50 SDs to attack 10 locations with 5 SDs each is much easier than using those same 50 SDs to attack 1 location with 50 enemy SDs. Space is big, you can pick a system in the middle of nowhere to set up as a forward base, hit a reserve location destroy the picket and the reserve ships and go back to rearm just to do it over again. Unless the SLN has its major bases clustered in the same neighbourhood by the time anyone knows what happened and has a chance to react I can hit a few more locations.

That’s my point, from one you get a black eye and might see some of those ships used against you, from the other you lose a significant % of your forces and might add a significant number of capital ships to the enemy.

Tenshinai wrote:

What does a black eye matter if you´re dead?

JohnRoth wrote:We've already got an example of a successful attack on a heavily defended system: Oyster Bay.

Sigs wrote:If I remember correctly they had to be in a fixed position(moon/asteroid etc…) and were likely only for base defence.

Sigs wrote:Everyone knew they were useless…that’s why they keep saying it’s only LACs…

Sigs wrote:That would be a great point, if the LACs were an offensive weapons. For them to be an offensive weapon you would have to build a carrier and when the LACs of 1905 and before that were so poorly armed it made no sense.

Sigs wrote:I was trying to make another point… I was not arguing that the reserve was in 100 locations. It’s not my fault you missed the point.

Sigs wrote:The good once do… They prepare for the likely and unlikely. Those that don’t pay the price.

Sigs wrote:Because anyone not in the top 5 could be stopped by a couple of cruisers. What navy not in the top 5 can attack the SLN reserve even if it was undefended? I am not talking about not willing… I am talking not able. Most navies not in the top 5 don’t have enough missiles in stock to do much damage even if they wanted to.

Sigs wrote:That means what exactly? They may have a couple of hundred SDs in the system but that is by no means a prepared defence force.

Sigs wrote:Or I use 50 SDs with fleet train, hit one system destroy the 5 SDs and the reserve units in it, move on and hit the next one and the one after that rearming after every attack. By the time you react I could have gone through half your reserve and 10% of your fleet.

Tenshinai wrote:

Sigs wrote:Everyone knew they were useless…that’s why they keep saying it’s only LACs…

And yet they keep using them as defenses?
Yes, compared to ships they are useless, but deploy enough of them and they´re a threat even to capital ships.
It´s always a numbers game. And no matter their individual weakness, LACs are also cheap, you can have many.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:


And yet they keep using them as defenses?
Yes, compared to ships they are useless, but deploy enough of them and they´re a threat even to capital ships.
It´s always a numbers game. And no matter their individual weakness, LACs are also cheap, you can have many.

For what little it's worth Manticore had stopped building old-style LACs for about 10 years starting around OBS because they realized that unless you have really overwhelming numbers of them the missiles they threw just didn't have a good chance of getting through modern point defense. The terminal velocities were too low to be likely to break through PDLC. (Basically you needed enough LACs to saturate the PDLCs and get hhits through by throwing so many targets that the lasers literally didn't have time to aim at them all.

Now the League, which was lagging behind, even then, in the adoption of the laserhead and the improved anti-missile defenses probably didn't come to that same realization. They probably rated LACs a bit better than Manticore did - but even so you'd know you'd need several to be likely to kill even a single DD; and a ton to counter even a small wall of battle (with it's vastly better integrated missile defenses).


Anyway, just a bit of an aside on 1900 era LAC effectiveness.

Theemile wrote:The easiest way to do this was to overcome the opponent with numbers, encircling the target and creating multiple firing directions, so the target was forced to take fire down the wedge. LACs, were a cheap force multiplier, and in largish numbers together with regular warships, could overwhelm larger opponents and drive them off.

One of the SITS senarios had this very thing happen to some Manty BCs in the first Havenite war, and one took a full salvo from some LACS up the throat while maneuvering against some other ships. It did not turn out well for the Manty.

The important take way is LACS were never intended to be THE entire defense on their own for 1st tier defenses, but an inexpensive system patrolling unit that was part of a multilayered defense. In peacetime they freed regular warships from normal patrol and SAR duties and in a war, were used en mass along with warships to overcome larger opponents.

Somtaaw wrote:I have problems understanding this, when virtually all the early LACs we saw, prior to the new generation Manticore sent to Silesia on the Trojans either had zero energy weapons, or they had a whopping two, maybe even three tiny lasers even a destroyer would sneer at. Their entire strategy revolved around flushing their single shot missile cells before they get killed.


So sure, you could generate dozens, or even hundreds of firing angles, but against anything larger than a destroyer, which if I remember either carries no armor, or less than a foot on it's vitals, small lasers would be like what small laser heads do to superdreadnought armor (ie: superficial only, and maybe a lucky hit on a drive node is the highlight).

Jonathan_S wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:I have problems understanding this, when virtually all the early LACs we saw, prior to the new generation Manticore sent to Silesia on the Trojans either had zero energy weapons, or they had a whopping two, maybe even three tiny lasers even a destroyer would sneer at. Their entire strategy revolved around flushing their single shot missile cells before they get killed.


So sure, you could generate dozens, or even hundreds of firing angles, but against anything larger than a destroyer, which if I remember either carries no armor, or less than a foot on it's vitals, small lasers would be like what small laser heads do to superdreadnought armor (ie: superficial only, and maybe a lucky hit on a drive node is the highlight).

First I think you're slightly underrating the warheads on LAC missiles - they're going to be dangerous to at least a CL and probably a CA.
But even against and SD, where I agree they're not going to get hits against it's vitals, you can still seriously reduce it's effectiveness with non-penetrating hits. It isn't only drive nodes that can't be armored. The sensor arrays are surface mounted, as are fire control links, and PDLCs. Weapons hatches are armored, but direct hits are likely to render that weapon at least temporarily out of action - by jamming the cover closed if nothing else.

So enough pin pricks can send even a mighty SD back to the yards to get it's exterior mounts repaired or replaced.


But Theemile has a good point about LACs normally being used to augment heavier defensive forces. The missiles from the LAC might not be able to hit an SD's vitals, but even before they start hitting and eroding your point defense and tracking capabilities they tend to obscure the bigger nasties capital missiles that the system's forts, moon bases, or own SDs might be throwing.

Yes, given a little time, you can distinguish between them. But the one-shot swarm of LAC missiles can still make it harder to stop the enemies first wave of heavy missiles. And if they hit and degrade the sensors and point defense, well, that just gives the defenders a better chance of winning the missile fight and causing the attackers to break off before the clash of energy range combat.