Designing an Honorverse Strategic Level Game Using VBAM

In a pre-pod environment I suspect that BCs supported by lighter units might sometimes be risked in a detached role during a wall to wall slugfest. I'm envisioning using their slight acceleration advantage to work ahead of the 2 fleets just outside of SDM range (so relatively immune to even capital missile fire). Then once they've achieved a better angle on the throats of the enemy force dip back into range and try get shots in on the hammerhead.

There's no sidewall interposed, which goes a long way to offsetting their weaker warheads. And the waller's simply can't fit as much point defense on the hammerheads as on the broadsides -- so you've got a better chance of getting missiles through.

The attempt would force the enemy to react. They could
1) Attempt to weather the threat - fire back with their chase launchers and use their chase defense to try to kill off the missiles. Seems risky, but shouldn't detract any from their continued broadside dual.

2) Sent their screen forward to fend off the attacking one - both sides lose the supplemental missile defense, but until the cruiser skirmish is resolved none of the detached light ships can interfere in the waller duel

3) Change heading to try to keep the throat angled away from the cruisers. This is simple, but turning the bow away gives the main threat, the opponent's wallers, an increasingly better angle on your stern. So not without risk, even if you don't especially care about getting deflected from your original course.

There may be other uses. And certainly if your CAs or higher carry energy torps an opponent can't dare risk them crossing a waller's 'T' within eTorp range.


But for the most part the early Honorverse combat was modeled after Napoleonic age of sail -- and when lines of battle collided the lighter ships, even heavy frigates, normally pulled clear and acted to relay signals or watch for additional forces. (I think sometimes they'd intervene is disabled ships fell entirely out of the line, but I'm not even sure about that).
Without a true equivalent of a underwater torpedo there wasn't a practical way for a small ship to realistically threaten disabling or destroying a much larger one. The small units were built for scouting, and message carrying when working closely with liners, and a whole host of day to day jobs that the fleet had to do and couldn't (or shouldn't) be done by the massive and valuable line of battle ships.

Jonathan_S wrote:But for the most part the early Honorverse combat was modeled after Napoleonic age of sail -- and when lines of battle collided the lighter ships, even heavy frigates, normally pulled clear and acted to relay signals or watch for additional forces.

This is what I assumed as well. It's just hard to model light unit uses (signaling, couriers, pickets, commerce raiding) in a 4X game, even though I wish more did (yay for Distant Worlds).

jscott991 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But for the most part the early Honorverse combat was modeled after Napoleonic age of sail -- and when lines of battle collided the lighter ships, even heavy frigates, normally pulled clear and acted to relay signals or watch for additional forces.

This is what I assumed as well. It's just hard to model light unit uses (signaling, couriers, pickets, commerce raiding) in a 4X game, even though I wish more did (yay for Distant Worlds).

Sins of a Solar Empire did scouts, signaling, pickets and commerce raiding ok; Couriers, not so much.

Jonathan_S wrote:In a pre-pod environment I suspect that BCs supported by lighter units might sometimes be risked in a detached role during a wall to wall slugfest. I'm envisioning using their slight acceleration advantage to work ahead of the 2 fleets just outside of SDM range (so relatively immune to even capital missile fire). Then once they've achieved a better angle on the throats of the enemy force dip back into range and try get shots in on the hammerhead.

There's no sidewall interposed, which goes a long way to offsetting their weaker warheads. And the waller's simply can't fit as much point defense on the hammerheads as on the broadsides -- so you've got a better chance of getting missiles through.

The attempt would force the enemy to react. They could
1) Attempt to weather the threat - fire back with their chase launchers and use their chase defense to try to kill off the missiles. Seems risky, but shouldn't detract any from their continued broadside dual.

2) Sent their screen forward to fend off the attacking one - both sides lose the supplemental missile defense, but until the cruiser skirmish is resolved none of the detached light ships can interfere in the waller duel

3) Change heading to try to keep the throat angled away from the cruisers. This is simple, but turning the bow away gives the main threat, the opponent's wallers, an increasingly better angle on your stern. So not without risk, even if you don't especially care about getting deflected from your original course.

There may be other uses. And certainly if your CAs or higher carry energy torps an opponent can't dare risk them crossing a waller's 'T' within eTorp range.


But for the most part the early Honorverse combat was modeled after Napoleonic age of sail -- and when lines of battle collided the lighter ships, even heavy frigates, normally pulled clear and acted to relay signals or watch for additional forces. (I think sometimes they'd intervene is disabled ships fell entirely out of the line, but I'm not even sure about that).
Without a true equivalent of a underwater torpedo there wasn't a practical way for a small ship to realistically threaten disabling or destroying a much larger one. The small units were built for scouting, and message carrying when working closely with liners, and a whole host of day to day jobs that the fleet had to do and couldn't (or shouldn't) be done by the massive and valuable line of battle ships.

Another tactic would be sending your screen - especially if it was heavier then your opponent's - to threaten a secondary or tertiary target. Sending a bunch of BCs and CAs to attack a mining colony or support vessels inside the hyperlimit may force an opponent to split his wall to take on both threats. So many tactical options....

Theemile wrote:Another tactic would be sending your screen - especially if it was heavier then your opponent's - to threaten a secondary or tertiary target. Sending a bunch of BCs and CAs to attack a mining colony or support vessels inside the hyperlimit may force an opponent to split his wall to take on both threats. So many tactical options....

Or given how indecisive most wall to wall combat was back then, the BC targets might be the real ones and your wall just came along to force their defenders to commit (and not run around trying to keep your BCs off things).

And hey, you've got a bonus chance they'll tuck tail and run at some point; then you've got control of the whole system.

A lot of the value of smaller units comes outside the clash of walls -- convoy against pirates, commerce raiding, exploration and show-the-flag missions, etc.

(Note that when the dreadnought came along in our timeline, and it looked like a big fleet clash was shaping up, Jackie Fisher scrapped most of the RN's show-the-flag/distant waters patrol ships and moved their crews and budgets into the dreadnoughts and BCs.)

With battle lines, they serve as additional sensor platforms, additional countermissile defense (not as critical in 1900 PD as 20 years later!), and detached scouting units. Recall that some sensor tech depends on long-baseline stuff putting together data from multiple ships...

tonyz wrote:A lot of the value of smaller units comes outside the clash of walls -- convoy against pirates, commerce raiding, exploration and show-the-flag missions, etc.

(Note that when the dreadnought came along in our timeline, and it looked like a big fleet clash was shaping up, Jackie Fisher scrapped most of the RN's show-the-flag/distant waters patrol ships and moved their crews and budgets into the dreadnoughts and BCs.)

Though a of that was apparently the Admiralty looking at the growth in size and cost of cruisers and realizing that the UK couldn’t afford to replace all the patrol ships with ones capable of standing up to the new “standard” cruiser.
So instead of planning to have cruisers everywhere they were planning to rely on strategic mobility of their BCs and their incomparable links into the global underwater cable system to sent BCs to hunt down cruisers performing commerce raiding based on reports of such received cabled from their far flung agents.

In some ways, the WWI battle of the Falklands was textbook case of that (marred by Coronnel and almost getting caught coaling in harbor)