Eridani Edict Violation of the most Dismissive Kind...

quite possibly a cat wrote:I'm thinking it might be some sort of super-super dreadnought. Aren't those things supposed to be utterly massive?

With powerful defenses they might even be a good counter to Apollo missiles. If the laser heads can't get through their combined bubble and radiation shields they'll be capable of rolling straight through any defensive position. Or holding any defensive position. Basically a mobile hyper-capable fort.

But isn't biggest drawback for the LDs the lack of wedges to kill the incoming fire?

George J. Smith wrote:But isn't biggest drawback for the LDs the lack of wedges to kill the incoming fire?

That's a trade-off forts already have the possibility to make. Forts can switch off their impeller wedges and put up a bubble sidewall.

Doing so allows them to deploy their ventral and dorsal broadsides - effectively doubling the fort's offensive and defensive capacity.

The benefits of doing so depends upon how powerful bubble sidewalls are.

George J. Smith wrote:

quite possibly a cat wrote:I'm thinking it might be some sort of super-super dreadnought. Aren't those things supposed to be utterly massive?

With powerful defenses they might even be a good counter to Apollo missiles. If the laser heads can't get through their combined bubble and radiation shields they'll be capable of rolling straight through any defensive position. Or holding any defensive position. Basically a mobile hyper-capable fort.

But isn't biggest drawback for the LDs the lack of wedges to kill the incoming fire?

Yeah, that's probably a downside. But missiles can go around a wedge, with a loss of accuracy. With a strong enough bubble and shields it wouldn't matter against missiles. Although such a powerful bubble might not be possible

Warning, speculation of future tech advances: However, the lack of a wedge could still matter in energy range. With current technology all a super dreadnought could really do against a theoretical missile proof mobile fort is interpose its wedge and make a run for it. Actually trying to face the fort in energy range would be something like a battlecruiser vs. super-dreadnought.

But there was a preview snippet about using remotely powered grasers to defend the wormholes. You could use that same idea to fire grasers while interposing your wedge.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Yeah, that's probably a downside. But missiles can go around a wedge, with a loss of accuracy. With a strong enough bubble and shields it wouldn't matter against missiles. Although such a powerful bubble might not be possible

Warning, speculation of future tech advances: However, the lack of a wedge could still matter in energy range. With current technology all a super dreadnought could really do against a theoretical missile proof mobile fort is interpose its wedge and make a run for it. Actually trying to face the fort in energy range would be something like a battlecruiser vs. super-dreadnought.

Well if you can hide behind your own wedge and beat off any missile attacks the missile-proof fort makes you could take it out with a wedge strike.

Even a vastly more powerful that currently (known to be) possible bubble wall isn't a wedge. So the ship wedge would be able to pop it and then shred the fort.


So not necessarily just run away. But a ramming attack is a dicey thing to try

Jonathan_S wrote:

quite possibly a cat wrote:Yeah, that's probably a downside. But missiles can go around a wedge, with a loss of accuracy. With a strong enough bubble and shields it wouldn't matter against missiles. Although such a powerful bubble might not be possible

Warning, speculation of future tech advances: However, the lack of a wedge could still matter in energy range. With current technology all a super dreadnought could really do against a theoretical missile proof mobile fort is interpose its wedge and make a run for it. Actually trying to face the fort in energy range would be something like a battlecruiser vs. super-dreadnought.

Well if you can hide behind your own wedge and beat off any missile attacks the missile-proof fort makes you could take it out with a wedge strike.

Even a vastly more powerful that currently (known to be) possible bubble wall isn't a wedge. So the ship wedge would be able to pop it and then shred the fort.


So not necessarily just run away. But a ramming attack is a dicey thing to try

Also David's already told us you cannot run a bubble sidewall and the spider drive simultaneously. So one you throw up the bubble, 2 things happen:

1) you stop accelerating and maneuvering
2) Everyone sees your bubble sidewall.

So while that bubble is up, there is no running and hiding and no hiding. Once the bubble is formed, battle has commenced and someone is going to lose.

One possible tactic I mentioned previously is a combined arms mission with a conventional wall. Pretty much you get your LDs in a system in advance and pre-position them - then you bring in your conventional wall loud and proud, and use it to lead the opponent's wall onto a pre-anticipated vector. At the proper moment, the LD's pop the bubble and ambush the opposition, while the conventional wall circles, not allowing the opposition to escape.

Depending on the LD's actual arms fit, it might be a decent idea - or not.

Theemile wrote:One possible tactic I mentioned previously is a combined arms mission with a conventional wall. Pretty much you get your LDs in a system in advance and pre-position them - then you bring in your conventional wall loud and proud, and use it to lead the opponent's wall onto a pre-anticipated vector. At the proper moment, the LD's pop the bubble and ambush the opposition, while the conventional wall circles, not allowing the opposition to escape.

Depending on the LD's actual arms fit, it might be a decent idea - or not.

Yep - combined arms can work. The LennyDets might not even initially need to get within conventional missile range. Stage one could be to lure the defending fleet only a vector that let the LDs slip graser torps directly ahead of them. Punching a bunch of (IIRC) CL grade grasers down the throat of even SD(P)s from say 50,000 km out is going to hurt. (And if they coming out to stick around and fight, rather that a fast flyby, and you could time the intercept to after turnover they'd be flying towards the torps stern first. That up the kilt shots gives a narrow range of possible attack angles, but in compensation it gives you a good chance to damages or destroy pod laying capabilities)

And a spider drive graser torp attack it won't give a trace back to the DLs likely position; not like firing off (and controlling) pods worth of Cataphracts would.


The even after initially laming the enemy some you can then try to pincer them between your conventional forces and the LDs -- that's when the LDs go all-in and pop up their bubble and start slamming off pods.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:One possible tactic I mentioned previously is a combined arms mission with a conventional wall. Pretty much you get your LDs in a system in advance and pre-position them - then you bring in your conventional wall loud and proud, and use it to lead the opponent's wall onto a pre-anticipated vector. At the proper moment, the LD's pop the bubble and ambush the opposition, while the conventional wall circles, not allowing the opposition to escape.

Depending on the LD's actual arms fit, it might be a decent idea - or not.

Yep - combined arms can work. The LennyDets might not even initially need to get within conventional missile range. Stage one could be to lure the defending fleet only a vector that let the LDs slip graser torps directly ahead of them. Punching a bunch of (IIRC) CL grade grasers down the throat of even SD(P)s from say 50,000 km out is going to hurt. (And if they coming out to stick around and fight, rather that a fast flyby, and you could time the intercept to after turnover they'd be flying towards the torps stern first. That up the kilt shots gives a narrow range of possible attack angles, but in compensation it gives you a good chance to damages or destroy pod laying capabilities)

And a spider drive graser torp attack it won't give a trace back to the DLs likely position; not like firing off (and controlling) pods worth of Cataphracts would.


The even after initially laming the enemy some you can then try to pincer them between your conventional forces and the LDs -- that's when the LDs go all-in and pop up their bubble and start slamming off pods.

The only issue with any of our above ideas, is they rely on the opponent doing exactly what you want them to do - and your people to do the same. The moment the sanitary system backs up into the air intake's rotary flow inducer, all that fancy planning and positioning is out the window, and you better have a simple backup plan.

Jonathan_S wrote:The even after initially laming the enemy some you can then try to pincer them between your conventional forces and the LDs -- that's when the LDs go all-in and pop up their bubble and start slamming off pods.

Nah, they deployed the pods long before.

It takes a dual-drive missile at max range before you can dodge into hyper. Remember what happened at the Battle of Manticore? The Havenite ambush fleet was outside the hyper limit and figured out that the missiles coming for them were Apollo birds--they tried to hyper out but didn't have enough time. If there was any possible shortcut they would have taken it.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Plus hyperspace is a crap place for Manticore to fight anyway. You can dodge those missile waves if you have your hyperdrive ready to start with.

We don't know exactly what the LD's are designed for but we do know they are built to use graser torpedos with internal magazines. We also know that the Sharks were built as training and testbeds for use of the spider drives and (one presumes) delivery tactics for the GTs.

That the GT as a weapon and the Sharks & Ghosts were the tactical scout & delivery systems for the Oyster Bay strikes mean that Manticore, Grayson and allied parties know about them (well, the invisable and so far untrackable part of the spider drive, not how it is done) doesn't mean that they can't be useful in the original intended role. The rest of the weapons used against the Manticore and Yeltsin's systems were otherwise conventional sent in on ballistic courses. We just haven't seen the LDs applied tacticaly yet. We also don't know what other weapon systems have been developed to go with them. The GT's single new piece of technology is the spider drive to get it into engagement range for the massive graser. Everything else is, we presume, variations on existing tech applied as a torpedo.

If my memory is accurate, the ships that delivered the Sharks and Ghosts were conventional massive freighters that made extreemly low speed transitions at great distances from the target systems to present the smallest possible transition signature and appear to be sensor ghosts. While I'm not sure what the speeds are for the LD's, they would be avoiding the whole transition signature problem. That would still let them bring an entire strike package to a target and do the deployment. They might even be set up to carry a Ghost or two themselves instead of using only recon drones in gathering the tactical data nessisary for the type of stealth strike used in Oyster Bay. It is precisely the stealth capability and tactics that let OB suceed against Manticore and Grayson as there was no time for the existing defenses and evacuation plans to be activated.
Given that the SLN doesen't seem to believe what they have heard about either attack, it would be likely that most of the SL member systems probably believe that their existing defenses are still effective against "normal" attacks and they haven't been adding the kind of full time and layerd defences the GA and friends are doing to harden systems. That will leave them very vulnerable to OB styles of attacks. They litteraly can't see them comming.

I would be most interested to hear what Grayson has been doing as far as detection and counter-systems against the spider drives. They do take a different approach and mindset to problems from Manticore so it should be interesting.