Where where the Beowulf Super Dreadnoughts built?

Since the only confirmed things that Beowulf will be supplying is missiles, why assume they have SD building capacity?

Yes they're a high-tech culture, but SD's are for system defense. They haven't (publicly) had a pressing need for more of that, instead they seem to have spent their efforts mostly on suppressing the slave trade, for which cruiser/battlecruiser facilities would be more logical than paying for huge shipyards.

So I think: SD's purchased, but they do have smaller yards.

A parallel question might be: How much tech would their wallers actually NEED in order to kick aside a SLN offensive? All they would need is pods towed by their own wallers, and manty recon drones instead of normal ones. Since the communication is FTL, the pods they shoot could be as easily controlled by the Manties at the terminus using the drones as their eyes, and having Manty LACs playing the missile-defense role, those 23 ships could eat the SLN for breakfast.

Of course, once Mycroft is installed, all those 23 would really have to do is look tempting.

There is that whole range thing. How far is the terminus and how far is the range of FTL?

manty5 wrote:Yes they're a high-tech culture, but SD's are for system defense. They haven't (publicly) had a pressing need for more of that, instead they seem to have spent their efforts mostly on suppressing the slave trade, for which cruiser/battlecruiser facilities would be more logical than paying for huge shipyards.

Not just system defense, Beowulf may have used that as a justification - the system and the Sigma Draconis terminus- but SD's work just find for offensive operations. You start building or aquireing SDs (or earlier Dreadnoughts) and you signal that you expect to need them for something which can include wall-of-battle in offensive operations against some other system or navy. Last use we saw was Fillerta and SLN fleet in Raging Justice to attempt to crush and capture the Manticore home system.

kzt wrote:There is that whole range thing. How far is the terminus and how far is the range of FTL?

Yep, as you allude to, range is a real issue.

While I don't think we know distance to the Beowulf terminus for sure, most of them are (IIRC) 3-8 light-hours from the Primary. And Apollo has a (non-relayed) FTL control range of around 4-6 light-minutes (apparently a bit more for the system defense versions with their larger ACMs; which presumably mount larger and hence more sensitive FTL transceivers).

So roughly a factor of 60 mismatch


Even once Beowulf is covered by Mycroft repeaters I don't know if they'll try to have continuous coverage all the way out to the terminus. Probably makes more sense to defend to just beyond the hyper limit and then put another defensive bubble over the terminus. (sucks for any ships in transit between them if enemies pounce, but it's take a lot more Mycroft nodes to cover that several light-hour long transit corridor)

First of all a few points about Beowulf.
1 For a large part of the League's existence Beowulf stood first among equals among its members, in fact it was historically the system with the highest GDP, and still remains within shouting distance of Sol. Although not all scientists were Beowulfan, they were and remain leaders in the research field, not only in biology and medicine but in most fields as well.
2 They remember when the SLN was smaller than the SDFs by a significant margin once the mercs were discounted.
3 Beowulfan warships are of different designs than of the League.
4 Beowulf may be officially a single system polity, but they are on the lines of the original republic of haven, they have a close relationship with their daughter colonies and neighbors, not all of which are league members, so they have a need of independent force projection. So they need SDs.
5 Not every league member is a single system polity with its own capital yard, and Beowulf is a ship seller.
Conclusion:
They probably do not have one of the League's battle fleet yards, but probably do build SDs and DNs for other member nations.
Additionally, some of the pearls all but outright state that Beowulf builds its own wallers. The ones that have to do with them not using suggestive technologies, like mk 41 tubes, and construction methods, like matrix integrated armor.

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:There is that whole range thing. How far is the terminus and how far is the range of FTL?

Yep, as you allude to, range is a real issue.

While I don't think we know distance to the Beowulf terminus for sure, most of them are (IIRC) 3-8 light-hours from the Primary. And Apollo has a (non-relayed) FTL control range of around 4-6 light-minutes (apparently a bit more for the system defense versions with their larger ACMs; which presumably mount larger and hence more sensitive FTL transceivers).

So roughly a factor of 60 mismatch


Even once Beowulf is covered by Mycroft repeaters I don't know if they'll try to have continuous coverage all the way out to the terminus. Probably makes more sense to defend to just beyond the hyper limit and then put another defensive bubble over the terminus. (sucks for any ships in transit between them if enemies pounce, but it's take a lot more Mycroft nodes to cover that several light-hour long transit corridor)

You can't pounce on someone going between a terminus and primary in N-space unless you were willing to land way off from them. At least if I understand resonance zones.

Really, if I was going to try and raid wormhole commerce I would sit above the wormhole in hyperspace. To start with, I won't be obvious to the people in N-space, so I might not get noticed. Second, if an actual military fleet pops over at a minimum you'll get to inflict massively disproportional damage, unless they did something like not use their sails or traveled a couple light minutes away from the terminus. The SLN in particular would benefit since it would cut down on the massive range advantage of the Manticorain missiles. Plus, you can translate away if the enemy gets too clever and they'll be stuck spinning up their drives. (I think? I'm not really sure how translating between bands in a single set of bands works.)

Sure, people going to Beowulf would be safe,

quite possibly a cat wrote:
Even once Beowulf is covered by Mycroft repeaters I don't know if they'll try to have continuous coverage all the way out to the terminus. Probably makes more sense to defend to just beyond the hyper limit and then put another defensive bubble over the terminus. (sucks for any ships in transit between them if enemies pounce, but it's take a lot more Mycroft nodes to cover that several light-hour long transit corridor)

You can't pounce on someone going between a terminus and primary in N-space unless you were willing to land way off from them. At least if I understand resonance zones.

Really, if I was going to try and raid wormhole commerce I would sit above the wormhole in hyperspace. To start with, I won't be obvious to the people in N-space, so I might not get noticed. Second, if an actual military fleet pops over at a minimum you'll get to inflict massively disproportional damage, unless they did something like not use their sails or traveled a couple light minutes away from the terminus. The SLN in particular would benefit since it would cut down on the massive range advantage of the Manticorain missiles. Plus, you can translate away if the enemy gets too clever and they'll be stuck spinning up their drives. (I think? I'm not really sure how translating between bands in a single set of bands works.)

Sure, people going to Beowulf would be safe,[/quote]
That seems to depend on the strength of the RZ. Still at Beowulf, the RZ should be quite strong - so to kill ships traveling between Beowulf and its terminus you'd need to enter normal space outside the RZ and then attack them.

Still, with 2 drive/stage or better missiles you can do that and I doubt even if a merchant ship saw you launch that they'd be able to bring up their hyper generator quickly enough to slip away. Mycroft nodes along the corridor would at least let the defenders kill any ship bold enough to try that (the retaliatory missiles could arrive in less than the 10+ minutes it takes a hyper generator to recharge after use)


I think the tactic of lurking in hyper near a wormhole only works if the terminus traffic primarily serves non-local traffic. Because ships (due to the RZ) almost always travel through normal space between the inner system and the terminus, and then obviously you can't interdict ships within the wormhole. I'm not sure what kind of standoff range traffic control imposes for arriving ships - obviously they have to leave hyper outside the wormhole's own small hyper limit, and not within the RZ, but I suspect they're supposed to enter normal space and establish contact with terminus control a 4-5 million km out - up to an hours sailing time from the terminus. So seeing and attacking inbound traffic might be iffy in the conditions of hyper. However outbound traffic probably doesn't need to clear the terminus by anywhere near as much before entering hyper to their next destination - they might make easier pickings...

Maldorian wrote:

[Besides, why not sell (or lease) a handful of Invicti instead? If no one is going to notice the presence of a rebranded Nike (In reality, a Battleship) , they are not going to notice true wallers with fresh paint. And while a single Nike could hold it's own against a division of SLN SDs, 3 divisions of Invicti would shred a hundred SDs without blinking.

In the end, none if it happened. David said there is no Manty hardware on any of the ships at Beowulf, a conscious decision of both Manticore and Beowulf to let sleeping intelligence agencies lie as long as possible./quote]

Manty gimmicks would be very helpful, but you can build better hardware than Scientist and Vega class without all that.

How big was the scientist class? Was it around 7million tons? If I remember correct, a newer manty superdreadnought has 8.5million tons. So, if you go to the most possible size with solarian tec you get also better ships.

Another point is the use of missles. I am not sure, but if I am remember correct, than have manticorian ships more missles and counter missles even before the war, they increase that during the war.

How old are the missles the Solarian Navy use? The Navy of Beowulf could increase their power if they buy or build better, newer designs. We are talking about the solarian league! There are more than one missle seller in the league.

You get the point: Even without the help of Manticore Beowulf can buy or research better equipment.

And we shouldn´t forget, that there are close connections between Beowulf and Manticore, so, if someone leaves a manticorian company and join a Beowulfian company and bring some knowledge with him/her....

The big point is the SLN is a slow glacial beast, with the Admiralty of Battle Fleet being run by someone who hasn't been in space for 50 years, and has no gut understanding of laser heads. Contrast this with both Hamish and Hemphill both having experience on the Manty Laser head development team.

Laser heads are the big change of the status quo. Pods and Apollo work because laser heads make missiles deadly. Hemphill's Jeune ecole school was absolute right about the change to warfare caused by a change in material (although tactics and technology both needed to be refined together).

The Scientists and Vegas are fundamentally pre-laser head designs. They assume you get in close, using Missiles to cause enough damage so your energy range can finish them off. Thus, to the higher ranks of the SLN, Missiles are not your primary weapons.

What this means is the Beowulf SDF, by not being myopic seat fillers, may have recognized the change to missile combat. Without pods, apollo, and ghost rider, they are limited to something like the ships at the beginning of the First Havenite war. However, they can still be more effective than similar SLN ships if the weapon's mix reflects the value of the laser head.

Regarding missiles, I'm not thinking they are going to be leaps ahead of the SLN. No pods. Likely they don't have the same developments that's radically increased the laser head power of the SLN. But their training and tactics, as well as their knowledge of how deadly Laser Heads are in fleet combats are going to be large.

If Beowulf SD's have a weapon's mix closer to the Haven Sector powers, and have developed tactics to use that mix, they will be at an advantage over SLN forces of the same size. They won't be trying to close to energy range, and instead will be focused on missile combat.

The question is how much edge does this give them against what size SLN fleet?

Jonathan_S wrote:I think the tactic of lurking in hyper near a wormhole only works if the terminus traffic primarily serves non-local traffic.

Oh absolutely. This ironically makes Lynx the perfect target. I would try some minelayers.

Jonathan_S wrote: suspect they're supposed to enter normal space and establish contact with terminus control a 4-5 million km out

I would assume so too. They also probably don't want to come down much closer to the terminus anyway since it mucks with navigation.

However, to translate downwards 6 million kilometers out you'd only be about 100,000km out in hyperspace. A grasers effective range is many times more than that, especially if the target is heading towards you. Now you just need to be stealthy enough for a merchantman not to detect you before energy range and you can probably kill every single incoming merchant ship.

Hell, get some missile pods a Moriarty and a bunch of pods and energy mines and you'd have a hilarious surprise for incoming military ships. And if they translated up into your death trap? Slaughter fest.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I think the tactic of lurking in hyper near a wormhole only works if the terminus traffic primarily serves non-local traffic.

Oh absolutely. This ironically makes Lynx the perfect target. I would try some minelayers.

Jonathan_S wrote: suspect they're supposed to enter normal space and establish contact with terminus control a 4-5 million km out

I would assume so too. They also probably don't want to come down much closer to the terminus anyway since it mucks with navigation.

However, to translate downwards 6 million kilometers out you'd only be about 100,000km out in hyperspace. A grasers effective range is many times more than that, especially if the target is heading towards you. Now you just need to be stealthy enough for a merchantman not to detect you before energy range and you can probably kill every single incoming merchant ship.

Hell, get some missile pods a Moriarty and a bunch of pods and energy mines and you'd have a hilarious surprise for incoming military ships. And if they translated up into your death trap? Slaughter fest.

Or just go lower tech and assemble a few of the forts with bubble sidewalls the Manties use to protect their side of the Sigma Draconis wormhole Junction. What was that text ev? Something like the forts at Lynx could destroy Crandall's fleet in minutes?