Remaining holes in SLN intel

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:And the fact that the Brazilian carrier seems to be a "pure" chopper carrier.

The Brazilian Navy's end-of-year roundup statement, published on Christmas Eve 2017, also included the line: "Minister Raul Jungmann and the Brazilian Navy Commander Eduardo Bacellar Leal Ferreira took the opportunity to announce the purchase of the Royal Navy's HMS Ocean multifunction vessel, valued at £84m sterling."

Google is your friend: HMS Ocean

Yes indeed. Google is our friend. She's served me well since her birth. But even she can't do anything about idiots who incorrectly digest her information, like yours truly, who was drawing conclusions of an incorrect pic of an incorrect ship.

Obtaining intel is only half the battle. We've got to properly digest said intel once it arrives, and somehow keep it out of some Malignant dead letter file.

Thanks Harold.

cthia wrote:I would imagine that even an offensive stance with 20 podlayers can be more easily botched than with MDMs, if wrong decisions are made to lay down pods untimely or incorrectly (wrong vector).

Podlayers would seem to require a bit more tactical acumen is all I'm saying.

I disagree. Offensively, SDM podlayers have only one thing they can do against MDM opponents - find an objective whose defenders cannot surrender and charge it. The attacker's only job is to make sure they send enough podlayers to survive closing the range.

On the offensive, MDM warships have to be careful not to allow built-up vectors to carry them into the range of podlayers laying doggo - or for a podlaying force to drop out of hyper behind or ahead of them. The range advantage means that the attacker is more capable of finessed raids, for example a handful of MDM SDs could run around Haven's third-tier systems destroying the orbital infrastructure.

As we saw with Eighth Fleet's operations during AAC, this can backfire even with the best commanders.

On the SDM podnaughts versus MDM non-podnaughts.

From an operational standpoint, if you backed your MDM non-podnaughts with fast transports full of missile pods carrying MDMs, you'd end up in approximately the same place. Probably the only question would be about limits of your fire control.

Against an opponent with only SDMs, podnaughts or not, you would win nearly every time.

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:On the SDM podnaughts versus MDM non-podnaughts.

From an operational standpoint, if you backed your MDM non-podnaughts with fast transports full of missile pods carrying MDMs, you'd end up in approximately the same place. Probably the only question would be about limits of your fire control.

Against an opponent with only SDMs, podnaughts or not, you would win nearly every time.

Yes, if the MDM ships had access to a steady stream of pods that would negate almost all their offensive weakness - at least until the enemy developed MDMs at which point those fast transports would be painfully vulnerable.

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:On the SDM podnaughts versus MDM non-podnaughts.

From an operational standpoint, if you backed your MDM non-podnaughts with fast transports full of missile pods carrying MDMs, you'd end up in approximately the same place. Probably the only question would be about limits of your fire control.

Against an opponent with only SDMs, podnaughts or not, you would win nearly every time.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yes, if the MDM ships had access to a steady stream of pods that would negate almost all their offensive weakness - at least until the enemy developed MDMs at which point those fast transports would be painfully vulnerable.

Also with the caveat that there are no shoals of pods between the attacker and the defender as Honor and Mike showed once upon a time.

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:On the SDM podnaughts versus MDM non-podnaughts.

From an operational standpoint, if you backed your MDM non-podnaughts with fast transports full of missile pods carrying MDMs, you'd end up in approximately the same place. Probably the only question would be about limits of your fire control.

Against an opponent with only SDMs, podnaughts or not, you would win nearly every time.

Yep, the scenario as presented wouldn't last for long. The MDM SDs could pair with ammo ships loaded with pods and deploy as fire control units.

And the SDM podlayers could upgrade to MDMs relatively quickly by changing their 16-missile SDM pods to 6 or 8 multi-stage missile pods. Or something similar - it's a net gain if a SD(P) sacrifices up to two-thirds of its ammo capability in order to have MDM range.

munroburton wrote:

drinksmuchcoffee wrote:On the SDM podnaughts versus MDM non-podnaughts.

From an operational standpoint, if you backed your MDM non-podnaughts with fast transports full of missile pods carrying MDMs, you'd end up in approximately the same place. Probably the only question would be about limits of your fire control.

Against an opponent with only SDMs, podnaughts or not, you would win nearly every time.

Yep, the scenario as presented wouldn't last for long. The MDM SDs could pair with ammo ships loaded with pods and deploy as fire control units.

And the SDM podlayers could upgrade to MDMs relatively quickly by changing their 16-missile SDM pods to 6 or 8 multi-stage missile pods. Or something similar - it's a net gain if a SD(P) sacrifices up to two-thirds of its ammo capability in order to have MDM range.

How long will it be before the GA has missiles with both the guidance and the distance and the numbers?

Figure next generation SD(P)s.

My guess they will be fully in place for the next arc of the story.

ldwechsler wrote:My guess they will be fully in place for the next arc of the story.

Everyone will have them then. It's mostly just engineering as people know it can be done and there are huge incentives to do it. In 5 years everyone will have effective MDM's, bucklers and stealthy LACs. In 10 years at least voice grade FTL. 20 years everyone has Apollo, dense fusion reactors, streak drive etc.

New stuff will certainly exist, but it won't be nearly as one sided. Manticore has destroyed a golden age of peace and there will be lots of military R&D everywhere.

Spider and the stealth system maybe not be out, it's very unclear exactly how much is really known. And the MA won't be standing still either.

ldwechsler wrote:How long will it be before the GA has missiles with both the guidance and the distance and the numbers?

Figure next generation SD(P)s.

My guess they will be fully in place for the next arc of the story.

Perhaps by the time Oravil Barregos cedes Maya from the league, they will be in deployment. Renmember, when 5helast book ended, the Manticore alliance R&D detatchment was just headed off to bolthole. it will take some little while for the tech to be incorporated into Haven systems anf gotten into production.

kzt wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:My guess they will be fully in place for the next arc of the story.

Everyone will have them then. It's mostly just engineering as people know it can be done and there are huge incentives to do it. In 5 years everyone will have effective MDM's, bucklers and stealthy LACs. In 10 years at least voice grade FTL. 20 years everyone has Apollo, dense fusion reactors, streak drive etc.

New stuff will certainly exist, but it won't be nearly as one sided. Manticore has destroyed a golden age of peace and there will be lots of military R&D everywhere.

Spider and the stealth system maybe not be out, it's very unclear exactly how much is really known. And the MA won't be standing still either.

Since bucklers are a new construction item, I'd move it to 10 years, otherwise... yeah..