SPOILER end of the MA

Sigs wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Sigs, why would Beowulf need to rebuild their industry? They lost one nanofarm and 3 civilian stations?

I am assuming that there was quite a lot of industry in the 3 stations. Aside from research and educational facilities my assumption is that there was some form of industry...that is unless they segregated their industry to a high level and kept it all off of the civilian stations. Manticore lost 3 Stations out of 3, what are the chances that beowulf would have 46 million people in space and that doesn't represent a large % of their industrial workforce?

Because it is so written?

Sigs wrote:

The Current MK-16G is as destructive as pre-war or SLN Capitol Ship warheads with twice to three times the powered range.

So? How long before the SLN gets weapons of similar capabilities? Or the MA/RF? Or some other nation that might have the desire to redraw borders?

About the same amount of time the GA takes to develop even more powerful and more compact MDMs.

First, the opposition has to crack Manticore's miniaturization tech, and micro-fusion tech, etc.

Sigs wrote:

While the MAlign scrambles to match UH level GA (and Andermani) tech the GA and Andermani are going to be doing at least incremental improvements and learn to detect Spider Drives.

And? The MA catches up to the GA and the GA can see them come...so what? I would say that would be more beneficial for the MA than for the GA.

As long as the GA keeps moving the goalposts, they can stay ahead of anyone trying to match their military tech. You seem to assume that the GA can't move the goalposts.

Sigs wrote:

If the Tech Levels advance in incremental stages from known tech levels -- with the spread of FTL, MDM and LAC tech -- the MAlign inflicts fewer casualties and still loses.

The MA knows where the GA is, they can plan attacks on the GA to disrupt their industrial build up or they can go into hiding and plan for round two.

Yes, the MAlign can do those things: stir up the GA populace by keeping the "War With The MAlign" on the 'front page' or go into hiding an limit their access to the outside world.

Sigs wrote:If the MA can keep Darius and the relationship with the RF secret from the GA eventually the GA will lose focus leaving them exposed.

Not if they keep playing the "Invisible Enemy" -- urging greater effort to detect and destroy attackers and keeping the War on the front page headllines.

Sigs wrote:

SDs and SD(P)s are going the way of the Big Gun battleships in the real world -- to mothballs and scrap-yards.

How so? You still haven't presented any evidence how the SDs and SD(P)s would become obsolete once technological parity is achieved.

Conversely, you haven't presented any evidence that SD(p)s can be in more places than one. You harp on the number of places that need protection but refuse to believe that Mycroft and LACs provide sufficient defense. Even with the MAlign's help in knocking out the Mycroft platforms, the SLN got trashed when the attacked Beowulf.

SD(P)s are only needed -- if at all -- for force projection or status symbols. BC(L) and BC(p) provide nearly as much fire-power and with a source of pods can take on even an SD(P) of end-of-war-RHN vintage with no better than 1.5:1 odds.

Even incremental improvements to automation, missiles, ECM, Pen-AIDS, stealth, etc, will make post-UH cruisers and destroyers better than anything in space at the end of UH.

Sigs wrote:But if the best you can do it is plan/prepare for the last war, it is still much better then nothing.

How well did the Maginot Line work for the French in 1939? The Maginot Line was worse than nothing, because the French sank millions of Francs into building it instead of building and training tanks and airplanes to match what the Germans showed off in the Spanish Civil War.

The English at least survived to learn from their inter-war deficiencies and innovate enough to eventually win (with a lot of help from Russia and the US.)

"Preparing to fight the last war" is a losing strategy that is worse than nothing. Even the best result costs outrageous casualties.

Weird Harold wrote:First, the opposition has to crack Manticore's miniaturization tech, and micro-fusion tech, etc.

And the MA said they expected to have microfusion when?

Why did you all-caps it, Harold?

Sigh.

"Why did the Sollies put condoms on their missiles?"

So they couldn't get Pen-AIDS...

Note : post 666

jchilds wrote:Why did you all-caps it, Harold?

Stupid Fingers (tm)

Not having read the book, I'm going to frame the next as a question: is there a reason to believe that additional SD(p)s would have enhanced Beowulf's security? I think probably not. But I don't know.

Secondly, is there a reason to believe that the MA has advantages in warfighting ability that go beyond their stealth to give them an advantage?

Don

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With reference to Sigs response to my post:

I didn't say that you you didn't protect your systems. I did say that you have to allocate your resources according to known and potential threat levels with systems that are primary targets receiving level one security. Assigning LACs and system defense missiles to secondary systems certainly would not qualify as not defending them. For example, you don't assign SD(p)s to Split or Nuncio. The sector capitol probably does warrant some SD(p)s as the political nerve center of the Quadrant.

The reason for not commiting to an infinite program of building SD(p)s is that they absorb both resources and manpwer that is needed elsewhere. Resources, both human and otherwise, are always finite. For the concrete jobs that need to be done, I would have to vote to increase the number of smaller hulls, bcs and down rather than increasing the number of capital ships much beyond where they are at. By my count the GA has 700 to 800 SD(p)s currently including new build construction coming out of Bolthole. That should do for now.

To kzt: I would think that 45 to 50 million casualties would provide the GA with lots of motivation to stay on a war footing for a long time.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Not having read the book, I'm going to frame the next as a question: is there a reason to believe that additional SD(p)s would have enhanced Beowulf's security? I think probably not. But I don't know.

If the SD(P)s had KHII and could control the Apollo Sysdef missiles after Mycroft was targeted, they could have improved the defense. Improved Fire control wasn't really necessary against the SLN, but that would have been an "enhancement" if things were a bit more difficult. [shrug]

There were sound political reasons there were no SD(p)s with KHII on Beowulf orbit; reasons that would have negated any minuscule advantage their presence would have provided.

n7axw wrote:Secondly, is there a reason to believe that the MA has advantages in warfighting ability that go beyond their stealth to give them an advantage?

Their Graser Torpedoes are significantly more powerful and (probably) more accurate than laser-head missiles. With Spider drives, they're slow and vulnerable if their stealth is breached, and they're not much good against moving targets. That could change if the Spider Drive was replaced with an impeller drive...

There are hints that the Lenny Dets are very, very, big ships that won't really need the stealth aspect of the Spider Drive... The implies some very good defenses and armor...

IMHO, the MAlign depends too much on the Spider Drive's stealth to be good at anything other than sneak attacks. The public face of the RF Navy is a collection of SDFs with slightly better than SLN tech. They're probably better than the SLN, but not as good as Maya's Navy.

IIRC the Cataphract IIIs are as good as the MA currently has, except for their spider drive missiles. And while they do not have the range of MK 16s they do have higher acceleration.

They also have stuck them on a RD impeller making them harder to detect at launch. And there is their Donkey clones they mamaged to come up with.

Bolthole has all of this, and while Adm. Hemphill is probably going to poo poo the notion that there is something there to improve missile drive performance, I doubt Adm. Foraker is equally blase.

The planetary sensor nets will obviously have to get much better to pick up on these low energy impeller drives, and without saying, the spider as well. And there are lessons to be learned from the destrution of the Mycroft platforms as well.

Building more SD(p)s that cannot see the spider drive is not going to be particularly beneficial to the GA. Building more SD(p)s without improving the quality and range of the sensor net will not increase system security. Deploying Mycroft without addressing its newly exposed vulnerabilities is as useless as not addressing the sensor net issues.

Nor is there much to be gained by building more SD(p)s until detection of the Spider Drive is attained. All you have is more ships to be blown up by spider drive grazer torpedoes that devastated the Manticoran stations during the Yawata attack and took out the Mycroft platforms at Beowulf.

And I have no idea how to protect from cargo containers containing explosive devices.

Finding the MAlign will be what it will be, or not. While the woman on the street may get bored with the search for the invisible enemy, I can assure anyone that the civilian and military leaders of the GA will not.

n7axw wrote:Not having read the book, I'm going to frame the next as a question: is there a reason to believe that additional SD(p)s would have enhanced Beowulf's security? I think probably not. But I don't know.

Weird Harold wrote:If the SD(P)s had KHII and could control the Apollo Sysdef missiles after Mycroft was targeted, they could have improved the defense. Improved Fire control wasn't really necessary against the SLN, but that would have been an "enhancement" if things were a bit more difficult. [shrug]

There were sound political reasons there were no SD(p)s with KHII on Beowulf orbit; reasons that would have negated any minuscule advantage their presence would have provided.

n7axw wrote:Secondly, is there a reason to believe that the MA has advantages in warfighting ability that go beyond their stealth to give them an advantage?

Weird Harold wrote:Their Graser Torpedoes are significantly more powerful and (probably) more accurate than laser-head missiles. With Spider drives, they're slow and vulnerable if their stealth is breached, and they're not much good against moving targets. That could change if the Spider Drive was replaced with an impeller drive...

There are hints that the Lenny Dets are very, very, big ships that won't really need the stealth aspect of the Spider Drive... The implies some very good defenses and armor...

Still dependent on the stealth of the spider. The Sharks used in OB were concept and training platforms to develop the cadre of officers and enlisted to train the rest of the MAN. Protecting that core was a major argument against launching attacks against Trevor's Star and Haven.

They are just not as vulnerable to attack if they are discoveredand dialed in.

Weird Harold wrote:IMHO, the MAlign depends too much on the Spider Drive's stealth to be good at anything other than sneak attacks. The public face of the RF Navy is a collection of SDFs with slightly better than SLN tech. They're probably better than the SLN, but not as good as Maya's Navy.

I kind of disagree with that. They showed a concept at Beowulf. Send in Mannerheim and the other RF forces with a fwe Lenny Ds leading the way and your defenders will be against the wall in short order. Yes, as long as there is no way to detect the Spider at ranges longer than light nanoseconds.