Opening Phase of Havenite war

Silverwall wrote:
Short version the havenite fleet wasn't big enough to cover critical defence commitments and mass a big enough fleet to first strike Manticore. The massive size of Haven really hurts them here.

The truly critical systems are a lot fewer than the total size of Haven would suggest.

4) Haven Knows that BBs are worthless in a fleet major engagement and only uses them for rear area defence. Text evidence from 4th yeltsin and later in the war shows this to be true.

BB's might be useless in fleet engagements by themselves, but they are still very powerful as a force in conjunction with wallers. They are still missile heavy, sending 300 BB's with the fleet allows them to launch 11,400 missiles in a single launch, missiles that are of the same class as their DuQuesne class SD's. Adding 240 SD's gives another 11,520 missiles. Imagine in the opening Phases of the first war Manticore being faced with almost 23,000 missiles in a single launch. With Home Fleet being ~12 Squadron(96 SD/DN's) plus equivalent of 100 SD's of forts then that gives them ~200 SD's worth of firepower. If we assume that Manticore SD's have 40 missiles per broadside that gives them 8000 missiles against 540 Targets vs 23,000 missiles vs ~200 targets. I don't care how good the RMN is, with such numbers the RMN is screwed.

Total Opposing wallers as per the appendix in SVW
Haven: 460
Manticore: 301

Fleet deductions from both totals:
1) because of increased tensions both sides know somthing is up and have made a major effort to clear the refit/repair lists and have managed a frankly outstanding feet of each side only having 10% of wallers currently unavailable in the yards. Normally this number is about 25%
Haven: 414
Manticore: 270

2) Manticore has nodal fleets at Hancock, Grendlesbane and Yeltsins star + misc other deployed forces which in SVW add up to about 100 wallers.

Haven: 414
Manticore: 170

-2nd fleet alone had 64 wallers in 8 Squadrons.
-Hancock Station has 42 wallers in 5 squadrons.
-Assuming that Basilisk gets 1 Squadron and Grendlesbane gets 2 Squadrons that is a further 24 wallers in 3 squadrons.
-Call it another 24 wallers in 3 squadrons deployed somewhere else like the Talbot System

This gives the RMN's deployment of 154 wallers plus ~96 in home Fleet. The rest would be in transit from one station to another or in refit.

Haven on the other hand might have 5 truly critical systems if even that, that are critical to the war while the rest are secondary systems at best with limited if any help to the war effort. Capital Fleet Can still maintain 80 SD's with another 20 DN's. which still leaves 80 wallers plus 30 BB's for the rest of the critical systems.

4) Haven must maintian some forces at the border nodes and fleet bases of Barnett, Trevors star, Seabring, Treadway/Solway to prevend manty nodal forces running amok if things go sideways. total of 8 squadrons or 64 wallers

Haven: 250
Manticore: 170

If things go sideways the war is lost, if Haven launches a surprise attack with a large portion of their fleet and losses the battle chances are whatever is left behind will not be enough.

5) Haven is big and even using BBs for most rear area security you have 5 other systems that are important enough for political/strategic/economic reasons to have 1 squadron of wallers which can also act as deep nodal defence forces. - 40 wallers

Final rough tally for the proposed first strike battle of Manticore

Haven: 210 wallers
Manticore: 170 wallers + massive fixed fortifications.

We know that 1/3 of Manticore's Home Fleet's wallers were send to reinforce 2nd Fleet, that represented 4 Squadrons, so that would be that Home Fleet was at most 96-100 wallers if that.

Jonathan_S wrote:
Also Haven had those old BBs on rear security as much to keep their restive systems in line as to deter or beat off RMN BC raids. I don't know that President Harris would be willing to risk those systems rebelling by pulling his iron fist to throw at Manticore... (Though by some ruthlessly logical arguments he probably should have - with Manticore captured he could afford to recapture and subdue his restive systems almost at his leisure. And if he's failed to capture Manticore after an all or nothing attempt systems breaking away would be the least of his problems)

Those restive systems would be just as easily held y a destroyer as by a BB. Those restive systems don't have any space born resources to cause problems with so a DD plus some LAC's for police duties should suffice. Hell just a few LAC's can hold any system as long as there is no external threat.

And if you want to do this with minimal notice to Manticore things get even trickier. You could dispatch orders that caused every scattered unit that would make up the assault force to head directly to a convenient unoccupied system on the way to Manticore. With the strike leaving as soon as they all nearly simultaneously met up there. That wouldn't leave enough time for useful warning to reach Manticore. But we've also seen that without time to forces to drill together they're far less effective that they should be.

Leave orders with individual field commanders to open their orders on a specific date after estimating where they would be at the time. Once they concentrate in Forward Bases that are previously build inside alliance space they can spend a couple of months drilling before the RMN can even get the news that something is going on. And even if they knew something was up they won't be able to o much about it but prepare as best they could. They can't reinforce alliance pickets without leaving Manticore exposed and they cannot reinforce Manticore without leaving pickets in Alliance systems exposed. If Manticore abandons the Alliance to concentrate the RMN in Manticore then Haven can simply go in an take over this members.

kzt wrote:A CM would work just fine. It hits a big piece of debris with it's 15km? wide wedge and vaporizes as the wedge overloads after chewing away part of the object. Same thing with PDLC's They are not terribly powerful as anti-ship weapons, but at 5000km they are both extremely destructive against debris and extraordinarily accurate as they are expected to hit a 5 meter target at >0.6C at over a light second.

And forts would have a LOT of CMs and PDLCs.

Odds are that a fort wouldn't have it's wedge up, but it would more likely have the bubble sidewall up.

Those forts could have been further out than the Stations. Therefore those forts would be firing towards the planet rather than away from the planet. I would put the important stations behind the forts not in front of them.

kzt wrote:The junction is the most heavily fortified part of the Manticoran system. It would eat several hundred SLN SDs, particularly as they probably just march in one after the other. And I suspect that not all members of the SL would be happy with about this whole idea, as the SL doesn’t fortify WHs. Like the one now connecting Haven to Beowulf. Or the one now connecting Gregor to Haven.

If Manticore is captured and the SLN sends a DD to tell the junction forces to stand down they would have to. The last thing they would need is for the SLN to start a war with whatever is left of the RMN.

On the flip side the SLN informs Haven that they can keep the Manticore system but the Junction and it's facilities are to be surrendered to the SLN, if Haven or Manticore's commander of the Junction defences refuse then the SLN sends in a fleet of 1000 SD's to crush the forts, take it's losses and get the junction.

drothgery wrote:

Sigs wrote:Haven was losing the first war because of political rather than military reasons. If the Coup had not happened chances are that Haven would have performed a lot better.

They would have performed better in the early stages for sure. But pretty much all the top Havenite commanders (both in the late 1st war era and the 2nd war) except Chin failed to achieve flag rank under the Legislaturalists because they weren't Legistlaturalists.

Because there was no need for the Legislaturalists to promote outside their own ranks, when the war starts the Legislaturalists will eventually realize that they will need competent commander or they will suffer the consequences. Even if they didn't promote outside their own ranks that still means they would have somewhat competent field commanders without backseat drivers that were the political commissionaires.

You will get a LOT of uncomfortable questions when you start a war without appropriate political cover and then lose from 1/8 to 1/4 of Battle Fleet in the process. Remember how BF was planning on attacking the Junction 15 years later? How many survivors would you expect from that? I’d estimate approximately zero.

Garth 2 wrote:To be honest the one bit that has always confused me in the opening stages of the war, from an SKM perspective, is why didn't the just smash Trevor Star first, then go after the other bases.

A single fleet, could of been dispatched with a suitable support units during the period between the Haven "surprise" attack and the SKM Parliament voting to go to war. If they decide not to go to war, there is more than enough time to send a courier through the junction to Trevor Star and then onto a "insignificant Star System", where the Fleet has been instructed to wait for a given period (allowing for travel time from Manticore etc.)

The SKM's political system prevented them from launching a surprise attack, they would have to debate and argue in Parliament before a declaration of war is made and their element of surprise is gone. Plus there is a danger of having a significant enough of a force away from Alliance space when Haven attacks, Haven loses Trevor's Star but the Alliance loses Manticore? I don't think that would be a fair trade off.

kzt wrote:You will get a LOT of uncomfortable questions when you start a war without appropriate political cover and then lose from 1/8 to 1/4 of Battle Fleet in the process. Remember how BF was planning on attacking the Junction 15 years later? How many survivors would you expect from that? I’d estimate approximately zero.

The Junction is very important for the LEague's trade, they can stand on the principle that they don't care who attacked who or why they will step in between two warring nations to preserve the free movement of trade for the rest of humanity from being restricted due to one or both combatants. The SLN will gallantly stand in defence of free flow of trade until Manticore the war is over and Manticore can the control of the junction once more, if Manticore losses then the League keeps the Junction, if Manticore wins the war then the League will still keep the junction because Manticore won't have the desire to fight a war with he League right after potentially losing a huge % of their wallers in combat. In the 1920 they knew they had technological advantage against the League, in 1905 their advantage would be negligible in comparison.

Once the league has full control of the Junction they won't hand it over willingly and they can simply station 1000 wallers in and around the junction to prevent anyone from trying anything.

Well, to give full credit to the Peeps, it seems they very well might have had much earlier plans for a direct assault, by first embracing a little "Island Hopping" strategy of its own, in the early phases of the war. Had they been able to acquire the Basilisk System while they had Trevor's Star as well, may have been the catalyst and impetus for an early attack on the MBS.

How would owning two terminii into the heart of Manticore have changed things? The Peeps weren't exactly short on strategy. Failing in its endeavors at Basilisk may have heightened Manticore's senses of the Peeps's aspirations of visiting the system some day. The strategic attempt to grab a "two-lane" highway into the heart of the binary system may have helped fuel a hectic pace of mines and forts in Manticoran space.

At any rate, after the sneaky grab at Basilisk failed, the Peeps may have felt their hand was tipped.

If I reduced Haven's strategy to the chess board, I'd say the Q-Ship was essentially equal to a sneaky Knight. You never know what the wild moves of a Knight on the chess board are up to. But, luckily, Harrington smelled a skunk, who fell off his horse. LOL

cthia wrote:Well, to give full credit to the Peeps, it seems they very well might have had much earlier plans for a direct assault, by first embracing a little "Island Hopping" strategy of its own, in the early phases of the war. Had they been able to acquire the Basilisk System while they had Trevor's Star as well, may have been the catalyst and impetus for an early attack on the MBS.

How would owning two terminii into the heart of Manticore have changed things? The Peeps weren't exactly short on strategy. Failing in its endeavors at Basilisk may have heightened Manticore's senses of the Peeps's aspirations of visiting the system some day. The strategic attempt to grab a "two-lane" highway into the heart of the binary system may have helped fuel a hectic pace of mines and forts in Manticoran space.

At any rate, after the sneaky grab at Basilisk failed, the Peeps may have felt their hand was tipped.

If I reduced Haven's strategy to the chess board, I'd say the Q-Ship was essentially equal to a sneaky Knight. You never know what the wild moves of a Knight on the chess board are up to. But, luckily, Harrington smelled a skunk, who fell off his horse. LOL

Not very much. Any ships the PRH puts in Basilisk to keep it is unavailable elsewhere. They still have to assault the wormhole Junction through hyperspace to clear out the minefields and such before any wormhole transits can be usefully performed, the same way White Haven took Trevor's Star.

Once that part's done, possessing Basilisk does allow them to transit twice as many ships(either sequentially or simultaneously), but at the cost of pre-positioning those ships. Meaning they're not available for the attack on the Junction defenses or to defend Trevor's Star against a counter-attack - without the Junction itself, they can't imitate White Haven's emergency reinforcement of Basilisk from Trevor's Star.

IMO for the PRH, grabbing Basilisk was mainly about gaining the terminus revenue from the Silesia Triangle(Manticore-Gregor-Basilisk) traffic. At the time, this was a high-risk strategy, but one requiring comparatively little investment to achieve given the messy position Manticore's anti-annexationists had forced.