Opening Phase of Havenite war

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:Going after the junctions has the benefit of splitting Home Fleet, to defeat in detail. A good plan, IMO, especially if the Tripple Ripple is unleashed for the first time.

The terminus and junction are outside the hyperlimit.

You deliver some huge attack they just hyper out.

It takes a serious error or something very clever to get a decisive battle outside the hyperlimit.

'Tis true?, do pardon my faux pas, I'm having a blonde moment. Who hypers out where? I'm going to wager the who is the mobile RMN forces tasked with protecting the wormhole? If so, let them run. A hostile force, simply needs an unopposed vector for, at the very least, an unopposed ballistic launch on fortifications. No?"

The forts have impellers and wedges and maneuver at least slightly while on alert to avoid ballistic attacks. They might drop them in combat to go to their bubble sidewall, but the people running the junction defense have thought long and hard about this.

cthia wrote:

kzt wrote:The terminus and junction are outside the hyperlimit.

You deliver some huge attack they just hyper out.

It takes a serious error or something very clever to get a decisive battle outside the hyperlimit.

'Tis true?, do pardon my faux pas, I'm having a blonde moment. Who hypers out where? I'm going to wager the who is the mobile RMN forces tasked with protecting the wormhole? If so, let them run. A hostile force, simply needs an unopposed vector for, at the very least, an unopposed ballistic launch on fortifications. No?"

I think that's a typo in KZT's post. they=then.

Basically, deliver a huge raid upon the Junction defenses, then hyper out. It'll all be over hours before Home Fleet can intervene.

But, and I'm not 100% certain of this, but before Manticore took Trevor's Star, they had at least a hundred sixteen-million ton forts on Junction defense duty. This would mass slightly more than the PRH's entire inventory of BBs in 1905.

It's quite possible Manticore had far more than 100 forts on Junction duty - IIRC, the figure was 2-2.5 million fort crew freed up by shutting down the Junction forts alone. At 5,000 crew per fort, that's nearly 300 - and therefore logically all the forts deployed at the Junction are constantly at ready status with off-duty forts withdrawing at least some distance into the hyper limit. It's a formidable walnut to crack indeed.

It's probable that Fort Command simply rotated forts between the planets and the Junction, as back then Sphinx was far enough inside the hyper limit to allow its sleeping defenders time to react against a surprise attack.

Any attempt at conquering Manticore before it took Trevor's Star would have had to deal with potentially five billion tons of forts in addition to Home Fleet. The entire mobile force of the People's Navy in 1905 massed 4.7 billion tons.

And the MDM/podnought mix made all of that tonnage - on both sides - completely obsolete. Phew.

munroburton wrote:
Any attempt at conquering Manticore before it took Trevor's Star would have had to deal with potentially five billion tons of forts in addition to Home Fleet. The entire mobile force of the People's Navy in 1905 massed 4.7 billion tons.

And the MDM/podnought mix made all of that tonnage - on both sides - completely obsolete. Phew.

The forts would also be better armed and armored for their weight then ships are. They would also be able to get away with having less space for spare parts, rations, and crew recreation/support facilities. The last depends on often the crew members can get shore leave.

After Haven took San Martin, while Manticore still control of the Junction, there were challanges with the terminus. I don't remember all the detail but once the Haven-Manticore war started. that terminus was closed to Haven. Even if Manticore held full control of the Trevor's Star terminus it lost it to Haven in the opening of the war.
If Haven had been able to take control of Basilisk in their ploy to forment an uprising of the local enhabitants AND hold control of that terminus, it would have put a lot of pressure on Manticore. Given that there was essentialy only Harrington and the Fearless at Basilisk, Haven could have just parked a couple of squadrons of heavy warships on the Basilisk end of the wormhole and assumed control along with having taken over the planet and all local resources. Manticore would be unable to send anything through and Haven would have been snapping up shipping (or ransoming it if SKM) comming from Silesia to use the terminus.

At that point two termini would have been effectivley closed to Mantiocre (and everybody else) during the Haven-Manticore war, depriving Manticore of the transit fees and access to both commercial sets of routes instead of just the one via Trevor's Star.

Haven could have put forts in place at Basilisk Terminus to insure nothing was tired from the Manticore end and, untill the war started, siphoned off the Basilisk end of the fees from all traffic.
It's not that they couldn't preposition ships there for use in an attack of Manticore, it is that it was unnessisary as well as dangerous. They still would have had to attack Manticore via hyper-space, they would have denied the commercial triffic and ability of Manticore to move warships around using Basilisk to Silesia.

David has stated that in fact the Trevor's Star terminus was generally open during the war. With additional restrictions, but most shippers could use it.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/280/0

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

Capturing Basilisk would have changed very little in the outcome of a blind attack from two different terminals simultaneously into the junction forts, especially since it would have to be timed damn near simultaneously to even have a remote chance of success over hundreds of light years and thats assuming that having Trevor's Star and Basilisk doubles the total tonnage for a simwltaious movement, which I don't know wether it would or not.

cthia wrote:
Indeed, your logic makes sense to me. However, the Battle of Basilisk was during peacetime, wasn't it? Basilisk could have been taken with a large force w/o need of a fleet train, which is what was sent. Then a direct assault shortly thereafter on the Manticore before a shipload of mines are laid. I assume some mines were already emplaced.

Prepositioning forces at Basilisk isn't simply to assist in a direct assault later, but to forego having to hustle up a fleet train for the entire party enroute to Manticore.

Going after the junctions has the benefit of splitting Home Fleet, to defeat in detail. A good plan, IMO, especially if the Tripple Ripple is unleashed for the first time.

At any rate, a bad idea is a direct assault in the first place, counting wholly on a weight advantage.

Wether it was peacetime or not I still think that the RMN would have forts on alert 24/7 guarding the Junction as Haven didn't go around declaring wars.

Sigs wrote:Wether it was peacetime or not I still think that the RMN would have forts on alert 24/7 guarding the Junction as Haven didn't go around declaring wars.

They did. They didn’t have the minefields and I think the missile pod shoals deployed. And I’d expect a lower readiness %. So it would be more doable. Not saying it’s doable...

cthia wrote:

kzt wrote:The terminus and junction are outside the hyperlimit.

You deliver some huge attack they just hyper out.

It takes a serious error or something very clever to get a decisive battle outside the hyperlimit.

'Tis true?, do pardon my faux pas, I'm having a blonde moment. Who hypers out where? I'm going to wager the who is the mobile RMN forces tasked with protecting the wormhole? If so, let them run. A hostile force, simply needs an unopposed vector for, at the very least, an unopposed ballistic launch on fortifications. No?"

munroburton wrote:I think that's a typo in KZT's post. they=then.

Basically, deliver a huge raid upon the Junction defenses, then hyper out. It'll all be over hours before Home Fleet can intervene.

But, and I'm not 100% certain of this, but before Manticore took Trevor's Star, they had at least a hundred sixteen-million ton forts on Junction defense duty. This would mass slightly more than the PRH's entire inventory of BBs in 1905.

It's quite possible Manticore had far more than 100 forts on Junction duty - IIRC, the figure was 2-2.5 million fort crew freed up by shutting down the Junction forts alone. At 5,000 crew per fort, that's nearly 300 - and therefore logically all the forts deployed at the Junction are constantly at ready status with off-duty forts withdrawing at least some distance into the hyper limit. It's a formidable walnut to crack indeed.

It's probable that Fort Command simply rotated forts between the planets and the Junction, as back then Sphinx was far enough inside the hyper limit to allow its sleeping defenders time to react against a surprise attack.

Any attempt at conquering Manticore before it took Trevor's Star would have had to deal with potentially five billion tons of forts in addition to Home Fleet. The entire mobile force of the People's Navy in 1905 massed 4.7 billion tons.

And the MDM/podnought mix made all of that tonnage - on both sides - completely obsolete. Phew.

HOLY FORTIFIED POSITION BATMAN!

Kzt, munroburton, very informative, very interesting posts.

Munroburton, it is quite interesting that MDMs and podnaughts make assaults on wormholes feasible.* It still makes me wonder, however, if Haven had indeed "acquired" both termini, it may have led to the brainstorming of the possibility of a direct assault, which would have led to the realization of the missile power required, which in turn may have led to the earlier development of pods/podnaughts.

After all, necessity is the mother of invention. But of course, since this tech is available to the GA now, questions whether the author may indeed treat his Celerians to a wormhole assault in the future - some where near Darius maybe?

* Appear to make it feasible.