Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That actually begs the question: how did the MA "mistletoe" the Mycrofts at Beowulf? We know that Honor was able to use Mistletoe at Lovat because they had forced the RHN to activate them in their feints before. There had been no feints before activation and I'm sure that the defending forces would have been aware of that tactic (always reposition after firing, like any good infantryman).

As I recall from the book the Silver Bullets were able to find their Mycroft targets by hanging around invisibly long enough to trace down the sporatic FTL signals to/from them that were part of periodic status checks/tests.

If the Mycrofts has been running totally silent then they wouldn't have been found and the Silver Bullets would have likely only been close enough, by pure chance, to just a few to kill them when the array went active against the SLN.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's why I was focusing on 12-15k missiles: we know that a handful of Saganami-C can control that many Apollo. The premise of the discussion was that someone could throw 50 SD(P)s and 20 CLACs at minor Talbott systems to make the RMN scramble and disperse its forces and to inflict psychological tension between the member planets and Manticore. I was arguing that with a handful of picket ships and a shoal of Apollo missile pods in each system (Mycroft optional, but welcome) is able to effectively defend them against any conceivable threat that anyone in known space is able to throw at them.

The problem here is that a dozen heavy cruisers is hardly a "handful of picket ships". In that engagement each ship was controlling 150 pods at once; IIRC the max each one could possibly control is 192 (based on being able to control a double broadside and IIRC the redundancy buffer of 40% built into the Sang C's). To match the same missile control capability with Rolands you'd need 64 of them (based on Arngrim being able to control a triple broadside of 36 missiles at Hypatia). Again, not a handful by any means.

Every system is going to require Mycroft to some degree or a substantial naval presence.

Or perhaps not. That missile control capability could be augmented by the LACs of the system defenses. We've never been given a look into their maximum missile control capability, but we know they can control at least 4, more likely 8 or 12 missiles at a time. So the same missile control capability could be met by 288 LACs assuming they can control a double "broadside" each. Or obviously any mix of ship types combining to meet the same number of missile control channels.

Galactic Sapper wrote:The problem here is that a dozen heavy cruisers is hardly a "handful of picket ships". In that engagement each ship was controlling 150 pods at once; IIRC the max each one could possibly control is 192 (based on being able to control a double broadside and IIRC the redundancy buffer of 40% built into the Sang C's). To match the same missile control capability with Rolands you'd need 64 of them (based on Arngrim being able to control a triple broadside of 36 missiles at Hypatia). Again, not a handful by any means.

Completely agreed, but the RMN having a dozen CAs available to deploy at each of the two dozen Talbott systems is completely within its capabilities. That's just 2 gross (288) ships. On the other hand, anyone having 50 SD(P)s is not realistic before 1930 PD.

Every system is going to require Mycroft to some degree or a substantial naval presence.

Yep, but I guess each Mycroft pair is cheaper to build and operate than a dozen Saganami-C.

You still need a picket in the system, possibly a reinforced one (CL minimum) to avoid the technology falling into someone else's hands through deception.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That actually begs the question: how did the MA "mistletoe" the Mycrofts at Beowulf? We know that Honor was able to use Mistletoe at Lovat because they had forced the RHN to activate them in their feints before. There had been no feints before activation and I'm sure that the defending forces would have been aware of that tactic (always reposition after firing, like any good infantryman).

As I recall from the book the Silver Bullets were able to find their Mycroft targets by hanging around invisibly long enough to trace down the sporatic FTL signals to/from them that were part of periodic status checks/tests.

If the Mycrofts has been running totally silent then they wouldn't have been found and the Silver Bullets would have likely only been close enough, by pure chance, to just a few to kill them when the array went active against the SLN.

Thanks for the information, I didn't remember that.

If they had been running totally silent, then the possibility that the Silver Bullets be close enough to all Mycrofts for energy weapon is, literally, astronomically small. You just need one far enough for the attack to fail.

Now, homing in on the FTL state-keeping messages is an interesting tactic. It can be mitigated by the same solution of moving after the last exchange, keeping a long silent period afterwards, and never exchanging keepalive messages from multiple platforms at the same time. If you space them far enough in time and close enough in space, you can even hide the number of platforms from the attacker. They'd have to figure that out by other means, such as fingerprinting the emissions.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Completely agreed, but the RMN having a dozen CAs available to deploy at each of the two dozen Talbott systems is completely within its capabilities. That's just 2 gross (288) ships. On the other hand, anyone having 50 SD(P)s is not realistic before 1930 PD.

Given that that in 2020 there were only 148 CAs in the the entire RMN I will argue that in fact it is not within their capabilities.

The only ship that they have at least 288 of are DDs and CLs. The next largest numbers are the 225 SDs.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Completely agreed, but the RMN having a dozen CAs available to deploy at each of the two dozen Talbott systems is completely within its capabilities. That's just 2 gross (288) ships. On the other hand, anyone having 50 SD(P)s is not realistic before 1930 PD.

Given that that in 2020 there were only 148 CAs in the the entire RMN I will argue that in fact it is not within their capabilities.

The only ship that they have at least 288 of are DDs and CLs. The next largest numbers are the 225 SDs.

the RMN built ~150 Sag-Cs between the 1920 fleetlist and May 1st 1921, and possibly 75-100 more in the next 10 or so months before OB, in addition to 3-4 Squadrons of Sag-Bs laid down in late 1919.

Still, with war losses, this proposal would eat up all the Sag-Cs built, and most of the surviving Sag-Bs... leaving few CAs for anything else.

Also note there are only 16 Talbott member systems, not counting Lynx and the Terminus. Covering all 18 systems would only require 216 ships, still a non-trivial sum.

Theemile wrote:Still, with war losses, this proposal would eat up all the Sag-Cs built, and most of the surviving Sag-Bs... leaving few CAs for anything else.

Also note there are only 16 Talbott member systems, not counting Lynx and the Terminus. Covering all 18 systems would only require 216 ships, still a non-trivial sum.

Right now, no one but the IAN, RMN, RHN, GSN, ESN and the SLN even has 50 SDs, with all but one of those are part of the Alliance or very tied to it. Even Beowulf had only 36 or so and was viewed by the SL members as wasteful expenditure.

Even accepting someone is going to be dumb enough (or mad enough) to attack with two dozen pre-pod SD, we know that their point defence, counter missiles and ECM are woefully inadequate. The numbers we discussed before were for someone catching up with 1919 Haven technology, which shouldn't happen until 1930 and that's granting that they aren't likely to be getting battle experience and sensor data that Haven had from the PRH.

Even 1930 is very optimistic, unless you get a leg up. More likely:
1923.5 (now)
+ 18 months of R&D to design the class and develop pod-launching systems
+ 36 months to build the first prototype
+ 30 months to build the next 10 in parallel

This gives you only 10 SD(P)s by mid-1930.

The build times are an optimistic guesstimate based on the time it takes Manticore to build (22 months) and how long it took Carlucci to build SD(P)s for Maya, based on the expected commissioning of 1923. And that's with Erewhon already having experience building those.

And given the experience the Mayans had at the Battle of Torch with inferior missiles and sensors, I don't think they'll be at 1919 RHN levels.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Still, with war losses, this proposal would eat up all the Sag-Cs built, and most of the surviving Sag-Bs... leaving few CAs for anything else.

Also note there are only 16 Talbott member systems, not counting Lynx and the Terminus. Covering all 18 systems would only require 216 ships, still a non-trivial sum.

Right now, no one but the IAN, RMN, RHN, GSN, ESN and the SLN even has 50 SDs, with all but one of those are part of the Alliance or very tied to it. Even Beowulf had only 36 or so and was viewed by the SL members as wasteful expenditure.

Even accepting someone is going to be dumb enough (or mad enough) to attack with two dozen pre-pod SD, we know that their point defence, counter missiles and ECM are woefully inadequate. The numbers we discussed before were for someone catching up with 1919 Haven technology, which shouldn't happen until 1930 and that's granting that they aren't likely to be getting battle experience and sensor data that Haven had from the PRH.

Even 1930 is very optimistic, unless you get a leg up. More likely:
1923.5 (now)
+ 18 months of R&D to design the class and develop pod-launching systems
+ 36 months to build the first prototype
+ 30 months to build the next 10 in parallel

This gives you only 10 SD(P)s by mid-1930.

The build times are an optimistic guesstimate based on the time it takes Manticore to build (22 months) and how long it took Carlucci to build SD(P)s for Maya, based on the expected commissioning of 1923. And that's with Erewhon already having experience building those.

And given the experience the Mayans had at the Battle of Torch with inferior missiles and sensors, I don't think they'll be at 1919 RHN levels.

David has said multiple times that for a system with an existing navy to go from "Oh snap, I need one of those" to "I Christen thee, USS First Podnaught" would take a minimum of 6 years. Without an existing shipbuilding industry and navy would probably add several years for a Core world, even if they had no missteps. So your timeline is about on.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Still, with war losses, this proposal would eat up all the Sag-Cs built, and most of the surviving Sag-Bs... leaving few CAs for anything else.

Also note there are only 16 Talbott member systems, not counting Lynx and the Terminus. Covering all 18 systems would only require 216 ships, still a non-trivial sum.

Right now, no one but the IAN, RMN, RHN, GSN, ESN and the SLN even has 50 SDs, with all but one of those are part of the Alliance or very tied to it. Even Beowulf had only 36 or so and was viewed by the SL members as wasteful expenditure.

Even accepting someone is going to be dumb enough (or mad enough) to attack with two dozen pre-pod SD, we know that their point defence, counter missiles and ECM are woefully inadequate. The numbers we discussed before were for someone catching up with 1919 Haven technology, which shouldn't happen until 1930 and that's granting that they aren't likely to be getting battle experience and sensor data that Haven had from the PRH.

Even 1930 is very optimistic, unless you get a leg up. More likely:
1923.5 (now)
+ 18 months of R&D to design the class and develop pod-launching systems
+ 36 months to build the first prototype
+ 30 months to build the next 10 in parallel

This gives you only 10 SD(P)s by mid-1930.

The build times are an optimistic guesstimate based on the time it takes Manticore to build (22 months) and how long it took Carlucci to build SD(P)s for Maya, based on the expected commissioning of 1923. And that's with Erewhon already having experience building those.

Nitpick; Erewhon purchased all their SDs throughout the first war (before the war from League yards, later from Manticore's) they didn't have a domestic SD capable yard. So the SD(P)s they were working up to building after they went their separate way from Manticore weren't something they had experience with building.

(Hence why they started off with Marksmen + podded ammo colliers, then were tackling BCs, and only after that aiming to move on to full up SD(P)s)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Still, with war losses, this proposal would eat up all the Sag-Cs built, and most of the surviving Sag-Bs... leaving few CAs for anything else.

Also note there are only 16 Talbott member systems, not counting Lynx and the Terminus. Covering all 18 systems would only require 216 ships, still a non-trivial sum.

Right now, no one but the IAN, RMN, RHN, GSN, ESN and the SLN even has 50 SDs, with all but one of those are part of the Alliance or very tied to it. Even Beowulf had only 36 or so and was viewed by the SL members as wasteful expenditure.

Even accepting someone is going to be dumb enough (or mad enough) to attack with two dozen pre-pod SD, we know that their point defence, counter missiles and ECM are woefully inadequate. The numbers we discussed before were for someone catching up with 1919 Haven technology, which shouldn't happen until 1930 and that's granting that they aren't likely to be getting battle experience and sensor data that Haven had from the PRH.

Even 1930 is very optimistic, unless you get a leg up. More likely:
1923.5 (now)
+ 18 months of R&D to design the class and develop pod-launching systems
+ 36 months to build the first prototype
+ 30 months to build the next 10 in parallel

This gives you only 10 SD(P)s by mid-1930.

The build times are an optimistic guesstimate based on the time it takes Manticore to build (22 months) and how long it took Carlucci to build SD(P)s for Maya, based on the expected commissioning of 1923. And that's with Erewhon already having experience building those.

And given the experience the Mayans had at the Battle of Torch with inferior missiles and sensors, I don't think they'll be at 1919 RHN levels.

Another point - the RMN in 1905 had worked their way up to 36 months per SD. At that time the Havenites, with an advanced modular method, had a 48+ months build schedule. Only by focused effort was the RMN get to 22 months in 1920, while the Havenites, trying their hardest to mimic Manticore build practices, got down to 36 months at bolthole.

Meanwhile, the SLN takes 60-72 months for a new build SD. Yes, this is stretched out somewhat to "lower" costs and save building knowledge and infrastructure, so I would expect 48 months or more to be the average, especially for inexperienced yards just getting the feet wet in SD construction.