Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

Maldorian wrote:

That is a pretty substantial risk, in that a pair of destroyers might not be a match for whatever comes through. While the Harvest Joy was substantially less armed than a cruiser of its size normally would be, there's no guarantee the next ship to come through will be as toothless or as soft. Especially if the GA suspects the reason why the Harvest Joy didn't return. The next ship to come through might just be a surplus Solarian Scientist class SD (for maximum expendability) with a volunteer skeleton crew, coming through at GQ and ready for an energy range engagement. The DDs would do more damage than they should normally be able to, but they're going to lose. Unless the SD gets extremely unlucky and loses a sail, it wouldn't need to carry the science team needed to plot a return through the wormhole. They'd just need to survive long enough to run, and even against battlecruisers they might be able to pull it off.

Hell, with all the surplus Solarian ships the GA has laying around, they could even put a multiple transit through. Such ships wouldn't need to be prepared for an extended engagement, so they could probably scrape by with a single bridge and tactical crew and just enough engineers to keep the reactors running. Assuming they survived the ambush they could abandon all but one of the ships and combine crews for the trip back.

The only problem would be finding volunteers for those crews, and with all the people they have available they should be able to get enough for at least one skeleton crew and probably more.

As I said, all this is contingent on the GA finding at least some evidence the Harvest Joy was lost to enemy action and not natural phenomena. But it would certainly be doable against a picket that is too weak. The suicidalness of assaulting a defended wormhole depends entirely on exactly how defended it is.

Why solarian Superdreadnoughts? The GA has enough "outdated" SD´s on their own and the crews that can handle them, and, the alliance know exactly what their ships can do/ what they can survive. The captured solarian SD´s maybe more disposable, but they are also have a less chance of success.

First of all there is the question: "can you discover the transit limit of a wormhole from the outside, or do you have to try and error the max out?"

You can estimate about the discovered wormholes, what the minimum transit capaticity is (wormhole X has the smallest capaticity, so we take it as reference).

My personal plan would be: Take an old Podnought as the real science ship. Put one or two Frigates in the podstorage. Use a half dozen (more or less, depends of the transit limit) of old Non-Podlayers and put them around the main ship as cover. Modify them for remote control from the main ship. I know that it was mentioned, that David don´t like AI ships or remote controlled warships, but this is a very specific mission and not an overall strategy. The ships should after transit use all their electronic warfare equippment to blind all possible defenders. The Superdreadnought "Dummies" should immediately start some programms. If anything is detected, start fireing on them.

1 question - where are you going to find an "OLD" podnaught? The GNS Honor Harrington is 10 years old if it still survives. Keyholes are being added to the Harrington/Medusa class to make them Apollo capable, even if that limits their internal pod storage. If there is an "old" podnaught laying around idle, there are better uses for it.

Maldorian wrote:Why solarian Superdreadnoughts? The GA has enough "outdated" SD´s on their own and the crews that can handle them, and, the alliance know exactly what their ships can do/ what they can survive. The captured solarian SD´s maybe more disposable, but they are also have a less chance of success.

First of all there is the question: "can you discover the transit limit of a wormhole from the outside, or do you have to try and error the max out?"

You can estimate about the discovered wormholes, what the minimum transit capaticity is (wormhole X has the smallest capaticity, so we take it as reference).

My personal plan would be: Take an old Podnought as the real science ship. Put one or two Frigates in the podstorage. Use a half dozen (more or less, depends of the transit limit) of old Non-Podlayers and put them around the main ship as cover. Modify them for remote control from the main ship. I know that it was mentioned, that David don´t like AI ships or remote controlled warships, but this is a very specific mission and not an overall strategy. The ships should after transit use all their electronic warfare equippment to blind all possible defenders. The Superdreadnought "Dummies" should immediately start some programms. If anything is detected, start fireing on them.

I'm not sure it would be possible, but send a podnought with two or three unmanned unpowered obsolete BCs. Not just unmanned, but totally inert, reactors shut down and everything. The SD arrives and can't use sidewalls or missiles to defend itself, but it can use tractor beams to maneuver a half million tons of meat-shield to absorb energy fire while it gets clear of the terminus. Sure, lasers and grasers are going to be blasting big chunks out of unshielded battlecruisers, but without powered nodes and reactors the ships won't explode when they take too much damage. You'd have to blast your way through them a few meters at a time, and that may well take longer than you have. Especially if the SD has a second or third meat shield on tractor to move into place as the first one starts literally falling apart.

Perhaps it would be best to use a first flight Harrington/Medusa for this, because the ability to send out a stream of Dazzlers from the broadside tubes (launched solely with the mass driver of the tube, the missile impellers being disabled) could only help frustrate the defender's targeting ability.

Theemile wrote:1 question - where are you going to find an "OLD" podnaught? The GNS Honor Harrington is 10 years old if it still survives. Keyholes are being added to the Harrington/Medusa class to make them Apollo capable, even if that limits their internal pod storage. If there is an "old" podnaught laying around idle, there are better uses for it.

An early Havenite SD(P) that would have to be rebuilt from the keel outward to accept current GA tech? Presumably their pod bays aren't even the same dimensions as Manticoran pods.

Sigs wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:In the absence of CLAC and LACs, a squadron of DDs would suffice (FFs would, but no one has them). A squadron of BCs is overkill.

I disagree, if they consider the system as important, they should picket the system accordingly. Just because a squadron of DD's SHOULD suffice doesn't mean they will. Picket the WH with forces you are sure would be adequate rather than deploying a half-assed picket that will piss of the RMN and put the RF and MSDF on a list they sure as hell don't want to belong. Their goal should be the destruction or capture of any survey ship, screwing up is not an option when you want to stay as far away from the MA as possible but at the same time you attacked an RMN survey ship and it managed to get away.

I'm arguing the same: picket the system accordingly. The difference is that I concluded that they don't need nearly as much force as you indicate to do a good job (not half-assed). Tying your forces up in a picket for something that has a less-than-1% chance of happening is inefficient use of your forces. Couple that with the fact that they can afford to lose The Twins, since they're still one wormhole transit away from the Felix Junction and two from Darius. If they lose The Twins, then they picket Felix in force, with possibly forts that are ready to be placed there.

The one thing they shouldn't do in that case is allow themselves to be identified. That's where MAN ships would be better than MSDF or RFN ships: the first rule of space warfare is to not let the enemy know where your homeworld is. In the absence of Darius-built DDs or CLs, a handful of the tens of thousands of ex-SLN ships will do just fine.

And we all know that no military organization in the history of humanity has ever wasted effort. Just because it doesn't make sense for someone to do something doesn't mean no one will do it. But the biggest issue here is, the RF/MA CANNOT base their plans and strategy on the assumption that the other guy will behave the way they want him to. Just because it doesn't make sense to one person doesn't mean another person/group will think/behave the same way.

Agreed, the first rule of space warfare is to not make plans assuming the enemy will behave exactly as you expect it to. After all, "no plan survives contact with the enemy". And I think we both agree that you have to make reasonable assumptions as to what can happen and what forces you have available. Otherwise, you'd conclude that nothing short duplicating the MWHJ defence with a Home Fleet on standby will suffice.

Where we differ is what the reasonable assumption is.

Why wont it transit as soon as they want? If the republic had decided to have a little race with the RMN they wont wait for the RMN to complete the survey for them to start…kind of defeats the purpose.

Several reasons:

1. First, the survey was done on behalf of Torch. Torch doesn't need two competing teams and having a second team transit after the first has failed to return does not increase its chances of success.
2. At the time of the transit, no one suspected the MAlign existed. At this time, even with Operation Rat Poison, all everyone knew was that Manpower was corrupt and trying to fend Manticore off.
3. Manticore had a lot more knowledge about WH physics than Haven, both in institutional knowledge and personnel. If the premier scientists who had just completed a new transit 6 years before could not do it, would Haven be able to beat them?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
But until another ship shows up in Congo to do the research, you don't need much. The MAlign is aware of the readings one will see in Congo, especially the unexplained extra resonance. SOP will be to spend a year or two investigating before transiting.

If they spend a year or two surveying one side shouldn’t they spend at least say half of that time if not an equal amount of time on the other side?

No. We know from the Lynx transit that it took years to find the vector, but only a few days to plot it back. From the conversations we've been privy to, it appears that the ship, knowing the vector it exited on and having the instruments recoding while transiting, can make a much quicker assessment of the return vector.

Anyway, I wasn't talking about the far end, I was talking about the near end. The survey ship in the Congo system is constantly reporting back its findings to Torch and its home government.

What I meant is that because of the anomalous readings and because Harvest Joy failed to return, any new research will undoubtedly spend timing assuring themselves they haven't missed anything. They have to be responsible to the crews who will transit, to make sure that they're not unnecessarily risking their lives.

So your point is that the RF should not defend the system with an adequate picket because the RMN is so good and pure that it will never under any circumstance risk their crew’s? The RMN might get some intelligence that the RF/MA is not aware of like they did courtesy of the Republic of Haven and Jack McBryde, they could have had someone defect that the MA intelligence service had not caught, or someone might have leaked information about the WH and the other end. What if someone had leaked or gotten their hands on the information that the other side of the WH leads to the MA’s secret base? Or that it leads to something very important to the MA?

No, that's not at all what I am saying. I am saying that they make an honest (if arrogant) assessment of the threat level and the consequences of losing The Twins. I don't think there's anything the MAlign could do to make the RMN even more pissed after Oyster Bay. And Oyster Bay was launched at around the same time as the transit happened anyway, so the genie was out of the bottle. Having the picket at The Twins overrun by a surprise transit in force won't change anything politically and will not compromise Darius.

On the other hand, the RMN cannot assume that the Harvest Joy failed to return due to nefarious reasons. There's a very big chance that it didn't survive the transit for hyperphysical reasons (there's one recorded failed transit) and the anomalous readings should make everyone nervous.

I have a theory for the wormhole guard force

The 4 yahoos in the Gladiator CAs that the Gauntlet took out in Tiberian in 1918 were probably supposed to be the anonymous gate guard for the Congo-Twins wormhole. Unfortunately, 4000 pirates got bored and wanted to go and be... pirates, so (since the Torch was at that time secure in the arms of Manpower) the Yahoos were allowed to go do some hunting far from the wormhole, both to keep the pirates happy and trained and destablize the region. Centering them and their activities at Tiberian would keep any focus away from Congo (and the wormhole).

This explains all the questions we had about the Yahoos: what their true purpose was for Manpower and why were they stalking the area around Tiberian.

First, RHN doesn't have a bunch of BB's anymore, the ones they could scrape up from "suppression" duty in various systems got blasted in an earlier strikes agasinst RMN forces

The Alignment only has to picket the Torch Wormhole from the end away from Torch. You don't want ANY of your or your allied partners showing up anywhere near the Torch Wormhole at the Torch end to keep from starting someone to wonder what they are doing there.

Given the size of the Mannerheim navy, they could probably be used to sit on top of the TW at the far end until the Alignment put something together as an effective long term block on it. Perhaps some smallish forts, plus minefield and a few hyper capable warships in the DD through BC range. Why? because eventualy the MAN is going to want to take full control of that side of the wormhole and stop growing the number of people outside the Alignment that knows anything about it. They have the example of the Manticore Junction Forts and even the earlier designs (extrapolated from observations) would give them something that even multiple SD in a simultanius transit could survive.
At this point, the Alignment should also be putting Forts at the non-Felix side of the Felix wormhole.
It also occurs to me that there is probably at least one other WH out of the secret network as I don't recall anybody talking about all the traffic that does show up at Darius only flows through the Felix WH.
Mannerheim is supposed to be using the Felix System (and nobody outside the Alignment & RF knows about the Felix WH) for "training" while they are also quietly negotiating to purchase the othewise not particularly valuable/usable system from present ownere.

Per the backstory, a Wormhole Exploration Ship spends a lot of time studying a new wormhole teminus before making a 1st transit. A LOT of time. On the other hand, once through- with the presumption they survive- they have all that new data both on the transit and on the exit vector at the other end. At that point, the return trip is mostly the reciprocal vector of that exit plus they gather while effectivly sitting close to the WH and studying the devil out of it plus taking all sorts of observations and readings to determine where they now are relative to any galactic landmarks. They want to be able to report where the terminus is so that the distance to the far terminus can be calcuated and what may or may not be close to it that is known or inhabited (presumabley by other humans). There is also the possibility that the ship might have to take the long way back to known human civilization if the have an engineering casualty and can't use the Sail to go back through the WH. And that has happened before....there was a long conversation about that by the head of the Exploration Team that went through with the Harvent Joy to find out the terminus was by Lynx.

Brigade XO wrote:First, RHN doesn't have a bunch of BB's anymore, the ones they could scrape up from "suppression" duty in various systems got blasted in an earlier strikes agasinst RMN forces

The Alignment only has to picket the Torch Wormhole from the end away from Torch. You don't want ANY of your or your allied partners showing up anywhere near the Torch Wormhole at the Torch end to keep from starting someone to wonder what they are doing there.

Given the size of the Mannerheim navy, they could probably be used to sit on top of the TW at the far end until the Alignment put something together as an effective long term block on it. Perhaps some smallish forts, plus minefield and a few hyper capable warships in the DD through BC range. Why? because eventualy the MAN is going to want to take full control of that side of the wormhole and stop growing the number of people outside the Alignment that knows anything about it. They have the example of the Manticore Junction Forts and even the earlier designs (extrapolated from observations) would give them something that even multiple SD in a simultanius transit could survive.
At this point, the Alignment should also be putting Forts at the non-Felix side of the Felix wormhole.
It also occurs to me that there is probably at least one other WH out of the secret network as I don't recall anybody talking about all the traffic that does show up at Darius only flows through the Felix WH.
Mannerheim is supposed to be using the Felix System (and nobody outside the Alignment & RF knows about the Felix WH) for "training" while they are also quietly negotiating to purchase the othewise not particularly valuable/usable system from present ownere.

Per the backstory, a Wormhole Exploration Ship spends a lot of time studying a new wormhole teminus before making a 1st transit. A LOT of time. On the other hand, once through- with the presumption they survive- they have all that new data both on the transit and on the exit vector at the other end. At that point, the return trip is mostly the reciprocal vector of that exit plus they gather while effectivly sitting close to the WH and studying the devil out of it plus taking all sorts of observations and readings to determine where they now are relative to any galactic landmarks. They want to be able to report where the terminus is so that the distance to the far terminus can be calcuated and what may or may not be close to it that is known or inhabited (presumabley by other humans). There is also the possibility that the ship might have to take the long way back to known human civilization if the have an engineering casualty and can't use the Sail to go back through the WH. And that has happened before....there was a long conversation about that by the head of the Exploration Team that went through with the Harvent Joy to find out the terminus was by Lynx.

The Malign and the RF currently control 3 wormholes, and partially control a 4th

Mannerheim has a hyperbridge with Werner
Visigoth is a junction with 2 bridges, Mesa and near the system of Ghatotkacha
Felix, with 4 termini : the Twins, Darius, a terminus somewhere in the Haven quadrant, and an additional unknown terminus

and Partially
Congo - Twins hyperbridge

With Mannerheim only 10ly from Felix, that potentially connects 7 hyper locations almost instaneously (minus that little 10 ly walk) if Congo was still in the Manpower's hands.

I'm not really certain if anything lines with with Visigoth, but it did add 2 possible jumping off points to the initial traffic from Mesa.

Sigs wrote: Unless they suspect something important is on the other hand. The GA has a couple of hundred Havenite BB's and 139 SLN SD's plus 80 SLN BC/CL/DD's and another 120+ ships from spindle, they can pick any of them for a mass transit by remote to "escort" a handful of manned warships and courier ships.

Well they can only throw so many of them down the wormhole. The largest simultaneous transit limit ever discovered is Manticore's two hundred million tons. So even you can get around RFCs repeated claims than you CAN NOT sent an unmanned ship through a wormhole you've got less than 25 SDs you can send simultaneously -- and that's with zero escorts. Most wormholes have significantly lower limits than that.

But even if we assume 20+ SDs 400 pods will utterly gut them after a transit. And that's a somewhat large but hardly excessive amount to deploy. (Though without pods 8 BCs might have a hard time killing every SD before one got clear and got its sidewalls up)

OTOH sending a simultaneous transit down a wormhole that hasn't been properly mapped from both sides is seems dangerous to the point of suicidal -- even without the possibility of enemy action upon arrival.


I still say that pods are the key to your defense and BCs add little to what the pods already provide.

snipped BrigadeXO

Theemile wrote:The Malign and the RF currently control 3 wormholes, and partially control a 4th

Mannerheim has a hyperbridge with Werner
Visigoth is a junction with 2 bridges, Mesa and near the system of Ghatotkacha
Felix, with 4 termini : the Twins, Darius, a terminus somewhere in the Haven quadrant, and an additional unknown terminus

and Partially
Congo - Twins hyperbridge

With Mannerheim only 10ly from Felix, that potentially connects 7 hyper locations almost instaneously (minus that little 10 ly walk) if Congo was still in the Manpower's hands.

I'm not really certain if anything lines with with Visigoth, but it did add 2 possible jumping off points to the initial traffic from Mesa.

While it it technically Technodyne's, you should include Yildin in Mesa-controlled wormholes. I forgot where their junction connects, though. Also, the "terminus somewhere in the Haven Quadrant" was--the Twins, with Congo being nearly adjacent to Haven Space.

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:snipped BrigadeXO

Theemile wrote:The Malign and the RF currently control 3 wormholes, and partially control a 4th

Mannerheim has a hyperbridge with Werner
Visigoth is a junction with 2 bridges, Mesa and near the system of Ghatotkacha
Felix, with 4 termini : the Twins, Darius, a terminus somewhere in the Haven quadrant, and an additional unknown terminus

and Partially
Congo - Twins hyperbridge

With Mannerheim only 10ly from Felix, that potentially connects 7 hyper locations almost instaneously (minus that little 10 ly walk) if Congo was still in the Manpower's hands.

I'm not really certain if anything lines with with Visigoth, but it did add 2 possible jumping off points to the initial traffic from Mesa.

While it it technically Technodyne's, you should include Yildin in Mesa-controlled wormholes. I forgot where their junction connects, though. Also, the "terminus somewhere in the Haven Quadrant" was--the Twins, with Congo being nearly adjacent to Haven Space.

Rob

We could argue Yildune - it is not officially a part of the RF - but portions of the company are under the Malign's thumb. The other wormholes are under the control of RF members.