Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

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 Republic had 374 BB's at the start of the war, even if they lost 150 BB's in the first war which I am not at all convinced they did the RHN had to retire the remainder because they were short on people for their SD(P)'s, so unless the RHN scrapped them as soon as they pput them out of service there should be at least 150-200 BB's somewhere awaiting being scrapped.

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.

Noone is saying to picket Torch side of the system with RF ships, what is being suggested is that if it becomes apparent that getting to the other side of the WH brings you closer to the people who were responsible for tens if not millions of innocent people dying the GA would need to make an effort to get to the other side, and the RF/MA really should make an effort the guard the side they currency control which happens not to be Torch.

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.

It is a balancing act, you need a strong enough picket to avoid any oops moments, but not big enough to draw attention as the fact that you have a serious picket deployed in a secret location. The more you deploy in the system the harder it is to keep people from asking questions and the bigger the system picket and the more obvious it is(forts) the more likely some accidental visitors will draw the conclusion that you are guarding a WH because why would you be guarding empty space in the middle of nowhere and if you are guarding a WH why do you need to guard it?

Jonathan_S wrote: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.

Sending 20 million tons of shipping is 60+ SLN CA's or obsolete RM/RHN CA's, the point is to give the picket more targets rather than give the assault force survivable ships. SD's might be more survivable than CA's but sending 60-90 CA/CL's gives whoever is picketing the system significantly more targets than sending an equivalent tonnage in SD's.



As for no unmanned WH transit? Why not? How hard would it be for the assault force to be controlled remotely when on the torch side to transit and have a preprogrammed path when they exit the WH and they lose contact with their controller. The point is to give more targets not conduct an actual assault.

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.

Because Solarian SD’s are perfect for a task like this, they are as survivably as RMN SD’s when its in close quarters and their goal shouldn’t be to do a WH assault and fight their way through whatever is blocking the other end, it would be to provide more targets for the defending force to worry about. The whole point is to add targets for the defenders to allow your crewed ships to get away, adding crews to the decoy’s or risking giving them “obsolete” SD’s that are still very much a powerful combat unit when compared to any navy not in the GA seems like a bad idea.

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.

Putting FF’s in podnaughts seems like one lucky shot and you are SOL, if you don’t know the limit send a bunch of captured SLN ships, obsolete RMN, GSN and RHN ships through but make all of them light combatants. The RMN captured 24 BC’s, 12 CA’s, 23 CL’s and 18 DD’s at Spindle, they captured 29 BC’s, 23 CL’s and 28 DD’s. Those ships are all expendable but not all would fit the bill, to sow confusion you would need similar mass ships, pick some from the captured SLN ships, some obsolete RMN CA’s and BC’s as well as obsolete RHN CA’s and BC’s. Get as many Rolands as you can concentrate in one spot throw in a couple of Sag-C’s and do a mass transit with the rest of the ships under computer control, lose a computer controlled ship its not a big deal, the more light combatants there are the harder it is for the defending picket to pick of the manned ships especially since they would have to consider all of them manned until proven otherwise. Send 50 CL’s and CA’s through the WH under computer control to disperse as soon as possible after the transit most of the manned ships will likely survive as the picket would be swamped even if the assault force doesn’t fire on them. When you have 2-10 ships with 40+ targets heading in 40 directions all of them essentially behaving in the exact same fashion you have to assume they are all manned and try to systematically make your way down the list of targets, once the Rolands and Sag-C’s are far enough away even if they cant immediately get away they can fight their way out if they have space.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
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 question here isn’t how likely it is to happen, it is how damaging it will be if it were to happen. If the GA NOW finds out the location of the other end, and finds the system picketed by MSDF/RF ships a lot of very direct questions will be asked that the RF and MA would rather keep hidden, not to mention that the interest this will generate in the GA intelligence community.


If they really wanted to keep it secure, the MSDF should have picketed the terminus and send the Harvest Joy on their way back with clear instructions to not come back and the SEM cant do a thing. Mannerheim could have explained it as they didn’t want anything to do with Manpower and now that the other end falls in the territory of a “terrorist” organization they still want nothing to do with it. Manticore can’t do anything since they already have the entire galaxy believing they falsified correspondence and by the time they get around to going back they will have way too much on their plate.

Instead the MA decided the system had to be defended, they destroyed a ship now they have to protect the system for that 1% chance that they will try again.

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.

It makes absolutely no sense but the MAN might not have conventional ships of it’s own and even if they procured ex SLN ships they wont have the manpower to man them especially if their fleet is trained exclusively on the sharks which again makes no sense.

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.

There is reasonable and then there is a hope and a prayer, reasonable adds a little overkill to what you would expect to need, picketing a terminus with 1-2 BC’s and 4 DD’s is reasonable and gives you enough overkill for a realistic scenario, fortifying a terminus with 20-50% of your navy’s annual peacetime budget worth of mines and pods and sending a steady stream of ships to and from the terminus to supply the pods is overkill and adds too much danger of discovery. The RF/MA should know their ships are less capable than their RMN counterparts, having a big enough hammer on your end helps with nasty surprises, yeah there is always the chance of something going wrong but there is a lot less of a chance then when you have a couple of destroyers or even a destroyer squadron as a picket.

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.

But how would it look to the republic if Torch refuses the republics request? Their stance has to be as neutral as possible to both sides and giving one nations preferential treatment or even the appearance of preferential treatment wouldn’t help with that. My view is that if the republic showed up a week after Harvest Joy went through or 6 months before they went through the Torch government would have had to accept the Havenite offer on the same terms or potentially piss off one of it’s guardians and the man who is arguably the most responsible for their creation and independence.

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.

That’s the beauty with the situation between Haven and Manticore, they don’t have to suspect anything to mount their own expedition. But what is more important the MA does not know what the SKM and the public may or may not know so they shouldn’t base their defences on what the enemy may or may not know unless they have no other choice. Afterall they have their hand in so many organizations that don’t know they exist they have to know that there is always the chance of a breach and significantly more so after the breach that was Jack McBryde.

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?

So what? How many nations have a space program and how many of those nations have as much institutional experience as the US? Just because they don’t have it doesn’t mean they wont try anyway, more importantly just because Haven may be behind doesn’t mean that they would have let the RMN do the survey on both without putting up the effort.

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.

Also reporting everything to Victor Cachat.

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.

But it will compromise the RF.

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.

But at the same time they are exploring a WH that Manpower owned and how the MA is linked to Mesa and Manpower might lead them to believe that Harvest Joy met something on the other end they couldn’t deal with. With everything that has happened since the start of the second war it wouldn’t be a stretch for the GA to figure out that the Manpower system where there was a WH leads to something that the MA might not like them to find, they might not know what but they sure would want to know.

Sigs wrote:As for no unmanned WH transit? Why not? How hard would it be for the assault force to be controlled remotely when on the torch side to transit and have a preprogrammed path when they exit the WH and they lose contact with their controller. The point is to give more targets not conduct an actual assault.

<shrug> Because the author says so.
(Presumably because he'd already done that in his earlier Starfire stories and didn't want to be writing unmanned warp point, err wormhole, assaults in the Honorverse)

I can't think of any practical reason ships shouldn't be able to transit under computer control; especially if they had remote assistance up until they hit 'go' on their hyper generators. But RFC said "no"; so unless he changes his mind it's not going to happen.

Sigs wrote:Instead the MA decided the system had to be defended, they destroyed a ship now they have to protect the system for that 1% chance that they will try again.

Very good point. Hindsight is 20/20.

It makes absolutely no sense but the MAN might not have conventional ships of it’s own and even if they procured ex SLN ships they wont have the manpower to man them especially if their fleet is trained exclusively on the sharks which again makes no sense.

This discrepancy is really weird. We'll have to hope RFC explains it away somehow.

[*] 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.

But how would it look to the republic if Torch refuses the republics request? Their stance has to be as neutral as possible to both sides and giving one nations preferential treatment or even the appearance of preferential treatment wouldn’t help with that. My view is that if the republic showed up a week after Harvest Joy went through or 6 months before they went through the Torch government would have had to accept the Havenite offer on the same terms or potentially piss off one of it’s guardians and the man who is arguably the most responsible for their creation and independence.

There was no preferential treatment. HMS Harvest Joy arrived first and was the premier gathering of WH exploration scientists in the known Galaxy. If the Havenite survey team had arrived before the transit, Queen Berry would have told them to work with the Manticoran team. If they arrived after, Queen Berry would have told them to work with the remaining Manticoran scientists who did not transit. Either way, that doesn't change the outcome: there wouldn't have been any sooner transit (could even have been later) and wouldn't have sped up a second attempt.

We don't know if a second ship was dispatched. We don't know what happened in the last 2 years (May 1921 - August 1923).

That’s the beauty with the situation between Haven and Manticore, they don’t have to suspect anything to mount their own expedition. But what is more important the MA does not know what the SKM and the public may or may not know so they shouldn’t base their defences on what the enemy may or may not know unless they have no other choice. Afterall they have their hand in so many organizations that don’t know they exist they have to know that there is always the chance of a breach and significantly more so after the breach that was Jack McBryde.

At this point, there had been no breach for centuries. McBryde wouldn't happen for another 9-10 months after the transit. There was no reason for them to change the policies and practices that they had been using for 300-500 years.

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.

But at the same time they are exploring a WH that Manpower owned and how the MA is linked to Mesa and Manpower might lead them to believe that Harvest Joy met something on the other end they couldn’t deal with. With everything that has happened since the start of the second war it wouldn’t be a stretch for the GA to figure out that the Manpower system where there was a WH leads to something that the MA might not like them to find, they might not know what but they sure would want to know.

That is true now. They may have begun to suspect in 1921, but until May 1922, with Zilwicki and Cachat's return and the formation of the Grand Alliance, they didn't know for sure. Now they do. And since they know Manpower was a puppet of the MAlign and they know Verdant Vista made little economic sense, they should be able to connect the dots. And given their own experience with Bolthole, they do suspect that the MAlign has industries accessible through a wormhole somewhere. They also know it isn't the Torch Wormhole, since nothing has come out of it, but it could be important somehow.

There are three possibilities:
1) The WH is a death trap because some natural phenomena makes it unsurvivable.
2) They made some sort of catastrophic error and were destroyed or at least have no hyperspace capability.
3). There is some sort of enemy force that acted against them.

If it’s case 1 anyone you send in will die. If it’s case 3 then most likely whatever happened to them will happen again. Only in case 2 is it likely that you have a reasonable chance of not getting a bunch of very difficult to replace people killed pointlessly. So, you feeling lucky?

kzt wrote:There are three possibilities:
1) The WH is a death trap because some natural phenomena makes it unsurvivable.
2) They made some sort of catastrophic error and were destroyed or at least have no hyperspace capability.
3). There is some sort of enemy force that acted against them.

If it’s case 1 anyone you send in will die. If it’s case 3 then most likely whatever happened to them will happen again. Only in case 2 is it likely that you have a reasonable chance of not getting a bunch of very difficult to replace people killed pointlessly. So, you feeling lucky?

And #2 is the reason why they are still studying the wormhole. If 18 months go by, nothing consequential is found, and the math is still the same - what are the chances they will make another attempt? pretty low...

Sigs wrote:

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 Republic had 374 BB's at the start of the war, even if they lost 150 BB's in the first war which I am not at all convinced they did the RHN had to retire the remainder because they were short on people for their SD(P)'s, so unless the RHN scrapped them as soon as they pput them out of service there should be at least 150-200 BB's somewhere awaiting being scrapped.

36 BBs were lost at 2nd Hancock, 23 at 4th Yeltsin, ~50 in one battle at Nightengale, 10 at Barnet, 8 at Macgregor. The list probably goes on. In AAC, it was mentioned that all but a handful of BBs were either destroyed in the first war, destroyed in the hands of the regional warlords, or had been retired to provide crews for SD(p)s. The BBs at Chantilly were some of the last functional BBs in RoH service.

So it is probably wrong to say that the RoH has no BBs left - there might be a few still functional or in reserve waiting for the breakers, but there are only a handful left - not 100s.

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.
Putting FF’s in podnaughts seems like one lucky shot and you are SOL, if you don’t know the limit send a bunch of captured SLN ships, obsolete RMN, GSN and RHN ships through but make all of them light combatants. The RMN captured 24 BC’s, 12 CA’s, 23 CL’s and 18 DD’s at Spindle, they captured 29 BC’s, 23 CL’s and 28 DD’s. Those ships are all expendable but not all would fit the bill, to sow confusion you would need similar mass ships, pick some from the captured SLN ships, some obsolete RMN CA’s and BC’s as well as obsolete RHN CA’s and BC’s. Get as many Rolands as you can concentrate in one spot throw in a couple of Sag-C’s and do a mass transit with the rest of the ships under computer control, lose a computer controlled ship its not a big deal, the more light combatants there are the harder it is for the defending picket to pick of the manned ships especially since they would have to consider all of them manned until proven otherwise. Send 50 CL’s and CA’s through the WH under computer control to disperse as soon as possible after the transit most of the manned ships will likely survive as the picket would be swamped even if the assault force doesn’t fire on them. When you have 2-10 ships with 40+ targets heading in 40 directions all of them essentially behaving in the exact same fashion you have to assume they are all manned and try to systematically make your way down the list of targets, once the Rolands and Sag-C’s are far enough away even if they cant immediately get away they can fight their way out if they have space.

The point is, that the Harvest Joy didn´t return and with the alignment in the calculation brutal force is the best guess why. If you think about how someone would secure a unused wormhole, mines or a single fortress would be the number one guesses. Ships would be a little bit down on the list.

Superdreadnoughts have a higher survivability than smaller warships. The cruiser you mentioned would be very fast, very dead if they arrive in the middle of a minefield or face a fortress.

Forget to mention, that the Superdreads should have extra armor. The armor under the wedges is a lot thinner and after a wormhole transit without wedges....

Also, I would remove the missle launcher from the Dummies and replace them with Grasers, add some extra armor inside the ship like crew quarters or missle magazines to make the ships sturdier.

The Frigate in the podstorage is for the case, that there is a second line of defense. If something with missles is there, you can use all your electric warefare equippment to distract the enemy and the frigate will sneak into the direction of the hyper limit.

The main reason your way would not be accepted is, because small ships are more useful in the daily duty of the navy. The navy can afford to lose some mothballed Superdreadnoughts, but even the solly cruisers have some value, if not for you, there are a lot of shell worlds who would be happy to buy them from you.

And like I said in my previos post: You know your own ships! Especialy the software. Worst case you cross the wormhole with solly ships and the alignment acess your software because they wrote them and have a backdoor. One button an whole ship shutdown.