So....imagine you are Admiral Parnell's staff officer

kzt wrote:

GloriousRuse wrote:Re: maintenance. Hmm. So 5% on full maintenance long work, probably double that for shorter projects in the multi day to a few week range (such as the earlier mentioned BCs sans missiles), a handful of ships working up, and whatever proportion have new or incomplete crews. Seems like the COFMs is shifting more and more to the point where winning a decisive battle with the manties means crippling the PRN.

The 5% makes me wonder what their ship life-cycle is. That means you get into a major maintenance overhaul once every 20 years. Or you throw away the vessels in a decade or so.

And we clearly see it's not. The only wallers to ever be shut down and decommissioned prior to the war were SD-02 and SD-03, with HMS Manticore SD-01 decommissioning rapidly once the shooting started. They were 150 years old at that point.

The interesting thing is that the 11 Ad Astra-class DNs, which were 250 years old, weren't decommissioned.

I didn't include the 16 battleships, which were decommissioned prior to Roger taking the throne.

I think we could genuinely assume that wartime built ships aren't expected to make it to needing long term overhaul.

Given battle damage, obsolecence(sp?), refits etc.

Annachie wrote:I think we could genuinely assume that wartime built ships aren't expected to make it to needing long term overhaul.

Given battle damage, obsolecence(sp?), refits etc.

I think the 5% was from book 3, before the wartime classes. It’s part of the who look how good they are. Which worked when i was younger and more foolish.

Haven has had a long string of sucesses in grabbing systems with things short of war, often creating situations where they move in and "have to" assert control to prevent or solve some problem- typicaly of their own making but ususaly that can't be proved.
So you have this buildup of support of local Shamans, production of a dangerous local drug and the "local" production of what amount to 17th or 18th century muskets to filt Stilty physiology to provide signifcant firepower advantages.

This is just one more step to encircle Manticore and, in this case, snip off a economic node and damage it's economy. It also creates, even if Haven can't also grab the terminus, a situation where Haven can hover around and be able to seize the terminus from the Basilisk end at the point they finally have to go to war to take Manticore.
It also -there are always a host of reasons- a set-up to damage Manticore politicaly both at home and with the League because of the "abuses" that Manticore's government and it's nationals have commited against the indigenous population. Republic of Haven "just happened" to have a task force that was able to step-in, save lives on the planet and uncover the systematic exploitation of the locals and the planets resources along with the vile practices of the Manticorian government officials charged with the care of the locals under Manti law. This plays well when used by High Ridge and his cronies againt the government and it's expansion/ imperialistic plans.

Ultimatly much cheaper than going to war and build a naritive to support Haven when they do finally have to attack Manticore.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Medusa the planet has nil or negative value. The Stilts do not participate in commerce and any activities there would just consume funds. The planet does have warehousing services, but I've never understood why they're in orbit of the planet, instead of close to the terminus. Why do merchants stop at the planet at all, if there's no commerce there? Most ships calling to the system will either transit the wormhole or have just transited from it. All others passing through can come to the wormhole much more easily than to the planet.

Good point. I guess in the pre-OBS days, when there were no forts on the terminus and the RMN forces there were a dumping ground for incompetents or those in disfavor, I could see why someone investing the resources in building a warehouse would want it deep inside the hyperlimit. At least there whatever RMN ships are assigned to this punishment duty are probably in a position to chase off any pirate raid on the warehouse contents - whereas there wasn't always a warship parked out at the terminus and therefor a far better chance for someone successfully pulling off a smash and grab then disappearing into hyper.

But after the forts started coming on line it'd make sense to keep warehousing out by the terminus; protected by those forts. (Heck, it'd probably have made sense to pay tugs to move the existing warehouses from planetary orbit out to the terminus.

(Though I guess it's not impassible there was some weird tax/customs incentive that made it cheaper to transship in Basilisk orbit than out by the terminus - even once it was safer to do so out there)

cthia wrote:The Peeps should have just seized it outright. Except for some silly political reason I can't seem to remember. If I had to guess, Haven wasn't ready to officially start a war. But if the Peeps would have used the operation at Basilisk to kick off the war, Manticore would have lost a lot. Namely their best officer to be.

The Peeps had that force sitting in hyper twiddling it's thumbs. If that fleet would have gone in with guns blazing, Honor would have been lost. Perhaps even White Haven as well when he arrived with the cavalry.

The Peeps were always the victim of overthinking. Most likely the ever present obese gorilla loomed large and in charge and kept everyone honest. None wanted to lose too many resources fighting a war and leaving itself vulnerable to the ever present greedy gorilla.

That's only if they manage to catch her. Honor is more than willing to run when faced with overwhelming force and no ability to affect the outcome (or surrender if running isn't possible - though her being in a treaty compliant POW camp takes her off the board almost as surely as killing her would)

At this point nobody had the coordination to drop a fleet from hyper into the path of a ship - so it'd be almost pure luck for Haven's fleet to pop out of hyper is a place where Fearless's built up vector make it impossible for her to evade. And if they jumped the terminus instead Honor would order the customs pinnaces to carry the Case Zulu order through on the next possible merchant transit and she'd evade. If she pickets the outer system she can share all her sensor recordings when Home Fleet drops out of hyper after coming the long way. (If she takes the sensor readings back to Manticore she'd likely to miss the relief force as it probably wouldn't wait for forces from Basilisk to arrive through hyper)

She might still get mousetrapped and taken out by the slightly higher acceleration PRN DDs - but that's hardly a given.

I guess where you put the warehouses also depended on what was comming or going from where.
Pre-war, there was no particular need to have a warehouse out at the wormhole since there was at least the orbital station that served the planet and unless you had goods that were going to the Medusa system (the planet or the orbital station) you would just skip the system and either enter the wormhole to get to the Juction (and points beyond) or leave the terminus and head for Silesia or Haven....or the orbital station.

If no one thought it would be an economical benifit (could make money operating a warehouse and related services by the terminus) then the orbital station by the planet was just going to have to be where you went to drop cargo for pickup.
All the customs work was being done in-system anywhat so no sense building a seperate facility out at the terminus Astro Control.

Note that we haven't seen a lot of non-offical service facilities at termini for most wormhole bridges. They are conduits of traffic. Anything with goods etc for the local system have to divert to the in-system orbital facilities. The rest just make their transit and continue on.

Jonathan_S wrote:She might still get mousetrapped and taken out by the slightly higher acceleration PRN DDs - but that's hardly a given.

Actually, she was aboard an 80-year-old light cruiser massing only slightly more than a modern DD. And unknown to the Peeps, she had crippled weaponry. So yes, a pair of DDs could take her on, a trio most certainly harrass her long enough to keep her from her duties.

Brigade XO wrote:I guess where you put the warehouses also depended on what was comming or going from where.
Pre-war, there was no particular need to have a warehouse out at the wormhole since there was at least the orbital station that served the planet and unless you had goods that were going to the Medusa system (the planet or the orbital station) you would just skip the system and either enter the wormhole to get to the Juction (and points beyond) or leave the terminus and head for Silesia or Haven....or the orbital station.

If no one thought it would be an economical benifit (could make money operating a warehouse and related services by the terminus) then the orbital station by the planet was just going to have to be where you went to drop cargo for pickup.
All the customs work was being done in-system anywhat so no sense building a seperate facility out at the terminus Astro Control.

Note that we haven't seen a lot of non-offical service facilities at termini for most wormhole bridges. They are conduits of traffic. Anything with goods etc for the local system have to divert to the in-system orbital facilities. The rest just make their transit and continue on.

You're making the case that, if there are services in orbit of Medusa anyway, there's no point in having them at the terminus. I agree: it makes no sense to have in both locations.

My argument is that there was no reason to build them in orbit of the planet in the first place instead of by the wormhole, when the system was first annexed. The value of the system was in the wormhole and ships would be transiting there. Taking a 4-hour detour into the hyperlimit to offload cargo and then 4 hours more to leave, with another 20 to get to the terminus, is a waste of time. Even the security factor doesn't work: around the terminus, the ships are protected by its hyperlimit and the picket ships can be quickly reinforced by the ready forces on the Manticore side of the wormhole.

Of course, that didn't take into account government action. As was argued before, the government may have decided for non-commercial reasons to build transshipment stations in orbit of the planet, which would also support the Native Protection Agency. The government may set up a tax incentive that makes the detour pay for itself. Going through the wormhole to Manticore might be quicker, but the a transit fee comes into play.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:She might still get mousetrapped and taken out by the slightly higher acceleration PRN DDs - but that's hardly a given.

Actually, she was aboard an 80-year-old light cruiser massing only slightly more than a modern DD. And unknown to the Peeps, she had crippled weaponry. So yes, a pair of DDs could take her on, a trio most certainly harrass her long enough to keep her from her duties.

I know she's an old CL that's barely heavier than a modern DD. That's why I said the Peep DDs have only slightly better acceleration.

And sure, if a pair (or more) of DDs can catch her inside the hyper limit they can probably capture or kill Fearless - I never meant to imply otherwise.

But I think they'll have a hard time running her down in the first place, even if they detect her; all she has to do make it outside the hyper limit to disappear. (And given the lack of system sensor platforms she could pretty easily drop back out of hyper beyond the sensor range of the Peep ships and sneak back in to resume her surveillance)