Has anyone else decided to root against Manticore?

cthia wrote:Why didn't the Peep's abandon their heavy energy armaments in favor of more missile tubes? Quite frankly, there was a point I thought all but a couple of energy batteries made sense. Didn't Grayson wake up and champion a ship class with few energy weapons?

Yup, they did. Most classes they built or modified had fewer energy mounts and more missile launchers than their Manticoran counterparts. And then there's the CLAC class that had no energy weaponry at all: it had no offensive capability aside from its LAC wings, actually.

kzt wrote:The pickets on the WH termini are great targets. You are not trying to get all of them, you just have to get one of the picket ships.

And at knife fighting range the RMN missiles are not that much more effective than anyone elses.

They still pack a bigger punch. BCs carry SD-killing missiles and CAs can probably kill BCs.

The force differential we're talking about here means you're trading off 10 BCs per CA you kill.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I don't see why any Manty officer would be caught outside the hyper limit.

Because worm hole terminus are outside the hyper limit?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:The pickets on the WH termini are great targets. You are not trying to get all of them, you just have to get one of the picket ships.

And at knife fighting range the RMN missiles are not that much more effective than anyone elses.

They still pack a bigger punch. BCs carry SD-killing missiles and CAs can probably kill BCs.

The force differential we're talking about here means you're trading off 10 BCs per CA you kill.

Probably not. First I'm jumping in with a much larger force, so I have a lot of defensive weapons vs attacking weapons, even at low pH. Second, a few thousand KM second velocity the SLN systems are much better suited to engaging them. Third, if I can actually get to energy range reliably then the nearby ships won't be a problem.

And If I can't get at least one vessel into energy range reliably in tests then you don't go operational. Bu if nothing else, the SLN ships are going to be deep into SDM range and THEY have pods deployed.

For demonstration purposes as to why you would be out-limit or near-limit, accept some geometric simplification:

Imagine a perfect circle (system limit) with the good stuff you’re trying to protect at the center. You need to be some distance from the center to have powered missile flight to the limit. So already there’s a small interior circle you have to hold at. But really, the attackers play if you shoot at him out limit is just going to be to jump away from your missiles.

So what you actually need is ships in range of the out-limit that will deliver their missiles before the attacker can jump out. You need to be closer. Now you have a much larger circle, much closer to the limit. Im fact, unless your missiles can travel faster in one jump cycle than the entire powered range of your opponents missiles, you are now both in range.

On top of which, unless you keep up constant velocity, you aren’t going to have a whole of V advantage unless you basically keep driving around those circles. Very little time to accelerate before they jump away again. Which you’re going to have to make a choice of staying still and therefore accepting a missile swap, in which case if your the manties...you lose.

Or you keep driving around the circle, but if they jump far side, the blow away your guts, and you lose.

Or you try to cover the entire circle, in which case they pound you to pieces in detail while your evenly dispersed force is struggling to rejoin.

Or you accelerate toward your opponent. In which case you are going to build up speed rather quickly, and either end up out limit or close enough to it for energy weapons to work.

Or you withdraw and the SLN industrial base pours repeating unanswerable volleys in the 100ks, slowly smashing down your fleet and orbitals while you are helpless to stop them from jumping away after launch.

At which point you might decide to go on the offensive...which requires you jump in out-limit.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Why didn't the Peep's abandon their heavy energy armaments in favor of more missile tubes? Quite frankly, there was a point I thought all but a couple of energy batteries made sense. Didn't Grayson wake up and champion a ship class with few energy weapons?

Yup, they did. Most classes they built or modified had fewer energy mounts and more missile launchers than their Manticoran counterparts. And then there's the CLAC class that had no energy weaponry at all: it had no offensive capability aside from its LAC wings, actually.

The later Manty Hydra sub-class of carriers gave up all their energy weapons and kept 24 MDM launchers for self defense. The Grayson Covington class carriers gave up the missiles as well as energy weapons. Presumably both the Hydras and the Covingtons could fire massed quantities of Vipers to discourage opposing LACs, though it's never explicitly stated whether they have counter missile tubes capable of firing the same Mk 31 CM that Katanas and late model conventional ships can fire.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I don't see why any Manty officer would be caught outside the hyper limit.

Because worm hole terminus are outside the hyper limit?

But they have their own hyper-limit (not especially large, if I recall Weber's statement correctly). They also have a fairly large region between the terminus and the local star where it isn't really safe to emerge from hyperspace.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote: They also have a fairly large region between the terminus and the local star where it isn't really safe to emerge from hyperspace.

Combat isn't really safe either.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I don't see why any Manty officer would be caught outside the hyper limit.

Because worm hole terminus are outside the hyper limit?

They're outside the primary's hyperlimit, but they have their own hyperlimit, large enough that it puts any translating ships outside energy range(*). There's also the Resonance Zone where attacking ships can't translate down to real space, so the bulk of the defending force can park itself there.

(*) I'm assuming that it's more than 1 million km in radius, I don't think we've been told that.

GloriousRuse wrote:So what you actually need is ships in range of the out-limit that will deliver their missiles before the attacker can jump out. You need to be closer. Now you have a much larger circle, much closer to the limit. Im fact, unless your missiles can travel faster in one jump cycle than the entire powered range of your opponents missiles, you are now both in range.

On top of which, unless you keep up constant velocity, you aren’t going to have a whole of V advantage unless you basically keep driving around those circles. Very little time to accelerate before they jump away again. Which you’re going to have to make a choice of staying still and therefore accepting a missile swap, in which case if your the manties...you lose.

Or you keep driving around the circle, but if they jump far side, the blow away your guts, and you lose.

Or you try to cover the entire circle, in which case they pound you to pieces in detail while your evenly dispersed force is struggling to rejoin.

Or you accelerate toward your opponent. In which case you are going to build up speed rather quickly, and either end up out limit or close enough to it for energy weapons to work.

Ok, I see it. The tactic is to employ massively-outweighing attacks against under-defended systems. If the Solly ships never get deep enough into the hyper limit (or at all), they can always translate out of the way of the missiles and translate back somewhere else. That means the defenders can't kill the attackers, but by the law of averages, a massive salvo will begin hitting the infrastructure.

I don't see the defending commander leaving the hyper limit at that point, not while there are missile pods he can control. There's no upside in doing that: the most likely scenario is you get a stalemate of ships translating up and down and not shooting anyone down. Only a stupid commander would translate their forces where the enemy expects you to. Remember the First Rule of Warfare: don't make it easy for the enemy to kill you.

Meanwhile, the defending commander will have sent a stealthed DD out to summon reinforcements, so the attackers have a time limit.

And remember they're shooting towards a planet. With 100k missiles in each salvo, 12 light-minutes downstream and definitely not telemetry-controlled, there's a non-negligible chance of hitting the planet and causing an EEV. Even if you don't, the sheer recklessness is going to invite Honor to your capital and that's game over.

Those tactics may have played to the SLN advantages, but they didn't further the SLN strategy. You don't want 500 Invictus, Harrington IIs, Sovereigns of Space and 20000 LAC anywhere near your capital or major production centres. The SLN strategy at that time had to be to buy time to build their FTL comms, pod-carrying warships, and better MDMs, while preserving their industrial base. Over time, the industrial might of the SL is going to out-produce the GA and have forces that can't be dismissed.