Do we actually need SD(P)s?

Galactic Sapper wrote:

kzt wrote:We don't even know how many ships were destroyed. We know it was something like 350 SD/CLACs, and you can roughly determine the number of LACs, but David provided no counts for the destroyers, cruisers and BCs with Home and 2nd fleet. Logically they would be about the same as the SDs.

Second Fleet consisted of 240 SDs, 16 CLACs with 3200+ LACs, and a screen of 90ish BCs and below.

Home Fleet consisted of 90 SDs, 57 BCs and below, and 4000+ LACs.

Of those, 75 SDs from Second Fleet and about 200 LACs from Home Fleet survived in a condition that could reasonably call a "ship". The rest were widely scattered bits debris of greater or lesser sizes.

Not to mention the couple million missiles launched in various directions and the pods they came from.

There were also a large number of LACs with Home Fleet that were from the orbital bases around Spinx IIRC.

kzt wrote:There were also a large number of LACs with Home Fleet that were from the orbital bases around Spinx IIRC.

Those are counted in the Home Fleet LAC contingent (note the lack of a CLAC count for Home Fleet).

kzt wrote:It's not a set of ship hulls. What you are dealing with is a series of expending debris cloud with along a vector of tens of thousands of KM/sec, along with a sprinkling of actual wrecked ship hulls. The wrecked ships are actually not a big deal, you just tractor them and pull them back to Manticore. It's the cloud of debris that is a problem.

Yeah--but you can tractor the debris into groups before it disperses. S&R requires locating things as small as suits, that's going to locate pretty much everything the MAlign would be interested in.

For the duration of life support everything that can help will be out there. Crews will be searching any space that could have people, that leaves a whole bunch of ships with tractors that might as well be rounding up the stuff, if nothing else to minimize the travel time for the search crews.

Which whole lot of ships?

Do you think it’s a great idea to send the only remaining operational naval unit off to chase a debris cloud moving at ~10% of the speed of light? Are you really sure that there isn’t yet another force to drop in while they are busy several light hours away from Manticore. Because if there is, then wow, are you screwed.

Oh, and there are three fast moving debris clouds, moving in very different directions, and one that is much closer to stationary. Which one are you going to chase? Or do you want to split 8th fleet into bite sized pieces that are light hours apart?

So, what ships are you going to send off? It seems to me that most of the ones that you would want to send are either trapped on the other side a WH for the next many hours or are expanding debris clouds.

kzt wrote:Which whole lot of ships?

Do you think it’s a great idea to send the only remaining operational naval unit off to chase a debris cloud moving at ~10% of the speed of light? Are you really sure that there isn’t yet another force to drop in while they are busy several light hours away from Manticore. Because if there is, then wow, are you screwed.

Oh, and there are three fast moving debris clouds, moving in very different directions, and one that is much closer to stationary. Which one are you going to chase? Or do you want to split 8th fleet into bite sized pieces that are light hours apart?

So, what ships are you going to send off? It seems to me that most of the ones that you would want to send are either trapped on the other side a WH for the next many hours or are expanding debris clouds.

There is the Astro Control Service, modern version of MPARS, which has a policing and "coast guard" role in Manticore space. They had some older LACs and other system patrol ships in 1900 - that had probably been updated along with everything else by 1922pd. However, given the magnitude of what has happened - life saving is probably their first, second and third priorities, everything else probably ranks ~30.

kzt wrote:Which whole lot of ships?

Do you think it’s a great idea to send the only remaining operational naval unit off to chase a debris cloud moving at ~10% of the speed of light? Are you really sure that there isn’t yet another force to drop in while they are busy several light hours away from Manticore. Because if there is, then wow, are you screwed.

Oh, and there are three fast moving debris clouds, moving in very different directions, and one that is much closer to stationary. Which one are you going to chase? Or do you want to split 8th fleet into bite sized pieces that are light hours apart?

So, what ships are you going to send off? It seems to me that most of the ones that you would want to send are either trapped on the other side a WH for the next many hours or are expanding debris clouds.

It wouldn't make much sense for there to be another fleet out there and the pods are unfired, it would take a major fleet to get through.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
It wouldn't make much sense for there to be another fleet out there and the pods are unfired, it would take a major fleet to get through.

There is no possibility that Haven could send two hundred plus SD(P) to attack us. That's just inconceivable. So no need for any plans to handle that.

Wait, you say 200 plus Haven SD(P)s just blew up Home Fleet? Luckily Home fleet did a lot of damage to them. But it's inconceivable Haven can send any more, they had to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to get that many.

OK, and now we will send our reserve in to save us!

Oh, another hundred SD(P) just dropped in and blew up our reserve. I guess they had more ships built than we thought. Umm, how many ships do they have?

Well anyhow, the last actual combat force we have in existence just got here and manged to drive them off. It's inconceivable there could be any more Haven ships out there. Right?

Loren Pechtel wrote:
It wouldn't make much sense for there to be another fleet out there and the pods are unfired, it would take a major fleet to get through.

Just in the off chance that there is yet a third Haven't fleet hanging around in hyper, how about just sending off the CLs and non-Roland DDs? I don't remember off-hand if the light forces engaged in their own private little war of annihilation or not.

Fox2! wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
It wouldn't make much sense for there to be another fleet out there and the pods are unfired, it would take a major fleet to get through.

Just in the off chance that there is yet a third Haven't fleet hanging around in hyper, how about just sending off the CLs and non-Roland DDs? I don't remember off-hand if the light forces engaged in their own private little war of annihilation or not.

I think they are trapped on the other side of the wormhole by the mass transit. IIRC they were told to keep the system safe while the big boys went off to play. Those that were in the system and operational were mostly with Home Fleet and are in no condition to help.

So no help from them for 12 hours or so. At which point the debris will be over a light hour away and have significantly expanded.

kzt wrote:I think they are trapped on the other side of the wormhole by the mass transit. IIRC they were told to keep the system safe while the big boys went off to play. Those that were in the system and operational were mostly with Home Fleet and are in no condition to help.

So no help from them for 12 hours or so. At which point the debris will be over a light hour away and have significantly expanded.

Why are we dismissing the thousands of non-fighting ships in system and focusing on RMN war-fighting ships? True that most civilian ships can't be actually involved in the rescue part of search-and-rescue (lest there be two ships that now need rescuing), but they can help with the search part: find big chunks of wreckage that are still radiating heat from a distance and tag it. They can also transport the least severe cases from the wreckage to orbital and ground hospitals, allowing the hospital ships and those with sickbays and infirmaries to focus on those that need more urgent care.

The debris cloud itself can be dealt with after SAR is concluded. The tugs can go and collect or destroy any relevant pieces.