?

Jonathan_S wrote:But prior to actually clearing and controlling the orbitals my recollection is that the only thing you can bombard planetside is emplacements, or fire control for same, capable of threatening your ships out in space. So unless the Manties made Mt. Royal Palace an early target by adding surface to orbit missile to it's defenses - or giving it direct fire control of the system defense missile pods - I'm pretty sure it is off limits until you win the battle for the high ground and then issue a surrender demand that isn't accepted.

That's how I understand it, also--the battle for space must be resolved before you start on the battle for the planet, and any time the battle is for something civilian you are expected to offer surrender first.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't see what more they could do. I saw the suggestion above of using OWP to shoot debris, but I don't think that's effective. Especially against large pieces. The graser beam is needle width. Unless you time the shot perfectly against a tumbling piece of debris, the chances are that you're not even going to shoot through the thickest section. Either way, the beam is simply going to go through. The material will become plasma but it'll also shoot through longitudinally the beam hole. It will expand and cause some fractures, but that'll likely create more pieces of debris, which in turn can make matters worse.

The beams aren't needles, and note that in burning through you appreciably alter the course of the object you hit. Wedges are by far the best clearance but they take time and they can't stop a kamikaze. Important targets have OWPs even if they have no use in the sort of battles we have seen.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But if there were forts around Manticore I would expect a mention that the MAlign didn't expend any of their limited weapons on such relatively tough targets -- and then that they watched helplessly as the debris rained down.

Yup. It's a perfect PoV to see the attack. David is pretty good with avoiding having the universe mutate per the needs of the plot, but I'm not sure about this. There just should be some mention of them. Instead it seems like the only military defense stuff in orbit is all on the platform.

And where are they controlled from? I would guess the station itself. No fire control = no useful OWPs.

Loren Pechtel wrote:The question is whether it is an Eridani violation.

Nope. If your military manages to nuke your capital it isn't my fault that you have given murderous fools control of deadly weapons.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
And where are they controlled from? I would guess the station itself. No fire control = no useful OWPs.

Well, maybe you would forget to include fire control on a 12-16 MT fort. I tend to doubt anyone else would.

Loren Pechtel wrote:And where are they controlled from? I would guess the station itself. No fire control = no useful OWPs.

OWPs are unmanned, but kzt was talking about forts, which are manned.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:Unless that firepower is directed at Mt. Royal Palace and other critical targets. The planets, the government and the RMN has to honor the threat. If not, the two or three additional decloaked LDs and Sharks ready to intercept any remaining ships, will show the Filaretas of the RMN the hopelessness of their situation.

I can't shake the dramatic baggage I have of the four alien ships in Independence Day maneuvering into a zero zero - line of communication - intercept of the planet.

What I'm saying is that if they fire on Mt. Royal Palace at that point they have committed an Eridani violation. If anyone finds Darius the response very well might be unloading everything they have on the planet.

The palace defenses are shown to be heavy enough to blast kiloton mass pieces of reentering space station that the tugs missed. That's certainly enough to threaten a ship in orbit and make it a legitimate military target.

That said, it's not like Darius would need to commit *another* Edict violation against Manticore. I'm pretty sure Yawata and Beowulf Alpha are justification enough to blast the planet down to the liquid mantle just to make sure every last one of them is exterminated.

kzt wrote:David once explained that the concept behind fortresses by the RMN was that you use them to protect absolutely critical sites that you never want to uncover because the good idea fairy visited the Admiral one night. OK, maybe not exactly like that, but you get the idea.

If anyone mentions this to David, I'm going to deny it. But that only appears to make sense if the object you are defending isn't civilian in nature. Like junctions.

It's obvious it doesn't actually work when the object protected is something like a planet, or even Grayson's farms and orbital industry.

It's basically like standing near your helpless daughter while you return fire at intruders with automatic weapons. No, you put your daughter down somewhere safe and say "Stay here honey. I'll be back."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
A fort is best placed close to the target it defends, so any attacker MUST go through it, with its bubblewall defences, massive graser batteries and huge stockpiles of missiles.

Close, yes. So it'll be obvious to an attacker it is defended. But dangerously close? No.

Ok, I'm just going to get this load off my chest and go ahead and say it. I've always thought orbital forts are a waste of resources. They're basically useless. They can't engage anything for risk of getting the family killed. Orbital forts remind me of a knight on the chess board which has been rendered useless because it is penned between an attacker and the King or Queen. Which is exactly the case of orbital forts.

cthia wrote:Apollo armed forts could probably be strategically placed anywhere.

I've always envisioned orbital forts as being the first line of defense, although it never seemed to be the case. Why the hell aren't massive installations like forts where huge amounts of resources have been invested and are heavily laden with missiles, not positioned on the front line? Forts should be the first thing an invading fleet encounters. All thru history, the first thing an invader has to overcome is the fort. And they have to throw everything they have at it before they could engage the city. A navy should have to deal with an enemy fleet only after it has fought its way thru forts. Perhaps this wasn't possible before the age of MDMs and Apollo. But Apollo certainly makes the point now. In fact, Apollo finally allows the notion of a fort to realize it's true calling. Without Apollo, a fort seems obsolete and a total waste of resources.

Let's think about this. You cannot engage a planet until you control the orbitals. You don't control the orbitals if there are forts in orbit. But who in their right mind is going to get near a fort to take a beating if they've dispensed with the enemy fleet. If there is no one left to oppose you other than the forts, you should be able to demand a fort to either surrender or be fired upon. From a distance.

During the final battles of Honor in UH, I kept asking myself, where the hell are the massive millenia of forts to protect the system. The staggering economy of the League who hadn't had a war since the age of sail should have had forts stacked on top of each other. And they shouldn't be referred to as orbital forts, but rather... system forts.

With Apollo, I'd like to see the notion of "orbital" forts finally realize their true calling.

As it stands, it's like the British arriving at Fort McHenry in the War of 1812 and being saved the trouble of storming the fort because the army came out to meet them. Would have been a very different outcome.

I'm sure the British would have appreciated the gesture, instead of shooting themselves dry by morning.

Galactic Sapper wrote: I'm pretty sure Yawata and Beowulf Alpha are justification enough to blast the planet down to the liquid mantle just to make sure every last one of them is exterminated.

Nah, neither of those are edict violations. Space platforms are not covered and the fact that Manticore decided to attach a few million people on their main naval bases is Manticore's problem. Falling debris is not covered either.

cthia wrote:I've always envisioned orbital forts as being the first line of defense, although it never seemed to be the case. Why the hell aren't massive installations like forts where huge amounts of resources have been invested and are heavily laden with missiles, not positioned on the front line? Forts should be the first thing an invading fleet encounters. All thru history, the first thing an invader has to overcome is the fort. And they have to throw everything they have at it before they could engage the city. A navy should have to deal with an enemy fleet only after it has fought its way thru forts. Perhaps this wasn't possible before the age of MDMs and Apollo.

Actually no. Historically the fort is usually one of the later things an attacker has to overcome. (Especially for naval forts)

The Maginot Line and the Atlantic Wall being two admittedly fairly recent historic exceptions, along with the vastly older Great Wall of China.But usually, and especially before the industrial revolution, it wasn't practical for fortify the entire border / frontier.

And of course for naval forts the enemy first has to fight through or evade your fleet before reaching the fort. Naval forts are normally just outside the port or naval base they're protecting (because that's where the access is constricted enough that a pre-industrial revolution gun can actually command it. I've visited Fort McHenry, defending the port of Baltimore. It's kind of amazing how small the harbor area it really protects is. At that point an enemy has sailed all the way up the Chesapeake bay, past any navy forces located in Norfolk, DC, and Annapolis - and past quite a bit of what is today Baltimore itself. Really all it did was keep them out of the final 2 miles of inner harbor. It did just about nothing to keep an Army out of Baltimore - Fort McHenry's job was to keep enemy warships out of that final couple miles of narrow inner harbor. The only way an army could attack it would be come march through Baltimore, past the harbor, and south east down locust point to assault the rear of the fort.
Now there were other forts protecting the land side of Baltimore - but McHenry was really only a naval fort.

To elaborate on that the land side of the battle of Baltimore started with an open field engagement, the Battle of North Point with 3000 US militia sent forward to delay the British army and allow Major General Smith to complete the defenses in Baltimore. After the British got through this (small) army in the field they finally came to the first of the fortifications, a 3 mile long earthworks centered on Hampstead Hill. There the US regular army along with the militia were able to hold off the British. And well behind them Fort McHenry kept the British Navy from reaching the port from the south.


Even for land fortifications most of them were around cities, or critical points. First the enemy had to get past your army, or whatever passed for it in the area. Then that force could shelter in the fort and tie down the enemy while a relieving army was organized. So normally not the first thing an enemy had to overcome.

A castle was basically the same thing. An enemy couldn't exactly leave it in their rear because the forces using it for refuge could come back out to harass their logistics (wagons, foragers, camp followers, etc.). So the attacker would either have to take the castle (costing a lot of tim) or split off enough forces to keep the castle pinned up (reducing their concentration of force). Then do it again for the next castle they passed on the way to the city.

Prior to WWI the French used that idea of fortifying choke points by routing rail lines through forts (the Battle of Verdun was largely fought down the rail line going through that fortified city) Because the French correctly realized that to campaign deeper into France, on an industrialized scale, would require the enemy to rely on railroads for their logistics. So if you could block the rail lines with a fort the enemy would either have to take the fort, constructed new rail lines to provision themselves, or run out of ammo and starve should they be silly enough to march past and leave the fort behind them.

Now there are some time where natural choke points happen to coincide with frontiers, and those can be fortified (Swiss mountain passes; for examples) - in which case you might have a fort as the first thing an enemy would have to overcome. But even that's hard before the industrial revolution because without a handy river or canal it is economically infeasible to keep a remote fort supplied. (Not unless it's basically a fortified town with it's own farmers to provide food for the garrison)