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cthia wrote:
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.

The army DID come out to meet the British ground forces in Baltimore trying to skirt around Ft. McHenry along the Northern approaches to Baltimore and defeated the British ground force.

cthia wrote: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."

The analogy isn't very good if the defender in question had very good CM defences. The missiles aren't THAT dumb always go for the planet. In pre-MDM days, when decisive fighting was mostly on energy weapons, they'd make a lot of sense.

That would be like your analogy, whereas placing the fort tens of millions of km away would be "Stay there honey, I'll go fight in another continent and be back next year".

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.

You may be right that they are a waste of resources. RFC may provide a rationale in-Universe why that was the conclusion. It might be possible to pay for two or three SDs for the price of one fort, which gives the defender more flexibility.

But I don't buy that they are useless. If you replace the orbiting fort with an SD that happened to be out of the initial fight, would you still say it shouldn't engage for fear of return fire landing on the planet? We did see a lot of ships either hiding behind planets or firing (or at least engaging in defensive action) while in proximity of them.

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.

Because space is vast. You can't fortify the necessary volume so that they are the first line of defence for a system that has asteroid mining and other ship traffic. Don't forget the 3D component: an attacking force can simply go out of the ecliptic and bypass the ring of forts the same way an aeroplane can bypass a naval fort that doesn't have SAMs.

A better approach would be to create shells around important assets, leaving everything else to be defended by mobile forces. I can understand your desire to place the forts far enough away that stray missiles won't threaten the planet. That still doesn't solve the problem of an enemy that happens to find itself on the same direct line between the planet and the defensive position. For that, you need a second line of defensive installation that can pick up stray missiles.

That is, a second line of forts, closer to the planet.

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.

We go back to the discussion of how close a civilian must be to be considered human shield.

Is 100,000 km far enough away? How about 1 million? How about 10 million?

I'm taking a beating for a lot of things in my last post. I blame kzt for telling us where to buy the best crack. Kuzak.

When I first encountered orbital platforms, I didn't understand their logic. What I settled on is way before pre-MDM days when King Roger was at the helm, their initial concern was runaway missiles and mitigating EEVs. And now their time has come to an end because the threat environment has made them obsolete. I see them as the safest duty station though. You can walk around the platform in your robe, you're never going to see any action. I see a ring of OWPs as both more cost effective and practical.

I agree the further away from the planet, the bigger the sphere becomes, making a shell of forts cost prohibitive. Although with the range of Apollo it might be worth reconsidering! A ring of OWPs seem like a much better idea. How many OWPs for a fort?

@ThinksMarkedly. To be fair, I think the fire power of one fort is said to equal 3-4 SDs. Dunno how that equation is affected by the much smaller forts. Or if the original estimate is being compared to an SD or an SD(P).

I just don't see the return on investment of forts today but can certainly understand it yesterday.

cthia wrote:@ThinksMarkedly. To be fair, I think the fire power of one fort is said to equal 3-4 SDs. Dunno how that equation is affected by the much smaller forts. Or if the original estimate is being compared to an SD or an SD(P).

I just don't see the return on investment of forts today but can certainly understand it yesterday.

We can't compare on firepower, but on cost. A fort doesn't have a hyperdrive generator and its impellers are much weaker. SDs also need to carry their fuel and other consumables for a long deployment. That added cost and reduced space for an SD means you can't build as many SDs to match the firepower of a fort for the same cost.

So on one hand, a fort would concentrate more firepower than an SD for the same cost. In that logic, it's cost-effective.

On the other hand, a fort can only be in one place at a time, while 3 SDs can be in three. They can also be in other places more quickly. In that logic, mobile forces are more effective.

A saying in our military was that aeronautical engineers build weapons systems, while naval and armoured core engineers build targets. Mobility is important

Daryl wrote:A saying in our military was that aeronautical engineers build weapons systems, while naval and armoured core engineers build targets. Mobility is important

Let's not kid ourselves, everything is a target. But it is true that going high and fast make a person harder to hit; which is why the Air Force hates doing ground support, as shown by the way they keep trying to dump the Warthog.

Loren Pechtel wrote:... not merely that you can bring heavy firepower to bear on threats. I would assume controlling orbitals would mean the same thing. Getting your ship into orbit undetected doesn't keep the defenders from unloading pods on you--I would not call the orbitals controlled while operational pods can bear.

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.

Jonathan_S wrote:The infodump is still down, and I don't have my file of RFC posts handy, but as I recall the rules of the Eredani Edict (which most people presumably still consider effectively the rules of war) there are pretty sharp limits on the critical targets planetside that can be bombarded before you have control of the orbitals.

After taking control of the orbitals you're allowed to bombard military bases, missile defenses, military command and control nodes and the like to soften the planet up for landing forces (if necessary); though even then I believe you have to give the government a chance to surrender before actually starting the bombardment. I think at that same point you're also allowed to bombard the Government; but I'm not 100% sure on that.


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.


Of course the MAlign could chose to violate the rule of war - that's a different problem. But following them I think they have to win the orbitals before the ground targets can be threatened.

Mt. Royal has a weapon system that may be a threat to something in orbit, this could be considered a military target. Albeit, I don't know the range of that weapon. The MA may very well designate it as a military target because of its batteries anyway.

I have a problem with this whole "control of the orbitals" thing as it applies to the MA. If everything in orbit is floating debris except the Lennys, then the MA has control of the orbitals. At that point the MA should be able to issue the demand to surrender. Is there some magic time limit on how long you must have control of the orbitals? Does the MA have to await for some fleet that has to transit from Trevor's Star like 8th Fleet? Or has to await Home Fleet which is sitting in orbit around Sphinx and hasn't even begun to bring up it's wedge - if it TOO hasn't been bynged? The Edict has never envisioned an enemy that could circumvent a lot of the warships and firepower that a more traditional navy has to fight thru before gaining control of the orbitals.

So how long does a fleet have to have control of the orbitals? Hours? Days? Perhaps the MA has to await Henke to arrive with her fleet.

MA stealth has made not only your designated survivor protocols obsolete, but it seems it could shred the current Edict as well. Or at least circumvent the logistics of.

cthia wrote:I have a problem with this whole "control of the orbitals" thing as it applies to the MA. If everything in orbit is floating debris except the Lennys, then the MA has control of the orbitals. At that point the MA should be able to issue the demand to surrender. Is there some magic time limit on how long you must have control of the orbitals? Does the MA have to await for some fleet that has to transit from Trevor's Star like 8th Fleet? Or has to await Home Fleet which is sitting in orbit around Sphinx and hasn't even begun to bring up it's wedge - if it TOO hasn't been bynged? The Edict has never envisioned an enemy that could circumvent a lot of the warships and firepower that a more traditional navy has to fight thru before gaining control of the orbitals.

So how long does a fleet have to have control of the orbitals? Hours? Days? Perhaps the MA has to await Henke to arrive with her fleet.

MA stealth has made not only your designated survivor protocols obsolete, but it seems it could shred the current Edict as well. Or at least circumvent the logistics of.

I would assume the control has to be more than just momentary. Basically if there is still a friendly fleet in the system and they're moving to attack (as opposed to a few grossly outgunned ships picketing the outer system) I'd argue you don't yet have practical control of the orbitals.

Now, of course, we don't have the precise wording of the Edict, nor access to any debates or writings from its framers. Nor from any judicial opinions on either theoretical or actual borderline instances.

Arguing by analogy ut basically a submarine can't be said to control a harbor just because it snuck past the patrolling destroyers and forts guarding the harbor mouth and then surfaced. (Because those bypassed destroyers are going to charge in and quickly kill it). But it could be said to control the harbor if the nearest destroyers are a day's sailing away.

Manticore though, with the junction, is a tricky one because the Junction makes the far termini effectively slightly more remote parts of the same star system. With a conventional attack (as we saw during the Battle of Manticore) there's time for forces positioned on the far end of those wormholes to enter the battle (or at the very least be in direct pursuit) before the attacking force - no matter how powerful - could reach Manticore orbit. Their response time might actually quicker that a fleet in Manticore-B depending on how close they are to the far terminus.

And I suspect very little thought in the League or elsewhere has been given to how long orbitals have to be controlled when there isn't a responding fleet in sight - but you know to expect them within an hour or so. So it probably isn't codified since normally any response force not already in the system would take at least a week to summon.

Even if the MA has only temporary control of the orbitals, to say that control isn't total is like saying that someone who has pulled off a Fool's Mate on the chess board hasn't won because you still have damn near all of your pieces in play.

Well, I'm sorry. I'm in your back yard and your King, Queen, or whoever's wearing the pants is in check. And since he, she, can't move. Mate.

You can't say "Wait, let's start over."

[quotel]
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.[/quote]

If nothing else, the outgassing of vaporized structural material and other materials plus escaping atmosphere would cause a shift in there the target was going. How much depends on what/where it was hit and how what was in it reacted.