Why did everyone become dumb at the end of TEIF?

Theemile wrote:
The big follow on questions from this is what didn't the MAN also use freighters to drop off tons of Gtorps, programmed to swim around for weeks prior to attacking instead of using the Sharks on complicated multi month maneuvers? just a handful of freighters, originating from random systems, at random timing could drop more tops of munitions anonymously than 1 squadron of SD(p)s. Grayson would be a harder hit, but not Manticore, with all the system traffic and wormhole traffic.

Loren Pechtel wrote:They did anticipate the stealth missiles and stop most of them.

munroburton wrote:That's the proof in the pudding isn't it? Grand Fleet lost about 20 capital ships in order to take the only star system fortified more heavily than Manticore's own Binary System. What's more, only one-third of those losses were actually to stealth weapons; the other two-thirds died because they advanced into close range of conventional missiles disguised as civilian cargo.

The GA's losses at Galton only seems "bad" because they've been walking all over the SLN with relative impunity for two years. If you go back to the wars between Haven and Manticore, it's barely a drop in the bucket. EG: White Haven lost about ten wallers in a minor engagement in 1906 which he retreated from. Amos Parnell lost over forty wallers in a major engagement which he also retreated from. Lester Tourville lost nineteen capital ships retreating from Sidemore. Between them, both sides lost around four hundred capital ships at First Manticore.

The static deployment beyond the hyper limit did exactly what it was meant to; it forced the Alignment to throw away its stealth advantages and come into a zone dominated by GA forces, utterly saturated by recon drones with FTL communications. Sun Tzu would be very proud.

We've already seen what happens when someone charges across the hyper limit into a fortified system. Tourville got his ass kicked and Filareta screwed himself so thoroughly he was going to surrender without firing a shot.

That leaves dancing outside the hyper limit and aggressive maneuvering would only create interception/ambush opportunities for the Alignment. As many recon drones as the GA can deploy, the numbers required start growing exponentially when they have to cover an expanding cone ahead of their fleet's base course. It's one of the reasons they moved so slowly into Galton orbit.

Or the final option is the one advocated by Captain Jaruwalski: a massive salvo launched as soon as they were out of hyper. This was ruled out because the GA refused to contemplate civilian casualties on the scale they had suffered. Would it have been better to do it that way?

Assuming they had done that and managed to not hit any civilian targets, what happens next? They eventually come in to Galton orbit, at which point those camouflaged Cataphracts potentially come into play anyway, unless Galton's command structure is so eviscerated that nobody is left to order it.

We know that final strike killed more ships than the first graserhead attack. It's hard to say how it would have worked out if it was the first and only attack Galton made. The GA crews might have reacted more slowly without having endured incoming fire, but they would also have a few more ships providing anti-missile defenses.

If there's a better way to crack a nut like Galton, I don't see it. The same technique should work on Darius if the GA ever finds it. They'll sit out there and force any spiders to sally forth or rot unused in their spider holes as Darius' orbital infrastructure dies to long-range bombardment.

cthia wrote:I love this post. Except that the final paragraph may need some rethinking. Sitting or stooging around in the Darius system will be a no no.

NO LOITERING ALLOWED.

The same tactics will be suicide at Darius. Especially since Darius has seen the tactics. Which is another reason Galton was necessary. I think DW is setting the stage for something big.

And if all of the naysayers are right that the Spiders can't possibly have been hatched this soon, then DW is setting the stage for a heaping helping of arachnophobia. It does seem ironic that the very experienced GA seemed to ignore the possibility that they exist. Or, like my spidery naysayers in the forum, Simoes may have given a timeline for their possible completion.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Microjumps. The fleet sits out there beyond the limit but every so often jumps somewhere else. Every bit of space hardware gets pecked to pieces. Sitting still doesn't make sense against an enemy with stealthy weapons--we already saw the Hasta at Beowulf, the GA knows about it.

cthia wrote:I didn't post that but anyway ...

Microjumping can be just as dangerous. Sooner or later you are going to jump right into a Spider's web.

It also doesn't seem practical. The reason the fleet sits out there is to look over the prey and get bearings. If there is a lot of microjumping, then is there ever time to get bearings on enemy emplacements? I suppose data from drones can be received anywhere one jumps, but it seems jumps still have to be within a certain area to receive data in a timely fashion.

I still think that somehow the MA simply needs to figure out how to destroy the fleet train, then it is game over for the GA. And if the drones are eaten in the Darius system as I suspect they will be, then microjumping like frightened chickens isn't going to amount to much. At any rate, sooner or later there is going to be one jump too many.

BTW, is there nausea after each microjump?

Jonathan_S wrote:But you're right - given that we now know the graser torps worked you didn't need Spiders to deliver them; they could have been brought in by freighters and could have been sufficient on their own for the OB attacks.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And finally, fifth, an autonomous attack would be a clear EE violation. We know missiles are somehow dumb unless properly instructed, so they might have attacked the planet or just plainly ploughed through one, or attacked purely civilian installations. At this point, they were still trying to avoid a violation.

tlb wrote:If we are talking about Oyster Bay, there were no EE violations. Everything attacked in orbit was a valid military target. There was mention in the book that the planners kept the laser head missiles away from the planets because of a fear of a planetary impact by one of them.

cthia wrote:I didn't post that but anyway ...

Microjumping can be just as dangerous. Sooner or later you are going to jump right into a Spider's web.

It also doesn't seem practical. The reason the fleet sits out there is to look over the prey and get bearings. If there is a lot of microjumping, then is there ever time to get bearings on enemy emplacements? I suppose data from drones can be received anywhere one jumps, but it seems jumps still have to be within a certain area to receive data in a timely fashion.

I still think that somehow the MA simply needs to figure out how to destroy the fleet train, then it is game over for the GA. And if the drones are eaten in the Darius system as I suspect they will be, then microjumping like frightened chickens isn't going to amount to much. At any rate, sooner or later there is going to be one jump too many.

BTW, is there nausea after each microjump?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And finally, fifth, an autonomous attack would be a clear EE violation. We know missiles are somehow dumb unless properly instructed, so they might have attacked the planet or just plainly ploughed through one, or attacked purely civilian installations. At this point, they were still trying to avoid a violation.

tlb wrote:If we are talking about Oyster Bay, there were no EE violations. Everything attacked in orbit was a valid military target. There was mention in the book that the planners kept the laser head missiles away from the planets because of a fear of a planetary impact by one of them.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But that's my entire point. They were valid military targets, but the weapons were fed detailed targetting information by the manned ships. But if they were autonomous and developed a glitch in targetting, or simply thought this massive civilian industrial node was a military target, it could have attacked it.

An autonomous attack should be able to distinguish a target from a planet and if it is successful at doing that, then there is no EE violation. Both the Silver Bullets and the Apollo missiles are anything but dumb, so it is possible to build an autonomous missile that would avoid a violation.

tlb wrote:You were saying that an autonomous missile is automatically an EE violation and that is not so.

tlb wrote:You were saying that an autonomous missile is automatically an EE violation and that is not so.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I'm not saying it's an automatic EE violation. I'm saying the chance of causing one is much, much greater if someone isn't there to help the missile along with last-minute targetting and that at this point, the MAlign was trying to avoid causing one.

The Silver Bullets don't actually count, since they were meant to attack nearly at the same time as an intentional EE violation was supposed to happen. And their targets were also not supposed to be anything readily visible anyway, so it would be easy to exclude planets and civilian installations. The "worst" case would be if they targetted a black site by the BSC.

Plus, the Silver Bullets weren't screaming in at the target at a significant fraction of light-speed. They had weeks to refine their targetting and they were loitering. The Oyster Bay attack would not have been that, if done with missiles.