"What if" after HH09

Reflame wrote:Thanks for your insights, Theemile and Relax.

Relax, you use a way of argumentation which would be difficult for me to consider, accept or refute, so I will not answer what you wrote.

Theemile, you raise inspiring arguments and some of them are very convincing. But still: Let's say that I am a mad Grayson commander who convinced the protector. I keep a very vast majority (almost 95%) of my fleet at home at Grayson. I deploy system-defense pods and I run intense drills and simulations how to use and control them efficiently. I want to keep the time between salves as little as possible; I also grab every ship, every device able to control missiles, to increase the number of "control lines" (or how it is called in English). I run these simulations assuming that Haven attacks with some 200 SD and 200 Battleships - how likely is it that they would send more?

And let's say that they do attack. What happens then? I will fire salve after salve. Will they survive long enough to get into firing range?

Or will I run out of ammo before I destroy them? This is related to another question: How many pods am I able to deploy at once and how many in several months? By "at once" I mean before it can be expected that Haven can assemble a huge fleet, make all simulations (training to smooth the rough edges) and reach Grayson.

I have several ideas, both in defense and offense, what I could try as Grayson admiral, but first I would try to estimate:

1. How many Haven SDs could I repel this way if I had a unlimited number of pods?
2. How many with my current supply if I don't send any rampagers?
3. And if I do send them, with enough ammunition ships to make the rampaging efficient enough to make a difference? I don't have to disclose to the enemy that my goal is different than in HH11. In HH11, the goal was to tie (bind) many ships so they could not go to offensive. My goal is to verify how much I can achieve with my long range missiles, i.e. how far am I from dictating the terms of peace from the orbit of Haven.
4. And how long until I can both send rampagers and defend against 200 SD and 200 battleships?

I will probably wait (unless you prefer me not to ) for your answer before I write my other ideas what Grayson could try to do. I don't know if you enjoy such questions because I understand that I put you in a difficult position, Theemile: I ask rather specific questions where it can be very hard to come up with exact numbers. So of course I expect your anwers to be vague; I am impressed how many details (about numbers and strength of ships etc.) you wrote so specifically (concretely, not vaguely).

And I also think that it is fair to round this vagueness (uncertainty) a bit toward the pessimistic side (i.e. that Grayson could NOT have succeeded with this), because the very fact that in David Weber's story (unlike my story) Grayson did not do it or even consider it, is a reason to justify these pessimistic assumptions.

Theemile wrote:To be honest, 1 squadron can probably stand off ~50 conventional ships in a pitched battle.

Well, does this not mean that Grayson would need only 4 squadrons of modern SDs to repel an attack of 200 SDs against Yeltsin's star? Without system-defense pods. In that case, how many Haven SDs could Grayson probably repel WITH these pods without suffering unacceptable damage to its orbital infrastructure?

Btw. If the orbital infrastructure was dispersed over a far larger space than the range of new Alliance missiles, then one could not use _all_ deployed pods in the actual battle - which is a strong argument toward "Grayson will either be defeated because it will have run out of pods, or (if they keep all pods concentrated near the planed) they will lose all infrastructure which is out of the firing range of the pods" - am I right?

I enjoyed it very much, composing arguments and ideas (strategies) for Grayson (I have not posted all that I came up with...) But this might be the true Achilles heel of Grayson. It would be sad if my ideas failed only because of this...

Going back to some of your questions Redflame

In 1914,
a Gryphon/Steadholder Davinski SD was the equal of ~1.5-2 Havenite SDs
a Medusa/Harrington (SD)P was the equal of ~10 Havenite SDs
a Havenite SD took ~500 capital missiles to kill on average

10% of the Grayson fleet is 5 SDs, 3 SD(P), and half-3/4s a CLAC, 3-4 DD/CLs, 2-3 CAs, and 2 BCs
5% is 2 SDs, 2 SD(p), no CLAC, 1DD, 1CL, 1 CA, and 1 BC
(you could trade the Lighter units for 1 CLAC.)

So a 5% fleet could take on ~25 Havenite SDs without fleet train support. A 10% fleet, ~50 SDs.

There is no indication that Grayson has it's own fleet train at this point - if it does, it is most likely just a tanker and/or a ammo ship or 2 - Call it enough for enough for 1 full reload at best (1 Ammo ship has the reload capability for 2-4 SDs), so at best 2-4 strikes, with replacements 3-4 months away (and a communicationsloop of 6-8 months without use of the wormhole.)

It doesn't matter how many pods you have at home, you will be limited by firecontrol - a Grayson SD can control ~150 single drive missiles, a SD(p) could control ~300 mdms at this time. CLACs can control somewhere in the 150 MDM range. Some firecontrol is also at forts, but we don't know if any of Grayson's small forts got replaced, and if they got upgraded with the latest SD(p) level fire control (probably not).

With 10% of the fleet gone, our ~25 SD(p) and ~5 CLACS can control ~8000 MDMs in a salvo, and the ~30 SDs and ~12 forts (guess) can control ~6500 SDMs.

This size of defenses should be able to push off a fleet of 200-250 SDs, but:

Grayson also needs to protect Blackbird base, it's major construction node, so a portion of the fleet needs to be based there. Urial's hyper limit is longer than SDM range, but far inside MDM range, so attackers can jump in without needing to wade through 70MKM of MDM fire, and can take out a fair portion of Grayson's defenders without directly assaulting Grayson. Even the destruction of Blackbird will knock Grayson out of the war because it has no other ability to repair and keep up it's fleets, or build new units.

A Fleet of 200-400 Havenite capital ships should be able to easily knock out Blackbird, pull back to repair/replenish, then strike again at Grayson. Even a "winning situation" leaves Grayson with no construction ability, and a minimum of 50% fleet losses, and probably some damage to the orbital infrastructure.

(A smart commander would attack Blackbird with intent just to destroy the mobile defenders, but leave as much of the base intact. Retreat, rendezvous with the fleet train, repair, then repeat the raid 2-3 weeks later and winnow down another 20-30 % of the Grayson defenders while chewing up the base. The Grayson fleet would be reduced to under 50% at this point with light to moderate losses, and Grayson that much more vulnerable.

Thank you, Theemile. It is wonderful to have such concrete numbers, and your detailed knowledge is amazing.

I will have to think about some of the arguments before I answer. I also don't want to describe my ideas for offensive/rampaging strategies before we come to an understanding about defending Yeltsin.

If 10% of my fleet can take out 50 SDs without support and pods, then 95% of my fleet can take out - without pods - 475 Peep SDs, which is much more than they have.

What would happen if I sent 5% of my fleet to rampaging, roughly 50% to guard Grayson and 45% to guard Blackbird, ready to micro-jump behind (i.e. to the rear of) a potential attacker attacking Grayson - but only if the attacking force is so huge that Grayson defenders need help. And let's say I'll divide the system-defense pods in a similar ratio.

What would the probable outcome be if Haven attacks cleverly?

- - -

But now I realize that Uriel's shorter hyperlimit makes the system defense pods probably less practical - but I don't know how much... How many salvos could Blackbird defenders fire before the Peeps can fire back?

Depending on that, I may decide to place more pods near Grayson and most of my fleet near Uriel, ready to micro-jump if desperately needed. And I will run intense drills (and brainstorming of tacticians and scientists) how to achieve a very high number of salves per minute.

If 90% of my fleet can control 8000 MDMs, then 45% can control 4000, destroying about - how many... Sixteen? - Havenite SD in each salvo.

What will happen at Grayson when, say, one third of my fleet is stationed near Grayson, particularly ships with many MDM control lines (while most old-style SD's guard Blackbird), and a massive Haven attack comes? Will they get near enough to fire at me? I think that it can happen only if I:
a) either run out of pods
b) or don't have enough time to destroy a decisive majority of their fleet.
Which of that is probable?

So what will the probable outcome be if a Haven admiral cleverly attacks either Blackbird or Grayson?

Reflame wrote:Thank you, Theemile. It is wonderful to have such concrete numbers, and your detailed knowledge is amazing.

I will have to think about some of the arguments before I answer. I also don't want to describe my ideas for offensive/rampaging strategies before we come to an understanding about defending Yeltsin.

If 10% of my fleet can take out 50 SDs without support and pods, then 95% of my fleet can take out - without pods - 475 Peep SDs, which is much more than they have.

What would happen if I sent 5% of my fleet to rampaging, roughly 50% to guard Grayson and 45% to guard Blackbird, ready to micro-jump behind (i.e. to the rear of) a potential attacker attacking Grayson - but only if the attacking force is so huge that Grayson defenders need help. And let's say I'll divide the system-defense pods in a similar ratio.

What would the probable outcome be if Haven attacks cleverly?

- - -

But now I realize that Uriel's shorter hyperlimit makes the system defense pods probably less practical - but I don't know how much... How many salvos could Blackbird defenders fire before the Peeps can fire back?

Depending on that, I may decide to place more pods near Grayson and most of my fleet near Uriel, ready to micro-jump if desperately needed. And I will run intense drills (and brainstorming of tacticians and scientists) how to achieve a very high number of salves per minute.

If 90% of my fleet can control 8000 MDMs, then 45% can control 4000, destroying about - how many... Sixteen? - Havenite SD in each salvo.

What will happen at Grayson when, say, one third of my fleet is stationed near Grayson, particularly ships with many MDM control lines (while most old-style SD's guard Blackbird), and a massive Haven attack comes? Will they get near enough to fire at me? I think that it can happen only if I:
a) either run out of pods
b) or don't have enough time to destroy a decisive majority of their fleet.
Which of that is probable?

So what will the probable outcome be if a Haven admiral cleverly attacks either Blackbird or Grayson?

We could play this out a lot of ways, and the devil, as they say, is all in the details.

At best, the mad commander is going to manage 4 or so heavy strikes against defenses with squadron+ forces before he runs out of ammo and provisions. If he runs into a force too big, he's going to take damage. After those strikes, he's going to be forced to wait months for ammo and reinforcements (if that is possible), or return to Grayson.

Even if Grayson "Wins" they will probably lose Blackbird or a portion of it, as well as a majority of their fleet, and possibly portions of their orbital infrastructure. And as Mentioned before, they've forced the Manty alliance to cut them off from trade, so rebuilding will be difficult. The only good news is if Grayson does survive, it will again inherit any Havenite ships with damaged nodes - Since Grayson is in a Grav Wave, ships with damaged alpha nodes cannot leave as they cannot make sails. The bad news is without the fleet yards and access to Manticorian parts, it cannot fix them.

On the other hand, Haven will have spent their load on the assault on Grayson, and no longer be a real threat - the survivors of the Grayson strike will choke the repair yards for years and civil war we saw in the main timeline will be more complete, as the navy doesn't have the forces to put down the former SS Warlords immediately, allowing them to get further entrenched and better forces, turning the region into a quagmire of squabbling polities.

kzt wrote:David says that doesn’t exist. So the people won’t exist either. Nobody is going to raise a family in a tiny steel box unless there is a compelling reason to be there.

Why not? Why must space habitats feel like tiny steel boxes in the first place? Make them bigger, give them very large, internal areas with open greeneries and parks, and plenty of artificial illumination. As I said before, neither the engineering nor the energy budget seems to be a problem. Have you read the Culture series, by Iain M. Banks? The GSVs are (very) large vehicles with populations sometimes climbing to the hundreds of millions, but they're all described as having a huge park on the top deck, illuminated by an artificial, tubular sun.

Beowulf Alpha had a population 15 to 20 million, didn't it? And that's a single habitat, plus it was in orbit, so people could commute to the ground if they wanted. In the Unicorn Belt, you'd expect the habitats to be smaller but more numerous, in the tens to hundreds of thousands of inhabitants each. And they're much further from Gryphon, let alone Manticore, so there's more incentive to have people who live there permanently and create a business. Why can't the inhabitants of habitat D4114s have a thriving space cattle industry and create a good barbecue food scene as a result, becoming a tourist (if local) attraction? The inhabitants of belt capital in Au571n may have diversified into the textile industry and created the motto "Keep Au571n weird" to convince people to buy clothing (or their for-a-fee designs) instead of printing public-domain designs at home.

(You can see that my knowledge of Texas is only the stereotypes)

My point is that once you get beyond the "who would live in a space habitat" problem, and we're surely past that with 300 million people in the Belt and 40 million between Beowulf Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, there's no reason for those habitats not to have the same industry as elsewhere in the system. Those are possible businesses that may have been originally created to support the mining industry, but after a generation, they become self-sustaining and an industry in themselves.

Theemile wrote:At best, the mad commander is going to manage 4 or so heavy strikes against defenses with squadron+ forces before he runs out of ammo and provisions. If he runs into a force too big, he's going to take damage. After those strikes, he's going to be forced to wait months for ammo and reinforcements (if that is possible), or return to Grayson.

Which is exactly what happened to Honor during Operation Cutworm III and the Battle of Solon, albeit with superior forces on both sides. That battle resulted in, at best a draw, if not a defeat for the Alliance side. Eighth Fleet lost one of its only two Invictus-class SD(P)s because it got mouse-trapped by a force with superior positioning and prepared defences. And mind you that Haven did have Javier Giscard commanding one of its fleets at this time.

On the other hand, Haven will have spent their load on the assault on Grayson, and no longer be a real threat - the survivors of the Grayson strike will choke the repair yards for years and civil war we saw in the main timeline will be more complete, as the navy doesn't have the forces to put down the former SS Warlords immediately, allowing them to get further entrenched and better forces, turning the region into a quagmire of squabbling polities.

That's an interesting point. How big were the forces loyal to Theisman after the coup? I suspect it was half to three quarters of the PN at most. So he may simply not have the ability to marshal 400 SDs to go attack Grayson as a punitive action until he put down the warlords in the first place. He dare not take ships off Capital Fleet, because said warlords would make it for the Haven system and attempt to depose Pritchart. Moreover, the ex-SS units would not even go for a straight-up battle they'd never win (they were poorly educated and thugs, but not as stupid as thinking that a lone SD or BC could take on even a diminished Capital Fleet and the Haven forts). Instead, they'd attempt surgical strikes or terrorist ones, so the defences in the Haven System must remain tight.

We know from the real timeline that it took until 1918 or so until the last petty warlord was finally removed. It was probably earlier that the last of them was a non-negligible threat, though, and the reforms he and Pritchart instituted would have quickly risen the number of units loyal to the Nouveau Paris government.

Moreover, the republic's industrial capability was mostly untouched during the First War. Even discounting Bolthole, which no one in the Alliance yet knew about and therefore could not plan for it, they must have had several shipyards capable of building new SDs. Pierre's reforms had had an effect and the economy and the education systems were improving, so Haven could (and did) build new DuQuesne-class SDs in the period following OSJ's downfall. So the Grayson planners would need to know that they could persecute the war to victory above Nouveau Paris. Anything short of that and Grayson would see itself out-produced in just a few years. Grayson had a lot of new SD(P)s in the pipeline, whereas Haven had none, but Haven could produce more SDs and missiles to go with them than Grayson could.

And mind you the six-year timeline between "what's that?" and "I christen thee First Podnought." High Ridge was blind to this, but the Graysons weren't. In the real timeline, it only took the Havenites under Shannon Foraker less than 4 years.

Theemile wrote:I mentioned the Strategic Thought of "Fleet in Being" previously. Simply, that means you have the ability to coalesce a force large enough to hypothetically overpower any smaller force an opponent could field without making any of his responsibilities overly vulnerable. With a battlefield spread over light months, this concern is magnified ans intell is virtually always outdated and unreliable.

It's the reason why Haven never attacked Manticore itself (or Vice versa) in the 1st war- after the first days of the war, they couldn't field a force capable of knocking out Manticore while simultaneously defending their vital systems. There was always a worry that Manticore could do a repeat of what they did at 3rd Yeltsin - they could use their internal lines to stealthly reinforce a system from other commands and lay a trap - or to do a massive raid on a critical Havenite system and return to defend Manticore while an attacking force is in motion, but before they could reach their target and take advantage of the vacancy. (After Trevor's star was taken by Manticore, this worry became doubly so for Haven).

For Grayson, any assault force sent out will be gone 6-8 months without the wormhole network, and draw down Grayson's defensive power that much more. And as I said, Grayson only has 75 capital ships at this point, so any assault force will greatly reduce their defensive force, so Grayson really doesn't have a "Fleet in Being" for Haven to worry about - meaning the chances of them throwing a massive wave at Grayson to knock them out is much more likely.

And once Haven realizes that the units it holds back to defend its systems aren't actually capable of preventing SD(P) raids from wrecking infrastructure then Saint Just (who presumably hasn't be taken out yet because the war is still on and so he hasn't tried his massive post-war purge of the navy) would quickly realize that the only effective defense is a massive offense.

Strip the home defenses far, far, lower than they ever contemplated during the war with Manticore and adopt a full on Zap Brannigan vs the killbots strategy. Throw so many ships at Yeltsin that you run the defending SD(P)s out of ammo and then crush the system - and FYI HOS says the GSN's Harringtons had only 492 of the original pods; so slightly fewer than you'd noted. (Also, how much MDM production does Grayson have domestically at this time? Were they still getting most of their missiles from Manticore? That'd limit how many pods could be deployed in an ad-hoc system defense role -- as would the limited amount of shipboard or fort fire control for them)

And with the early MDMs you still needed many hundreds of hits to kill an SD.
So in the pre-buttercup fight at Elric, firing the MDM's from within SDM range, 6.5 million km, (so with the best possible target locks, and lowest possible fire control lag) BatDiv 62 fired 404 10-missile pods + internal tubes for a 4,900 missile salvo -- against 35 SDs w/ escort -- and killed just 5 SDs. Making around 500 hits per SD to kill them (the other half of the salvo would either have been jammers/decoys, failed to hit, or been stopped by the fleet's point defenses).

On the one hand if fired at longer range the MDMs would have a higher terminal velocity, so they'd be harder to stop; but on the other there would be weaker target locks and high lag which makes them easier to decoy or evade -- so, on the whole, hit probabilities go down as range increases. So at true MDM range you presumably need to fire more than 1,000 missiles per SD to kill it.

That means a Harrington-class SD(P) can only be expected to kill around 4-5 SDs each before running out of ammo. If Haven sends in 4 or 5 hundred SDs with escorts in a Beatrice Bravo style all-in attack on Yeltsin they should roll right over the defenders. (Taking horrible losses in the process, but still rolling right over them)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's an interesting point. How big were the forces loyal to Theisman after the coup?

As I noted in passing in my post right above I don't know that the coup would have happened if Grayson had refused the cease-fire.

Saint Just wouldn't have triggered such a massive purge of the navy while it was still in combat (he'd just try to get the perceived unreliable personnel killed saving his sorry ass). And without the attempted purge I don't know that Theisman would have launched the coup; at least not then.

And if the navy had been ordered into a costly, but likely winnable, all costs strike on Yeltsin they'd have likely gone along with it. (As the alternatives would appear to be total surrender or being slowly nibbled to death)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Why not? Why must space habitats feel like tiny steel boxes in the first place? Make them bigger, give them very large, internal areas with open greeneries and parks, and plenty of artificial illumination. As I said before, neither the engineering nor the energy budget seems to be a problem. Have you read the Culture series, by Iain M. Banks? The GSVs are (very) large vehicles with populations sometimes climbing to the hundreds of millions, but they're all described as having a huge park on the top deck, illuminated by an artificial, tubular sun.

That's not how it works.
"This particular Dempsey's lay at the very hub of HMSS Hephaestus's core, yet its designers had gone to great lengths to create a ground-side environment. They couldn't avoid the legally mandated color codings for emergency life support and other disaster-related access and service points, but they'd paid through the nose for permits to build double-high compartments, then used the extra height to accommodate dropped ceilings that hid the snake nests of pipes and power conduits which covered deckheads elsewhere. "

My point is that once you get beyond the "who would live in a space habitat" problem, and we're surely past that with 300 million people in the Belt and 40 million between Beowulf Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, there's no reason for those habitats not to have the same industry as elsewhere in the system. Those are possible businesses that may have been originally created to support the mining industry, but after a generation, they become self-sustaining and an industry in themselves.

Except David says they don't. The entire, I mean ENTIRE, industrial base of the entire system was contained on the three platforms. Along with the technical experts who ran it, the engineers who designed it, and the entire infrastructure that built not only the industrial base but all space construction. An probably the entire training infrastructure for this.

And it was all somewhat less than a million people who produced everything the SEM made, from children's toys to SD(P)s.

Jonathan_S wrote:[

That means a Harrington-class SD(P) can only be expected to kill around 4-5 SDs each before running out of ammo. If Haven sends in 4 or 5 hundred SDs with escorts in a Beatrice Bravo style all-in attack on Yeltsin they should roll right over the defenders. (Taking horrible losses in the process, but still rolling right over them)

I originally had the Medusa/Harringtons at ~5:1 kill ratio , but remembered that they had 61/72 tubes and 5000+ MDM ship killers for them in addition to the Pod bays, and then revised the capabilities up, especially seeing that Havenite SDs have less then 35 tubes in a broadside, with roughly a 2 salvo/minute fire rate. The Grayson SD(p)s had 5 tube launches per minute, and 5 pod salvo launches per minute, allowing a Harrington SD(p) to fire 30, 10 missile pods, and 360 missiles from the tubes, compared to <70 missiles for the 2 tube launches from a Hvenite SD. So just on a missile per minute rate, a Grayson SD(p) can throw a 9.5:1 ratio.

Of course there is always towed Pods, which is a 2:1 ratio and a Defensive weapons, which is overall a 3:1 ratio, plus misc. other soft advantages, like accel, ECM, Firecontrol, Drones, and FTL comms which all play into Grayson favor.

So 4-5 might be the floor, but I think the actual ratio is slightly higher, depending on how you figure it.

A Haven SD(P) force needs to fire in the vicinity of 20,000 missiles to kill a late-model RMN SD(P). I'm not at all sure what they non-apollo stats are for a the RMN vs RHN SD(P)s or SDs. It's a lot less, but I don't know if that means 5,000 or 10,000 or what.