Commerce raiding

Relax wrote:One can argue in the age of FTL controlled missiles... with ~200Mkm range; Speed, in system speed specifically, is pointless or nearly so at this point. Your hyper generator recharge time is now more important than acceleration capability.

To be fair, they only have ~200Mkm range under FTL control if you've already seeded the system with Mycroft FTL fire control relays.

FTL control range from a Keyhole II appears to be most like 4.5 light-minutes (~81Mkm)


Of course if you're happy letting them attack under autonomous control (as they had to do at Beowulf) then FTL control range is irrelevant.

Jonathan_S wrote:

tlb wrote:As for the rest, size inflation might be making some classes go away. A modern DD is now the size of a CL or CA. A modern BC is now the size of a BB and basically the DN has gone away. So the warship class these days is defined by the mission and not the size/weight.

A BC(L) isn't quite that large, though it's still over twice the size of older BCs.

A Triumphant-class BB is ~4.5 million tons
A Nike-class BC(L) is "only" ~2.5 million tons; about 55-56% the volume and tonnage of the only BB we have stats on.

(And even a Roland-class DD is still 16% smaller than the smallest CA we know of, the Truncheon-class which is over a century old)

Size inflation is real, you overstated it a bit

I misquoted Michelle Henke; but never mind, in another decade what I said may be correct. From Storm from the Shadows:

Chapter 13 wrote:Not that most other navies would consider them "battlecruisers," I suppose, she told herself. At two and a half million tons, the new Nike-class ships were closing in on the size of the old battleships no one had built for the last fifty or sixty T-years, and some navies—like the Sollies, she thought sourly—still defined ship types by tonnage brackets which had become obsolete even before the First Havenite War. But even though the Nikes were the next best thing to half again the size of her dead Ajax, Artemis was capable of almost seven hundred gravities' acceleration at maximum military power. And her magazines were crammed with over six thousand Mark 16 dual-drive missiles.
I don't care how big she is, she's still a battlecruiser, though, Michelle thought. It's the function, the doctrine, that counts, not just tonnage. And by that meter stick, she's a battlecruiser, all right. One from the dark side of Hell, maybe, but still a battlecruiser. And I've got eight of her.

Relax wrote:So, SIZE inflation is real

Sure, but also does quantity. And other aspects.

That was my point: everything is a matter of striking a balance and compromise. Sometimes you have to have more units that are each individually less capable. Sometimes you need faster units to escape a bigger ship. Sometimes you need that bigger ship to throw its weight around.

penny wrote:Contained in one of the threads currently trending on this page, I suggested that the Peeps could have deployed their surplus of battleships to wage a new type of war of attrition against the RMN’s components by hassling their far fewer systems. The hotter the node the fewer the spares. Commerce raiding would be included in that strategy.

It won't matter that some ships can run away from them. At the end of the day. They also can't stand and fight. The base will be destroyed. And a crafty CO can surprise smaller ships with cold nodes anyway.

But yeah, why sit on their surplus of BBs.


.

That's what didn't make sense, they capture a bunch of systems that they then picket with cruisers and below, why not use BB's to recapture those systems and force the alliance to fight for the same real estate over and over again, the fight to get to Trevor's Star wont be easy if they have to recapture everything around it 3,4 or 5 times.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Relax wrote:So, SIZE inflation is real

Sure, but also does quantity. And other aspects.

That was my point: everything is a matter of striking a balance and compromise. Sometimes you have to have more units that are each individually less capable. Sometimes you need faster units to escape a bigger ship. Sometimes you need that bigger ship to throw its weight around.

Sarcasm inflation is real too Size in ultra sarcasm land, where my zip code is , means SD's are the new DD's.

As for acceleration --> Sorry, in age of DDM let alone MDM + FTL drones/missiles, acceleration advantage while nice is ultimately pointless.

Now, IF DW had made the HYPER limit out to say Jupiter instead of only ~mars yes, acceleration could still mean something. By sacrificing acceleration, what could be gained in terms of tonnage? What more defensive/offensive systems could you carry? If your SD has to run in an era of MDM's, sorry admiral, your dreams of fighting another day or conquest just got crushed.

penny wrote:Contained in one of the threads currently trending on this page, I suggested that the Peeps could have deployed their surplus of battleships to wage a new type of war of attrition against the RMN’s components by hassling their far fewer systems. The hotter the node the fewer the spares. Commerce raiding would be included in that strategy.

It won't matter that some ships can run away from them. At the end of the day. They also can't stand and fight. The base will be destroyed. And a crafty CO can surprise smaller ships with cold nodes anyway.

But yeah, why sit on their surplus of BBs.

Sigs wrote:That's what didn't make sense, they capture a bunch of systems that they then picket with cruisers and below, why not use BB's to recapture those systems and force the alliance to fight for the same real estate over and over again, the fight to get to Trevor's Star wont be easy if they have to recapture everything around it 3,4 or 5 times.

So, you do not think that Haven was trying to recapture the most valuable systems from Manticore? Isn't the push to capture Trevor's Star when Manticore had the edge in missiles pods? So Haven moves to retake and faces an Alpha launch before the Manticore retreat. Isn't that a losing tactic, even with BB's? The systems may have been valuable to Haven, but that does not mean that they are equally valuable to Manticore.

PS: I think the cold node surprise only involved incompetent commanders.

Jonathan_S wrote:No, Haven't doesn't appear to have much of a fleet train.

I seriously doubt that, after all the RHN went to war attacking an enemy with a large navy and a multi system presence and even if everything had gone according to plan they were likely to destroy only ~16 SD's and 16 DN's in Hancock, and 32 wallers in Grayson. That means that even if they had gone in and destroyed all wallers in those two systems that would still leave the RMN with a substantial force of wallers which would inevitably call for another operation.

Haven's navy, prior to the first war, was optimized around:
1) Deterring internal insurrection (yeah, you don't need one to fight an insurrection; loyal ground troops plus even a DD providing orbital bombardment is plenty. But the visible proof that the iron boot is hovering over your head to drop outsized marine detachments and fire from the sky helps remind restless planets that it isn't worth causing a fuss. (Plus being a warship its harder to infiltrate saboteurs the way a groundside army base might be vulnerable to)

The SLN completed the same task with BC's, CL's and DD's yet the RHN needed BB's.

2) Carefully planned short range overwhelming lunges.

So they just didn't need much of a fleet train because they only fought wars of choice, and only from nearby bases. Therefore they didn't need to send supplies, ammo, repair ships, etc. after the fleet to keep it supplied and operational far from home because the fleet would stock up, overwhelm their target, and then mostly return to base. The supplies, repair capabilities, ammo, could just stay at their forward bases.

The SKM spent about 50 years building up the RMN and then spent a decade or two building up the Manticore Alliance and the forward bases. At no point in the books are the Havenite officer corps before the comitee took over described as absolutely incompetent and blind. They would have had to see that it wont be a simple one system offensive but rather it would be a dragged out war and simply the process of taking a system would require a fleet train.

(This is kind of like assuming France, because they have a modern aircraft carrier and thus are a pretty significant navy, must have a decent fleet train. Not really, they don't operate far enough from, or long enough away, from their ports to need one -- so, unlike the modern RN, they really haven't invested in any expeditionary capability and would be hard pressed to sustain an operation in, say, the Pacific or South Atlantic without support from allied bases or fleet trains)

What exactly do you think a fleet train is? Ammunition ships, supply ships, tankers and repair ships are required to keep the forward bases functioning, they would be required for any offensive operations otherwise a damaged SD has no way of making ti home until you build up the facilities in system and that could take months or years.


What was the goal with the attack on Hancock and Yeltsin? Attack and then win or lose withdraw? If the RHN had won the battle of Yeltsin would they withdraw? or would they have tankers to refuel the warships, ammunition ships to rearm the fleet and repair ships to try and bring any damaged warships to a serviceable status to be sent home and assist in preparing minor battle damage?


No fleet train means the RHN cannot advance at all.

tlb wrote:Note that in At All Costs it is noted that when Tourville attacked Honor's forces at Sidemore in the Marsh System, they were 400 light-years from home without the possibility to use a wormhole. So when their damaged ships could not go above the Delta band, the voyage home took over 3 months.

The point of repair ships is to bring a warship to a level where it can make its way home not repair it completely on site. It would be a pretty risky manoeuvre to send a large fleet 400 LY away from home, have them blow through their ammunition in a battle or two and make their way home unarmed.

Relax wrote:#7 Why build SD's? Not as large as forts

tlb wrote:Nice summation, but of course a fort is not hyper-capable; so there will always be an SD class, with its size limited by the compensator

Relax wrote:Everything is hyper capable, including forts should a hyper generator be installed. Also one does not require a compensator. Grav plates work just fine.

I am aware that a fort could be built with a hyper-generator and use their already installed gravity plates. I have even written posts advocating that; so instead of assembling forts in situ for new wormholes, they could be built in the yards and flown into place. But no one seems to do that and instead fill that volume with weapons. The problem (as you know) is that gravity plates do not work "just fine", because a ship like that cannot take full advantage of a gravity wave.

tlb wrote:Note that in At All Costs it is noted that when Tourville attacked Honor's forces at Sidemore in the Marsh System, they were 400 light-years from home without the possibility to use a wormhole. So when their damaged ships could not go above the Delta band, the voyage home took over 3 months.

Sigs wrote:The point of repair ships is to bring a warship to a level where it can make its way home not repair it completely on site. It would be a pretty risky manoeuvre to send a large fleet 400 LY away from home, have them blow through their ammunition in a battle or two and make their way home unarmed.

It was a single battle and I do not know if they used all ammunition. Also Tourville lost two thirds of his fleet, so I would agree that it was "pretty risky".