Defending a wormhole junction/terminus.

darrell wrote:I am not sugesting using a warship/courrier quality hyper generator. You would not need even a merchant quality hyper generator, as all you need to do is get into the wormhole. That is the equivilant of a generator that can get you into the alpha band.

I am not sugesting using a warship/courrier quality warsawaski sail. You would not need even a merchant quality sail, as all you need to do is stabelize the flight through the wormhole. Theoretically, a courrier boats sail might work, more than likely you would need something slightly larger, such as the sail from a 1m ton tramp freighter.

Such a configuration would probably lower the combat capability by 1%-2% or so, but the tactical flexibilty to move the forts from termini to termini should outweight that consideration. Then there is the fact that the forts would all be manufactured in manticore orbit, making them cheeper to produce, which should outweigh the minor loss in combat power or the slightly larger size.

I don't recall any instance where one can slap on substantially smaller drive components on a larger vessel. You would still need a large hyper generator needed to generate a large hyper field, simply because it's a larger ship. Likewise, you wouldn't see destroyer sized beta nodes on a vessel larger than even a superdreadnought.

Duckk,

Help my memory here.

At the time of OBS, what was the status of the various termini?

Trevers Star was under PRH control.

Basilisk was under RMN control but the defenses were a joke.

The Beawulf terminus was under Beawulf control and the defenses were nominal.

The Gregor terminus I am uncertain of but I believe was under Andermandi control. Thismeans that the terminus was until the recent and brief alliance under the control of and defended by a hostile foreign power.

I can't recall the names of the other termini, but IIRC, they weren't under RMN control much less defended.

IMHO, the existance of the wormhole junction FORCES manticore to become expansionistic to seize and control the various termini to have a viable defense. By the time of ARC, the RMN is finally accepting this reality.

Duckk wrote:

namelessfly wrote:The RMN's traditional way of defending the junction by stationing forts at the junction is the wrong way to do it. As Weber emphasized, an attacker could transit in from any of the termini unexpectedly and catch the forts at low alert status. This was a result of an isolationist policy that left the various terminae undefended and usually not under RMN control. Trevers Star was already under Havenite Control at the time of OBS and the purpose of the Basilisk operation was to seize a second termini to enable the simultaneous mass transit of two fleets. The SLN ploy of having a fleet transit in from the Beawulf terminus was a demonstration of the same principle.

Basilisk Station was a political minefield which specifically precluded defenses. It is not indicative of how well the other termini were defended prewar. Note that once the political situation was resolved, the termini defenses were heavily upgraded.

A far superior strategy is to sieze control of all termini and actively defend them. Alternatively, allow powerful allies (the Andermandi control AND Defend termini). Part of the defense strategy is to have the termini defense forces summon reinforcements from the junction to reinforce a termini under attack. (How many times have we seen this tactic as a central plot element.).

Except the Andermani weren't allies of any sort until after Thunderbolt. Relations were cordial at best, frigid at worst. Most of the other termini had no powerful ally in the area. Only Beowulf has any powerful defense force, but that's also the terminus under the least amount of threat since it would have been defended by the entire might of the Solarian League (recalling that open warfare between the two star nations was previously inconceivable).

Manticoran foreign policy has evolved from isolationist to arguable imperialistic as a direct result of the strategic and tactic realities that favor defending wormhole termini rather than just the central junction. This too has been a major plot arc.

Manticore's foreign policy has always been to secure the far end of a terminus whenever possible. There has been zero departure from historical precedent in this regard. When people talk about Manticore's imperialism, they're talking about the annexations of Talbott and Silesia, an expansionism which Manticore had never previously expressed an interest in.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/108/1

It's clear that all the termini except for Trevor's Star (seized by coup de main) and Beowulf (whose own prestige and influence put it in a special class) are under the full control and defense of Manticore.

Aside from the infodump, Gregor was also mentioned in Honor Among Enemies as being explicitly in RMN control in spite of being in Andermani space, because of a treaty that antedated the Andermani inclusion of the nearby system into their empire.

solbergb wrote:Aside from the infodump, Gregor was also mentioned in Honor Among Enemies as being explicitly in RMN control in spite of being in Andermani space, because of a treaty that antedated the Andermani inclusion of the nearby system into their empire.

However the RMN deliberately limited the mobile forces at that junction to a minimal level to avoid excessively irritating the IAN.

solbergb wrote:
My 2 cents on the whole thing.

You want forts at the junctions because any other way of defending it will tempt the CO into sending them off to do something else. The inability of forts to rapidly charge off to meet some other threat is a feature, not a bug. It ensures that the kind of attack attempted at 2nd Basilisk is pointless. This frees your hyper-capable garrison for defense of the system, letting all junctions look after themselves.

The other extension of wanting forts at the Junction is an economy of force mission. I believe that if the RMN was operating with both an unlimited construction/operations budget and could recruit and retain an unlimited number of highly skilled spacers for decades on end, they may have been tempted to build 1,000 superdreadnoughts and keep 300 for Junction defense in the lead-up to the 1st war. However, we have been told repeatedly, and realistically, that the RMN and EVERY OTHER MILITARY, faced resource and manpower constraints.

We are also told that the dozen or so Lynx Terminus forts were designed to hold off an attack by the entire pre-Apollo Manticoran wall of battle without any support. Even if the Lynx fortresses had twice the crew of a superdreadnought and three times the operating expenses (I am making both proportions up), they are an amazingly efficient use of resources to defend a strategic point versus parking another Home Fleet, that the Manticorans did not have, at the Lynx Terminus.

For places that are obvious targets, forts make a ton of sense as at least the baseline defense that is supplemented by more expensive but more flexible hyper capable combat power.

fester wrote:We are also told that the dozen or so Lynx Terminus forts were designed to hold off an attack by the entire pre-Apollo Manticoran wall of battle without any support. Even if the Lynx fortresses had twice the crew of a superdreadnought and three times the operating expenses (I am making both proportions up), they are an amazingly efficient use of resources to defend a strategic point versus parking another Home Fleet, that the Manticorans did not have, at the Lynx Terminus.

OK, 12 forts can fend off 250 superdreadnoughts with both the forts and the SDs being of pre-Apollo tech and after Apollo their combat power has been multiplied considerably.


Any specific reason why a 30-kiloton hyper generator and the maybe 100-kiloton impeller modifications that allow warsawski sails should not be put to those forts?
Because, if you got a class of ships that can match SD(P)s in 20 to 1 numerical odds, does it really matter if they can only pull 120 gs via gravity plate compensation? You build 100 or so of them and use them to smash anything the enemy had.

Duckk wrote:

darrell wrote:I am not sugesting using a warship/courrier quality hyper generator. You would not need even a merchant quality hyper generator, as all you need to do is get into the wormhole. That is the equivilant of a generator that can get you into the alpha band.

I am not sugesting using a warship/courrier quality warsawaski sail. You would not need even a merchant quality sail, as all you need to do is stabelize the flight through the wormhole. Theoretically, a courrier boats sail might work, more than likely you would need something slightly larger, such as the sail from a 1m ton tramp freighter.

Such a configuration would probably lower the combat capability by 1%-2% or so, but the tactical flexibilty to move the forts from termini to termini should outweight that consideration. Then there is the fact that the forts would all be manufactured in manticore orbit, making them cheeper to produce, which should outweigh the minor loss in combat power or the slightly larger size.

I don't recall any instance where one can slap on substantially smaller drive components on a larger vessel. You would still need a large hyper generator needed to generate a large hyper field, simply because it's a larger ship. Likewise, you wouldn't see destroyer sized beta nodes on a vessel larger than even a superdreadnought.

You do not need a warships hyper generator to transit a wormhole juction, merchants with ordanary, much smaller hyper generators do it all the time. In HotQ, Thunder of God extened its hyper field to cover the masandan LAC's in order to transport them through Hyperspace to grayson. This indicates to me, that in the lower hyper bands you don't need as big or as powerful a hyper generator as you need in the higher hyper bands. Worst case scenerio for a fort hyper generator would be a merchant quality hyper generator large enough for the fort, which would be smaller than a warship quality hyper generator. I belive that as the hyper generator will not be taking the ship into the Delta, Gamma, or Beta bands, it is probable that the Hyper generator could be physically smaller than the generator on most merchant ships. That means takes up less tonnage, but designed for the fort, not a smaller ships hyper generator plugged into the fort.

The main reason that Alpha nodes and sail is soo much larger than the beta nodes and wedge is that the sail needs to propel the ship at 10 times the acceleration of a wedge (2,000G's+ for a merchant, 5,000G's+ for a warship) This is not the case for the fort, which has no compensator, and would be limited to 100G's whether in a grav wave or in normal space. Note that I am not saying that you use a smaller ships hyper generator, without modification, only that

The main question is how big a sail do you need to safely transit a grav wave. Worst case scenerio, you need a full merchant qulality sail to transit a grav wave, so the sail for a fort would be a merchant quality sail that would be physically smaller than an SD's sail. It is possible that a relatively weak sail would enable a transit through a grav wave, and a sail with the POWER to transport a 12M ton fort at 100G's in a grav wave would have the equivelant POWER and approimate tonnage as the sail needed to transport a 500K ton merchant ship at 2,500G's, but designed for the fort. Again, I am not saying to use the same sail as a small merchantman, but one of similar size/power.

The big question is what is the MINIMUM size/power of equipment needed to transit a junction. If Merchant qulity fort sized hyper/sail generators are needed, they will likely reduce the combat power of the fort by something on the order of 10%. If much smaller equipment can do the job, which I believe to be likely, than the combat power of the fort could be dropped by 1% or less.

I'm going by memory here so I may be wrong

RMN Fortresses are approx 2x the size of a pre-war dreadnaught

While classed as static defences they can actually move a little, enough that long distance C-Frac snipping is impractical, and to cover defensive gaps in the formation caused by battle damage.

the function of the Terminus forts is more of a tripwire to enable the Junction forts to come to full Battle stations (usual rediness was 50% at BS?) and let home fleet detachments respond to an attack

Most of the Juction forts where decommisioned when the security at Trevors Star was guaranteed by 3rd fleet

While still a powerful force the current role of the Junction forts is shipping protection (against a hit and run attack on junction shipping) and Astro Control enforcement.

SO why would you want to move the fortresses through the wormhole when they have an important defined role in their current position?

darrell wrote:*snip*

Thunder of God's ability to boost LACs into hyper was because they were using military drives, which had the brute power to do something like that. And even then, they were running serious risks of blowing out the drive, since they had to redline the hyper generator to get it to extend the hyper field out beyond its normal parameters. It is not something you would expect people to do on a regular basis. Ergo, you need hyper generators which are appropriately sized for their work load.

Secondly, alpha nodes are just naturally big. It has nothing to do with acceleration curves.