Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Thing is, they are big and take a while to build. Thoughts?

The problem is that they are combat support vehicles, they shouldn't be in combat at all. They're slow to accelerate, slow to translate, and nowhere as heavily armoured as a proper warship of that size, not even a CLAC. It's great to support the other ships that are doing the actual combat, but it must skedaddle before the shooting begins and can't easily return until it stops. So it can help its side win the battle, but the other ships there need to be able to win in the first place.

I'm not sure a CSV would have helped in the Battle of Hypatia. It might have provided some LACs and those would have aided in the defence, but not in the attack. And there's no way the RMN could withstand that many missiles fired at them, without much more defensive power than a wing or two of LACs could provide. The CSV would also have poorer stealth, so it would have had to stay much further back to avoid giving the Phantom task force away too soon, so it couldn't resupply -- not that they needed resupply at all. Phantom died with missiles in the magazines.

Considering that they don’t have any way to power up the missiles…

kzt wrote:Considering that they don’t have any way to power up the missiles…

I was assuming that the GA will adopt the idea of the SLN Huskies and make automated pod deliveries to the warships, but that still requires a lull in battle.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I'm not sure a CSV would have helped in the Battle of Hypatia. It might have provided some LACs and those would have aided in the defence,

1) They can fire up the missile pods as shown in Shadow of Victory

2) RMN ships would never have even come close to missile range of SLN

3) Number of pods = ~400 400 * 14 = 5600 missiles + 5000 carried by BC(L) = 10,000 against SLN BC's with effectively no missile defense. Also, compared to the book battle, with said pods number shot down by SLN would be smaller as waves of missiles would be larger.

4) Maybe small fry could get away if they all scattered for the hyper limit, but all the BC's would be dead.

5) Taylor class has excellent Stealth equal to that of the BC(L). SLN never saw Phantom, so why would they see the Taylor? ~ same tonnage.

kzt wrote:Considering that they don’t have any way to power up the missiles…

Not true as already shown in previous book. Apparently, it is possible for the RMN to run fusion conduit in a Taylor class but cannot be bothered for other classes of ship for permanent Pod attachment on their Dorsal/Ventral spots for permanent pod attachments even though their boat bay are RIGHT next to said limpetted pods have fusion conduit for servicing their shuttles, pinnaces, cutters, RD's, Hermes fusion/micro fusion plants so...

Oh yea, and the collar for fusion conduit attachment is already designed and used throughout pod bays of SD'P and apparently in Taylor class CUMLV's..... Its not like those collars are not designed for quick connect disconnect in said SD'P/Taylor/Missile colliers already. But hey, that is too much to ask for to place on a SAG-C or etc ship.

Relax wrote:1) They can fire up the missile pods as shown in Shadow of Victory

2) RMN ships would never have even come close to missile range of SLN

That wasn't relevant. The sheer number of missiles that Hajdu fired at them would have wrecked the task force regardless. They were beyond effective telemetry control when they reached the task force and the vast majority of those missiles were completely uncontrolled anyway. So it doesn't matter if the range was 15 million km or 25 or 35. I don't think the task force had a realistic chance of survival at any range.

If you replace the heavy cruisers with an FSV, then you probably even lose in terms of defences.

3) Number of pods = ~400 400 * 14 = 5600 missiles + 5000 carried by BC(L) = 10,000 against SLN BC's with effectively no missile defense. Also, compared to the book battle, with said pods number shot down by SLN would be smaller as waves of missiles would be larger.

You don't want to stay there longer. They needed bigger and fewer salvos.

Just how many control channels does an FSV have? Though IIRC Phantom was alone controlling all the missiles sent by the squadron, wasn't it?

Either way, I'd never replace 5 Saganami-C for one FSV. I know that at Hypatia they weren't Charlies, but that's not the point of this thread. In this thread, you're suggesting that the FSVs could be effective warships in place of something else. I'd exchange on a 1:1, maybe 2:1 hull count, but not on a tonne-for-tonne.

5) Taylor class has excellent Stealth equal to that of the BC(L). SLN never saw Phantom, so why would they see the Taylor? ~ same tonnage.

They're 20% bigger, at 3 million tonnes. And they're not built like a battlecruiser, so there's no requirement that they have the same stealth capabilities.

Do you have a text passage saying they do?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Relax wrote:1) They can fire up the missile pods as shown in Shadow of Victory

2) RMN ships would never have even come close to missile range of SLN

That wasn't relevant. The sheer number of missiles that Hajdu fired at them would have wrecked the task force regardless. They were beyond effective telemetry control when they reached the task force and the vast majority of those missiles were completely uncontrolled anyway. So it doesn't matter if the range was 15 million km or 25 or 35. I don't think the task force had a realistic chance of survival at any range.

(snip)

But, if they had a supply of DDM pods, then, instead of spending time getting into range for the Saganami-B class cruisers, they could lay down a long path of missile pods, have drones, pretending to be cruisers, going down the path with missile pods pretending to be the internal missile tubes of the cruisers (who are off to the side). The SLN recon drones will spot the drones; the massive launch will descend upon those drones; and the untouched RMN cruisers go active.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

Relax wrote:1) They can fire up the missile pods as shown in Shadow of Victory

2) RMN ships would never have even come close to missile range of SLN

But, if they had a supply of DDM pods, then, instead of spending time getting into range for the Saganami-B class cruisers, they could lay down a long path of missile pods, have drones, pretending to be cruisers, going down the path with missile pods pretending to be the internal missile tubes of the cruisers (who are off to the side). The SLN recon drones will spot the drones; the massive launch will descend upon those drones; and the untouched RMN cruisers go active.

Exactly, even before one adds in physical drift due to blind fire from 12Mkm to 40Mkm etc.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:But, if they had a supply of DDM pods, then, instead of spending time getting into range for the Saganami-B class cruisers, they could lay down a long path of missile pods, have drones, pretending to be cruisers, going down the path with missile pods pretending to be the internal missile tubes of the cruisers (who are off to the side). The SLN recon drones will spot the drones; the massive launch will descend upon those drones; and the untouched RMN cruisers go active.

The Loreleis aren't good for that long. They're able to mimic the power levels of a cruiser in stealth, for what, a minute? You'd have to turn them on and hope that the SLN was competent enough to find them, but not competent enough to see through the deception.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:But, if they had a supply of DDM pods, then, instead of spending time getting into range for the Saganami-B class cruisers, they could lay down a long path of missile pods, have drones, pretending to be cruisers, going down the path with missile pods pretending to be the internal missile tubes of the cruisers (who are off to the side). The SLN recon drones will spot the drones; the massive launch will descend upon those drones; and the untouched RMN cruisers go active.

The Loreleis aren't good for that long. They're able to mimic the power levels of a cruiser in stealth, for what, a minute? You'd have to turn them on and hope that the SLN was competent enough to find them, but not competent enough to see through the deception.

The SLN, at combat range, thought they were able to start differentiating the Lorelies from the cruisers they'd already been tracking, out of the post-jamming quintupled targets, after several seconds; a process .

Uncompromising Honor wrote:Even as she watched, numbers flickered under each of the cruiser icons—percentage values, changing rapidly to reflect CIC’s confidence as its analysis winnowed through the input to find the Manty starships once more. They were unlikely to accomplish that before her missiles reached attack range, unfortunately

But just because they were more confident doesn't mean they were right -- nor do we know how high their confidence levels were.

Also, if they hadn't already had a baseline on those specific cruisers it probably would have been harder to differentiate them from the decoys. But generally the decoys were designed primarily to fool missiles in terminal acquisition, not full up warships. Still, without an existing baseline signature for each real cruiser in the system, and without even real cruisers to try to distinguish against the decoys, it'd probably be far harder to determine that you were seeing decoys rather than real cruisers.

But we don't know how long they could have kept powering the illusion. At that battle the League ships weren't finding the cruisers because the Lorelies ran out of power; and I seem to recall Honor using them against Raging Justice and got the impression those were in operation far longer than just a few seconds.


Still, trying to use them to explain away a sting of pre-deployed pods seems like it's going to fall apart shortly after the enemy returns fire. Those "cruisers" can't simply disappear, nor can they outrun the return fire -- but their illusion will collapse when they seem to sit there fat, dumb, and happy to be blown apart by Cataphracts without firing a single CM or PDLC in defense.

Jonathan_S wrote:The SLN, at combat range, thought they were able to start differentiating the Lorelies from the cruisers they'd already been tracking, out of the post-jamming quintupled targets, after several seconds; a process .

But just because they were more confident doesn't mean they were right -- nor do we know how high their confidence levels were.

Also, if they hadn't already had a baseline on those specific cruisers it probably would have been harder to differentiate them from the decoys. But generally the decoys were designed primarily to fool missiles in terminal acquisition, not full up warships. Still, without an existing baseline signature for each real cruiser in the system, and without even real cruisers to try to distinguish against the decoys, it'd probably be far harder to determine that you were seeing decoys rather than real cruisers.

But we don't know how long they could have kept powering the illusion. At that battle the League ships weren't finding the cruisers because the Lorelies ran out of power; and I seem to recall Honor using them against Raging Justice and got the impression those were in operation far longer than just a few seconds.

I don't remember Loreleis against Raging Justice. Maybe my memory is faulty here. I do remember freighters pretending to be SDs deeper into the system, though.

However, your pointing out of Hypatia actually reminded me that the Loreleis were powered up for a significant amount of time. You're right that after the Dazzlers the numbers quintupled.... from 9. The SLN task force thought all along that TG 110.1 was 9 cruisers (1 BC + 8 CA), but in reality they were only 5. There's a passage where RFC explains Kotouč's thinking that the SLN wouldn't have believed a higher number and would have thus looked for decoys, so 9 was a sweet spot that allowed the real ships to have a chance at not being targeted in the initial selection. It would also confuse the SLN tac sections when 35 more Loreleis came alive: if they could now tell that there were 40, they'd be scratching their heads trying to find those other 4 cruisers that had never been there.

I was going about with the information from the Battle of Ajay-Prime, which is in the same book, and we have Commodore Martin Lessem thinking that the Loreleis can't hope to match the emissions of a full heavy cruiser, but can match those of one attempting to be stealthy.

Still, trying to use them to explain away a sting of pre-deployed pods seems like it's going to fall apart shortly after the enemy returns fire. Those "cruisers" can't simply disappear, nor can they outrun the return fire -- but their illusion will collapse when they seem to sit there fat, dumb, and happy to be blown apart by Cataphracts without firing a single CM or PDLC in defense.

True, but if you've managed to force a salvo towards those decoys -- particularly if that's an alpha strike -- you should consider that a win. Forcing the enemy to spend their best shot away from you is good tactics.

I now think this is plausible, or at least was in the war against the SL. Against Haven or when the tech gap shrinks, probably not.