****A Call to Insurrection Spoiler****

Just a comment on the legality of Manticore and the Andermani hauling stuff away after acquiring it from Walther, I think that's covered under the laws of salvage. So it is probably legal.

As for parts, I would think that they should take all they can carry. It probably would be useful back home. Casey might not be able to haul much, but every litter bit would probably help, given the RMN's spare parts situation.

Don

-

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Not after the Volsung invasion. After this, it was clear there was someone with deep funds and serious hardware to take over Manticore. However, he and his supporters came to all the wrong conclusions in the aftermath of the battle: they concluded that small ships could swarm bigger ones. I don't think he was greedy enough to willingly and knowingly compromise national security: don't attribute to malice what can be best explained by stupidity.

Here's the thing: given the naval battles we've seen, he's not completely wrong. Given the number of missiles fired and the relative firepower of a battlecruiser, destroyers and corvettes can indeed swarm a bigger opponent. That's far more difficult in Honor's time (even at OBS), given the presence of rapid-firing grasers and the number of missiles a BC or DN could fire in a salvo. Not to mention the laserheads making missiles attack from much further range.

But the butcher's bill would be very big. It would probably take 10x the number of smaller platforms to swarm a properly-protected BC or two. That's something David has said: the RMN (in Honor's time) knows this and wouldn't waste spacers' lives like that.

So my thinking is that Breakwater believes his own arguments, but had also failed to take them to the logical conclusion because he is not a naval strategist. And even then, the Exchequer would still need to fund 30-50 ships between the MPARS and RMN. In proper condition and with full autocannon loads.

Yeah, even the battleships could take relatively few hits. They weren't quite glass cannon, but much more-so than a DN of Honor's time. And they have many fewer missile launchers.

So if you had enough smaller ships that the enemy couldn't successfully hit them all in a few salvos then you probably have enough to send back at least as many missiles as they're sending your way.

Each of your little ships would be very unlikely to survive even a single solid hit - but solid hits are a bit of luck and if you've got enough little ships you might actually be losing launchers and defenses slower than a small fleet of large ships.
But it's attritional warfare and hell on the crew of those small unsurvivable ships.

(Plus it sucks for projecting power -- the little ships wouldn't have the endurance for the months of travel it takes back then between major powers. So you'd lack the ability to deter an enemy out of concern that you might counterattack their system if they attacked you and failed)

It occurs to me that given their inability to control missiles or CMs through their sidewalls, that they'd really love something like keyhole to act as a fire control relay while they're turned.

Wouldn't let them easily launch additional missiles without lowering their sidewall, but might make them more survivable defensively. And they wouldn't have to cut control links to their attack birds if they turned to interpose sidewalls; not if those control links could run through the relay.

(However I'm not sure if they've got the tractor/pressor tech to keep such a relay in position as they maneuver, or the beamed power tech to keep them running for long. And since they have to import all their impeller rings it'd seem too expensive to make them free flying, even if you could address the power issues)


Along that vein I almost wonder if it'd make sense to give ships, at least in your home system, unmanned escorts with just am autocannon (I'm assuming CMs would be too large to carry on an affordable). Again, its probably too expensive to give such ultimately expendable shields their own impellers, but since they seem to mostly cut acceleration during combat a good reaction drive could let you push the platform out towards the enemy as you prepared for missile combat.

Position them down the threat axis and enlarge you point defense envelope. Maybe even use in combination with a relay and have their autocannon engage the missiles after you pitch or yaw ship to interpose your wedge or sidewalls.

Jonathan_S wrote:Each of your little ships would be very unlikely to survive even a single solid hit - but solid hits are a bit of luck and if you've got enough little ships you might actually be losing launchers and defenses slower than a small fleet of large ships.
But it's attritional warfare and hell on the crew of those small unsurvivable ships.

This is a cold but it valid calculation: if you're invaded 1 out of 100 years, but in the 99 others you need search and rescue and patrol craft, then funding a 50-small-ship fleet for 100 years pays off. Their argument was that a BC can only be in one place at a time, so if for the price of one BC they can field 1 DD and 4 CT, they can patrol 5x more volume and be available for many more times the number of civilian craft in distress.

So long as you turn back that once-a-century invasion.

But this is again lacking the natural follow-up thought: if in that invasion, you lose 90% of your fleet, you're left with 5 ships, all of them small. You can't turn back a follow-on invasion that arrives before you rebuild. And where are you going to get those ships from? It takes 8 months to place an order for impellers in the League, 8 months for the impeller ring to arrive, plus however long the build time is and the backlog in the supplier (unless you're willing to pay a premium to jump ahead of everyone else). Haven is closer, at just 4 months each way. But if making the impeller ring takes 4 months, that's 12 months until the rings arrive.

So when news of the invasion reach opportunists, they could move before the RMN and MPARS have sufficient assets to deter them.

At a minimum, the SKM would need a mutual defence treaty with the Andermani and Haven both, so those would send some ships in time of need.

(Plus it sucks for projecting power -- the little ships wouldn't have the endurance for the months of travel it takes back then between major powers. So you'd lack the ability to deter an enemy out of concern that you might counterattack their system if they attacked you and failed)

From their point of view, that's a feature not a bug.

They explicitly said that they don't want to anger Haven or the Andermani by having a navy that can project force. Especially not the Andermani, because that could've made Gustav decide to nip the threat in the bud and simply annex Manticore.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Each of your little ships would be very unlikely to survive even a single solid hit - but solid hits are a bit of luck and if you've got enough little ships you might actually be losing launchers and defenses slower than a small fleet of large ships.
But it's attritional warfare and hell on the crew of those small unsurvivable ships.

This is a cold but it valid calculation: if you're invaded 1 out of 100 years, but in the 99 others you need search and rescue and patrol craft, then funding a 50-small-ship fleet for 100 years pays off. Their argument was that a BC can only be in one place at a time, so if for the price of one BC they can field 1 DD and 4 CT, they can patrol 5x more volume and be available for many more times the number of civilian craft in distress.

So long as you turn back that once-a-century invasion.

But this is again lacking the natural follow-up thought: if in that invasion, you lose 90% of your fleet, you're left with 5 ships, all of them small. You can't turn back a follow-on invasion that arrives before you rebuild. And where are you going to get those ships from? It takes 8 months to place an order for impellers in the League, 8 months for the impeller ring to arrive, plus however long the build time is and the backlog in the supplier (unless you're willing to pay a premium to jump ahead of everyone else). Haven is closer, at just 4 months each way. But if making the impeller ring takes 4 months, that's 12 months until the rings arrive.

So when news of the invasion reach opportunists, they could move before the RMN and MPARS have sufficient assets to deter them.

At a minimum, the SKM would need a mutual defence treaty with the Andermani and Haven both, so those would send some ships in time of need.

(Plus it sucks for projecting power -- the little ships wouldn't have the endurance for the months of travel it takes back then between major powers. So you'd lack the ability to deter an enemy out of concern that you might counterattack their system if they attacked you and failed)

From their point of view, that's a feature not a bug.

They explicitly said that they don't want to anger Haven or the Andermani by having a navy that can project force. Especially not the Andermani, because that could've made Gustav decide to nip the threat in the bud and simply annex Manticore.

Humm...Given that Manticore and Haven have been friends and reliable partners in the hunt for pirates, I would think that Haven would welcome a strengthened ally and partner better able to take care of itself. As for the Andermani, it has already been stated that Manticore is much too far away for them to spend much time worrying about. Not on the Horizon of the emperor's interest.

On the subject of big ships v. little big ships won out for reasons already mentioned in this thread. Too big at this point wouldn't be good. Battleships in usable numbers would be more than Manticore could sustain at this time. But say, a half dozen modern BCs with a corresponding increase in lighter combatants would put Manticore beyond the reach of most merc groups, esp. those operating in the shadows. It would be fun to see what kind of numbers you guys come up with.

Let's face it. The Volsungs should have been able to have conquered Manticore. Had they pressed home their attack, they would have. They had more than enough firepower. Incompetence coupled with lack of experience in dealing with a near peer adversary did them in.

So how much navy should Manticore plan for in the near to intermediate term future?

Don

-

Delivery systems are not as critical as the missiles they carry.
So an emerging star nation like Manticore could bolster their professional Navy with fitted "for" not "with" mining ships that can quickly pick up a couple of missiles on preinstalled hard points. Sure they will have limited control, and possibly survivability, but with the primitive defences of the time a relatively high number of missiles from different vectors will be a shock.
This would have to be coordinated under a single command though.

Daryl wrote:Delivery systems are not as critical as the missiles they carry.
So an emerging star nation like Manticore could bolster their professional Navy with fitted "for" not "with" mining ships that can quickly pick up a couple of missiles on preinstalled hard points. Sure they will have limited control, and possibly survivability, but with the primitive defences of the time a relatively high number of missiles from different vectors will be a shock.
This would have to be coordinated under a single command though.

That is interesting... Building on your idea a bit, maybe something more like Q ships with anti missile defenses to increase the survivability of the crews. To be actually useful, however, the crews would need to be trained to function in that role as well as being immediately deployable. Also the ships would need to be available upon demand and not scattered across the system doing their own thing when someone like the Volsungs comes to call...

Don

-

Daryl wrote:Delivery systems are not as critical as the missiles they carry.
So an emerging star nation like Manticore could bolster their professional Navy with fitted "for" not "with" mining ships that can quickly pick up a couple of missiles on preinstalled hard points. Sure they will have limited control, and possibly survivability, but with the primitive defences of the time a relatively high number of missiles from different vectors will be a shock.
This would have to be coordinated under a single command though.

A problem with this is the low acceleration the mining ships would have.

We saw in the fight at Tomlinson that missile performance is so low relative to warship acceleration that an canny attacker with an acceleration advantage can contrive to launch their missiles and then brake hard enough that their missiles outrange the return fire. (Which only works because the warships acceleration is sufficient that they can both have the base velocity to extend their missile's range and also the ability to avoid that base velocity then causing them to coast into the powered range envelope of the enemy; even though deceleration didn't begin until launching a couple salvos).

Since dedicated warships would have an acceleration advantage over your basic civilian ship, like a mining one, you're unlikely to get good use out of those strapped on missiles. Either you hold them and hope your minimal defenses allow a useful number of mining ships to survive the enemy's first salvos, until they come into your missile envelope, or you have to launch them before the enemy's opening salvos land -- knowing your missiles will be ballistic, and thus far less dangerous, once they reach the enemy.

But if you build your equipped for but not with mining ships with military grade propulsion then they're expensive enough that it's probably a false economy not to build in military grade sidewalls, armor, and point defense.

Haven isn't that close to Manticore and the Andermani are a long way away so for them to be effective in beating off an invasion attempt, either (or both ) would have to post a ship or two to the Manticore system....and that isn't going to happen short of Manticore getting really credible advice notice of an attack and sending off a successful request to H or A for help. Not exactly rapid response.
MPARS could provide more ships but the question becomes from where do your source them and then where do you deploy them. That whole Patrol and Rescue part of the mission means that you going to have most of the active ships out where the mining and processing is going on and perhaps a couple relative to the projected most dangerous approach to Manticore given the dual system orbital dynamics. The RMN at least has hyper capable but not MPARS. On the other hand you can put a pair of box launchers and almost anything that you can make comparable to a MPARS frigate and - with training and sensors and the system net (to be further developed) they can be a threat that must be honored by any attacking force. Of course they would also be essentialy eggshells going into combat but Breakwater seems to also look on the loss of MPARS ships as point in his ledger for glory.

The real question becomes how much can the Star Kingdom afford to put into both putting existing ships back into commission (and bring maintenance up to spec on those already there) and what can it do to add more modern/capable ships to the RMN?

The inpeller and other hyper capable ship building capability is a chicken/egg discussion. If you can profitably build starships for export and for domestic use, you can use one variant of that ability to build your own warships.

n7axw wrote:Humm...Given that Manticore and Haven have been friends and reliable partners in the hunt for pirates, I would think that Haven would welcome a strengthened ally and partner better able to take care of itself. As for the Andermani, it has already been stated that Manticore is much too far away for them to spend much time worrying about. Not on the Horizon of the emperor's interest.

Well, yes, but what those governments have said is not what mattered to Breakwater and his supporters. It's what they thought those governments were thinking, not what they said. In their minds, Manticore having a large Navy would mean it becomes a threat and therefore subject to pre-emptive attack.

Do note Haven is farther than New Berlin (4 months vs 2.5). That'll be the case even with the Gregor and Trevor's Star termini of the Junction.

That is interesting... Building on your idea a bit, maybe something more like Q ships with anti missile defenses to increase the survivability of the crews. To be actually useful, however, the crews would need to be trained to function in that role as well as being immediately deployable. Also the ships would need to be available upon demand and not scattered across the system doing their own thing when someone like the Volsungs comes to call...

Q-Ships for your own system don't make sense. If you're going to build a ship with military-grade impellers, sidewall, some hard-points for missiles, and non-negligible armour, you may as well build it as warship hull. A Q-ship can't be used for mining or hauling a lot of freight, so a good scouting would be able to tell it apart from all the actual mining ships and freighters.

It's going to cost nearly as much as a warship and it won't provide the deterrence factor of being an over warship.