Question about Beowulf tactics

I was just thinking about how things may progress after the SLN attack on Beowulf in other parts of SL space. Out there the main tactic is the taking of wormhole termini/junctions and a lot of these are located outside of any restrictive hyper limits. So just what would a battle for a point in space like a terminus be like?


The group holding a terminus will have to defend that point in space but the attacking group can drop out of hyperspace at any distance and in any direction from the terminus. If they leave their hyper generators up they could easily jump back out if they needed to avoid a bunch of missiles coming their way from the terminus defensive fleet. But the defending fleet would not be able to move out of the way of any missiles coming their way if they intended to defend the junction infrastructure.

So, quite literally, the attacking force could adopt the tactic of dropping out of hyperspace at some location, closing on the terminus to the point where the defending force fires missiles, then the attacking force jumps back to hyperspace and then makes another approach from another direction until the defending force fires missiles then jump back to hyperspace. This process could repeat itself as many times as necessary to deplete the missile supply of the defending force. And through out this whole process the defending fleet would have to deal with missile attacks coming at them from any direction if the attacking force wold drop out of hyper close enough to launch missiles before they jumped back out.

The only way to counter this is if you had a group of ships that could jump in close enough to the attacking fleet to get off an effective attack before the attacking fleet could jump back to hyperspace. I get these images in my mind of current day "fire and maneuver" tank battles.

So what would be nice to see, as part of new technologies coming out of the Himphill/Foracker(?) collaboration in bolthole, would be the ability to make frequent and very accurate micro jumps. The result being that I could jump into the middle of an attacking force and get off a launch of missiles and a barrage of grazer shots and then jump right back out before the enemy could react and fire on me. Energy weapons would become important again. Battles around junctions would become complete rats nest of confusion and such fun to read about.

StealthSeeker wrote:I was just thinking about how things may progress after the SLN attack on Beowulf in other parts of SL space. Out there the main tactic is the taking of wormhole termini/junctions and a lot of these are located outside of any restrictive hyper limits. So just what would a battle for a point in space like a terminus be like?

The group holding a terminus will have to defend that point in space but the attacking group can drop out of hyperspace at any distance and in any direction from the terminus. If they leave their hyper generators up they could easily jump back out if they needed to avoid a bunch of missiles coming their way from the terminus defensive fleet. But the defending fleet would not be able to move out of the way of any missiles coming their way if they intended to defend the junction infrastructure.

So, quite literally, the attacking force could adopt the tactic of dropping out of hyperspace at some location, closing on the terminus to the point where the defending force fires missiles, then the attacking force jumps back to hyperspace and then makes another approach from another direction until the defending force fires missiles then jump back to hyperspace. This process could repeat itself as many times as necessary to deplete the missile supply of the defending force. And through out this whole process the defending fleet would have to deal with missile attacks coming at them from any direction if the attacking force wold drop out of hyper close enough to launch missiles before they jumped back out.

The only way to counter this is if you had a group of ships that could jump in close enough to the attacking fleet to get off an effective attack before the attacking fleet could jump back to hyperspace. I get these images in my mind of current day "fire and maneuver" tank battles.

So what would be nice to see, as part of new technologies coming out of the Himphill/Foracker(?) collaboration in bolthole, would be the ability to make frequent and very accurate micro jumps. The result being that I could jump into the middle of an attacking force and get off a launch of missiles and a barrage of grazer shots and then jump right back out before the enemy could react and fire on me. Energy weapons would become important again. Battles around junctions would become complete rats nest of confusion and such fun to read about.

Minor problem with that. The RMN can target your "pop in ships" from WAY outside the range that anyone can target theirs, and there's not much infrastructure out there that the RMN is interested in defending out there in Lacoon II territory. There's not even a golden BB solution you can use to take out the RMN ships without them getting a better shot in first.

If they leave their hyper generators up they could easily jump back out if they needed to avoid a bunch of missiles coming their way from the terminus defensive fleet.

Superdreadnoughts cannot go back into hyper immediately after transiting. It takes a SLN Scientist or Vega 12 minutes to fully recharge, and another 4 to boost into hyper. So if you hyper out inside missile range, you're committed to eating multiple missile salvos.

SWM wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Interesting legal point. Sending a fleet of the SLN to demand compliance is interesting given that Beowulf is a SOVEREIGN system. It has given proper notice of intent to hold the plebiscite and, in my opinion, be justified in telling the SL (its representatives and or the SLN) to stay the hell out of the system until the vote is taken. If- as we expect- the SL tries to inject it's military into the process and actualy cross the hyper limit, I believe Beowulf is within it's right (and necessity) of defending itself and it's population. Things will then get ugly.

I believe you are mistaken in what the SLN would be saying when (if) they arrive at Beowulf. They won't be saying "You must comply with our wishes." They will be saying "We are here to ensure that the plebiscite is held fairly. We have reason to believe that foreign operatives have infiltrated Beowulf with the intent of sabotaging or manipulating the vote." Then they will make sure that the vote result comes out the way they want.

The discussion taking place between the Mandarins in ART(p453) is fairly clear about the reasoning that will be used to justify the attack on Beowulf. The Mandarin's want to make the attack all about the security threat posed by Beowulf should it leave the SL rather than anything to do with the legality or not of Beowulf seceding.

(FROM ART: "Exactly." Kilokoltsov tipped back in his chair. "I think we need to get Kingsford in here, let him take a look at any military options we may have -workable military options, I mean- where Beowulf is concerned. If there's one that will work, I'm entirely in favor of using it, but not because they illegally seceded from the League. At this point what we need to do is to make it over the security threat to the League Beowulf represents because of its association with the League's avowed enemies. As Omosupe said, everybody knows about Beowulf's effective proximity to Manticore.)

SharkHunter wrote: Minor problem with that. The RMN can target your "pop in ships" from WAY outside the range that anyone can target theirs, and there's not much infrastructure out there that the RMN is interested in defending out there in Lacoon II territory. There's not even a golden BB solution you can use to take out the RMN ships without them getting a better shot in first.

The idea is that this new accurate multi-micro-jump technology is GA technology. And it would be used against SLN fleets attacking wormhole termini and their defensive fleets.

Duckk wrote:

If they leave their hyper generators up they could easily jump back out if they needed to avoid a bunch of missiles coming their way from the terminus defensive fleet.

Superdreadnoughts cannot go back into hyper immediately after transiting. It takes a SLN Scientist or Vega 12 minutes to fully recharge, and another 4 to boost into hyper. So if you hyper out inside missile range, you're committed to eating multiple missile salvos.

Darn, cold water on part of my parade. So that takes away the possibility of the SLN jumping out of hyper with in missile range and then jumping back out. But how would things work for a SLN fleet that approaches from a distance, preps for a jump during their approach, and then jumps as soon as the RMN fires missiles. Would this be a successful tactic to deplete missile stores? Or would the SLN ships still be caught in at least one missile salvo?

The new accurate multi-micro-jump technology is something I'd like to see developed in the GA from bolthole. Maybe it would be fitted to a smaller ship than an SD, maybe a destroyer or larger frigate, just so it had grazers. It pops in, gets off one energy weapon shot, and pops out. (fire and maneuver) It would really work out great for harassing the supply train of an enemy fleet.

Maybe it's not practical (darn), but its a really fun idea.

StealthSeeker wrote:I was just thinking about how things may progress after the SLN attack on Beowulf in other parts of SL space. Out there the main tactic is the taking of wormhole termini/junctions and a lot of these are located outside of any restrictive hyper limits. So just what would a battle for a point in space like a terminus be like?


The group holding a terminus will have to defend that point in space but the attacking group can drop out of hyperspace at any distance and in any direction from the terminus. If they leave their hyper generators up they could easily jump back out if they needed to avoid a bunch of missiles coming their way from the terminus defensive fleet. But the defending fleet would not be able to move out of the way of any missiles coming their way if they intended to defend the junction infrastructure.

As has been noted, hypergenerator cycle times aren't quite so fluid as to give you get-out-of-missiles-free cards at will.

Accurately landing precisely where you want to be relative to the terminus is tricky, especially if you don't emerge to get your bearings in the area before a final microjump. You'd really like to drop a few Scientist SD's in graser range of the upstart neobarbs with no warning whatever, but you cannot count on that. You can probably come closer to it, or have better odds of it happening, than the RMN commander really likes, granted, but if you count on that, you're almost certainly going to end up embarrassing and endangering yourself.

Popping in after a microjump within SLN powered missile range, without counting on hypering back out when the missiles start coming back, is a realistic goal, and it does give you a tactical situation better than the SLN should have come to expect by now. And the SLN could concentrate forces against any single terminus picket to generate some victory somewhere. But even then, the SLN could expect to pay cash for the victory, when the terminus pickets have missile pods, better EW, better missile defense, and better missiles.

For that matter, terminus pickets could have forces in hyper and rotate warm hypergenerators among the smaller picket ships, to go fetch reinforcements waiting in hyper, to emerge shortly thereafter at a location of their choice in the area. The SLN isn't likely to be looking nearby in the alpha or beta bands before they suffer another disaster or two, and hyperspace is foggy. That force could appear outside SLN missile range and within GA missile range and pop the SLN attackers freely, while the normal space picket can freely run into hyper as soon as their hypergenerators allow - or simply concentrate on surviving in normal space while the ambush (counter-ambush?) force does the killing.

So, quite literally, the attacking force could adopt the tactic of dropping out of hyperspace at some location, closing on the terminus to the point where the defending force fires missiles, then the attacking force jumps back to hyperspace and then makes another approach from another direction until the defending force fires missiles then jump back to hyperspace. This process could repeat itself as many times as necessary to deplete the missile supply of the defending force. And through out this whole process the defending fleet would have to deal with missile attacks coming at them from any direction if the attacking force wold drop out of hyper close enough to launch missiles before they jumped back out.

The only way to counter this is if you had a group of ships that could jump in close enough to the attacking fleet to get off an effective attack before the attacking fleet could jump back to hyperspace. I get these images in my mind of current day "fire and maneuver" tank battles.

So what would be nice to see, as part of new technologies coming out of the Himphill/Foracker(?) collaboration in bolthole, would be the ability to make frequent and very accurate micro jumps. The result being that I could jump into the middle of an attacking force and get off a launch of missiles and a barrage of grazer shots and then jump right back out before the enemy could react and fire on me. Energy weapons would become important again. Battles around junctions would become complete rats nest of confusion and such fun to read about.

I think that hyperspace secondary picket amounts to the fast closing force you have in mind, and is already a part of current plans and consistent with hypergenerator cycle times on both sides. Faster hypergenerator cycle times would certainly be handy - they're the chief bottleneck for emergency missile evasion outside the hyperlimit - but I wouldn't count on them popping up soon and planning can offer you some of those advantages already.

Darn, cold water on part of my parade. So that takes away the possibility of the SLN jumping out of hyper with in missile range and then jumping back out. But how would things work for a SLN fleet that approaches from a distance, preps for a jump during their approach, and then jumps as soon as the RMN fires missiles. Would this be a successful tactic to deplete missile stores? Or would the SLN ships still be caught in at least one missile salvo?

I'm sure the RMN forces would catch on the first time they see the SLN ships disappear into hyper, and thus won't bother to engage until they know they have a shot.

The new accurate multi-micro-jump technology is something I'd like to see developed in the GA from bolthole. Maybe it would be fitted to a smaller ship than an SD, maybe a destroyer or larger frigate, just so it had grazers. It pops in, gets off one energy weapon shot, and pops out. (fire and maneuver) It would really work out great for harassing the supply train of an enemy fleet.

Even though destroyer hyper generators cycle faster, you're still looking at a few minutes of sticking around in real space waiting to escape back into hyper. That's more than enough time to potshot a dinky DD or FG. It also presupposes that one can achieve a hitherto unknown increase in navigational accuracy and control over hyper transits.

Duckk wrote:Even though destroyer hyper generators cycle faster, you're still looking at a few minutes of sticking around in real space waiting to escape back into hyper. That's more than enough time to potshot a dinky DD or FG. It also presupposes that one can achieve a hitherto unknown increase in navigational accuracy and control over hyper transits.

Yep, that's why it would have to be a "new accurate multi-micro-jump" technology. But its all a pie in the sky dream anyway. The picture in my mind of this happening is very enjoyable.

There is already some microjumping going on in the honorverse. IIRC, in the BOM, Honor microjumped from the junction to the position where she engaged Chin's ships.

I think therehas been some discussion about microjumping Truman's SDPs on toward Beowulf in the event of a SLN attack. At any rate it wasn't my idea.

Don