Attacking Darius:

penny wrote:Indeed Phillies. I pointed out long time ago that his idea of a fort or fortress is not a fort or fortress. Fortified position is the mainstay of a fort. If a fort can not hold out for at least a week, I'd say, then it is NOT a fortified position.

Jonathan_S wrote:Sure - it should be able to feed its crew and fuel its reactors for a reasonable length of time.

Though that doesn't really reduce the frequency of resupply trips -- because you'd want to keep the forts' supplies pretty close to topped up. That way if the enemy does attack all the forts have close to their maximum supply levels already aboard.

(If they could hold, say, 6 weeks of supplies it'd be pretty stupid to wait over 5 weeks before before resupplying them. They're sitting right there, just top things off every day or three and then you don't need to worry about getting caught short on supplies)

tlb wrote:In this style of warfare, a fort (particularly in the home system) is not expected to withstand a siege; because if the invaders can set up a siege, then the mobile forces have already been defeated. A fort is intended to hold a strategic position, such as a wormhole, long enough to be relieved by the manned ships which should have a combined offensive power greater than any fort.

Strangely at Galton there were no manned mobile forces. Note that for Manticore, this includes all those forces that are just a wormhole away.

penny wrote:I agree. So a fort should be able to hold a position for at least a week - or at the very least, days - until relief forces can get to Manticore.

In the Battle of Manticore, that was less than two full days (if memory serves). If this requires a week, I doubt any fort could stand. Galton's forts did not last four days.

tlb wrote:In this style of warfare, a fort (particularly in the home system) is not expected to withstand a siege; because if the invaders can set up a siege, then the mobile forces have already been defeated. A fort is intended to hold a strategic position, such as a wormhole, long enough to be relieved by the manned ships which should have a combined offensive power greater than any fort.

Strangely at Galton there were no manned mobile forces. Note that for Manticore, this includes all those forces that are just a wormhole away.

Actually at Galton there were mobile manned - some SDs and SD(P)s, and some LACs. Gail's simulations have Alpha System (aka Galton) a defensive fleet of "less than sixty superdreadnoughts, less than a quarter of them pod-layers"; and Tremaine's scouting of "El Dorado" detected "at least fifty superdreadnoughts to support those fortresses, although the drones, confined to the outer reaches of the star system in the name of stealthiness, had been unable to tell them how many—if any—of them were pod-laying designs". (Later the GA fleet determines that the SDs/SD(P)s break down into "about three classes")
However those mobile forces weren't on a scale commensurate with the number and power of forts the system boasted.

And they were so irrelevant, in the face of 200+ SD(P)s, that RFC doesn't seem to have bothered to write up their deaths -- which logically must have happened at some point during the 3 day bombardment of the forts.



Under MDM SD(P) combat you're right that a siege doesn't seem likely. But I could see under the SDM paradigm that it sometimes might -- having to summon heavier mobile forces from a nodal base; or recall them from an offensive operation. If your existing mobile forces are too light to fight the attack, but your forts are strong enough to keep it off your orbitals, you might pull back your heavier ships to supplement the forts then send your CLs and maybe CAs to picket the outer system and force the besieging forces to divert escorts to protect any supply ships they might need, while you send some couriers or DDs to yell for help.

Mind you, that'd mean the enemy misjudged the firepower they needed to bring -- but it might happen.

penny wrote:
Strangely at Galton there were no manned mobile forces. Note that for Manticore, this includes all those forces that are just a wormhole away.

I agree. So a fort should be able to hold a position for at least a week - or at the very least, days - until relief forces can get to Manticore.[/quote]

Please note I never said forts couldn't hold a week - I said they do not have MONTHS of endurance. Nor should they have to, under normal conditions, a Fort should be able to rotate through alert and off alert posturing to do routine maintenance and resupply.

With a dozen forts, you could easily have 2 undergoing a relaxed posture at any time, with the other 10 at some level of alert. Depending on your alert posture and threat level, usually you would have a spectrum of alert status like we had during the cold war, with 2-4 units at full readiness, 2-4 at "+5" (crews in their skin suits), 2-4 at "+15" (Crews doing more relax tasks, similiar to a normal ship's posture), and 2-4 offline with crews relaxed and a repair/replenish cycle going on. Depending on the current threat level, you would have more Fortss on one end of the spectrum or the other. You can't have crews and hardware at full alert 24/7 for weeks on end; people and parts will burn out.

Theemile wrote:
Please note I never said forts couldn't hold a week - I said they do not have MONTHS of endurance. Nor should they have to, under normal conditions, a Fort should be able to rotate through alert and off alert posturing to do routine maintenance and resupply.

With a dozen forts, you could easily have 2 undergoing a relaxed posture at any time, with the other 10 at some level of alert. Depending on your alert posture and threat level, usually you would have a spectrum of alert status like we had during the cold war, with 2-4 units at full readiness, 2-4 at "+5" (crews in their skin suits), 2-4 at "+15" (Crews doing more relax tasks, similiar to a normal ship's posture), and 2-4 offline with crews relaxed and a repair/replenish cycle going on. Depending on the current threat level, you would have more Fortss on one end of the spectrum or the other. You can't have crews and hardware at full alert 24/7 for weeks on end; people and parts will burn out.

The same thing I was thinking. In fact, I had prepared this post ...

The Galton System's Order of Battle consisted of over thirty orbital fortresses. The smallest was as large as those covering the MWJ. There were fifty SDs to support those fortresses. Expect that number to be dim by comparison to Darius.

They also had a dozen massive industrial platforms. In the face of all of that infrastructure, if their hardware was limited by the powers that be, then the powers that be must be, themselves, very powerful.

Robert A. Woodward wrote:The GSNSS Francis Crick was described as "somewhere north of 48,000,000 tons" (during Benjamin Detweiler's visit there in the March 1923 PD section of _To End in Fire_).

Francis was an obese babe wasn't she? Did she still have tactical mobility?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:LDs definitely are rear area masters, but I just cannot agree that that is their only reason for living.

I can agree that it makes little sense for them to have only one reason for living. That's a horrible design, because it's an expensive ship. If an enemy can overcome that Achilles heel, then it becomes useless.

The problem is we don't know what else it is good for and it's hard to speculate, because of lack of information. I say they have other uses in mind which we don't know about, which means they have other advantages or mitigations for the weaknesses that we equally don't know about.

And yet I wouldn't be surprised if they have a single use in mind, because they were created at the behest of the Detweilers, not proper military strategians.

Huh? Wha? Huh?

Leonard Detweiler is a strategist extraordinaire. He played with huge building blocks of ceramecrete, not Legos. You might need to research a good recipe for crow.

penny wrote:Leonard Detweiler is a strategist extraordinaire. He played with huge building blocks of ceramecrete, not Legos.

Do you really mean Leonard Detweiler? The one from six centuries ago.

penny wrote:Francis was an obese babe wasn't she? Did she still have tactical mobility?

You have previous mentioned that the forts had wedges; but movement with a wedge requires one end fully open, which would not be healthy with the number of missiles that the GA was throwing its way.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Francis was an obese babe wasn't she? Did she still have tactical mobility?

You have previous mentioned that the forts had wedges; but movement with a wedge requires one end fully open, which would not be healthy with the number of missiles that the GA was throwing its way.

Francis Crick is 48M tons. I thought there was a tonnage limit to remain mobile. I thought 48M tons exceeded the limit.

penny wrote:Francis was an obese babe wasn't she? Did she still have tactical mobility?

tlb wrote:You have previous mentioned that the forts had wedges; but movement with a wedge requires one end fully open, which would not be healthy with the number of missiles that the GA was throwing its way.

penny wrote:Francis Crick is 48M tons. I thought there was a tonnage limit to remain mobile. I thought 48M tons exceeded the limit.

The only tonnage limit that I am aware of involves the compensator (drop off at ~8.5 Mtons has been the limiting factor in hyper ships), but it is still possible to move at much lower acceleration using grav plates. But the LD's are going to be bigger than 8.5 Mtons, which will limit their acceleration in normal space and particularly in gravity waves.

penny wrote:I assume the GA will find the system. I don't mean to suggest the MA will be able to prevent the inhabitable planet from being detected. If it even is an inhabitable planet. Do we have textev? Remember, these are genetically engineered humans developed to withstand harsh environments. Isn't that partly what genetic uplift is all about? Providing more options to mankind?

It's inhabited.

It doesn't matter if other people would find it cosy and nice. What matters is the amount of artificial emissions coming from that planet, which indicates that there are people and activity there. I suppose you could try and dupe the scout into thinking that they'd found an advanced, technological alien civilisation, but the consequence of that is that everyone would come to Darius to see the new aliens. No secret would withstand that pressure.

But yes, we hear it's nice for human life. It's compared to Galton and described as effectively a paradise.

And we have never heard about any type of humans breathing atmospheres that aren't an oxygen-nitrogen one.

Do we even know whether the spider drive has anywhere near the MTBF of wedges? The spider drive may not have as serious a problem with maintenance issues as wedges. It may be fine to operate the spider drive 24/7. At any rate, the Mean Time Between Failure numbers may be considerably higher for spider drives.

Unlikely, but possible. Even then, it's not an infinite MTBF (never fails), so you must do some type of preventative maintenance. Given that the spider hasn't existed for more than 10 or 15 years, they can't know that the MTBF is longer than that. And you don't know when GA is going to drop for a visit, so you must be at your best readiness in the worst case scenario. That means they should do maintenance.

And if that system is so full of spider drives as you make it to be, there will be dozens of ships and installations at any point in time undergoing maintenance.

A spider fort is already stealthy if it does not, naturally, deploy a wedge. The ships of the RMN's Home Fleet could not be detected while in orbit by an attacker hypering in until they brought up their wedges. A spider drive fort does not have wedges to bring up. And even if the spider drive is not activated, the fort is stealthy anyway, by range and lack of a wedge. No?

No, because such a thing doesn't exist. There's no point in having a stealth fort.

That thing needs to have good defences and there's nothing better than wedges and bubblewalls. Those are not stealthy at all (they are some of the brightest things known to humankind). And a fort needs to defend a position, so it can't really choose its location for best stealth. If you keep it close to a main target, where all eyes are looking at, the stealth will get penetrated.

Forts need to fire something, either in offence or defence. Maybe it could only fire graser torpedoes, but I don't think that's likely. And just what is it going to fire in defence, should a missile come close? They can't afford a single missile deciding that there's something juicy over here, because the damage compromises the stealth too.

So a stealth thing isn't a fort. And since there doesn't appear to be an upper limit on spider drive ships, then that wouldn't be a fort, but a ship.

Drones will not be able to detect spider drives in a fly-by. GR isn't a miracle worker or an apparition detector.

Just don't stand in front of the planet (from any angle).