Question about Beowulf tactics

fallsfromtrees wrote:Right - even if Mycroft isn't operational, it becomes feasible to move a dozen Invictus SD(P)s into Beowulf orbit, assuming the secession passes.

As long as the system defense missile portion of Mycroft is in place, one or two Invictus class SD(p)s are all that would be needed. But by the same token, only one or two Mycroft control platforms would be necessary for the system to be functional.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

This is exactly how I am hearing the concern Honor is expressing as well as the political situation. There is a real window of vulnerability here that is cause for concern.

Actually in the interest of keeping our ducks in a row here (quack, quack,) the actual window of vulnerability is either until Mycroft is up and going or until the vote of succession, presuming the vote carries....whichever comes first. When Mycroft becomes functional, the vulnerability is past. OR once the vote is over, the GA can place a fleet in Beowulf orbit to protect the planet and its infrastructure. The window ends that way too.

In her speech before the League Assembly, Hadley announced that the vote would occur two months from that moment in time. IIRC, the Assembly voted out its resolution to investigate Beowulf almost simutaneously --within a day or so-- of the royal wedding. So there you have your window of vilnerability, a maximim of almost exactly two months.

Don

Right - even if Mycroft isn't operational, it becomes feasible to move a dozen Invictus SD(P)s into Beowulf orbit, assuming the secession passes. If it fails, they just announce that to the SLN fleet, which hopefully has orders to gracefully leave under those circumstances - if they don't it could cause a serious backlash.

If I read you right, you're saying that if the vote to secede did fail and the SLN fleet shows up, the SLN would be asked to leave and if it didn't, there would be a serious backlash? Why? If Beowulf stays in the SL, it is up to the SLN to help protect it from the SEM/GA, which happens to have a wormhole junction in the system. It is literally a part of the SLN's mandate to stay and protect the SL, which would include Beowulf, and there is no way Beowulf could legally refuse since a state of war now exists between the SL and SEM/GA. So in this instance, the SLN is what has the legal authority to commandeer Beowulf's SDF and give orders as per the rules of war in the SLN (the fact there was no vote to go to war is no longer relevant. Manticore declared war on the SL when the SLN attacked Manticore, so the Beowulf Diktates and SDF commanders objections are now null and void and legally (in all ways) superseded by the authority of the SLN).

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

This is exactly how I am hearing the concern Honor is expressing as well as the political situation. There is a real window of vulnerability here that is cause for concern.

Actually in the interest of keeping our ducks in a row here (quack, quack,) the actual window of vulnerability is either until Mycroft is up and going or until the vote of succession, presuming the vote carries....whichever comes first. When Mycroft becomes functional, the vulnerability is past. OR once the vote is over, the GA can place a fleet in Beowulf orbit to protect the planet and its infrastructure. The window ends that way too.

In her speech before the League Assembly, Hadley announced that the vote would occur two months from that moment in time. IIRC, the Assembly voted out its resolution to investigate Beowulf almost simutaneously --within a day or so-- of the royal wedding. So there you have your window of vilnerability, a maximim of almost exactly two months.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:Right - even if Mycroft isn't operational, it becomes feasible to move a dozen Invictus SD(P)s into Beowulf orbit, assuming the secession passes. If it fails, they just announce that to the SLN fleet, which hopefully has orders to gracefully leave under those circumstances - if they don't it could cause a serious backlash.

Zakharra wrote:
If I read you right, you're saying that if the vote to secede did fail and the SLN fleet shows up, the SLN would be asked to leave and if it didn't, there would be a serious backlash? Why? If Beowulf stays in the SL, it is up to the SLN to help protect it from the SEM/GA, which happens to have a wormhole junction in the system. It is literally a part of the SLN's mandate to stay and protect the SL, which would include Beowulf, and there is no way Beowulf could legally refuse since a state of war now exists between the SL and SEM/GA. So in this instance, the SLN is what has the legal authority to commandeer Beowulf's SDF and give orders as per the rules of war in the SLN (the fact there was no vote to go to war is no longer relevant. Manticore declared war on the SL when the SLN attacked Manticore, so the Beowulf Diktates and SDF commanders objections are now null and void and legally (in all ways) superseded by the authority of the SLN).

You are probably right, although I consider this to be a low probability event. Should such happen, I would expect there to be a good deal of sabotage of whatever missile lines have been set up to prevent the technology from falling into SLN hands, and Beowulf itself would deserve whatever befell it for acting so stupidly. Wouldn't even surprise me that there was a significant departure of people through the wormhole to Manticore.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Hi fallsfromtrees,

This is exactly how I am hearing the concern Honor is expressing as well as the political situation. There is a real window of vulnerability here that is cause for concern.

Actually in the interest of keeping our ducks in a row here (quack, quack,) the actual window of vulnerability is either until Mycroft is up and going or until the vote of succession, presuming the vote carries....whichever comes first. When Mycroft becomes functional, the vulnerability is past. OR once the vote is over, the GA can place a fleet in Beowulf orbit to protect the planet and its infrastructure. The window ends that way too.

In her speech before the League Assembly, Hadley announced that the vote would occur two months from that moment in time. IIRC, the Assembly voted out its resolution to investigate Beowulf almost simutaneously --within a day or so-- of the royal wedding. So there you have your window of vilnerability, a maximim of almost exactly two months.

Don

Right - even if Mycroft isn't operational, it becomes feasible to move a dozen Invictus SD(P)s into Beowulf orbit, assuming the secession passes. If it fails, they just announce that to the SLN fleet, which hopefully has orders to gracefully leave under those circumstances - if they don't it could cause a serious backlash.

fallsfromtrees: I'm not sure where your are going with your posts.

The whole puzzle/conundrum is that the people of Beowulf would tend to vote against which ever side would attempt to influence the outcome of the vote by placing ships in orbit of Beowulf. The poling that has been done indicates that well over 80% of the people of Beowulf want to withdraw from the SL. But the vote isn't going to happen for 2 months. Beowulf's defenses will not be complete for at least 2 months time leaving them vulnerable for that 2 month period. Manticore would like to help defend Beowulf during those 2 months but can take the chance of souring the vote. So the 64-million-dollar-question is, how to supply security to Beowulf during that 2 month period with out putting ships in orbit of Beowulf.

The mandarins of SL want to send a fleet to capture Beowulf before the vote is taken. Their plan is to claim they are taking an action against Beowulf to maintain security of the SL. And in doing so are trying to avoid having to deal with the whole succession situation. But the intended message delivered between the lines is that nobody is going to be allowed to leave the SL. But to be able for events to support what they intend to claim, they have to attack before the vote is taken in 2 months time.

So,... It looks like its inevitable that the SLN will attack Beowulf before the succession vote but Beowulf won't be secure until some time frame shortly after the vote is taken. So how does Manticore put assets in place that can help defend Beowulf with out putting any ships in Beowulf? But they still have to be close enough to respond in time if help is requested. The ships at the terminus are to far out to prevent SLN ships from reaching Beowulf if the SLN drops out of hyper space on the hyper limit and makes a dash for the planet.

So how do you not have ships in orbit but yet have them "close" enough to be effective in preventing the SLN from reaching Beowulf??? The only way I can think of is to have ships waiting in hyperspace that can drop out into real space right behind the SLN once the SLN crosses the hyper limit. They should be able to close on and destroy any SLN fleet before it can reach Beowulf.

I'm looking for better ideas, anybody got one to share??

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Given any imbalance in forces, flanking is a critical maneuver because the flanked force will continually be defeated in detail. In land terms, I'll give you ten divisions of men to my four, so long as I can put preposition enough of my forces on your flank and with advantage of position on the field. Give me that and I'll chew your forces up one division at a time because you can't shoot through your own soldiers to get to mine.

In spatial terms, consider the Battle of Sidemore. Honor prepositioned the Protector's own in the one system (just vacated) where there was NO chance of the Havenite's finding them, and that turned out to be at 180 degrees to the rear. I'm sure she would have much rather placed them in a position that would have "flanked" Tourville's turn, because there would have been no way for Foraker's schemes to defend all ships from angular fire. In turn that would have kept Tourville's fleet under more intensive and successful bombardment all the way to the hyper limit, in turn possibly forcing a full surrender rather than a third of the ships escaping.

It would be like having to gallop towards a field of machine gun to escape the cannon fire that's tearing your calvary charge to shreds. No good options.

In the battle of Sidemore, they lured the enemy into the hyper limit, just as I described in an earlier post. That is a different situation.

My understanding is that if you have the smaller force, splitting it up to flank the enemy only works if you have the protection of cover. You don't have cover in space. Splitting up into a flanking force, especially outside the hyper-limit where the enemy could hyper out to try to outflank you in turn, just opens you up to the possibility of defeat in detail.

That was more or less my thought.

If you aren't very careful with your possitioning you give the enemy the chance to roll wedge against one of your forces so they can focus on pounding the other. (Admittedly this works poorly against Apollo -- but if you're beating up on baby chicks you hardly need to bother 'flanking')

Plus I get the impression that defensive fire's effectiveness scales non-linearly (and not just because the larger force is less susceptible to saturation). So each of your forces seems to be less well defended than if you grouped all your ships into a single mutually defensive wall.


That's not to say that sometimes a second force isn't a good idea. But it tends to require careful positioning, sneakiness, and luck. And even then it can often be a short term advantage. (See when White Haven nearly got mousetrapped by a second force way back at Nightingale(?) which if the trap had come off would have attempted a down the throat initial surprise salvo, and then forced him to accept at least a brief energy range fight without the ability to impose wedge against all the Peeps -- those were hiding ahead of him, not off a flank, but still one example where splitting forces almost worked)

StealthSeeker wrote:So,... It looks like its inevitable that the SLN will attack Beowulf before the succession vote but Beowulf won't be secure until some time frame shortly after the vote is taken. So how does Manticore put assets in place that can help defend Beowulf with out putting any ships in Beowulf?

Even without a full Mycroft installation to control them, the Beowulf SDF can still control sufficient System Defense Missiles with light-speed control links to devastate any Solarian attack force. All Manticore (or Haven) needs to supply is the (Mk-25 Apollo)System Defense Missile Pods (or just Mk-23 pods) and the access codes to launch and control them.

We know the BSDF has 36 SDs compatible with the SLN's scientist class SDs, but we don't know what they have in the way of smaller ships or LACs -- any ship armed with ship-killer missiles should be able to control a few pods worth of SDMs; times eight if they're Apollo pods.

For the sake of easy Math, figure a hundred ships total capable of controlling an average of fifty missiles per salvo. That's Five Thousand Missiles per salvo; at 200 missiles/kill (an outrageously over estimate) that's 25 SD's per salvo, dead. More dead ships per salvo when the missile storms work down to BCs and smaller.

The only limitation is the number of SDM Pods seeded within range of the attacking force.

Beowulf doesn't need any help other than an immediate supply of MDM pods, preferably System Defense Missiles, to generate missile storms bigger than SLN defenses can handle.

Given the whole control channel thing I think that it takes a whole lot more hardware to guide a missile than you seem to think it does. If all you need to do to use a missile is send it a message why did Home fleet die with most of its missiles unfired?

Weird Harold wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:So,... It looks like its inevitable that the SLN will attack Beowulf before the succession vote but Beowulf won't be secure until some time frame shortly after the vote is taken. So how does Manticore put assets in place that can help defend Beowulf with out putting any ships in Beowulf?

Even without a full Mycroft installation to control them, the Beowulf SDF can still control sufficient System Defense Missiles with light-speed control links to devastate any Solarian attack force. All Manticore (or Haven) needs to supply is the (Mk-25 Apollo)System Defense Missile Pods (or just Mk-23 pods) and the access codes to launch and control them.

We know the BSDF has 36 SDs compatible with the SLN's scientist class SDs, but we don't know what they have in the way of smaller ships or LACs -- any ship armed with ship-killer missiles should be able to control a few pods worth of SDMs; times eight if they're Apollo pods.

For the sake of easy Math, figure a hundred ships total capable of controlling an average of fifty missiles per salvo. That's Five Thousand Missiles per salvo; at 200 missiles/kill (an outrageously over estimate) that's 25 SD's per salvo, dead. More dead ships per salvo when the missile storms work down to BCs and smaller.

The only limitation is the number of SDM Pods seeded within range of the attacking force.

Beowulf doesn't need any help other than an immediate supply of MDM pods, preferably System Defense Missiles, to generate missile storms bigger than SLN defenses can handle.

Steathstealer - one of the reasons that you can't be sure where I'm going is that I have moved from the "SLN is toast camp" to the "Um, there may be a problem camp". My primary reason is the discussion in ART and Honor's concern. This is not a woman who jumps at shadows - if she is concerned, there is probably a damn good reason, at it would behoove rational people to pay attention. Now maybe they will move a bunch of SDM pods into the system, and the 36 SDs have sufficient control links to handle them, but from BoM II, we know that Filareta's 417 SDs could handle salvos of about 17,000 missiles. doing the arithmetic, that's about 40 missiles/SD, which is short of the number 50 Weird Harold noted. I suspect that David has already figured out what he is going to do, and didn't mention it, so as to keep his options open for the next book, and besides, if he gets asked, he likes going tum-te-tum-te-tum. It will probably to Ghost Rider platforms, and SDM pods borrowed from Manticore, but I am sure he has something.

kzt wrote:Given the whole control channel thing I think that it takes a whole lot more hardware to guide a missile than you seem to think it does. If all you need to do to use a missile is send it a message why did Home fleet die with most of its missiles unfired?

fallsfromtrees wrote:Now maybe they will move a bunch of SDM pods into the system, and the 36 SDs have sufficient control links to handle them, but from BoM II, we know that Filareta's 417 SDs could handle salvos of about 17,000 missiles. doing the arithmetic, that's about 40 missiles/SD, which is short of the number 50 Weird Harold noted.

I am considering "the whole control channel thing" in assuming it is a generic kind of thing where anyone's light-speed control channel can control anyone else's missiles if they have the proper codes.

I'm also considering that the BSDF is more capable than the SLN and their SDs have more control redundancy than stock Scientist class SDs.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Steathstealer - one of the reasons that you can't be sure where I'm going is that I have moved from the "SLN is toast camp" to the "Um, there may be a problem camp". My primary reason is the discussion in ART and Honor's concern. This is not a woman who jumps at shadows - if she is concerned, there is probably a damn good reason, at it would behoove rational people to pay attention. Now maybe they will move a bunch of SDM pods into the system, and the 36 SDs have sufficient control links to handle them, but from BoM II, we know that Filareta's 417 SDs could handle salvos of about 17,000 missiles. doing the arithmetic, that's about 40 missiles/SD, which is short of the number 50 Weird Harold noted. I suspect that David has already figured out what he is going to do, and didn't mention it, so as to keep his options open for the next book, and besides, if he gets asked, he likes going tum-te-tum-te-tum. It will probably to Ghost Rider platforms, and SDM pods borrowed from Manticore, but I am sure he has something.

I will agree with you that this will not be the walkover by Beowulf many poster think is going to happen. I also think that the SLN is going to be shocked how wrong they were when they said we know what Beowulf has. The question is how much and what tech do they actually have deployed in the SDF, all we have text ev of is it is not deployed where the SLN can easily see it (not that they have ever even looked very hard).

My geusses:

New build and ships recently out of major yard work have significantly more accel than SLN and FTL Com. Text ev on FTL is that reading signals is a software patch, but generating them requires new nodes. I think to see any changes, you would need to inspect the nodes themselves.

All BSDF ships have more fire control than SLN ships of similar classes (can use pods effectively). How much more is unknowable by this poster.

BSDF has more realistic ideas of defending against missiles and thus has more effective ECM, CMs and PDLCs.

BSDF has access to Manty missiles, thus their ships have better missiles than SLN standard, possibly even are using late model Manty single drive missiles. Do not have figures easily at hand about how SLN missiles compare to late First Haven War single drive missiles.