crewdude48 wrote:There are only a few times when a CLAC is preferable to a cargo ship.
1) When transport time is absolutely critical, and a commercial hyperdrive is insufficient.
2) When you are entering a high threat area that can't be mitigated by standard convoy escorts.
3) When the LACs must be ready to use as soon as you enter a system, rather than a couple of hours after you make orbit.
4) When cargo ships are aboslutly unavailable.
I'd add one more (that may have applied in the Talbott Cluster) though it's really just an expansion on your #3.
5) When you need the ability to operate system defense LACs but their permanent base is being completed.
In that scenario you might choose to
temporarily tie down a CLAC or two until the station/fort is ready to serve as the long term base for the system's LAC force. (Since your other options are to leave it undefended, or leave multiple hyper capable combatants to cover the system until the LAC base is ready to receive a shipment of LACs)
cthia wrote:Yes, you contact the Home system. That's what I have been saying. The Home system dictates tactical and strategic policy. What I am saying, is that in a pinch you send for help in the Home system for certain! Whether you contact other bases as well, or have the option to do so, is simply extra icing. But contacting the Home system is a must. That was utilized throughout the books.
"Detach one of the tin cans to the Admiralty for reinforcements, and one to System X and System B, to alert those COs, if we can spare them.
And you want the Home system(Admiralty) to be able to respond, and to at least thrust the responsibility of logistics and decision upon his shoulders. Nearby fleets may be busy themselves, have been diverted elsewhere, destroyed or redeployed. I never said that reinforcements should come from Home fleet. I am saying that the Home system, which just happens to hold Home fleet, is where you send for help.
Are you forgetting the Case Zulu sent by Harrington from Yeltsin? She didn't have the luxury to pussyfoot around with the logistics of availability of nearby forces, nor could Honor make the decision to divert those forces at the time, IIRC, as many COs on the spot wouldn't have that authority to do so. And having to convince another station Commander to do so in an emergency, may utilize more time than Murphy allows. Honor sent for help directly Home. Hell, she didn't even have the available ships to spare to send all over Honorverse's or Hell's creation.
Remember also, Alice Truman when she disabled the safety interlocks. Where did she run to? She ran her sweet ass Home, as quickly as her safety interlocks would take her. She didn't pass go, didn't take time to collect 200 credits, and she didn't bother checking with other fleet bases.
In the case of Grayson the Manticoran System
was/is the closest fleet base.
Also as it was pre-war, and really before they'd set up much of the Alliance infrastructure, it was probably the
only nodal response force. But that's changed later in the books.
Even as early as SVW that's
why Yancy Parks and his superdreadnaughts were deployed to Hancock station - to act as a local nodal response force to any incursions in the surrounding Allied systems. It would have taken the better part of a month (18 days or so) if those systems had sent a courier to Manticore, just so the Admiralty could dispatch another courier all the way back to Parks ordering him to move. [based of the maps it looks like Hancock station is roughly 52 LY from Manticore]
The local systems contact the nodal response fleet, and that Admiral can notify Manticore. The communication loops (once you get much past the junction termini) are just too long to centrally coordinate fleet response.
