Honorverse ramblings and musings

JeffEngel wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Well, if you're involved in a lengthy missile exchange (defenses on both sides able to more or less stand up to deeply stacked salvos), and to assault CLAC was effective enough at topping up the screening LAC's CMs, I could see where it might make sense to target it first.

If you can cripple or destroy the assault CLAC(s) then the screening LACs rapidly run out of CMs; sharply reducing their sustained anti-missile capabilities. That in turn lets more of your missiles through against the offensively dangerous targets.

Basically taking the approach of stripping the defenses before going for the juicy targets. Normally that's not a great strategy; since it just gives your opponent's offensive units free of fire to concentrate on attriting your offensive forces. But in rare situations it can make sense.

Yeah, in that case, a sturdy CLAC would be really useful - if you could get it at a reasonable price. But if the price is having far fewer LAC's out there as that defense, chances are the price won't be worth it. And that's a marginal situation, and also depends on the LAC's themselves - all alone out there, away from the wall's close defenses - not constituting a better attritional target. (Even if you're attacking them with your own space-superiority LAC's, unsuited to a direct attack on the wall, you're in a position to get the LAC's off the board directly rather than by taking out their base for reloading.)

You'd have to edge down a path of a lot of contingencies likely to go the other way before you'd find that to be a good design/deployment decision. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but I'm going to say it's too unlikely to be a good basis of doctrine or design.

Jonathan_S wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:If you are designing a CLAC to remain with the wall and provide rapid reloading of LAC's that are a part of its missile defense - if that's even practical, it's apparently still an open question in RFC's mind - then being able to contribute to the wall's close-in point defense and handle missiles that pick out the CLAC as a target as a plausible mistake is useful. There's where trading LAC capacity for defenses (active particularly, but armor somewhat as well) serves more point. But you still need not count on being able to stand up to the fire a priority target would get, because you still won't be a priority target, outside weird circumstances where an enemy fleet would gain greatly from stranding LAC's and can carry out the rest of the battle to achieve that goal.

Well, if you're involved in a lengthy missile exchange (defenses on both sides able to more or less stand up to deeply stacked salvos), and to assault CLAC was effective enough at topping up the screening LAC's CMs, I could see where it might make sense to target it first.

If you can cripple or destroy the assault CLAC(s) then the screening LACs rapidly run out of CMs; sharply reducing their sustained anti-missile capabilities. That in turn lets more of your missiles through against the offensively dangerous targets.


Basically taking the approach of stripping the defenses before going for the juicy targets. Normally that's not a great strategy; since it just gives your opponent's offensive units free of fire to concentrate on attriting your offensive forces. But in rare situations it can make sense.

Jonathan_S wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:If you are designing a CLAC to remain with the wall and provide rapid reloading of LAC's that are a part of its missile defense - if that's even practical, it's apparently still an open question in RFC's mind - then being able to contribute to the wall's close-in point defense and handle missiles that pick out the CLAC as a target as a plausible mistake is useful. There's where trading LAC capacity for defenses (active particularly, but armor somewhat as well) serves more point. But you still need not count on being able to stand up to the fire a priority target would get, because you still won't be a priority target, outside weird circumstances where an enemy fleet would gain greatly from stranding LAC's and can carry out the rest of the battle to achieve that goal.

Well, if you're involved in a lengthy missile exchange (defenses on both sides able to more or less stand up to deeply stacked salvos), and to assault CLAC was effective enough at topping up the screening LAC's CMs, I could see where it might make sense to target it first.

If you can cripple or destroy the assault CLAC(s) then the screening LACs rapidly run out of CMs; sharply reducing their sustained anti-missile capabilities. That in turn lets more of your missiles through against the offensively dangerous targets.


Basically taking the approach of stripping the defenses before going for the juicy targets. Normally that's not a great strategy; since it just gives your opponent's offensive units free of fire to concentrate on attriting your offensive forces. But in rare situations it can make sense.

Theemile wrote:And this is one of the arguments against specialized units - an opponent who knows the value of the assault CLAC or a antimissile CA can focus on them first and weaken them most.

Speaking of which, I'm looking at the surviving SDs from the 1st Havenite war, and I'm convinced that the vast majority of the capitol losses on the Manty side were the oldest SDs and the DNs. Of the Victory design, 34 out of 36 survived the entire war. Of the Gryphons and Sphinx (and Samothrace) designs, 225 out of 237 survived until May 1920. That accounts for a total of only 14 Manty losses (either destroyed or written off) in the first war.

I can imagine that the DNs (or smallish SDs like the King Williams) were targeted in battle due to them just being able to absorb fewer hits. Per mass they could absorb just as many hits as the larger SDs - they just had less mass. Somebody had to see them as the weakest links and target them on at last one occasion, knowing that they would fail sooner then their consorts.

I admit it should be a forgone conclusion, given what we know about their "vulnerable" status post war, but it follows along with the specialist thread - given something to focus on with asymmetircal results, an opponent will eventually focus there.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd envision the sturdy CLAC being designed to reload many more LACs that it itself carries.

That way an assault force would bring a mix of higher-capacity fragile CLACs and lower-capacity sturdy CLACs. The fragile ones still get left out beyond the hyper limit, but the sturdy ones that came in-system would be able to replenish CMs for the combined LAC swarm (on some kind of rotating basis - where some LACs on deployed, some are replenishing, and more are in-, or out-,bound between the deployment zone and the sturdy CLACs.

cthia wrote:I should mention, that another of my concerns about wanting to harden CLACs is out of consideration and respect for another element of overlooked resources during battle - the CO of the CLAC. Of course, who readily comes to mind is Alice Truman. You all know that I've always maintained that underneath Truman's bonnet lies a tactical genius. Her skills could be essential during an important, critical battle. As it stands, a keen tactician is tasked with dropping off LACs then removing herself from the battle equation. I HATE THAT. Honor, and others as well, has shown us that one officer can make a difference.

Truman, one of Manticore's most keen tacticians, is essentially relegated to twiddling her thumbs during action. I hate it for her too. She's probably %$#$&%$#@# during the entire ordeal.

Aside:
Who else is tasked as CLAC CO? I can't recall any names. On both sides of the GA.

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:I should mention, that another of my concerns about wanting to harden CLACs is out of consideration and respect for another element of overlooked resources during battle - the CO of the CLAC. Of course, who readily comes to mind is Alice Truman. You all know that I've always maintained that underneath Truman's bonnet lies a tactical genius. Her skills could be essential during an important, critical battle. As it stands, a keen tactician is tasked with dropping off LACs then removing herself from the battle equation. I HATE THAT. Honor, and others as well, has shown us that one officer can make a difference.

Truman, one of Manticore's most keen tacticians, is essentially relegated to twiddling her thumbs during action. I hate it for her too. She's probably %$#$&%$#@# during the entire ordeal.

Putting a flag officer on a CLAC helps when it is a non-priority target. The officer lives to keep providing leadership - if you want to assassinate them, you're blowing fire from a target you'd not otherwise be bothering on. Flag officer on a SD(P) - two-for-one attacking it.

A CLAC skipper is effectively a kind of flag officer, not by rank but by role. She's putting a hundred little destroyers in the place to do what needs doing, while aboard a vehicle that has wonderful command and control capabilities at the center of a web of recon drone and scout data. She's not twiddling her thumbs. She's delegating, of course, but that's what any officer does, is supposed to do. Compromising her ship to give her some missiles to fire, or to be in a place where she's got something to fire on, is not doing her or her fleet any favors

Aside:
Who else is tasked as CLAC CO? I can't recall any names. On both sides of the GA.

Rafe Cardones, flag captain of Admiral Harrington on Sidemore Station, flagship CLAC Werewolf, for one.

n7axw wrote:One thing I've wondered about is why, at least so far, we have seen no repeat of what Truman and Harmon pulled at 2nd Hancock against the Sollies.

I'm aware of the use of the LAC in the missile defense role, and why doctrine as evolved that way in the war against the Republic, given the long range missile capability on both sides.

But against the Sollies and their antiques? Wouldn't it have been fun if at 2nd Manticore, a force of stealthed shrikes and ferrets could have slipped in and taken out all those towed missile pods, for example. Imagine how different the conversation between Filereta and Honor would have sounded...

Don

Jonathan_S wrote:

n7axw wrote:One thing I've wondered about is why, at least so far, we have seen no repeat of what Truman and Harmon pulled at 2nd Hancock against the Sollies.

I'm aware of the use of the LAC in the missile defense role, and why doctrine as evolved that way in the war against the Republic, given the long range missile capability on both sides.

But against the Sollies and their antiques? Wouldn't it have been fun if at 2nd Manticore, a force of stealthed shrikes and ferrets could have slipped in and taken out all those towed missile pods, for example. Imagine how different the conversation between Filereta and Honor would have sounded...

Don

Fun, but dangerous.

There's a difference between pulling that trick against energy-weak BBs, and trying it against intact walls of energy-heavy SDs. Even if it's just a cut and run raid against the towed pods that puts the LACs deep in the weapons envelope of a lot of wallers. It's asking a bit much for even Mantie ECM, stealth, and bow/stern walls to keep them from taking significant losses on the way out.

And I suspect that many SLN SDs would be less likely to panic and scatter than the BBs at 2nd Hancock. Without that stupid order the LACs couldn't have survived much longer as the wall of BBs got over its surprise and started determining effective strategies - and the SLN had a hell of a lot more SDs at Manticore than the Peeps had BBs at Hancock.


On the other time, the first time SLN BCs try to raid a system defended "just" by Mantie LACs <big grin>

n7axw wrote:One thing I've wondered about is why, at least so far, we have seen no repeat of what Truman and Harmon pulled at 2nd Hancock against the Sollies.

I'm aware of the use of the LAC in the missile defense role, and why doctrine as evolved that way in the war against the Republic, given the long range missile capability on both sides.

But against the Sollies and their antiques? Wouldn't it have been fun if at 2nd Manticore, a force of stealthed shrikes and ferrets could have slipped in and taken out all those towed missile pods, for example. Imagine how different the conversation between Filereta and Honor would have sounded...

Captain Alice Levinsky, commanding officer of LAC Group 711, watched the Shrikes and Katanas of Carrier Division 7.1 forming up around Her Majesty's Light Attack Craft Typhoon. She was aware of a certain queasiness as she contemplated the juggernaut of superdreadnoughts rumbling steadily towards Flax. Against a Havenite wall of battle, even the Manticoran Alliance's newest-generation LACs no longer possessed anywhere near the survivability they'd boasted when the Shrike-A was first introduced all of nine T-years ago. And even if they had, superdreadnoughts—even Solly superdreadnoughts—were normally too heavily armored for even a Shrike's enormous graser to damage significantly. Of course, the Shrike-B, like her own Typhoon, had significantly improved its graser's grav lensing when the newest generation of bow wall came in. The Bravos really could blast their way through SD armor, assuming they could get close enough.
...
But, Levinsky reminded herself coldly, these weren't Havenite superdreadnoughts. They were Sollies, and that was an entirely different kettle of fish. Like the rest of Tenth Fleet's officers, Levinsky had studied the technical data from the captured Solarian battlecruisers attentively, and unless that data was grossly inaccurate, the Sollies' anti-LAC capabilities were even more primitive—a lot more primitive—than the Havenites' had been during Operation Buttercup.
Which suggested all sorts of interesting tactical possibilities to one Alice Levinsky.