Warship jump range

[The Oz]

a sure defeat in the making. it could be months before any reinforcements arrive, even if enemy activity doesn't delay them. in the meantime the enemy is free to maneuver, set up bases at will, concentrate and attack at leisure.

I'm referring to the official Imperial Navy strategy, as outlined in Supplement #9. There are two main tenets to this strategy: one tactical/operational, and the other operational/strategic.

#1: Supp. #9, page 5; Background-says that the "elastic defense" strategy relies on colonial forces centered around "islands of resistance" able to stand long sieges. Imperial Navy forces in the frontier are raiders and delayers, holding things up until the main Navy forces from Corridor can intervene.

#2: Supp. #9, page 9, says that battlerider squadrons have been concentrated in the reserves while frontier delaying forces are composed exclusively of jump-capable ships able to retreat on their own.

To me this makes sense, especially in the Spinward Marches, where the really valuable worlds (high tech =and= high pop) are few and far between. Planets without high tech and the population to deploy it cannot defend themselves and the Imperial Navy cannot defend all of them since the enemy will always be able to concentrate superior numbers.

The Imperial strategy is intended to reinforce the few worlds that are able to defend themselves and keep mobile (especially self-retreating) forces operating to delay the enemy, until sufficient forces have been assembled from Corridor. The Zhos and their allies end up with detachments from their fleet watching all the worlds under siege, and other detachments hunting the Imperial raiding forces. Then the Imperial Navy goes on the offensive, seeking the enemy fleet, not enemy-held worlds. Once the Zhodani main fleet is crushed (as we see happening during the Abyss campaign as described in SMC) the war naturally ends as the Zhodani cannot hope to hold any conquests without their fleet.

 

[flykiller]

I'm referring to the official Imperial Navy strategy ....

which is a losing strategy. if it were employed with ground forces operating on terrain visible at a glance to the commander then it would be great, but jump, jump comms, and the discreet nature of the "islands of resistance" completely negate any advantages such a "flexible defense" has. it's the same strategy employed by the japanese in the pacific, and they got walked-on. "flexible"? the maginot line was more flexible than this.

reinforcements from corridor? that's 250 days, minimum, and that's if they're ready to go at a moment's notice and if they respond to the very first partial reports. then, when they arrive, a third of the fleet is due or overdue for annual maintence. that's a long, long time for an "island of resistance" to stand unsupported against enemy fleet meson guns that can freely concentrate at will. imagine leningrad or stalingrad, where moscow is unable to respond for 250 days. game over, man.

Then the Imperial Navy goes on the offensive, seeking the enemy fleet ....

how does a jump fleet engage an enemy jump fleet that does not want to be engaged?

 

[aramis]

how does a jump fleet engage an enemy jump fleet that does not want to be engaged?

by catching them before they can refuel, or within 10 diameters of a world.

 

[flykiller]

how does a jump fleet engage an enemy jump fleet that does not want to be engaged?

by catching them before they can refuel, or within 10 diameters of a world.

sorry, I wasn't clear. how does a jump fleet contact an enemy jump fleet that does not want to be contacted? consider it from the commander's point of view. he gets a report - "enemy fleet elements here" - but that report is already at least a week old. if he responds to the report and jumps in, he'll get there two weeks after the report. are they still there? have they been reinforced? what is he getting his fleet into? there's no way to know. if he divides his fleet to search then he will have massive coordination problems, and each element must be cautious not to blunder into a superior enemy force. if he concentrates his fleet so that he does not have to worry about getting ambushed this limits his search area, and it can take up to an entire _year_ to visit every system just in a subsector - meanwhile the enemy fleet roams freely having little worry of the pursuing fleet achieving contact.

and as for preventing an enemy fleet from refueling, that's not so easy in a system with multiple refueling worlds and gas giants that are separated by days of transit, and there's quite a few of those.

 

[rancke]

How does a jump fleet contact an enemy jump fleet that does not want to be contacted? consider it from the commander's point of view. he gets a report - "enemy fleet elements here" - but that report is already at least a week old. if he responds to the report and jumps in, he'll get there two weeks after the report. are they still there? have they been reinforced? what is he getting his fleet into? there's no way to know. if he divides his fleet to search then he will have massive coordination problems, and each element must be cautious not to blunder into a superior enemy force. if he concentrates his fleet so that he does not have to worry about getting ambushed this limits his search area, and it can take up to an entire _year_ to visit every system just in a subsector - meanwhile the enemy fleet roams freely having little worry of the pursuing fleet achieving contact.

If only we had a historical example that was somewhat analogous to look at. Oh, wait, we do. This is exactly the sort of problem Age of Sail admirals had. Mostly they headed for places where the enemy fleet might do the worst damage, on the assumption that the enemy would want to do as much damage as it could. Then they put fixed defenses around the places they really didn't want the enemy to attack while the fleet was elsewhere.

Of course, if the enemy is besieging a world, it's a good idea to go there. If the enemy is still there, you can fight him, and if the enemy has left, well, at least the siege has been broken.


Hans

 

[dccarles]

Catching a fleet that doesn't want to be caught is nigh impossible: if it retreats to the outer system and powers down its power plants, it can last a very long time before it has to refuel (assuming an average of PPlant-8 with no jump fuel, this'll be 32 weeks.) A fleet in the outer system that's not too deeply in enemy territory would be able to rely on fleet tankers, lasting indefinitely.

This makes for a viable 'fleet in being' strategy: a defensive fleet would be required to make sure the enemy fleet in the outer system can't get up to any mischief...and there would need to be defenders in nearby systems, too, in case the enemy fleet jumped out for a quick raid.

The idea, then, is to draw the enemy fleet into battle, either with deception (the old 'hiding behind the planet' routine) or by threatening something that the enemy can't afford to lose. A good place to start would be wherever those tankers are coming from.

We have a serious problem in that we don't know the relative strength of planetary defenses vs. an attacking fleet. I concluded in another thread that the only way to defend a system was in depth (I'd have to revisit my reasoning to explicate.)

--Devin

 

[Icosahedron]

sorry, I wasn't clear. how does a jump fleet contact an enemy jump fleet that does not want to be contacted? consider it from the commander's point of view. he gets a report - "enemy fleet elements here" - but that report is already at least a week old. if he responds to the report and jumps in, he'll get there two weeks after the report. are they still there? have they been reinforced? what is he getting his fleet into? there's no way to know. if he divides his fleet to search then he will have massive coordination problems, and each element must be cautious not to blunder into a superior enemy force. if he concentrates his fleet so that he does not have to worry about getting ambushed this limits his search area, and it can take up to an entire _year_ to visit every system just in a subsector - meanwhile the enemy fleet roams freely having little worry of the pursuing fleet achieving contact.

and as for preventing an enemy fleet from refueling, that's not so easy in a system with multiple refueling worlds and gas giants that are separated by days of transit, and there's quite a few of those.

How about using monitors or scoutships (isn't that what they're for, from the Navy's POV)?
A swarm of scouts could search a subsector, (50 worlds, tops, often much less) and if one or two jump into an ambush, it's a small loss. Hopefully they can escape with a message, and in any case absence of a report is telling.
If the enemy fleet jumps away, they'll enter another scoutship's hex, and another report will be sent.
This is just the sort of job my Black Globe Submarine (described elsewhere) would excel at.

 

[rancke]

How about using monitors or scoutships (isn't that what they're for, from the Navy's POV)?

Better yet, pickets. Station a few in each system and they can jump out and report the moment an enemy arrives. Though that still leaves the problem that no reactive force can be there until two weeks later at the earliest.

(Just to forestall: The pickets move about randomly and are never in the place they were in two weeks earlier, so they can't be taken by surprise).

A swarm of scouts could search a subsector, (50 worlds, tops, often much less) and if one or two jump into an ambush, it's a small loss. Hopefully they can escape with a message, and in any case absence of a report is telling.

No risk of ambush if the scout (or an attacker, for that matter) just don't jump in anywhere close to anything interesting. A star system has very limited interesting space, but lots and lots and lots of empty space, far too much for any ambusher to stake out.



Hans

 

[flykiller]

scouts and pickets are of course necessary, and they work great keeping fixed locations (such as regina, rhylanor, mora, etc) informed, but for a fleet commander to make use of them he has to be at a known location to receive their report. this slows him down. and if a scout doesn't return that means only that the scout didn't return, and nothing more. did it just break down, or did it get taken out by another scout, or by a frigate, or by a fleet of battleships? again, no way to know. and if a scout does return with a good report, it still leaves the two-week problem.

don't mean to be contrary, just trying to point out that "the reinforcements move up and engage the enemy fleet" is not a simple maneuver.

We have a serious problem in that we don't know the relative strength of planetary defenses vs. an attacking fleet.

a great deal rides on this. imo asking an "island of resistance" to hold up against free-roaming meson guns for 250 days until reinforcements arrive is asking a lot.

Mostly they headed for places where the enemy fleet might do the worst damage, on the assumption that the enemy would want to do as much damage as it could.

ranke is on the right track.

 

[rancke]

scouts and pickets are of course necessary, and they work great keeping fixed locations (such as regina, rhylanor, mora, etc) informed, but for a fleet commander to make use of them he has to be at a known location to receive their report.

Admirals usually stay at their HQ unless they're going somewhere specific. When they do, they send out couriers to notify their other forces.

don't mean to be contrary, just trying to point out that "the reinforcements move up and engage the enemy fleet" is not a simple maneuver.

Probably why the 5FW took so long. I recently tried to work out what happened on Kinorb during the war (for a campaign writeup), and the 212th and the two Vargr fleets takes forever to DO anything. They apparently just sit there staring at each other for six months at a time.

a great deal rides on this. imo asking an "island of resistance" to hold up against free-roaming meson guns for 250 days until reinforcements arrive is asking a lot.

OTOH, it may also be asking a lot of ships armed with the size of meson guns that you can stuff into a ship to go up against the size of meson guns you can deploy on a world.

Canonically, a siege consists of pounding the space defenses until you can slip an invasion force down to establish a bridgehead, then spending months and months reinforcing the beachhead and expanding it. This can evidently take a long time. Note that I'm not giving any warrantry that this makes sense under any specific set of rules, because I haven't tried to analyse any of them. However, the history of the OTU shows that the strategy did work.


Hans

 

[flykiller]

Admirals usually stay at their HQ

a fleet admiral's hq will be on a command ship with the fleet, and he will be authorized to make strategic decisions in the field. it can't be any other way.

They apparently just sit there staring at each other for six months at a time.

if kinorb has two gas giants, and if the two opposing admirals do not feel they have any immediate useful superiority over the other, then it's entirely possible.

OTOH, it may also be asking a lot of ships armed with the size of meson guns that you can stuff into a ship to go up against the size of meson guns you can deploy on a world.

hg2 specifically states no upper limit on ship size. a tigress' "spinal" mount weapon is only about .01 of the ship's total volume - it could easily accomodate several of them.

 

[far-trader]

...

hg2 specifically states no upper limit on ship size. a tigress' "spinal" mount weapon is only about .01 of the ship's total volume - it could easily accomodate several of them.

..."could accommodate", by volume, by power supply, but NOT by the rules. Just one spinal per hull. Period. And the tables of spinals only go up so big. Sure it may not be the rule we want but it's what we have

I vaguely recall bigger weapons for deep meson sites but I'm not sure it was a canon rule or some fan/houserule. Though it would seem, under the rules we have, that planets are likewise limited to the maximum spinal mounts listed in the tables, just not how many they can install.

 

[rancke]

I vaguely recall bigger weapons for deep meson sites but I'm not sure it was a canon rule or some fan/houserule. Though it would seem, under the rules we have, that planets are likewise limited to the maximum spinal mounts listed in the tables, just not how many they can install.

I don't think bigger guns are included in any canon rules, but remember that the rules appaer to be simplified to the point that they're just plain wrong. If ship combat was anything close to what the HG rules says it is, no navy would be as silly as to build any combat vessel bigger than what is needed to mount a decent spinal mount and a factor 9 meson screen -- somewhere around 75,000 T, IIRC. Yet we know for a fact that navies do build battleships. And not just a few, but about one for every cruiser they build. Obviously a battleship must have advantages that isn't reflected in the combat system.

Sorry, I'm having trouble with my editor. I'll have to cut this post short and try to edit it later.


Hans

 

[The Oz]

I don't think bigger guns are included in any canon rules, but remember that the rules appaer to be simplified to the point that they're just plain wrong. If ship combat was anything close to what the HG rules says it is, no navy would be as silly as to build any combat vessel bigger than what is needed to mount a decent spinal mount and a factor 9 meson screen -- somewhere around 75,000 T, IIRC. Yet we know for a fact that navies do build battleships. And not just a few, but about one for every cruiser they build. Obviously a battleship must have advantages that isn't reflected in the combat system.

Sorry, I'm having trouble with my editor. I'll have to cut this post short and try to edit it later.


Hans

This is what the house rules Sigg and I worked out were intended to do: explain why larger ships were built. The rules we proposed were deliberately restricted to changes that would not make canon ships instantly obsolete, which did have the trouble of not increasing larger ship's firepower; all our rules did was make them tougher to kill.

I did propose a "spinal weapon turret" rule: ships can mount additional spinal weapons in "turrets" as long as the tonnage of the spinal mount was 1% or less of the total ship's tonnage. This rule would allow a Tigress (at 500ktons) to mount factor-R meson guns as "turrets."

But doing this =without= increasing the durability of larger ships is nothing but folly: you're just putting more firepower into the same expensive, easy-to-kill basket.

 

[rancke]

a fleet admiral's hq will be on a command ship with the fleet, and he will be authorized to make strategic decisions in the field. it can't be any other way.

Most Age of Sail admirals were headquartered at a specific port, usually the one where the British governor for the station the admiral was posted to resided. This was also, not coincidentally, where all the fleet's supply of extra spars, cordage, guns, etc. was stored and some form of ship repair facility was located. They could jump aboard their respective flagship and gad about if they wanted to, of course, but unless they had a specific purpose, like intercepting an enemy or exercising the fleet, they usually didn't. The exceptions were those who were blockading French ports, but they were pretty easy to locate too.


Hans

 

[far-trader]

Most Age of Sail admirals were headquartered at a specific port, usually the one where the British governor for the station the admiral was posted to resided. This was also, not coincidentally, where all the fleet's supply of extra spars, cordage, guns, etc. was stored and some form of ship repair facility was located...

Hans

Sounds like a Depot.

But are there more Admirals (or Grand Admirals) than Depots?

 

[Patron Zero]

I vaguely recall bigger weapons for deep meson sites but I'm not sure it was a canon rule or some fan/house rule.

Perhaps misreading the thread but has there been any mention of an asteroid being fitted with large weapon bays or spinal mounts ?

I envision such as a mobile firebase, a sort of fleet deployed Guns of Navarone if you will.

 

[far-trader]

Perhaps misreading the thread but has there been any mention of an asteroid being fitted with large weapon bays or spinal mounts ?

I envision such as a mobile firebase, a sort of fleet deployed Guns of Navarone if you will.

Not yet I don't think. Sounds like a Planetoid Monitor. Standard ship building rules, one spinal mount, planetoid or buffered planetoid hull type.

For a non-mobile version it's a Deep Meson Site. Presumably the methodology is to build a "ship" (but without jump drives or maneuver) deep within the body of a world, moon or asteroid. Several in fact. Each with their own spinal meson gun.

I figure since the hull limit in HG seems to 1,000,000 tons that is the point to place the breakpoint for multiple spinal mounts. So a ship up to 1Mtons can mount only 1 spinal weapon. For more than 1 spinal weapon you need more than 1Mtons. A 2Mton base would allow 2 spinal mounts, a 3Mton base would allow 3 spinal mounts, and so on. Even the smallest moons can have practically unlimited spinal mounts.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>Most Age of Sail admirals were headquartered at a specific port

I think you're misreading the sources. for anglo navies its been:-
Admirals were assigned to command either fleets or bases/ports/stations.
Fleets were "home based" at particular ports .... so the admiral has to go with it
situation becomes even worse when the harbour is home to several types of base .... eg in modern terminology fleet logistics command, training command etc
thus the same port could have several admirals apparently assigned.

 

[rancke]

>Most Age of Sail admirals were headquartered at a specific port

I think you're misreading the sources.

I think I'm not.


Hans