Well, see above. We can blockade them and hope they attack. It will be a stalemate but it's the best we can do.
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Well, see above. We can blockade them and hope they attack. It will be a stalemate but it's the best we can do.
Lure it into the Neutral Zone and kill it at the Harmony jump point.
As Randakar pointed out, no jump point blockade is impregnable. But we'll need to build up towards it, and that means we need to blockade them while we build up.
I also wonder whether we can put Decoys on Fighters. That would be a useful force multiplier.
Good idea. Do we even have decoys launchers? Because I can see that work..
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Luckily we are already building Fortress components.
So we are already working on setting up a blockade.
So we are already working on setting up a blockade.
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Given the performance of the PD swarm, do we even need to lure them back to the Harmony JP? Could we just press the engagement in the neutral zone? Leaving the PD swarm 150 million kms from the JP? (Don’t want the sarthe involved if they jump through).
The Sarthe are less scary than the missile storm, we could grind them down with a long range fight simply withdrawing any shielded ship that takes too much beating for the shield to recover. The Sarthe are unshielded, and slower than the gunships.
The Sarthe are less scary than the missile storm, we could grind them down with a long range fight simply withdrawing any shielded ship that takes too much beating for the shield to recover. The Sarthe are unshielded, and slower than the gunships.
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How big is a ECM component anyway? Can we miniaturize that? Because if we can fit fighters with ECM the AMM missiles won't be able to hit any of them.
I don't see why we wouldn't blockade the NZ <-> Mechanus jump point on our side. Agreed on that one.
Fair point. Which gives us options, really.
A little research ..
Jammer - AuroraWiki
Decoy Launcher - AuroraWiki
I'm not sure if this can be fired during jump shock, though. Given it's similar to a missile launcher, I'd guess 'no'.
Now, let's suppose we put ECM -- a missile jamer - on a fighter-like design. More of a shuttle, really, because given the above sizes it would be about 350 tons I think.
Make it fast enough to outrun the Sarthes. With an tiny active sensor to get eyes on the battleground.
Jump, say, 500 of these into the system. The vosges can't shoot them due to the ECM, so the sarthes and the ASM boats have to respond. But we're doing squadron jumps so they *will* start to scatter immediately. We'll lose a bunch of them to sarthes' initial laser fire, and more due to the ASM boats, but they won't be able to kill all of them. Some of them will get away, and more importantly, the ASM ships are *required* to shoot them down because the Sarthes can't catch them.
So then we execute the initial plan from there. Though we need to think about what we'll jump in next, because whatever we jump in needs to be faster than the Sarthes.
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I wouldn’t want to jump gunships into point blank Sarthe fire. Dancing at the limits of range, our speed is good enough to grind them down. I doubt it will be enough to get us out of range from point blank!I don't see why we wouldn't blockade the NZ <-> Mechanus jump point on our side. Agreed on that one.
Fair point. Which gives us options, really.
A little research ..
So a missile jammer is 150 tons. That's the ECM side.Jammer - AuroraWiki
aurorawiki.pentarch.org
A minimum size decoy launcher would be 25 tons and fake a 1000 ton ship signature. This is as small as we can get it.Decoy Launcher - AuroraWiki
I'm not sure if this can be fired during jump shock, though. Given it's similar to a missile launcher, I'd guess 'no'.
Now, let's suppose we put ECM -- a missile jamer - on a fighter-like design. More of a shuttle, really, because given the above sizes it would be about 350 tons I think.
Make it fast enough to outrun the Sarthes. With an tiny active sensor to get eyes on the battleground.
Jump, say, 500 of these into the system. The vosges can't shoot them due to the ECM, so the sarthes and the ASM boats have to respond. But we're doing squadron jumps so they *will* start to scatter immediately. We'll lose a bunch of them to sarthes' initial laser fire, and more due to the ASM boats, but they won't be able to kill all of them. Some of them will get away, and more importantly, the ASM ships are *required* to shoot them down because the Sarthes can't catch them.
So then we execute the initial plan from there. Though we need to think about what we'll jump in next, because whatever we jump in needs to be faster than the Sarthes.
That said, a swarm of 500 or so fighters should inflict a fairly heavy blow on their ASM supplies… After which fighters could potentially be used to draw Sarthes away from the JP long enough to insert the gunships
That's more or less my line of thinking. Though the original plan didn't have weapons on the fighters, I don't see why not.
Our PD performance was against 100-missile salvos. The force sitting beyond the JP can fire 182-missile salvos, and can possibly use AMMs to boost the salvo count and confuse our defensive fire. So we should be conservative with our extrapolations. Gauss PD doesn't scale, so more missiles incoming equals lower efficiency.
Against a 67-missile salvo we scored 100% shoot-downs.
Against a 100-missile salvo we scored 90% shoot-downs.
So against a 182-missile salvo we should score... 70%? 75%?
It would be a lot easier to blockade the Harmony => Neutral Zone jump.
Are we?
Doesn't a Squadron Jump have to be led by a ship with a jump drive capable of jumping the whole squadron?
Fighters lack jump drives and must make standard jumps instead.
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Not enough, at any rate. Losses would mount quickly.
Fair. Maybe dump a few more DST's in the neutral zone to expand the sensor coverage in that sector though.
They can be jumped in by other vessels, right? Do those need to jump with them?
Wildly inpractical idea: Design some really large heavily armored commercial carriers with commercial hangar bays. Jump *them* into the system. Launch fighters immediately after the jump.
Would that work? Obviously they need a lot of armor and will probably be lost fairly quickly, but it'd soak up a ton of fire in the process.
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Pretty sure a squadron jump requires that the jump-capable vessel be part of the squadron, not just a Tender.
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Time for return of the rocks. Build 20 or 30 huge rocks with ciws and let them waste their salvoes then jump in the fighters and sabers and then the gunships.
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How about this?
The Wild Weasel! Only 300 tons.
Wild Weasel class Fighter (P) 299 tons 3 Crew 146.1 BP TCS 6 TH 154 EM 0
25768 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 HTK 2 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 0-0 PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 59% IFR 0.8% 1YR 25 5YR 376 Max Repair 76.8 MSP
Magazine 0 / 10
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days Morale Check Required
2021 SCAM Drive EP153.60 HS-1.6 P-300 (1) Power 153.6 Fuel Use 1169.13% Signature 153.6 Explosion 30%
Fuel Capacity 1,000 Litres Range 0.05 billion km (0 hours at full power)
Size 5 Decoy Launcher (2) Decoy Size: 5 Hangar Reload 111 minutes MF Reload 18 hours
Electronic Warfare Jammers: Missile 5
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a None for auto-assignment purposes
Twice as fast as the enemy, carries two Decoy launchers and an ECM-5 Jammer... just enough to guarantee a miss by non-ECCM missiles.
In other news, Nikolai will be finishing his research project this month. Missile Jammer 6.
Certainly a long-term solution.
We need both a long term solution (to deal with the problem permanently) and a short-term solution (to deal with THIS iteration of the problem, NOW).
The Wild Weasel! Only 300 tons.
Wild Weasel class Fighter (P) 299 tons 3 Crew 146.1 BP TCS 6 TH 154 EM 0
25768 km/s Armour 1-3 Shields 0-0 HTK 2 Sensors 0/0/0/0 DCR 0-0 PPV 0
Maint Life 0 Years MSP 0 AFR 59% IFR 0.8% 1YR 25 5YR 376 Max Repair 76.8 MSP
Magazine 0 / 10
Lieutenant Commander Control Rating 1
Intended Deployment Time: 3 days Morale Check Required
2021 SCAM Drive EP153.60 HS-1.6 P-300 (1) Power 153.6 Fuel Use 1169.13% Signature 153.6 Explosion 30%
Fuel Capacity 1,000 Litres Range 0.05 billion km (0 hours at full power)
Size 5 Decoy Launcher (2) Decoy Size: 5 Hangar Reload 111 minutes MF Reload 18 hours
Electronic Warfare Jammers: Missile 5
This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction
This design is classed as a None for auto-assignment purposes
Twice as fast as the enemy, carries two Decoy launchers and an ECM-5 Jammer... just enough to guarantee a miss by non-ECCM missiles.
In other news, Nikolai will be finishing his research project this month. Missile Jammer 6.
Certainly a long-term solution.
We need both a long term solution (to deal with the problem permanently) and a short-term solution (to deal with THIS iteration of the problem, NOW).
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How long to build the rocks? Do we need larger civilian yards? I like the idea of the Weasel but won't it just be destroyed while in jump shock like any other craft?
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Very nice. Now we're talking.
Semi related I suppose. If we wait a bit for that to finish before we build the weasels.
Agreed. Fun hashing that out, too.
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This looks like the biggest CIV Rock we can build in our current shipyards.
Three years build time. Naturally that can be reduced with pre-builds.
20 layers of armor, over a very wide target. Four CIWS close-defense systems.
FASTER than the enemy fleet.
If we drop the requirement that it should be faster than the enemy, we can make it MUCH smaller.
Once we get the opponent's engine tech, that will also increase the speed or reduce the size.
Would you like to see a Military Rock?
Military Rocks can have shields. And Gauss PD.
On the other hand, they compete for available shipyard slips with other military assets.
Three years build time. Naturally that can be reduced with pre-builds.
20 layers of armor, over a very wide target. Four CIWS close-defense systems.
FASTER than the enemy fleet.
If we drop the requirement that it should be faster than the enemy, we can make it MUCH smaller.
Once we get the opponent's engine tech, that will also increase the speed or reduce the size.
Would you like to see a Military Rock?
Military Rocks can have shields. And Gauss PD.
On the other hand, they compete for available shipyard slips with other military assets.
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Yeah... of course, we don't actually NEED to have ECM-6 for the Wild Weasel concept. We DO need ECM-5 (or more).
The Wild Weasel idea hinges on the fact that ECM-5 already means an automatic miss for AMM-PD opponents.
Military engines deliver much more thrust per kg, so the ship can be somewhat smaller than a CIV Rock.
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