Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: CT27 on March 29, 2017, 04:06:56 pm
-
If Admiral Severanti had been given more time to do his strategy for the war in Sol (let's say for some reason there is slightly more support for the war in the GTVA), would it have eventually led to a GTVA win and UEF surrender?
-
Does he appear in The Blade Itself or where else? I dont remember hearing this name. I just read the Wiki page. So he was the Commander of the 13th Battlegroup and attacked Sol after the 14th Battlegroup retreated right? They speak of a flawful tactic of him and before he could do a devestating strike against Jupiter, Steele jumped in and stole his victory. Thats all i know. What was the name of his Flagship? Maybe that will help me remember what his tactics look like in game.
Anyway i dont think a single Battlegroup could manage to make Sol surrender. Maybe with the element of surprise like the 14th Battlegroup but they were in very bad shape right after the fighting against dozends of Shivan Destroyer and even a Sathanans.
I am not up to date with the speculations in this forum but maybe the Vishnans pulled the 14th into the parallel universe for that exact reason (mindblow).
I dont know at what exact point the Federation had the beamjamming technology but without it Sol would be defeatet very fast. I think thats is the reason Sol held so long against the GTVA.
Beamjamming first appears in Aristeia. But i think they had the technology before this mission.
So, no , i dont think Servanti could have beaten the Federation alone even if his tactics were better. One Battlegroup is just not enough.
-
Severanti was the overall Theater Commander for the entire Sol Expeditionary Force. Until he was recalled after Post Meridian, he was the supreme commander of all GTVA forces in Sol; the question isn't "Could Severanti defeat the UEF using only his Battlegroup", but "Would Severanti's strategy have worked eventually".
From my perspective, the answer is unambiguously yes. By the time WiH starts, the UEF is already losing badly; Steele's intervention hastened the fall of Artemis, but that is something that would have happened regardless. Of course, Severanti's careful and deliberate (or plodding, if you ask his detractors) strategy would have taken much longer to get to where Steele is by the end of Tenebra, but ultimately the balance of forces between the UEF and the GTVA is such that the GTVA is much more capable of fighting and winning a war of attrition.
-
Severanti was (slowly) winning the conventional war but I'm not convinced he could've held up against **** like the Fedayeen and whatever Shambhala is once they really came into play.
-
Severanti was (slowly) winning the conventional war but I'm not convinced he could've held up against **** like the Fedayeen and whatever Shambhala is once they really came into play.
I'm not entirely certain that the Fedayeen could turn the war around if they're facing Severanti. At the end of the day, the amount of materiel the GTVA can dump into Sol far outstrips the building/repairing capability the UEF has; the UEF's only option is to make taking Sol so costly that the GTVA is forced into a negotiated settlement sooner rather than later.
-
That was maybe not quite as far away as you think. Severanti ****ed up in Post Meridian because he was under mounting pressure from the GTVA to wrap the war up quickly, like Steele promised to.
-
Ironically Steele might be more vulnerable to the Fedayeen than Severanti.
Steele takes risks and that gives teh Fedayeen chances to hurt him. Severanti on the other hand played it save, which left fewer chinks in his "armour" for the Fedayeen to capitalize on.
Whether Severanti could have won to me really depends on what exactly the secret project is. If the completion of the project will make the UEF somehow win, then Severanti would have lost, because he was giving them too much time.
-
In Act 2 the UEF makes two big strategic gambits: the attack on the Carthage, and the attempt to open negotiations with the Vasudans. Steele is able, through uniquely :steele: methods, to turn both of these into devastating reverses. Could Severanti have similarly stopped them? Had both succeeded I think a UEF victory would have been reasonably back on the cards.
-
That was maybe not quite as far away as you think. Severanti ****ed up in Post Meridian because he was under mounting pressure from the GTVA to wrap the war up quickly, like Steele promised to.
Yes, but the entire starting point for this discussion is "what if Severanti had more time". That he didn't is a matter of record, but what if he had?
In Act 2 the UEF makes two big strategic gambits: the attack on the Carthage, and the attempt to open negotiations with the Vasudans. Steele is able, through uniquely :steele: methods, to turn both of these into devastating reverses. Could Severanti have similarly stopped them? Had both succeeded I think a UEF victory would have been reasonably back on the cards.
The attack on the Carthage is very much predicated on the situation Steele has set up beforehand. By creating the impression that his force was understrength and slightly overextended, he gave the UEF an opening to be sucked into overextending itself; I do not believe that Severanti would set up his forces in a similar way. For him, the loss of a major capital ship is something to be avoided at all costs, and setting one of his subordinate Admirals up for a failure like that is not something he would do, in my estimation.
There's a world of difference between Severanti's overall strategy and Steele's, basically. The only reason Severanti was removed from command, after all, was that he started blundering when he had to switch strategies at a moment's notice due to (partially real, partially imaginary) pressure due to Steele's presence in the Theater. I assume that, together with the orders dispatching the 15th BG to Sol, Severanti received a firmly worded letter to bring the war to an end now or else; If that hadn't been the case, if Severanti had felt that the chain of command was firmly behind him, he would have proceeded with his slow, steady approach and won the war by grinding down the UEF fleets.
-
[W]hy are we still here? Why are we the tip of the spear, the ones making a difference, while the White Guard shuttle Elders about and the Fedayeen do...whatever it is the Fedayeen do, if they even exist? How did a bunch of Second and Third Fleet rooks spit in the face of the greatest war machine in human space and live to brag about it?
In the big picture I think it's because the Wargods aren't special at all. We are the Federation unleashed. We are what ordinary Ubuntu citizens can become, given a mission and the means to achieve it. What happened here in Sol didn't breed a race of pampered weaklings - it made a generation of smart, tough, versatile men and women. If our leaders ever took to the taste of blood, we could be a nightmare.
The biggest difficulty facing the UEF was never a lack of warships or competent officers. Even as early as the first FV it's confirmed that Calder's 3JRF held back Severanti's superior numbers for 18 months, with little to no support from Mars or Earth. Netraba's artillery puts an abrupt end to the Blitz within half an hour of it starting; that it was so successful is speaks more of the BBlue than anything. The Wargods had the Agincourt within minutes of their insertion; all it took was a location and a commander willing to use it. (While their success against the Carthage' escorts is debatable, Calder, Al-da'wa, and Bei Sr. all confirm that losing the Agincourt hurt Steele badly; I can't believe that was part of his plan.) When the Feds get their act together, they get results. The fatal flaw in Severanti's plan was assuming Byrne's doctrine would hold. Netraba and Calder's actions, even as early as Darkest Hour but certainly by the start of Act 2, say otherwise. (Would they have broken away without Steele in command? Yes. Resentment towards Byrne's defensive posture was brewing even in early Act 1, while Severanti was still theatre commander.)
And Byrne isn't an idiot. I'm convinced that his Shambhala, whatever it is, would lead to a UEF victory (in some real, but possibly non-military, sense), if executed successfully. Leaving aside 2 and 3 Fleet autonomy for the moment, if Byrne and Severanti had exchanged slow, cautious strikes long enough, he'd have had time to implement Shambhala and do... whatever it is Shambhala does.
Third, the Fedayeen. I agree with the analysis that they're less effective against Severanti than Steele, but the fact remains that they could open up a deadly second front from positions Severanti thought safe. If Severanti leaves enough assets to guard against a Fedayeen strike at his rear positions, then those assets aren't fighting the UEF regulars... and the Fedayeen are the Fedayeen. They've got CASSANDRA. Given enough time to construct an accurate psych profile and run their simulations, they will find a weakness. And Severanti would give them time. In chess, there's the concept of sharp play: if every move is dramatic, you'll cut your opponent or yourself. A player accustomed to a sharp playstyle can force their opponent to match it; if they're unaccustomed, that unfamiliarity buys the sharp player protection from their own risks. This is what Steele did to Byrne. Leaving Severanti in charge would be to give him to the Fedayeen, and they would enact their own sharpness.
-
I might also add with Admiral Steele at the end of the third act jumping the gun on the Fedayeen's CASSANDRA clock and with it stated that his plans were "Hyper" calibrated, I'm wondering what Steele had to give up in order to do so. Did Steele miscalculate? Did he finally make a big mistake by scrapping his plans? Now with these questions, I don't think military defeat for the UEF, in part or in whole is any longer set in stone even if the UEF falls as a political and economic entity.
-
Which heightens the stakes and increases tension.
-
I would say Severanti was definitely winning the war on the front but was losing the war on the homefront. Attacking Sol was already an unpopular opinion among half of the GTVA population. The longer the war dragged on, the less popular support it would have. When put into this perspective (and assuming the GTVA has something similar to representatives in our own modern republics), then you can see why certain politicians might start feeling pressure to end the war sooner rather than later. The perception of a long drawn out war makes people unhappy, as it seems like lives and money are being tossed to achieve nothing. Ironically, Steele's strategy might have cost both more lives and materials (not even counting damage to the infrastructure in Sol that was supposed to be captured and used for the GTVA to begin with) because it would make the war seem more decisive and short, despite mounting casualties.
Steele knew his forces would be overextended following the Blitz. But he used this to his advantage by luring the Federation into an offensive, leading to the destruction of the Wargods which included many of the Federation's best units. Severanti would have never allowed his forces to be vulnerable enough to a counter attack.
To put this into a more abstract perspective: Severanti was maximizing damage to the Federation while minimizing losses. Steele was maximizing the progression to victory. Steele's understanding of war extends past a military understanding; he understands the war in a political perspective. This is the key defining characteristic of Steele. Whereas Severanti may be as capable a general as Robert E. Lee (and keeping in mind that his chief opponent Calder is explicitly referred to as a military strategist on par with Erich von Manstein), Steele would be more in line with generals like Napoleon or Alexander, with a bit of Ulysses S. Grant tossed in.
-
Sure the wargods did some real damage, but think about what it was the motivated the wargods.
In the very first mission we learn that Steele is merciless and gave orders to destroy any and all ships that don't surrender, including clearly civilian vessels. Then because of the pressure of being replaced by Steele, Severanti bombarded Luna.
Those are the reasons why the wargods fought so fiercly. And both those things are unlikely to have happened under Severanti's full control.
The biggest problem of Ubuntu isn't that they can't get anything done, but that they are at their core a peaceful society that abhors killing. It took some atrocities to shake then out of their believes and bring out their killer instinct. Without the atrocities, it's quite possible the majority of the UEF would never have fought to their full potential. And just the Jovians alone might be able to hold the GTVA off for a long while, but they would have crumbled eventually.
While I don't remember reading the names of any fallen station, the material made it quite clear to me that it was standard policy to make sure the stations couldn't be used by the GTVA, which in turn very strongly suggests that Artemis was not the first station to fall, just the first one where the UEF failed to evacuate and self destruct it in time and thus the GTVA managed to take it intact and gain control over the local gate network.
That in turn means that Severanti did take terretory for the GTVA, just slower and with far less flash than Steele did... but also probably with less losses and a lot less moral ambiguity... for whatever that last bit is worth in the face of the continued existence of the two species.
-
just the first one where the UEF failed to evacuate and self destruct it in time, killing all civilians onboard, and thus the GTVA managed to take it intact and gain control over the local gate network.
FTFY; the standing orders from UEF command ran counter to Ubuntu principles, possibly leading the captain of the Nelson (can't recall his name) to essentially commit suicide rather than carry out his orders & compromise his principles.
-
Yeah about that, I was wondering why non of the military powers developed essentially spacesuits for indoor use in case of hull breach during battle and why it was (assuming for the moment they did) not standard protocol in the event of imminent hull breach (like self destruct) to have all of the station civilian population to stop boarding the escape ships and suit-up, head to armored sections and await subsequent rescue after the end of the engagement.
But, that's just me trying to grapple with what seems to me make no sense for a variety of reasons.
-
Man, this is a great thread!
Yeah about that, I was wondering why non of the military powers developed essentially spacesuits for indoor use in case of hull breach during battle and why it was (assuming for the moment they did) not standard protocol in the event of imminent hull breach (like self destruct) to have all of the station civilian population to stop boarding the escape ships and suit-up, head to armored sections and await subsequent rescue after the end of the engagement.
But, that's just me trying to grapple with what seems to me make no sense for a variety of reasons.
Warships are implied to have the crew suited or at least in sealed environments during combat. But I don't understand how shoving all the civilians into disaster suits would help with the GTVA taking over the station's strategic capabilities.
-
You can then eliminate the whole morale question behind say enacting scorched earth policies at say the Jovian blitz. Now it would be a question of if the suit works and if it doesn't, sue the company for if the rate of mortality is beyond what they were commissioned to design into each suit. Also, the suit would not be the only part of the surviving an earth-shattering kaboom. I envision heading off to the armored sections, call them lifepods if you want, to maximize options.
So in short, stuff the civvies into amored suits and blow the station. There by minimizing civilian loss and maximizing options for strategic flexibility in the area of denying ease of foothold establishment.
-
Also minimize the politicians chances of getting onto your back after ordering and following through with it.
-
You do know that you can edit your posts, right? There's no reason to double post like you are doing right now :)
-
Yes I know, I just did. With correcting the "off" from "of" in one.
-
You do know that you can edit your posts, right? There's no reason to double post like you are doing right now :)
as usual in this board it's one rule for the little people and another for Crooked Battuta and his unstoppable post trains
-
You do know that you can edit your posts, right? There's no reason to double post like you are doing right now :)
as usual in this board it's one rule for the little people and another for Crooked Battuta and his unstoppable post trains
Yeah, I was thinking about adding "unless your name is Battuta" earlier :)
-
The problem with disaster suits here is that you'd end up with a Kumari's-worth of people floating around the battlespace. It wouldn't even help with scorched earth protocols, since they'd need to clear the station's blast zone, which takes time. You'd also need a very clear and orderly disembarkment process to avoid collisions, which is one thing with a Kadmos wing, quite another with random civvies in space suits. That's leaving aside the logistical nightmare of getting everyone suited up - once again, these aren't military personnel; they're not trained for such things.
@Norbert: While it's difficult to speculate on what attitudes in the UEF would be like without Steele, in The Cost of War the Suffron (or maybe Ironhide, I'm not sure) strongly suggests that at least 3JRF was fed up with Earth even while Severanti was in command, and in The Intervention, Simms directly states that 2 Fleet is less concerned with Ubuntu than Earth. There's a document somewhere in the library that backs this up. Given Calder's attitude and Netraba's interest in autonomous units, I think something like the Wargods were inevitable, had Severanti inflicted meaningful territorial losses on the UEF. I suppose Severanti could have gone fully war-of-attrition to avoid that, but that would leave the Feds with better logistics in spite of the Tev resource advantage, and without a defensible site of his own, he'd be very vulnerable to Fedayeen strikes.
-
Whereas Severanti may be as capable a general as Robert E. Lee (and keeping in mind that his chief opponent Calder is explicitly referred to as a military strategist on par with Erich von Manstein), Steele would be more in line with generals like Napoleon or Alexander, with a bit of Ulysses S. Grant tossed in.
I think that Lee is the wrong comparison for Severanti. Lee was adept at both maneuver, offense, and the politics of warfare. A better comparison might be McClellen, who utterly failed at keeping his political masters satisfied, was generally very motivated to keep his army intact, and lost several opportunities to more conclusively engage Lee.
-
Honestly I don't see how stuffing civilians into lifepods would be noticeably faster than stuffing them into evacuating transport ships. You'd need stations specifically designed with way more lifepod launchers than hangar space which makes no sense considering what those stations' primary purpose was.
Also, lifepods would be less volume-efficient than transport ships if you really stuff every deck with people like you would in an escape pod. Kinda like how tankers are way more volume efficient than speedboats.
A UEI Kumari probably holds like 40-50k people, maybe more, considering how big it actually is. You can't evacuate that many people in a short amount of time no matter what you do. And designing your station with a ridiculous number of escape pod launchers makes it less efficient at everything else.
And if you're planning to just have a big armoured section for all the civilians at once then the question becomes why not just have a secondary hangar there? There's always a better use of volume for both trade and evacuation than big dumb armoured boxes or escape pods. The reason warships have escape pods is that they can escape the battlefield very quickly compared to a transport, something you care a lot about when fighting against homicidal aliens.
As for free-floating disaster suits xenocartographer already explained why they'd be very problematic.
-
just the first one where the UEF failed to evacuate and self destruct it in time, killing all civilians onboard, and thus the GTVA managed to take it intact and gain control over the local gate network.
FTFY; the standing orders from UEF command ran counter to Ubuntu principles, possibly leading the captain of the Nelson (can't recall his name) to essentially commit suicide rather than carry out his orders & compromise his principles.
This is an incredible detail that I'd never thought of before.
-
And designing your station with a ridiculous number of escape pod launchers makes it less efficient at everything else.
Well I never said they'ed be escape pod launchers now did I? Since I imagine this idea is relatively new here (and I stress the word this as it's not mine), consider this like you would with say a tornado drill mixed with going deep-sea diving in terms of putting on a suit. Now the part I describe is mine but not entirely. It can be adapted to non-combat related events like going from an inner section of the spacecraft to the outer one adjacent to space. Before heading out, you suit-up in case of hull breach.
It wouldn't even help with scorched earth protocols, since they'd need to clear the station's blast zone, which takes time. You'd also need a very clear and orderly disembarkment process to avoid collisions, which is one thing with a Kadmos wing, quite another with random civvies in space suits. That's leaving aside the logistical nightmare of getting everyone suited up - once again, these aren't military personnel; they're not trained for such things.
Well as far as the disembarkment goes, thats not what I'm suggesting (or rather wonder why things are and are not), so that can be cut from the equation. No what I am suggesting is the design implement of handling what I will acknowledge is by it's nature a logistical nightmare and as a civilian, yes it is indeed possible to train civilians how to engage them in disaster operations with some modicum of efficiency. Above I listed tornado drill because it is the most relevant here (in this path of derailment) and I live in Minnesota, part of tornado alley here in the 'States so I have seen it and done it first hand. Granted it would not be perfect (I don't expect anything to be) but based upon my remnant culture of Civil Defence, I think it likely for a series of systems to be developed. Concluding though, Man once though it was crazy to go to the moon, but we purposed to do so by the end of the decade and so we did.
-
Stations are so big. So big. And very, very secure except in time of war — tens of thousands of people living in what's essentially a floating city. Disaster drills would be absolutely routine: how to get to your shelters, how to put on a survival suit, how to queue for an evacuation ship. There won't be enough full-fledged subspace capable escape pods for everyone: this isn't a military installation. But there will be enough short-range survival equipment to get more or less everyone out, even if it means drifting free in a bubble with a thruster. This would be a useful capability if everyone had to be transferred rapidly.
But how does that help anyone get off Simak Station? The whole problem is that the evacuation cannot be completed before the Tevs take control of the station's critical systems. There's no one nearby to pick up evacuees. There's a battle going on outside. There's an armed meson bomb ready to kill everything within several kilometers at a moment's notice. Surrounding the station in a crowd of drifting people just kills them when the bomb goes off or kills them when the UEF goes scorched earth on the station.
-
Exactly.
-
@Norbert: While it's difficult to speculate on what attitudes in the UEF would be like without Steele, in The Cost of War the Suffron (or maybe Ironhide, I'm not sure) strongly suggests that at least 3JRF was fed up with Earth even while Severanti was in command, and in The Intervention, Simms directly states that 2 Fleet is less concerned with Ubuntu than Earth. There's a document somewhere in the library that backs this up. Given Calder's attitude and Netraba's interest in autonomous units, I think something like the Wargods were inevitable, had Severanti inflicted meaningful territorial losses on the UEF. I suppose Severanti could have gone fully war-of-attrition to avoid that, but that would leave the Feds with better logistics in spite of the Tev resource advantage, and without a defensible site of his own, he'd be very vulnerable to Fedayeen strikes.
Yeah sure, the Jovians pretty widely believed that way and some among the Martians thought that way too, but not enough to turn the entire war around. Sure once Severanti took more and more terretory, more and more UEF people would change their views, but by then it would most likely have already been too late. All the martial zeal in the world won't do any good if you don't have enough ships, fuel and ammunition to fight with.
-
The thing I think people are missing is that Calder and 3JRF maintained a stalemate with Severanti for a year and a half singlehandedly, or very close to it. Laporte makes it quite clear that Home Fleet saw no action until Ganymede fell. We don't know if 2 Fleet sent any reinforcements rimward, but they're pretty much intact even at the end of Tenabra, so it seems reasonable that they were few, if any. Severanti was trying to fight a war of attrition, but the Feds had an overwhelming logistical advantage that he was unwilling to attack.
Here's a data point: Capella had a few million inhabitants, and was considered a large colony. This puts the population of the GTVA (well, the Terran wing, at least) at easily under a billion. Modern Earth has something like two orders of magnitude more inhabitants than all the Terrans in the GTVA, and the UEF has colonies of their own. Their economy is better than the Tevs', per capita, as well. They don't need to make intrasystem jumps to deliver war materiel, their logistics are untraceable due to their ability to dry-fire intrasystem gates... the Kadmos techroom entry even says they could establish a prosperous trade route across the entirety of GTVA space if they wanted to. The Feds may have only one system, but in every other measure of a civilisation, they're huge, relatively speaking.
What the Feds don't have is the ability to turn that economic advantage into war materiel. To remain competitive, they'd need to retool shipyards, expand procurement of militarily relevant raw materials, and otherwise refactor their economy. We actually saw a little bit of this with the Sanctus and Narayana refits; the Sanctus in particular was originally a freighter with enough firepower to function as a screening element. (I can't recall if these upgrades were in response to Tev aggression or the Gef campaign, but either way, the precedent is there.) Given a little bit of downtime, they could do it, and that's exactly what Severanti would give them.
The question is whether they would take it. I say yes. Byrne may be Ubuntu/10, but he commands Narayana artillery all the same. The Elders created the Fedayeen. Even if they refused to commit assets directly, surely Ubuntu would require they support their Jovian comrades with repairs, block upgrades, and medical care. Severanti's strategy would end with the GTVA grinding itself away at the node, while Sol's overwhelming economy gives them even stronger defenses as the war goes on, while the Tevs' already tenuous popular support wavers with each squadron or warship they bleed away. In short, Byrne would have his way, and the GTVA would exhaust itself on the Feds economic judo.
---
Comparing evacuating a space station to civil defense doesn't work. Responding to a tornado doesn't get harder just because you have more neighbors. I don't know if I buy that it's economically feasible to maintain enough space suits (keep in mind that they'd all need to be kept in working order separately) and procedures to get everyone to one, but it doesn't help. A suit just doesn't have the thrusters or fuel to clear an exploding Kumari, let alone dodge BBlues and Eos torpedoes (or even fighters - recall Kassim's comment about hitting an ejected pilot in Post Meridian). Furthermore, not only would your civilians not have a nice thick hull to hide behind, they'd have to be picked up independently, which would take far, far longer than picking them up from a docking bay.
Space suits wouldn't have helped at either Artemis or Simak.
-
The thing I think people are missing is that Calder and 3JRF maintained a stalemate with Severanti for a year and a half singlehandedly, or very close to it. Laporte makes it quite clear that Home Fleet saw no action until Ganymede fell. We don't know if 2 Fleet sent any reinforcements rimward, but they're pretty much intact even at the end of Tenabra, so it seems reasonable that they were few, if any. Severanti was trying to fight a war of attrition, but the Feds had an overwhelming logistical advantage that he was unwilling to attack.
It's important to note that probably half of this time was spent being on the defensive because of the events of Age of Aquarius. The GTVA had to re-evaluate their position on the war due to potential threats of not just another Shivan incursion, but possibly a Vishnan AND Sol offensive. There was simply a lot of unknowns that the GTVA had to act on.
The 14th Battlegroup being completely exhausted took the initiative away from the Terrans. It wasn't until the 15th Battlegroup was sent to Sol that the GTVA regained the material advantage to allow for a major offensive. For the conditions he was put under, Severanti was making steady progress.
The more controversial decision actually lies on the part of the Federation. Why didn't they attack the GTVA with all of their assets when they only had one Battlegroup in the system?
-
Sure, the 15th's arrival would change the strategic picture - but if there was ever motivation for 2 Fleet to commit, that'd be it. We even saw Netraba do this in Darkest Hour, although probably not as effectively as if the Blitz hadn't forced him to act so quickly.
-
I don't see how spacesuits are going to protect people from a station exploding when large ship explosions can **** shielded military fighters up. You're not going to put real shields on a spacesuit, either.
Here's a data point: Capella had a few million inhabitants, and was considered a large colony. This puts the population of the GTVA (well, the Terran wing, at least) at easily under a billion. Modern Earth has something like two orders of magnitude more inhabitants than all the Terrans in the GTVA, and the UEF has colonies of their own.
The UEF and the Terran half of the GTVA have roughly similar populations. Capella had a population of around 300 million, but Delta Serpentis, Vega, and Beta Aquilae are the real Terran population centers outside of Sol.
-
I think Sol is probably a bit bigger both economically and demographically. Enough to make it worth fighting for.
-
I think the biggest problem with Severanti's strategy was how much stronger Sol's production capabilities are. In months or a year the UEF can't afford frigate attrition while the GTVA can lose a destroyer and still keep up the pressure. Over a slower war lasting 5 years the UEF can replace all those frigates and build new destroyers while the GTVA relies on relatively fragile supply lines to keep their destroyers functioning in-system. The GTVA also has to dedicate most of their resources to a possible 3rd Shivan incursion.
The longer the war lasts the more chances you're giving to the UEF to cut off or seriously damage your logistics. And if you pressure them hard they'll be too busy worrying about their dwindling ship numbers to go after your supply lines.
-
Eloquently stated, Frikg.
-
There's one matter that would have severely hampered the UEF both in defense, but especially offense: Almost all their ships where equipped for anti-piracy duty when the war started.
The Narayana - probably the most feared weapon in the UEF arsenal - were only converted to artillary ships during the war. If their pilots had any experience it was against GEFs with inferior fighters, numbers and training compared to combat hardened Terran pilots.
I also strongly believe that the UEF initially had a rather small military, because they didn't really need one. They needed a police force until the node was reopened, but no military. The redical GEF cells were terrorists and criminals, not an actual military. Actually it's almost surprising they even had an actual military instead of just police and militia.
They also lacked any kind of beam-jamming until quite far into the war. Couple that with their initial lack of long-range firepower and any cap-ship engagement would have been beyond risky for the UEF.
So on one side we have the GTVA forces pretty much in chaos, in need to establish logistical lines and rotate in replacements for the exhausted14th BG and on the other hand a UEF force that was totally unprepared for a war, needing to recruit pilots, refit their ships for war and pretty much needing to learn how to fight a real long-term war. Looking at it this way, it's no surprise that neither side was willing to commit to any large-scale attacks.
-
I also strongly believe that the UEF initially had a rather small military, because they didn't really need one. They needed a police force until the node was reopened, but no military. The redical GEF cells were terrorists and criminals, not an actual military. Actually it's almost surprising they even had an actual military instead of just police and militia.
The UEF had an incredibly strong military. 3 Destroyers, 30 or 40 frigates, some 60-odd cruisers. Small compared to the GTVA armada, but way, way more than what the GTVA would normally assign to any single system.
-
That's odd... considering how much resistence there was to building any destroyers at all, I'd expect them to have a comparetively small military, or at least a small active military with most of the soldiers being reservists who spent most of their time away from the military.
-
That's odd... considering how much resistence there was to building any destroyers at all, I'd expect them to have a comparetively small military, or at least a small active military with most of the soldiers being reservists who spent most of their time away from the military.
Do recall that Sol's total population is huge. Compared to that and the strength of the solarian economy, the UEF Navy is actually tiny; by comparison, the terran portion of the GTVA alone with its somewhat more inefficient economy manages to keep 19 Destroyer Battlegroups in service (for a total of 35 Destroyers and over a hundred Corvettes and Cruisers). It's a matter of what measure you use to determine the size: For a single system navy, the UEF is ridiculously oversized. Compared to what the solarian economy could support, it's small.
-
Also, due to the way beam damage is very frontloaded GTVA ships benefit a lot more from being in larger groups than UEF ships. 4 Karunas can bombard and seriously hurt a GTVA battlegroup. 4 Chimeras can almost instantly evaporate a UEF frigate and give themselves a numbers advantage immediately or shoot and run, using their mobility to reposition/escape after the initial volley.
UEF ships simply don't have that explosive "one burst kill" firepower which makes them really unfavoured in a short-term attrition war. Even if you wreck a GTVA Corvette before it can jump away it can still be repaired and reused. A Narayana or Karuna hit by the Serkr team will only ever be used as scrap metal.
So even with ~relatively similar numbers the GTVA ships simply have more killing power, they have a much easier time turning advantages and tactical jumps into permanent damage rather than just a forced trip to Delta Serpentis.
Beam jamming changes this but it was a very late-war addition to the UEF arsenal, after Steele had already taken command in Sol.
-
Beam jamming changes this but it was a very late-war addition to the UEF arsenal, after Steele had already taken command in Sol.
I thought beam jamming was a thing well before WiH began. Source?
-
According to the Oculus tech room entry, a handful escaped the fall of Jupiter, bringing (among other things) beam jamming prototypes with them. The technology may have existed earlier, but wasn't in usable form until shortly after Steele arrived.
...however, the Feds had started producing more by as early as the Agincourt heist, so really, this just makes Severanti's strategy even less viable. The more jamming ships the UEF can build, the weaker the GTVA's weapons become, and we've already established that the UEF has the industrial base to do that, given time to retool some shipyards.
-
But as Delenda Est showed, beam jamming is something that the GTVA can counteract pretty much out of existing resources. Widespread deployment of the technology (which is something that isn't trivial, given the scarcity of Oculus hulls) will help to make the Tev's alpha strike advantage less acute, but it's not going to be nullified completely.
-
I don't think there's any evidence that the Federation's forces was actually growing rather than shrinking. Most of the Federation's industrial efforts seem geared towards replenishing strikecraft, repairing existing vessels, and on the rare occasion, retrofitting a capital ship. There might have been a few additional cruisers added to the fleet, but the general circumstances seem to suggest a shrinking fleet. I doubt Sol could afford to devote resources to construct more than a handful of frigates, if that is the intent at all given their Ubuntu philosophy and aim to resolve the conflict diplomatically.
There's also something else to keep in mind. There seems to be a desire to limit the escalation of the war as a result of the Elders' connection to the Vishnans, that seems to imply that if the Federation were to gear towards total war and abandon their Ubuntu philosophy, very bad things may happen, something along the lines of crossing the threshold.
-
But as Delenda Est showed, beam jamming is something that the GTVA can counteract pretty much out of existing resources. Widespread deployment of the technology (which is something that isn't trivial, given the scarcity of Oculus hulls) will help to make the Tev's alpha strike advantage less acute, but it's not going to be nullified completely.
Delenda Est showed the ultramodern, highly experimental GTD Carthage can blow up an Oculus after a fighter's TAGged it. Even that isn't guaranteed to work, since the BP discussion thread has described beam jamming as a combination of ECM to throw off targeting and EM disruption of the beam's magnetic bottle; this hasn't been confirmed, but I suspect the Carthage's ability to lock the Hanuman is a combination of the TAG missile and the distance between the two more than some flaw of the jamming tech itself.
Oculus spaceframes may be rare, but the Jovians built at least "several" prototypes "[i]n the weeks leading up to the Fall of Jupiter", according to the tech entry. (I had actually been under the impression that they'd been available to assist Calder's forces in the 18 months before WiH; that Calder was able to maintain a stalemate even against full-strength Tev alpha strikes suggests that either they're not usually as deadly as proposed earlier, or that Severanti egregiously underutilized them. I suspect some combination of both, leaning towards the latter.) Now, the rest of the UEF probably doesn't have too many flux tube probes laying around, but if some Jovian engineers can "jury-rig" a fully capable ECM ship in a few weeks, I doubt the UEF would have trouble adapting the design to a more typical hull configuration... well, unless a certain metal-themed admiral decides to smash their logistics out of nowhere.
@Snarks: Simms mentions UEF shipyard output as a going consideration in the briefing (or maybe the CB, I'm not sure) to Pawns on a Board of Bone. That doesn't mean the fleet is growing, but I think you're underestimating somewhat. I don't think canon mentions any new warships coming online post-Severanti, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. Further, we only have that perspective post-Steele. Severanti both inflicted fewer casualties and didn't prioritize attacking their economy, especially in and around Earth sector where most of their shipyards seem to have been located.
-
Remember that crewing those ships is certainly an issue too, no matter how much you shortcut training.
-
Delenda Est showed the ultramodern, highly experimental GTD Carthage can blow up an Oculus after a fighter's TAGged it. Even that isn't guaranteed to work, since the BP discussion thread has described beam jamming as a combination of ECM to throw off targeting and EM disruption of the beam's magnetic bottle; this hasn't been confirmed, but I suspect the Carthage's ability to lock the Hanuman is a combination of the TAG missile and the distance between the two more than some flaw of the jamming tech itself.
DE showed the Carthage nailing an Oculus with a Crypt Hammer beam, guided by a regular TAG fired from an Aurora. Nothing about that requires experimental tech; even if it does, the GTVA is better positioned to put a solution into place than the UEF is to put beam jammers everywhere. It's a tech race that the GTVA can win in short order; the period of vulnerability created by the deployment of beam jammers is very small.
-
By an Aurora?
Didn't that tagging come out of nowhere, which would suggest either an inside job from someone on the ship or a stealth fighter.
An Aurora would have been shot down before it got into range of the most mission critical ship in the area.
-
No, it's a standard TAG-B from a pop-up missile strike. Fighters have excellent subspace manoeuvrability and TAGs are too small and fast to be shot down so just jumping in, firing TAGs and jumping out is a very effective tactic. And with a range of almost 2000 metres for TAG-As and 1500m for TAG-Bs they can easily outrange BurstFlak.
If a subspace pop-up TAG strike isn't an option you can always send in stealth fighters though. That's why in Act 3 you see much less reliance on beam jamming and much more on long-range bombardment. Beam jamming was very effective for one op but mostly due to the surprise factor. It's become much less of a factor in warship engagements.
-
Also, due to the way beam damage is very frontloaded GTVA ships benefit a lot more from being in larger groups than UEF ships. 4 Karunas can bombard and seriously hurt a GTVA battlegroup. 4 Chimeras can almost instantly evaporate a UEF frigate and give themselves a numbers advantage immediately or shoot and run, using their mobility to reposition/escape after the initial volley.
I once did the math on Serkr's alpha strike potential in Aristea, if UEF AWACS did not come online on station and assuming the pair of Karunas were target priority, one Chimera would devote full fire to one, the other onto second, have the two anti-corvette beams on the corvette leader (Bellarriphon-class in this case) on one Karuna and the single anti-destroyer beam again on the other, both commited Frigates of JTF Wargods would be almost instantly hulled in one volley even with FULL armor integrity. With this in mind, you could see why one-half of the Wargods were going on about how the battlespace conditions were entirely outrageous. And this was designed with Shivans in mind...
-
That's odd... considering how much resistence there was to building any destroyers at all, I'd expect them to have a comparetively small military, or at least a small active military with most of the soldiers being reservists who spent most of their time away from the military.
I mean, everything you said there is true. The Solaris class saw a lot of opposition and took a major effort from Byrne to even get approved. The vast majority of the Sol's personel in fact seem to be reservists. I believe Laporte and her wingmates were all reserves, and there's a lot of mention of reservists being pulled into action.
The Federation fleet is large for a system, but it's barely a fraction of the forces the GTVA can muster (which probably numbers nearly 50 destroyers across Terrans and Vasudans with associated support vessels).
What's stopping the GTVA from committing more resources is a need to maintain perimeter defenses from possible Shivan incursions and a bottlenecked logistical pipeline.
The strangest thing to me is that all the Federation fleets are of roughly the same size despite Earth being clearly the largest economic and population powerhouse of the three Sol factions. If the fleets represented population and economic power, then 1st Fleet should be overwhelming larger than 2nd and 3rd Fleet. This implies to me that Earth built most of the ships and simply gave them to Mars and Jupiter, all the while having incredibly fewer serviceman per capita. Ubuntu must be really strong for that to happen.
-
3rd fleet is actually the largest of the three, due to a combination of having larger territory to cover, a martial frontier culture and troubles with fringe elements such as the gefs.
Earth has the larger population but the vast majority are planet bound, so they don't have the space culture that the Jovians have.
-
The strangest thing to me is that all the Federation fleets are of roughly the same size despite Earth being clearly the largest economic and population powerhouse of the three Sol factions. If the fleets represented population and economic power, then 1st Fleet should be overwhelming larger than 2nd and 3rd Fleet. This implies to me that Earth built most of the ships and simply gave them to Mars and Jupiter, all the while having incredibly fewer serviceman per capita. Ubuntu must be really strong for that to happen.
By the time of WiH, that is, 18 months after the outbreak of hostilities, 3JRF is the same size as the other fleets. It used to be larger.
-
If that's true, then it blows my Calder/Severanti stalemate thing out of the
water space. Bummer.
-
So how big was 3rd Fleet originally? I'm assuming the order of battle page doesn't cover original fleet strengths. We know at least one frigate was lost at the end of AoA.
That also seems to imply that by the end of Act 3, the Federation is probably down closer to 50% fleet strength as opposed to 66% (when all fleets were assumed to be roughly the same strength).
-
I once did the math on Serkr's alpha strike potential
I once did math on a Titan + Serkr alpha strike potential and concluded that a Solaris could quite easily get OHK'd. I was quickly corrected by Battuta saying that plot armour active armour makes those table-wanking calculations pretty much pointless.
-
Well I mean, thats certainly true of current naval combat. If someone fired an energy weapon at a cruiser, then it wouldn't do exactly 5000 damage with every hit (or whatever) nor guarantee the same effect every time in general.
-
If you shoot an anti-ship missile at a modern Nimitz carrier it's probably going to kill it, if you ignore literally everything else about the situation. But literally everything else is important!
-
The thing with missiles is that they can be countered. They can be shot down by point defense fire, spoofed or intercepted with counter-munitions. But beams are nearly perfect - they travel at 3E8 m/s and deliver effect with zero chance of avoidance. Beam guidance jamming and artillery at standoff range is basically the only thing that can keep them at bay, without it, Tevs have a massive advantage in ship-to-ship combat.
-
Well... there is the matter of the beam-emitters being quite vulnerable to anti-subsystem strikes.
That means that TEVs do have far more alpha-strike potential, but when it comes to prolonged battles, I think the UEF is better. Not to mention that most TEV ships are really screwed if you manage to catch them from outside their rather narrow main-beam arc.
-
'Beam jamming' is not, as I think people tend to fall into assuming, a single tactical capability that results in a magic beam off switch. While not directly represented in game there is a large component of beam countermeasures that significantly reduces the effective damage of an on-target beam.
-
Torpedo launchers and railguns are just as vulnerable to weapon supression strikes as beam emitters are.
And you seriously underestimate how potent TEI warships are even without their main beams. You've got secondary slasher and medium beams, torpedo launchers, and pulse turrets to even the playing field.
Look at "The Plunder", the Siren can seriously mess up the Indus and Yangtze even with its main beams disabled before they even fire a single salvo. TT2s and Pulses are no joke.
-
Actually, the tech room makes a point out of how easily destroyed BBlue emitters are (conversely, they're equally easy to replace). Secondary beams are nowhere near as effective as a shock-jump weapon.
IIRC, partial beam jamming actually is represented in gameplay by special armor types, but I could be mistaken. Either way, PH has a good point. Remember that, lore-wise, both sides have advanced targeting systems that look for weaknesses in enemy active armor, so even messing up beam targeting by a few degrees would result in effect below the tabled values, even if gameplay doesn't consistently represent that.
"The Plunder" (which, it seems, my phone is determined to turn into a Mario spinoff) is also an unusual example of the Feds prioritizing attack speed, which I'm sure we can all agree isn't their strong suit. If the threat of Tev reinforcements wasn't so severe, the Indus and Yangtze could actually kite the Siren pretty much indefinitely.
-
"The Plunder" (which, it seems, my phone is determined to turn into a Mario spinoff) is also an unusual example of the Feds prioritizing attack speed, which I'm sure we can all agree isn't their strong suit. If the threat of Tev reinforcements wasn't so severe, the Indus and Yangtze could actually kite the Siren pretty much indefinitely.
You can't ignore the strategic doctrine of the GTVA though, which states that a warship in reserve has more impact than a deployed warship. There's a reason why the Indus and Yangtze had to attack quickly because a jump five team could arrive and inflict heavy shock damage to the Federation vessels. In other words, the strategic doctrine of the GTVA means the threat of reinforcements is always there. Ironically, it's because Steele doesn't adhere to strictly to GTVA doctrine that gives the Federation opportunities to perform surgical strikes, as Steele often commits his reserves into action or is willing to take acceptable losses such as the Carthage.
On a side note, allowing the Carthage to be destroyed highlights the strategic thinking that Steele has. He understands that the Carthage is less valuable than more modern destroyers because of its aging spaceframe. He understood that for all intents and purposes, that the Carthage no longer had strategic value as it was on route to leave the Sol Theater anyways. By letting the Federation destroy/capture the Carthage, he is accepting a small loss in political capital in-exchange for keeping his plans on schedule, and to a certain extent, wearing down the Federation by having them expend further resources on what was already an irrelevant asset for his plans.
-
Steele did not 'allow' the Carthage to be destroyed; he gave Lopez a direct order to retreat and she disobeyed. It was a fairly minor loss to him by that point but it was unquestionably a loss he did not want.
-
Steele did not 'allow' the Carthage to be destroyed; he gave Lopez a direct order to retreat and she disobeyed. It was a fairly minor loss to him by that point but it was unquestionably a loss he did not want.
I'm not saying Steele wanted the Carthage to be destroyed, but he definitely could have saved it, at the cost of delaying his next attack. My post was highlighting the difference between Steele and Severanti. If Severanti was incharge in that situation, he definitely would have committed forces to saving the Carthage.
-
If you shoot an anti-ship missile at a modern Nimitz carrier it's probably going to kill it, if you ignore literally everything else about the situation. But literally everything else is important!
Assuming it's Nuclear-tipped of course. I read an article on how DURABLE the Nimitz is against conventional warheads. For all intents and purposes, I gathered from it if you want that one hit kill, you need nukes. Also yes, it does put into context the rest of the operation of a CVBG as why these groups are the most defensible units on the planet today.
If interested, you can look here: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/five-reasons-us-aircraft-carriers-are-nearly-impossible-sink-17318?page=sho
-
"The Plunder" (which, it seems, my phone is determined to turn into a Mario spinoff) is also an unusual example of the Feds prioritizing attack speed, which I'm sure we can all agree isn't their strong suit. If the threat of Tev reinforcements wasn't so severe, the Indus and Yangtze could actually kite the Siren pretty much indefinitely.
You can't ignore the strategic doctrine of the GTVA though, which states that a warship in reserve has more impact than a deployed warship. There's a reason why the Indus and Yangtze had to attack quickly because a jump five team could arrive and inflict heavy shock damage to the Federation vessels. In other words, the strategic doctrine of the GTVA means the threat of reinforcements is always there. Ironically, it's because Steele doesn't adhere to strictly to GTVA doctrine that gives the Federation opportunities to perform surgical strikes, as Steele often commits his reserves into action or is willing to take acceptable losses such as the Carthage.
Well, the Feds have the same doctrine, which is why the question of why they can effectively counter a Chimera pack's alpha strike is so important in the first place. I maintain (as does the relevant Library fiction) that Calder and Severanti were both very careful with their attacks for just this reason, drawing out the war and giving the Feds time to leverage their long-term advantages. The UEF doesn't need to destroy the Tev foothold, just keep it contained until the GTVA gives up/the UEF can mass-produce IWAR ships[1]/Shambhala happens/the Fedayeen go nuke the portal/whatever. The Tevs under Severanti, meanwhile, need to grind their way past not only Calder, but also Severanti, who has been left to build up his forces, and probably even Byrne, who doesn't seem to mind committing assets to defend things. Like, okay, I get it, the GTVA has a massive pool of ships to draw upon as reinforcements, but there's only so many times they can do that before morale and political support start becoming a problem. Meanwhile, the UEF gets to play defensive, which is what they're best at, but they certainly can go on the offensive when they have to - well, 2 Fleet and Calder can, at least.
[1] Yeah, okay, the Oculus isn't going to win the war on its own, but once the Feds figure out how to refit Demeters and Kadmoses into beam jammers, the Tevs are going to have a much harder time using their main guns. Case in point, the Siren and two cruisers are a legitimate threat to a Karuna pair in "The Plunder", but in the very next mission, those same two Karunae[2] plus an Oculus force Serkr Team to withdraw.
[2] I know this isn't the correct plural, but it amuses me.
-
The reason the Karunas win in Aristeia is because the main beams of the Serkr were jammed and they got beat up too badly before they got into pulse range. And even then they usually retreat at 50-30% hull integrity while doing serious damage to the Karunas. By the time the Medea jumps in the Indus will usually be on its last legs.
The GTVA was probably taken off guard and didn't have TAG-equipped ships ready to jump and no time to load up some Pegasi or Rheas with them.
And in the very next op(Pawns on a Board of Bone and Delenda Est) they have TAG-equipped fighters ready and once the Wargods overcommit they get absolutely annihilated.
I really don't think full beam denial is going to work anymore. All sorts beam disruption techniques that reduce damage are still important but you're unlikely to see them completely nullified. Look at HFH for example, the Carthage and her Mjolnirs will miss some shots presumably due to heavy interference but most of them will still connect(and do serious damage to your frigates) which makes those beams primary targets to take out ASAP. Also in the case that you lose too many of your battlefield assets Steele isn't afraid to call in the Serkr to wreck the Toutatis(if the player decides to call it in).
Despite the Toutatis presumably having a complex EWAR suite and active armour it still gets taken out rather quickly by the corvette hunter-killer team.
So in the future the alpha-strike instakill potential of GTVA reinforcements is a massive nightmare for the UEF while the slower increase in DPS UEF reinforcements provide is more of a tactical setback. A GTVA ship in reserve is much scarier than a UEF ship in reserve, especially if its a Titan or a Bellerophon.
-
Also in the case that you lose too many of your battlefield assets Steele isn't afraid to call in the Serkr to wreck the Toutatis(if the player decides to call it in).
Despite the Toutatis presumably having a complex EWAR suite and active armour it still gets taken out rather quickly by the corvette hunter-killer team.
Wait, that's an event that can happen?
-
If you lose most (all?) of the air wing (I think telling them to depart counts for this), you can call in the Toutatis directly. If some other condition is met (both artillery frigates driven off, I think?), Serkr jumps in and nails the Big T.
-
I was convinced that calling in the Toutatis was tied into how long it takes you to kill the Carthage but I've never actually looked at the mission file. If you lose all your Durgas that fight can drag on for like 15 minutes. Though I'm pretty sure you can get the Toutatis without losing your whole air wing. I've called it in with only ~20ish losses out of possible 50ish.
And yes, if you also lost both your arty frigs then Serkr jumps in with heavily uparmoured beams and wrecks the Toutatis.
-
"The Plunder" (which, it seems, my phone is determined to turn into a Mario spinoff) is also an unusual example of the Feds prioritizing attack speed, which I'm sure we can all agree isn't their strong suit. If the threat of Tev reinforcements wasn't so severe, the Indus and Yangtze could actually kite the Siren pretty much indefinitely.
You can't ignore the strategic doctrine of the GTVA though, which states that a warship in reserve has more impact than a deployed warship. There's a reason why the Indus and Yangtze had to attack quickly because a jump five team could arrive and inflict heavy shock damage to the Federation vessels. In other words, the strategic doctrine of the GTVA means the threat of reinforcements is always there. Ironically, it's because Steele doesn't adhere to strictly to GTVA doctrine that gives the Federation opportunities to perform surgical strikes, as Steele often commits his reserves into action or is willing to take acceptable losses such as the Carthage.
Well, the Feds have the same doctrine, which is why the question of why they can effectively counter a Chimera pack's alpha strike is so important in the first place.
Also, probable historic point, both inherited at least some portions of the same fleet doctrine from the now defunct Galactic Terran Alliance League of Defense. A possible explanation of roughly similar operation.
-
Sure the torpedo tubes and mass drivers can also be taken out, but they are much smaller and the UEF generally has more of them than the GTVA ships have beams.
And I think you are underestimating the UEF ships far more than I am underestimating the GTVA ships. Keep in mind that the Imperieuse has to basically cheat to make sure it wins against the Wargods all the time.
That three buffed up elite corvettes with a lot of strike-craft support can badly damage two Karunas with far fewer strike craft is hardly a good example to showcase how great the GTVA ships are without main beams.
Besides the blob turrets won't be doing much damage to hull when they are busy with countering torpedo spams, especially if the UEF ships switch to the torpedoes that split into 4 submunitions for point defense saturation.
-
The Serkr corvettes don't actually have any extra pulses so their damage output without beams is the same as any other Chimera or Bellerophon.
The Karuna has 2 mass drivers which are pretty big and pretty easy to disable, just like the Chimera's front beams. It also has 5 Gauss cannons which aren't very hard to hit and don't do that much hull damage. And size really doesn't matter, it's not like smaller turrets are all that hard to hit.
Finally, it has 3 Apocalypse launchers which isn't really enough to overwhelm a corvette group.
The reason UEF frigates win against GTVA corvettes without their beams is that they're a size class above them. Of course they're gonna have more armament, they just have more hull to work with. A 1300m Karuna and an 800m Chimera aren't in the same class and the GTVA currently has way more corvettes in sol than the UEF has frigates. Directly comparing a Kurana and Chimera 1:1 is just as pointless as directly comparing a Karuna and a Hecate 1:1. The Corvettes have greater numbers and greater subspace manoeuvrability even if you ignore their beams. With their beams a Chimera pack is superior to any UEF warship, even a Solaris(as HFH demonstrates) .
And you can't just pretend like those beams don't exist. The corvettes can jump in and immediately fire which gives the defenders no time to disarm the beams and we know from Collateral Damage that a Narayana or Karuna simply can't survive a Chimera pack beaming. If there's an Occulus jammer in the battlespace you either send in maxim-armed hercs or connect with a TAG missile. If you have an Erebus in reserve you can also SSM it before sending in your kill pack.
GTVA Corvettes are enough of a threat without their beams considering their size class that they don't have to immediately retreat and the GTVA has enough corvettes that they'll never be without that potential jump-in alpha strike kill potential.
The Imperiuse only needs to overdrive on the 2nd shot to clean up the Katana and Atlan Orde before they can damage her beam emmiters. Beam overdrives are common in BP and it's reasonable to assume that ships can overdrive the damage or the firerate with practised crews. That's not really 'cheating', that's just the basic capability of the ship.
If the Carthage can overdrive the firerate of her old BGreens then a Titan can probably get her BBLues to fire every 10 seconds(maybe sacrificing some damage). Even with reduced damage 3 BBlues and 3 MBlues from the supporting Chimera is more than enough to OHK a Karuna.
-
Keep in mind that the Imperieuse has to basically cheat to make sure it wins against the Wargods all the time.
The Imperiuse only needs to overdrive on the 2nd shot to clean up the Katana and Atlan Orde before they can damage her beam emmiters. Beam overdrives are common in BP and it's reasonable to assume that ships can overdrive the damage or the firerate with practised crews. That's not really 'cheating', that's just the basic capability of the ship.
This is very important and I can't believe I forgot it. Somewhere in the developer's commentary, there's an anecdote about Delenda Est actually being "winnable" due to 3JRF's frigates sometimes nailing the Imperiuse's beams - and it's the much-maligned Gauss Cannon#Karuna that did it. This was resolved by making the beam emitters indestructible, but the point remains - without plot armor, those beams can go down quite quickly, and I somehow doubt that ship-subsys-guardian-threshold is within the capabilities of a Titan-class destroyer.
Actually, let me do the math here... As a first-order approximation, I'm going to model this as Chimeras vs. Karunae.
A Chimera corvette has 80,000 HP, and its MBlue emitters have 5% HP, aka 4000 HP, according to bp-shp.tbm. The Gauss Cannon#Karuna deals 1200 subsystem damage per shot, and a Karuna has five of them. (I know I'm assuming Chimeras vs. Karunae, but as an aside... If Narayanas are in play, the Gauss Cannon#Narayana deals 2400 damage per shot and fires in bursts of two, so a single Narayana-grade gauss cannon can snipe an MBlue.) This is assuming perfect-or-close-to-it accuracy, which is less fair if we're trying to leverage the Narayana's range or ROF advantage.
On the defensive, a Karuna has 85,000 HP, and an MBlue deals 19800 damage per pulse. It takes roughly 4.3 MBlue pulses to sink a Karuna. If a single Chimera tries to shock-jump a single Karuna, it will leave the Karuna with 25600 HP, just barely enough to survive another MBlue pulse. If the Chimera emerged in TerPulse range, the Karuna is probably toast. If not, the Karuna has 35(!) seconds to strip the Chimera's beams before the lethargic MBlue has recharged... or, if the orientation of the ships doesn't suit that, it can just go be somewhere else, since the Karuna's got nearly twice the speed of the Chimera (and, another aside, fully twice the speed of the Bellerophon), all the while getting in some incidental damage with its Apocalypse launchers. Hypothetically speaking, if the Chimera's jump is particularly lackluster, it can even have an emitter taken out before it can fire (or before firing a full pulse), due to the Gauss Cannon#Karuna's range advantage[1]. Against paired Karunae, we see a similar situation, with the Chimeras inflicting moderate-to-severe damage but, depending on their insertion range, not necessarily taking out the Karunae unless they have numeric superiority. You can do the math on this one.
But that's going off the tables, and those don't paint a full picture. First off, beam jamming. I'm not talking about full-scale, the-Anjaneya-pwns-Serkr-Team-in-their-noob-asses sorta beam jamming here, though. It's been well-established in fluff that warships on both sides need extremely precise targeting is needed to get maximum effect from their main weapons in the face of enemy active armor[2]. Therefore, even slight degradation of beam targeting matters. I can't think of this being made explicit in canon, but it certainly seems to be the narrative justification for the special armor types used by Buntu ships in some missions. There aren't any canonical numbers here, but going off Delenda Est, a 20% degradation in damage seems plausible, in which case it takes a little over five full MBlue pulses to sink a Karuna with an ECM ship[3] escorting it. At 30% degradation, you'd need six, and at 40%, you'd need seven. In other words, depending on the ECM environment, a single Karuna may be able to escape even a paired Chimera strike!
What if we have multiple Karunae? Well, that's when this approach starts running into geometrical problems. How close together Chimera corvettes can safely jump in together starts to play a bigger and bigger role, but above a certain point, they're going to start having trouble emerging in a good shock-jump formation. I think there's some sort of diminishing return here, where at a certain point the corvettes start getting in each other's way. Another question would be whether ECM can mess up an incoming jump by interfering with whatever's relaying coordinates, which I don't think has ever been addressed. My guess would be that four Chimeras can almost always sink two Karunae, possibly with losses of their own depending on the Feds ECM, but that six can't reliably sink three since they'll get in each other's way.
Okay, so, why don't the Tevs just kill the AWACS? Well, if we're adding Tev fighters to the equation, we need to add Federal fighters as well. In "Aristeia", a pair of Kents or Uriels is sufficient to defend the Anjaneya more or less indefinitely, while Torpedo 2's AWACS is killed by SEXP fiat (which I discovered on one playthrough when I tried to save it to see if the Medea fight went differently). Karunae excel in the point defense department, and the AWACS would be nearby, so it seems plausible in-universe, too. Furthermore, the time spent fighting the AWACS gives the Feds time to Gauss Cannon the beams.
Okay, what about TAG missiles? Yes, it worked against the Hanuman, but I'd argue that that's not actually representative. It's been confirmed (and you'd have to find this yourself, I'm not searching through the entire BP discussion thread for it) that beam jamming is a combination of throwing off enemy targeting and physically messing with the beam magnetic bottle. At shorter ranges, it can be physically impossible to fire a direct-fire beam. If you send along a Deimos or Diomedes to TerSlash/TerSlashBlue the AWACS, you're still giving the Feds time to return fire.
Another issue is SUTRAC. Sol is the UEF's home turf. They've got listening posts, they've got recon elements, they've got whole installations devoted to computing enemy jump vectors. Conversely, the Tevs, erm, don't. The Feds also have their gate network, which, according to the tech room entry, helps them keep their own positions hidden by activating the gates at random intervals whether or not something's actually using them. Now, let's look at the times when we actually see a Tev shock-jump in practice:
- In "Collateral Damage", the player gets a warning quite some time in advance of Serkr's arrival. I can't remember what prevented the Ranvir from jumping out, but under ordinary circumstances, it would have had a wide window to do so.
- In "Aristeia", Calder warns you a full 30 seconds before the Medea arrives. If the Feds hadn't been escorting the crippled Agincourt, they could have jumped out right then and there. The Auxerre's CO, incidentally, describes the [/i]Medea's jump as unusually good, even though all she did was arrive in the correct orientation to fire her beams.
- In "Delenda Est", the Imperiuse had to jump all the way from the Kuiper belt to avoid detection.
All of this hints that shock-jumps are harder to start than they sound, between the long lead time and the difficulty of actually finding the friggin UEF ship in the first place. Even if successfully launched, executing it successfully requires good navigational data to deploy correctly, and for the Feds not to have sufficient ECM cover. For the record, I'm not suggesting that Severanti launched many (any?) failed shock-jump attacks, especially given how cautious he is; I am, however, suggesting that Calder knows how to answer them, and that Severanti can't just throw corvettes at the enemy without careful preparations. ("Subspace speed chess" and all...) All three of these attacks were Steele's, not Severanti's, and one can still fail miserably, depending on the player's skill.
Lastly, we can apply a variation of the anthropic principle: if shock-jumps really were so impossible to counter as has been suggested, then either Severanti's severely underutilizing them[4], or the war would already be over.
Wow, that ended up being longer than I expected.
[1] The Karuna's main guns do slightly outrange the Chimera's, and it's enough to disrupt an MBlue if the Chimera comes in from too far away and within the gauss cannon's firing arc. The tech room explicitly states that this is a considerable deterrent for Tev strikes.
[2] For example, the Toutatis certainly could lob torpedoes at the Hood through the Hoover's ECM, and the Vikrant and Toreador actually do so against the Shrievality and Beholder. In both cases, it's a matter of reduced effect, not being completely unable to target. (Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure the Toutatis doesn't actually do so.) Ships will sometimes hold off on firing into heavy ECM to preserve ammo (UEF) or to avoid needless heat/recharge cycles (Tev).
[3] I've already said that I think, had Severanti continued to fight the long war he was fighting, the Feds would figure out how to mass-produce Oculi and/or retrofit existing spaceframes into jamming ships. Imagine an ECM block upgrade to the Custos - or, hell, maybe the Demeter or the friggin Puruyasha.
[4] Which I can totally believe. Steele shock-jumps a planet, after all - but we're talking about Severanti, not Steele[5].
[5] Incidentally, the Carthage, Imperiuse, and Serkr Team are all Steele's assets. I think it's relevant that the most feared shock-jumpers were customized and trained by Severanti's replacement.
EDIT:
If the Carthage can overdrive the firerate of her old BGreens then a Titan can probably get her BBLues to fire every 10 seconds(maybe sacrificing some damage). Even with reduced damage 3 BBlues and 3 MBlues from the supporting Chimera is more than enough to OHK a Karuna.
A Titan probably could, but the Chimera's tech room entry is quite explicit that it has heat issues as it is - it's got plenty of energy, but risks blowing itself up if it routes any more to the main guns.
-
I think in a more coordinated shock jump you wouldn't have all the ships emerging from the same location with the same vector. I think it would look more like A time for Heroes where the entire battlegroup coordinates to burn through the Sath's 1 million health pool in about a minute and a half. That can reasonably happen to a stranded Solaris that doesn't have time to recharge its jump drives when it overcommits to an engagement.
By splitting up and coming in from different angles Tevs can both bring more firepower and split up the UEF torpedo swarms which makes them easier for fighters to shoot down.
The Serkr team jumping in side-by-side looks impressive and terrifying but with more assets you'd want to do a 90 degree or 180 degree split.
Overall beams do have less utility and are more demanding to use compared to long range mass drivers but they make up for that with their massive damage. Over the course of the war the UEF scores very few important kills on-screen. Mostly cruisers and 2 Diomedes, and some Deimoses depending on whether the player disables them. The GTVA on the other hand scores 6 frigate kills(and remember, frigates are a size class above corvettes) alongside some Sancti (Sanctuses?). A big reason for this is due to the UEF's lower subspace manoeuvrability and much more even damage with no real options for finishing off ships before they can jump out.
There's a good win in Her Finest Hour, scoring quite a few corvette kills and getting a destroyer but it might be too little too late. It was also an operation where the GTVA battlegroup refused to retreat when ordered to and could've retreated safely otherwise with no losses.
Most GTVA kills that we get to see come from shock jumps. GTVA jump drive tech is simply years ahead of what the UEF has which allows them to set up precise jumps and pick up kills with much less setup required. UEF kills on the other hand come from well-planned ops that utilise their infrastructure advantage but this also means that they're much less flexible once committed. Severanti never really exploits that, preferring to play it safely. Steele on the other hand doesn't play by your rules and uses that subspace manoeuvrability and shock-jump potential to great effect to exploit weaknesses as he sees them. Shock jumps aren't all that easy to pull off but they are extremely rewarding when pulled off correctly. On the other hand long-range artillery is much easier to set up but is less likely to pick up kills without very complicated setup that leaves GTVA ships stranded.
The jammer in Aristea is scripted to die, sure, but it's really not very hard to kill an AWACS ship from long-range with maxim-armed fighters and bombers. A wing of 4 Ares or Artemi with maxims in their 4-bank can burn through its 30k HP in just over 10 seconds. Even with active armour it shouldn't take much longer. Deploy 2 wings jumping at opposite sides of the Oculus, preferably from above and below(since that gives them a larger target profile to work with) at 4000 kilometres and fighter assets will have a very hard time responding before it goes down.
All of the scripting is supposed to have a diegetic explanation in-universe. The Imperiuse might have an ECM advantage which throws off the Wargods targetting and causes their shots to deal much less damage or it might have advanced new active armour that the UEF wasn't prepared for yet. The railguns on the frigates might have taken battle damage which causes them to be much less effective.
The Oculus dies before enough damage is dealt because of a lucky maxim hit that tore through the hull and hit the reactor. Or maybe something went wrong with its active armour, making it take way more damage than it should. Or a previous glancing hit ****ed up its cooling which caused the reactor to overheat and the ship to suddenly explode. There are plenty of factors not represented by game mechanics that explain away the "cheating".
And speaking of fighter assets, the wave 2 TEI fighters outclass anything the UEF has. The canonical reason UEF fighter corps have been able to pick up wins is that GTVA pilots are fresher but slowly improving with experience, sending their best pilots away from combat to train new pilots while the UEF keeps their best pilots on the front lines to "rack up ridiculous kill numbers". The UEF won't find it all that easy to keep picking up wins against superior fighters as the GTVA pilots catch up.
-
Can I just begin by saying that this is the most fun I've had in a debate in months? Anyway:
And speaking of fighter assets, the wave 2 TEI fighters outclass anything the UEF has. The canonical reason UEF fighter corps have been able to pick up wins is that GTVA pilots are fresher but slowly improving with experience, sending their best pilots away from combat to train new pilots while the UEF keeps their best pilots on the front lines to "rack up ridiculous kill numbers". The UEF won't find it all that easy to keep picking up wins against superior fighters as the GTVA pilots catch up.
The Nyx and the Atalanta are both very strong ships, but Nyx production didn't begin until after the Sol invasion, and Atalantas are "rare in the Terran theatre", according to their respective tech room entries. I'm not sure what to make of the Draco - does it ever actually show up in a mission? Meanwhile, the basic Uhlan is extremely effective against the outdated Herc IIs and Myrmidons the GTVA is still fielding, has the maneuverability to get the drop on heavier ships like the Ares, and is comparable, perhaps slightly favored, against the Perseus and Kulas, Kents are extremely flexible in the field, and Slammers exist. In the Fedayeen arc, Laporte, Thorn, and Al-da'wa all agree that Calder's fighter corps is still relevant, especially the bombers.
Oh, and the Fedayeen are still a thing.
I think in a more coordinated shock jump you wouldn't have all the ships emerging from the same location with the same vector. I think it would look more like A time for Heroes where the entire battlegroup coordinates to burn through the Sath's 1 million health pool in about a minute and a half. That can reasonably happen to a stranded Solaris that doesn't have time to recharge its jump drives when it overcommits to an engagement.
By splitting up and coming in from different angles Tevs can both bring more firepower and split up the UEF torpedo swarms which makes them easier for fighters to shoot down.
The Serkr team jumping in side-by-side looks impressive and terrifying but with more assets you'd want to do a 90 degree or 180 degree split.
Agreed, and this why I said shock-jumps against multiple frigates are hard to model mathematically: depending on the distribution of forces, it might be impossible for the corvettes to effectively focus-fire. Let C denote a Chimera and F a Karuna:
C F F | C F F C
C |
The first case is clearly much easier for the Tevs than the second.
Over the course of the war the UEF scores very few important kills on-screen. Mostly cruisers and 2 Diomedes, and some Deimoses depending on whether the player disables them. The GTVA on the other hand scores 6 frigate kills(and remember, frigates are a size class above corvettes) alongside some Sancti (Sanctuses?). A big reason for this is due to the UEF's lower subspace manoeuvrability and much more even damage with no real options for finishing off ships before they can jump out.
The Valerie, Medea, Arethusa, Antenor, and Siren are guaranteed corvette kills before Tenebra. The capture of the Agincourt is also guaranteed. The UEF is guaranteed to lose the Cormorant, Akula, and Ranvir, plus three of the four Wargods frigates, and I can't think of any other guaranteed (or... even allowable) frigate losses (well, there's the Serenity, but I think we've agreed not to count Tenebra here). That leaves the UEF with five guaranteed on-screen corvette kills to the GTVA's six on-screen frigate kills. There are surprisingly few guaranteed cruiser kills that I can think of: the Norfolk, Utica, and Elissa on the Tev side, and... none on the Fed side? Am I forgetting something? I suppose we can count the Dea Icaunis and Dea Bricta since it's difficult and optional to save them, but saving the Auxerre doesn't always require any particular effort.
Now, I'm going to do something totally ad-hoc here, borrowed from chess analysis, and say that a cruiser is the basic quantum of warship significance, a corvette is "worth" two cruisers, a frigate three, and the Agincourt five. These numbers are an estimate based more on what feels right than any particular formalization, but if we go with them, the Tevs have 17 cruisers-worth of onscreen kills, and the Feds 18. You can disagree with the numbers, but the point I'm making is that it's not actually that clear-cut. On the other hand, Steele's been tearing apart UEF logistics and there are frequent mentions of UEF supply shortages, so Steele's definitely pulling ahead...
...but that's just is. It's Steele, innit? He makes a lot of trades and takes a lot of risk, and while he generally gains some slight advantage on each one, that's not Severanti's style at all. The biggest on-screen loss for the Feds is Delenda Est, which Severanti simply can't do. He hasn't the chutzpah. All the pressure you've cited as Steele's advantages wouldn't happen; the Feds could build up, train up, scale up, and... I can't think of a way to turn R&D into "up", but you get the idea. I'unno, if the topic's drifted away from Severanti to shock jumps, that's fine, but I'm still interested in the original question.
Most GTVA kills that we get to see come from shock jumps. GTVA jump drive tech is simply years ahead of what the UEF has which allows them to set up precise jumps and pick up kills with much less setup required. UEF kills on the other hand come from well-planned ops that utilise their infrastructure advantage but this also means that they're much less flexible once committed. Severanti never really exploits that, preferring to play it safely.
Exactly.
Well, I have to nitpick your characterization of the UEF style. It's true of Byrne and it's certainly true of 3JRF, but the fiction makes a pretty big deal out of Netreba's style being different, and describes 2 Fleet frigrons as extremely autonomous.
On the other hand long-range artillery is much easier to set up but is less likely to pick up kills without very complicated setup that leaves GTVA ships stranded.
We've actually seen Narayanas shock-jump things (the Atreus and arguably the Arathusa), and the threat of the Katana and Altan Orde shocking the Carthage was cited as probably influencing her behavior (knowing the Imperiuse was coming was probably a bigger reason, but the Wargods' logic was still sound). I think the big difference between Fed and Tev subspace tactics is that, with proper navigation data, the Tevs can shock anything they can target, while the Feds can only effectively shock the flanks of an enemy they've already engaged.
Which means, come to think of it, that the Feds could offer one ship to bait a corvette pack, then roll in the Narayanas - probably not often in practice, but I can't see Severanti ignoring the possibility. A warship in the handreserve and all.
The jammer in Aristea is scripted to die, sure, but it's really not very hard to kill an AWACS ship from long-range with maxim-armed fighters and bombers. A wing of 4 Ares or Artemi with maxims in their 4-bank can burn through its 30k HP in just over 10 seconds. Even with active armour it shouldn't take much longer. Deploy 2 wings jumping at opposite sides of the Oculus, preferably from above and below(since that gives them a larger target profile to work with) at 4000 kilometres and fighter assets will have a very hard time responding before it goes down.
All of the scripting is supposed to have a diegetic explanation in-universe. The Imperiuse might have an ECM advantage which throws off the Wargods targetting and causes their shots to deal much less damage or it might have advanced new active armour that the UEF wasn't prepared for yet. The railguns on the frigates might have taken battle damage which causes them to be much less effective.
The Oculus dies before enough damage is dealt because of a lucky maxim hit that tore through the hull and hit the reactor. Or maybe something went wrong with its active armour, making it take way more damage than it should. Or a previous glancing hit ****ed up its cooling which caused the reactor to overheat and the ship to suddenly explode. There are plenty of factors not represented by game mechanics that explain away the "cheating".
Sure, damage to the Wargods' weapons (or the simple surprise factor of a Titan-class destroyer out of nowhere) could certainly mess up their targeting. The point I was making was more about not writing off the Gauss cannon due to its low hull damage. You've repeatedly cited the ease of blowing up an Oculus, but the one time we did see the Tevs throw bombers at one (I'm referring to Aristeia), it kinda... doesn't work.
-
More Nyxes and Atalantas are rolling into the sol theatre AFAIK. The Draco shows up in exactly 1 mission, The Blade Itself. You can also fly it yourself in Aristeia but it's not as good for that mission as the Atalanta.
The Uhlan is very good because it's basically a souped up Perseus. It's on about the same level as the Kulas, with slightly less shielding, manoeuvrability, and primary firepower but it has more health and much more secondary firepower. The Kulas edges it out due to that sick afterburner and balors just being better than UEF weapons though. While the UEF has Slammers the GTVA has trebs and both are really good at killing wings of less experienced pilots.
The Kent is... really clunky. It's a really good interceptor but not really that flexible. It's way too big to be useful anywhere near pulses and it's also not the best dogfighter(again, due to the size). With gattlers it's reasonably good at performing disarming strikes on older cruisers and corvettes but not that great against the TEI ships with TT2s and pulses.
The GTVA still uses a lot of older fighters but they have greater numbers in total. The UEF fighter corps is still relevant, of course, I'm just saying it might not be as easy to always have better fighter cover in the future.
The Artemi in Aristeia are equipped with balors instead of maxims which forces them to go in close for a bombing run. This makes it much easier for the player to defend the Oculus. The Hercs with maxims that jump in later can really tear it up if you're not paying attention and it can go down, it's not a mission-fail if it does. You just have to destroy the Hood's main beams. So I wouldn't really use Aristeia as an example of an Oculus being protected as its survival depends on the player. In some of my playthroughs of the mission the HercII maxim strike worked wonderfully and in others I managed to stop it.
Hell, HercIIs with maxims are one of the biggest threads to your Karunas in "Post Meridian". Maxims are really dangerous and really hard to intercept which makes guarding fragile AWACS ships rather difficult. It's not impossible but definitely not all that easy. When you factor in possible stealth TAG strikes it starts looking pretty bad for the poor UEA Oculus. Not that the Charbdys fares all that much better. It gets stormed by fighters or gets its radar domes sniped off.
While the threat of Narayanas point-jumping in at your flank and bombarding you is real it's not as deadly as a Chimera pack. It will still take it some time to kill you and you have a chance to recharge your subspace drives and get out of there. With a Chimera pack you either need a good jamming solution or you're dead in 4 seconds flat. If your infrastructure can predict the jump and warn you in advance it gives you a much better chance to GTFO but it won't always be able to do that.
Also, you're warned about the Medea in Aristeia because Calder was engaging Steele elsewhere and his BG probably saw the Medea jump out on their sensors and calculated its jump trajectory. It wasn't the system-wide net that detected it.
When comparing kills for the purpose of determining how effective ships are at finishing off targets I really wouldn't count the Agincourt. It's a vital target but its capture after the Siren was destroyed didn't really require that much. Cutting off supply lines is also very vital to the war effort but doesn't really showcase the effectiveness of GTVA shock-jumps or SSM strikes.
And even ignoring the actual numbers, almost all of the frigate kills seen on-screen are shock-jumps or SSM bombardments that kill the target in seconds. We don't really know how the Cormorant got into the situation it did and Nelson just charged the Atreus and got gutted. Also the Nelson brings the number of confirmed frigate kills to 7 even though it doesn't actually die on-screen. All UEF Corvette kills are a longer, drawn out brawl. The UEF hasn't been able to finalise kills with its shock jumps, only being able to force ships to retreat.
We see a lot more GTVA ships managing to safely jump out after getting seriously damaged by long-range bombardment while the Indus is the only ship we see actually escaping a shock jump.
So while shock jumps can be a lot of trouble to set up properly they reap massive rewards for the GTVA with almost all of them resulting in a kill.
-
Right, I somehow conflated the Cormorant and Nelson. I'unno, if we're trying to compare effectiveness, Severanti hasn't actually made a single on-screen warship kill - wait, no, there was the UEC Vilnius in "Post Meridian", if you want to credit him for that. If you don't want to count the Agincourt then I think I'm missing your point. I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the Kentauroi; it probably comes down to affinities for different playstyles.
The Artemi in Aristeia are equipped with balors instead of maxims which forces them to go in close for a bombing run. This makes it much easier for the player to defend the Oculus. The Hercs with maxims that jump in later can really tear it up if you're not paying attention and it can go down, it's not a mission-fail if it does. You just have to destroy the Hood's main beams. So I wouldn't really use Aristeia as an example of an Oculus being protected as its survival depends on the player. In some of my playthroughs of the mission the HercII maxim strike worked wonderfully and in others I managed to stop it.
Hell, HercIIs with maxims are one of the biggest threads to your Karunas in "Post Meridian". Maxims are really dangerous and really hard to intercept which makes guarding fragile AWACS ships rather difficult. It's not impossible but definitely not all that easy. When you factor in possible stealth TAG strikes it starts looking pretty bad for the poor UEA Oculus. Not that the Charbdys fares all that much better. It gets stormed by fighters or gets its radar domes sniped off.
Yeah, the Balors in "Aristeia" really confused me, since I can't think of any other time when Artemis don't carry Maxims - maybe "The Cost of War"? I really have a hard time visualizing Steele or any of his captains making that mistake here. I suspect a nondiagetic explanation but really don't have much of an idea.
I'm not sure that stealth fighters are the best answer to an AWACS sitting in the middle of a frigate team.
While the threat of Narayanas point-jumping in at your flank and bombarding you is real it's not as deadly as a Chimera pack. It will still take it some time to kill you and you have a chance to recharge your subspace drives and get out of there. With a Chimera pack you either need a good jamming solution or you're dead in 4 seconds flat. If your infrastructure can predict the jump and warn you in advance it gives you a much better chance to GTFO but it won't always be able to do that.
Agreed on both points. Hey, let me run something by you: "During the first 18 months of the Sol invasion, Severanti kept Calder on the defensive with shock jumps and the threat thereof, but was unwilling to risk assets to effectively press this advantage." Agree or disagree?
-
The multi-angle jumping has one disadvantage though: No overlapping point defense.
We've seen at least two instances in WiH where Serkr's combined close-in defense rips appart any fighters, bombers and torpedoes that are thrown at them.
If each comes in from a different angle, each ship will only be covered by it's own PD. And if the UEF concentrate all their torpedoes on just one GTVA ship, I seriously doubt their PD can cope with it. It also leaves each single ship more vulnerable against bomber strikes and UEF bombers are damn dangerous.
If you can be absolutely sure that the first salvo will cripple the enemy, it might be woth it, but it's still a risk. If that first salvo doesn't work well enough, the answering torpedo hail will severely ruin at least one Serkr corvette's day.
Besides, instead of calculating one optimal entry, you'd need to do it three times and factor in different courses through subspace to make sure that all ships arrive at roughly the same time.
And then there's the shock-and-awe moment. Seeing Serkr arrive in perfect formation and open up synchronised is surely also meant to give the enemy pause or outright panic them. It's called "Shock"-jump for a reason.
There may also be the matter of overwhelming the defensive systems and active armour. Concentrating the firepower from one side may be more effective in that than spreading the damage around three sides of the ship. Sure in raw, unscripted fights that's not an issue, but in lore-battles (so to say) it likely is.
-
The Idea is to have multiple 'packs' rather than standalone ships and it makes sense when your entire battlegroup is engaging(like in A Time for Heroes). You have 2-3 ship packs spread out throughout the battlefield, they have enough concentrated PD firepower to fend off bombers and torps but are far enough apart from other packs that they don't get in each other's way.
During the first 18 months of the Sol invasion, Severanti kept Calder on the defensive with shock jumps and the threat thereof, but was unwilling to risk assets to effectively press this advantage." Agree or disagree?
I would agree with this. We know from various lore tidbits that most of the early war effort was spent reorganizing the GTVA and dealing moderate damage to UEF infrastructure in the outer layer. In those circumstances Severanti was likely not willing to risk losing assets even if that risk could've let him push deeper into Sol much sooner.
After Steel took over he immediately kicked the war into high gear and seems to be looking to end it within the month. By the end of Tenebra his decisive attack is only days away. Though to give Severanti some credit he was working with the 4th BG which mostly consisted of Capella-era ships. He didn't have the supsbace manoeuvrability and shock potential that Steele had.
I didn't want to count the Agincourt because I was trying to compare UEF and GTVA ability to kill hard targets rather than "who's winning the war". The Agincourt isn't really a hard target and got captured, not destroyed.
As for stealth ships vs AWACS vessels we know that AWACS ships can detect stealth fighters at around ~2000m. That just happens to be the range of TAG-As and with the Oculus not really being very manoeuvrable the fact that As are dumbfires shouldn't matter. Pegasi could creep up, just barely get detected for a few seconds, fire their TAG-As and immediately jump out.
-
The Karuna has 2 mass drivers which are pretty big and pretty easy to disable, just like the Chimera's front beams. It also has 5 Gauss cannons which aren't very hard to hit and don't do that much hull damage.
IIRC one of the Gauss Cannons is located at the back of the frigate and it's pointed to the rear. That means no Tev vessel effectively chasing it down (ignoring Karuna's superior speed).
A 1300m Karuna and an 800m Chimera aren't in the same class and the GTVA currently has way more corvettes in sol than the UEF has frigates. Directly comparing a Karuna and Chimera 1:1 is just as pointless as directly comparing a Karuna and a Hecate 1:1.
When you get a good look at the Karuna, you can notice that a) entire frontal piece of the vessel is just empty space with an armor shell, which houses an extension of its main guns and a single torpedo launcher (and PD's), b) that rotary device is totally unarmed and c) Karuna has a fighterbay. I don't deny it, Karuna is so much bigger - but at least 300+ meters of that length is mostly non-warfare utility (or a silly design if you like it that way). I think if that frigate was meant to be a pure warship, it would rather be either Karuna mk2 from the beginning, or it would be so much shorter - all these turrets could be moved back a lot.
The subspace manoeuvrability is actually a pretty strange thing to me right here - I agree, Tevs have subspace drives years ahead from what UEF has, but the UEF is five decades ahead with system mapping, that is also true for the local knowledge of subspace characteristics... I mean here that the UEF could technologically make use of more... subtle subspace events that Tevs aren't aware of/can't register without years of research of the area. Okay, but what's with the past knowledge from GTA times? It's irrelevant, I say that the node collapse must have made havoc in Sol subspace environment (I also think that that happened on the GTVA side, something about other jump nodes closing?) and everything is completely different in this regard. I can also imagine some crazy UEF scientists using the jump gate network to manipulate with subspace in Sol ("dry firing"? Shambala? :nervous: )...
Of course, the GTVA doesn't need to use such techniques, they can just pump more power into their jump drives.
We can't pretend that these beams don't exist - but if we get an ideal situation when a UEF frigate pack is shock-jumped by a Tev corvette pack, disregarding everything outside local battlespace... Well, the UEF would be decimated/forced to leave the battlezone ASAP. But if we consider some outside interference (like subspace environment itself or any jamming going around the target), the GTVA might completely miss the jump (too far from enemies to fire or not facing the target) and then... Well, Karunas would face the corvettes in a matter of seconds, definitely before Tevs could even turn around, and then unload their Gauss Cannons on enemy beams. And Tevs would have to either leave right away (not by jumping, because cooldown, not by sublight, because Karunae are so damn fast) or stand and fight - that's secondary Tev armaments vs mass driver, torpedo, PD and fighter spam.
If there's an Oculus jammer in the battlespace you either send in maxim-armed hercs or connect with a TAG missile.
An Oculus jammer should not, by any means, be far away from allies. I think the only reason it can be even destroyed in Aristea (I mean - except the SEXP) is because it lagged behind and was outside of UEF effective point defence range. If it was close then in Aristea, what would you do? Maxim? That's why there should be a "sandwich" of the jammer and two frigates and any holes filled up by Kents (that's what they are for, get to enemy fighters in seconds). TAGs? Okay, but you've got an Oculus there, which both seems superior to any Tev AWACS and can have its stealth fighter detection range even boosted by passive EWAR abilities of two frigates (which can jam a Hecate's main beams on their own). Of course, in Aristea Wargods don't have any spare Kents to kill inbound maxim-spamming Hercs and the Oculus was too far from the frigates.
And from what I've seen in Delenda Est, the most probable way how the TAG warhead got onto Hanuman's hull would be treason. You just need someone who throws a small beacon somewhere behind some crates and activates it in proper time.
Though it could have been a stealth fighter this instance - Wargods were so focused on jamming beams and outbound transmissions that nobody might have expected a need for that kind of detection...
GTVA Corvettes are enough of a threat without their beams considering their size class that they don't have to immediately retreat[...]
I see The Plunder as a very frequent example here - that two Karunas are still pounded hard by the Siren and two cruisers even when the corvette has its beam emitters down... I don't know how it goes for you people, but I cannot ever disarm the main beams of the cruisers and each Karuna absorbs about three volleys of two beams. And when Auroras are down and UEF torpedoes start hitting hard, Fed's victory just a matter of a minute. Not to mention that both Karunas have to use majority of their EWAR capabilities to jam all outbound transmissions, leaving not-so-much to actively suppress enemy weapons.
I also have to point out that I've seen Karunas restoring their hull in battle, but never any Tev vessel doing the same...
While the threat of Narayanas point-jumping in at your flank and bombarding you is real it's not as deadly as a Chimera pack.
The Darkest Hour - just look at hull integrity of the Atreus goes even with torpedoes not even touching the target... I'd say that Serkr would have made some considerable damage to the Atreus, but two Narayanas would have killed it faster with their consistent but deadly guns. I think. Besides, that range.
And I still can't chew through decisions made in Delenda Est - Wargods can just make a U-turn and outrun the Imperiuse. Even with drives not in the best condition. And Tevs send squadrons of bombers shooting at Yangtze, which is going to be evaporated in seconds by the destroyer. wat
-
IIRC one of the Gauss Cannons is located at the back of the frigate and it's pointed to the rear. That means no Tev vessel effectively chasing it down (ignoring Karuna's superior speed).
a) I'm pretty sure there's no rear-facing cannon on the Karuna; b) a single Karuna-grade gauss cannon is a pretty minor threat, certainly not enough to deter pursuers.
-
I thought it was only in Karuna#AoA, but no, take a good look (couldn't find any pictures of the rear of a new Karuna): https://youtu.be/degdOAP4POE?t=279 (https://youtu.be/degdOAP4POE?t=279)
And it seems a pretty minor threat, at least until it starts to disarm beamz (with maybe a little help from fighters spamming long range missiles).
-
Good gods, BP has gone Wall of Text again.
And I still can't chew through decisions made in Delenda Est - Wargods can just make a U-turn and outrun the Imperiuse. Even with drives not in the best condition.
My read of this part of the battle is that if they all turned & run, the Imperieuse would have simply gone full speed ahead & started shooting at the Indus & Yangtze before they got out of range, then pick the others one by one. By having the other frigates & cruisers charge head on, they force the Imperieuse to engage them first, and by the time they're finished dealing with them, I & Y are out of beam range.
The Darkest Hour - just look at hull integrity of the Atreus goes even with torpedoes not even touching the target... I'd say that Serkr would have made some considerable damage to the Atreus, but two Narayanas would have killed it faster with their consistent but deadly guns. I think.
I'm not sure I what you are saying here, 'cause if with are assuming the ambusher is in range and able to deal consistent damage to its target, the Atreus would be vaporized in seconds by a Hunter Killer team, while it would take a Nara team a good 30 seconds to deal critical damage.
As strong as the Narayana's guns & torpedoes are, what makes them powerful assets is their ability to outrange GTVA beams. Negate that, and they're just harder-hitting Karunas.
Re:How to deal with an Occulus, it depends on what kind of assets you have available :
- Nix, Atalanta or Draco to keep the Kents busy + Hercs 2 with Maxim (& Trebs if the AWACS can't jam these).
- Pegasus diving through with TAG-A, depending on the Occulus' detection range.
- Say "**** it" & just send in slash beams with proper escort.
The point is both sides have a number of options to deal with each other, which is why the war is still going on & what makes the missions themselves interesting.
-
The Idea is to have multiple 'packs' rather than standalone ships and it makes sense when your entire battlegroup is engaging(like in A Time for Heroes). You have 2-3 ship packs spread out throughout the battlefield, they have enough concentrated PD firepower to fend off bombers and torps but are far enough apart from other packs that they don't get in each other's way.
If there were that many Bellerophon/Chimera groups in system, sure. But most of the corvette HK groups are Deimos pairs. And while Deimos are extremely good ships, they lack the high alpha strike capability of the newer TEI corvettes. In fact, given that lack of high alpha, I'm not convinced of the conventional wisdom that paired Deimos are equivalent to a Karuna/Sanctus pair. I think the organic strikecraft capability of the Karuna provides the edge there. Of course, if the Deimos are escorted, that calculus changes, but Deimos pairs even supported by strikecraft and cruisers have a pretty poor on-screen track record against UEF frigate groups. Diomedes corvettes are scary, but they don't have any better survivability when deployed individually than a Karuna does.
-
On the original topic of the thread, 'Would Severanti's strategy eventually have worked?'
I suppose it depends on your definition of 'worked'. The UEF clearly has a long term initiative to create a win condition through nonmilitary means. I suspect that Severanti's strategy would give them the time to implement it. But a win condition for the UEF is not necessarily a lose condition for the GTA. Given that there are numerous possibilities when strategic/political objectives of military action change, I will limit myself to the mutually exclusive objectives 1) GTA forcing the UEF to capitulate or 2) UEF successfully stopping the current GTA military invasion. To do this, I'm also going to consider the use of resources by both sides for objectives other than the direct military conflict at hand as logistical limitations. The GTA has a gigantic military, but has an equally huge number of obligations that interfere with the goal of forcing the UEF to surrender. Similarly, as of the Jupiter blitz, the UEF has numerous assets that are committed to other missions than directly fighting the GTA invasion.
I think that Severanti was essentially working a war of attrition. He had to be, considering the GTA wanted to keep Sol's infrastructure intact. Outside of a slow whittling of 3JRF, the only major strategic success for Severanti was the capture of Neptune. Even then, it took two pitched battles and IIRC the UEF was able to destroy most of their facilities before the defeat. He was certainly able to put pressure on UEF logistics (see the death of LaPorte's mother). On the other hand, in 18 months, 1st Fleet basically never saw combat and 2nd Fleet Mars only rarely saw action. There was considerable available slack in UEF forces for a stronger tempo of combat that I don't think the GTA could logistically sustain. It is easier, after all, to jump 1st Fleet around from Earth than to bring in more destroyer groups from Delta Serpentis. Given the relative lack of pressure on Earth and Mars, I think that Severanti's slow strategy might also have given the UEF time to gear up their industry and reverse the attritional losses he was inflicting. Severanti was doomed strategically any way you look at it. Either his gradual buildup of pressure provoked a stronger response from the UEF if he poked something sensitive and forces him to face more than just 3JRF, or the time he gave the UEF would allow them to start out-building the stream of reinforcements available through Delta Serpentis, or (as actually happened) his political masters replaced him with someone more aggressive and willing to risk both fleet components and Sol infrastructure for a decisive blow.
-
The Atreus was overdriving its jump drives in Darkest Hour and the effectiveness of its active armour was pretty minor at that point. Without the active armour a hunter-killer team of 2 Chimeras and a Bellerophon can do 191400 damage in 4 seconds, more than enough to oneshot the Atreus' 145000 health.
In fact, if it managed to catch a Solaris with its pants down and without beam jamming or active armour to reduce the damage it could oneshot its 180000 health too. You seriously underestimate just how insane a hunter-killer alpha strike is.
And with 7 destroyers in Sol surely they have more than 2 Chimeras and 1 Bellerophon. Lore-wise these frigates were hot **** and every admiral wanted one in his fleet.
-
Per http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Blue_Planet_Orders_of_Battle (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Blue_Planet_Orders_of_Battle), of the GTA fleets and battlegroups where anything beyond the destroyers are known, there are only Chimera/Bellerophon corvettes attached to battlegroups with TEI destroyers. Granted, the composition of most of the battlegroups is unknown, but it seems reasonable to look at the two battlegroups we've seen with TEI corvettes (14th and 15th battlegroups) and the two battlegroups we've seen without TEI corvettes (2nd and 13th battlegroups) and extrapolate rough numbers. By my count, that would put two battlegroups assigned to METIS/MORPHEUS with TEI corvettes, and the rest of the battlegroups have Deimos escorts. That means there are roughly 6 Chimeras and 2 Bellerophons running around in Sol. Three, more likely two, hunter-killer groups including Serkr. Extremely dangerous, but given how much has to go exactly right for an alpha strike, it clearly isn't an insurmountable problem for the UEF. Otherwise there would be fewer Solaris destroyers.
-
Lore-wise these frigates were hot **** and every admiral wanted one in his fleet.
Lol... sure everyone wants them, but what they want and what they can get their hands on are two different matters.
I'm sure GTVA high command isn't all to thrilled about the idea of sending the majority of their TEI corvettes into Sol and leaving only decade old ships behind to fend of the ever feared next Shivan Incusion.
-
Jeepers, that low? Even if it's slightly higher, it's certainly relevant that these things are so much rarer compared to the Deimos. (It also fits with the numbers of ships we actually see on-screen.) Hm.
-
Otherwise there would be fewer Solaris destroyers.
I don't think counting Solaris destroyers is a good metric of Tev shock effectiveness. Solaris destroyers are primarily command and control vessels, and it's only after things got super desperate that Calder even began committing the Toutatis for combat operations. From what we can see, only TEI destroyers are seen on the frontlines given their next generation firepower and more importantly, sprint drives. Without sprint drives, shock jumps become far riskier.
-
It isn't a measure of shock effectiveness, it is a measure of how often the GTA can risk making shock jumps given the number of vessels they have that are capable of performing them. If the GTA has sufficient numbers of Serkr-type groups available, they can risk one to force a Solaris to crash jump away and then respond to the openings that presents in the UEF defense. Deimos groups don't have the ability to kill a destroyer in 30 seconds, so they aren't as threatening to the UEF defensive posture.
-
It isn't a measure of shock effectiveness, it is a measure of how often the GTA can risk making shock jumps given the number of vessels they have that are capable of performing them. If the GTA has sufficient numbers of Serkr-type groups available, they can risk one to force a Solaris to crash jump away and then respond to the openings that presents in the UEF defense. Deimos groups don't have the ability to kill a destroyer in 30 seconds, so they aren't as threatening to the UEF defensive posture.
There are far better targets to shock jump than a Solaris in a defensive posture. Orbital stations, frigates, freighters, and cruisers are all preferable targets because of their low hull strength but still high values. If you doubled the amount of sprint drive vessels in the GTA, they still wouldn't go out of their way to attack a Solaris because: 1) a Solaris is going to be some of the most heavily defended targets, 2) why go after a heavily defended target when there's plenty of other high value targets to shoot still, 3) Solaris destroyers rarely go on the offense, which means their exact position isn't always known. And if there were indeed more sprint drive vessels, the UEF would play even more defensively with their destroyers; what you would see is not fewer Solaris destroyers, but even fewer frigates.
-
It isn't exactly unknown where the various UEF destroyers are. Especially when one is in for refit like the Toutatis was for several weeks after getting torn up during the Delenda Est operations. I'm sure in normal operations they move around quite a bit, but even without scouting you know that the Solaris is likely to be in Earth proximity, and Eris is likely to be in Mars proximity.
Regardless, I think you focused on a rather flippant remark rather than the actual point I made about how much worse the situation for the UEF would be if the Tevs had a higher ratio of TEI to Capella-era corvettes in theater.
-
Regardless, I think you focused on a rather flippant remark rather than the actual point I made about how much worse the situation for the UEF would be if the Tevs had a higher ratio of TEI to Capella-era corvettes in theater.
Fair enough. That does raise the question of whether or not the GTVA had intended to replace Severanti to begin with, with the accompanying question of whether or not he was aware of Morpheus/Shambala/Vishnan, or if Severanti had always been intended to keep a foot in the door while the GTVA re-evaluated their plans. We know Steele knows about Morpheus, and it seems Lopez was not privileged to this information. Is Severanti's strategy acting under the notion that there is no Shambala, no Morpheus contingency?
We know Severanti did not have TEI ships under his disposal for the most part. It was not until Steele's 15th Battlegroup was deployed that the Terrans were given the actual resources for the Blitz. While Severanti was theater commander, Steele seem to of had enough autonomy to conduct the Blitz, which seems contrary to Severanti's overall strategy to begin with.
-
It's very hard to translate "somewhere in Earth proximity" and "somewhere in Mars proximity" to the 4-8km radius sphere you'd need to jump into. On a map of Earth and its surrounding space 4-8km would be less than a single pixel so you'd need very precise information. You can do that for orbital stations since you can calculate their position in advance but with ships you either have to spot them with another vessel or make them come to you by baiting them out.
-
It might well be that Severanti wasn't supposed to lead the invasion for long, since originally Admiral Bei was the one sent into Sol first. If he hadn't defected, I strongly suspect that he would have had overall command of the theatre (if the UEF had somehow managed to fend of the surprise attack at any rate).
So Severanti was likely the replacement for the actual commander.
But what I wonder about most is what Steele was doing prior to him being sent to Sol. Why wasn't he the first choice to replace Bei after the defection, or the first choice for being sent in with the 14th BG to begin with? His dossier made it clear that he was highly regarded pretty much from the beginning of his military career and everyone know how ruthlessly effective he was. That initial surprise attack is something that would fit in perfectly with his usual style, so why was Bei chosen over him?
Did the GTVA think he was too reckless to unleash right away and they only turned to him when it became clear that the less risky approach didn't work (or at least didn't work fast enough to their liking)?
-
It might well be that Severanti wasn't supposed to lead the invasion for long, since originally Admiral Bei was the one sent into Sol first. If he hadn't defected, I strongly suspect that he would have had overall command of the theatre (if the UEF had somehow managed to fend of the surprise attack at any rate).
So Severanti was likely the replacement for the actual commander.
Severanti was the second in command of the Sol Expeditionary Force (of which Bei and the 14th BG were the vanguard). The original invasion plan had the 14th establish space superiority very quickly, with the rest of the force coming in to reinforce and actually hold Sol.
But what I wonder about most is what Steele was doing prior to him being sent to Sol. Why wasn't he the first choice to replace Bei after the defection, or the first choice for being sent in with the 14th BG to begin with? His dossier made it clear that he was highly regarded pretty much from the beginning of his military career and everyone know how ruthlessly effective he was. That initial surprise attack is something that would fit in perfectly with his usual style, so why was Bei chosen over him?
Did the GTVA think he was too reckless to unleash right away and they only turned to him when it became clear that the less risky approach didn't work (or at least didn't work fast enough to their liking)?
There are factions within the Security Council. Steele, while undoubtedly effective as a military commander, has deficiencies when it comes to the political or diplomatic side of the business of fleet command. It was thought that, while he would undoubtedly strengthen the invasion force, his lack of diplomatic ability would make the business of holding Sol much more difficult than it needed to be. Severanti, as a member of the GTVA's "old guard", was chosen as a backup for Bei because there was no risk of him doing something that would make Bei's job harder.
-
Is Severanti's strategy acting under the notion that there is no Shambala, no Morpheus contingency?
I can't imagine that Severanti is completely unaware of Shambala's existence; that could be pieced together from all sorts of intelligence readily available to a theater commander. I mean, even low level pilots in the UEF know that Byrne has a mystery project.
On the other hand, he may be vastly mis-estimating the scope/timeline of Shambala, and he is definitely incorrectly estimating the priorities encompassing MORPHEUS. My guess is that he doesn't know about MORPHEUS. Severanti appears to still be working under the impression that the end goal is the incorporation of Sol's resources into the GTVA, and as such the destruction of their infrastructure and population are unwanted and the removal of UEF leadership can be taken care of after the UEF surrender.
-
On the other hand, he may be vastly mis-estimating the scope/timeline of Shambala, and he is definitely incorrectly estimating the priorities encompassing MORPHEUS. My guess is that he doesn't know about MORPHEUS.
As the theater commander, Severanti almost certainly knows about MORPHEUS because it's one of the big reasons why the GTVA went to war and is therefore information critical for him to do his job properly. Just because we never get to see Severanti implement his plans for dealing with Shambhala doesn't mean he didn't have any. GTVI and SOC were in Sol long before Steele was.
Severanti appears to still be working under the impression that the end goal is the incorporation of Sol's resources into the GTVA, and as such the destruction of their infrastructure and population are unwanted and the removal of UEF leadership can be taken care of after the UEF surrender.
He's probably under this impression because both of these things are true. MORPHEUS precludes neither.
-
To put this question another way: if you were a UEF military commander and you heard Steele replaced Severanti, would you be happy or disappointed?
-
To put this question another way: if you were a UEF military commander and you heard Steele replaced Severanti, would you be happy or disappointed?
Depends on the commander no? Calder certainly doesn't think so, but Byrne and possibly Netreba seem to think removing Severanti was a good thing. The difference being that Calder bore the brunt of the assault from Steele's blitz.
-
Well, canonically... Telfer was quite excited in the debrief of Post Meridian, which gives us some insight into how Home Fleet viewed it. (I'm actually not sure why Telfer regarded the GTVA switching commanders such a victory - enemy disorganization? morale? But whatever.) At the same time, Calder warned that Steele was a bigger threat than Severanti, and in The Intervention Simms was pretty aware that giving Steele more latitude was a bad thing.
If I were a UEF commander, my response would probably likewise vary depending on where I was and how much I knew of Steele's style.
Aesaar: Are you speaking as an Official Blue Planet Team Member with Badges, or are you also speculating?
-
I mean as a Very Definitely Not Team Member I can say that everything he said about MORPHEUS is exactly what I'd say based on released material.
-
I mean as a Very Definitely Not Team Member I can say that everything he said about MORPHEUS is exactly what I'd say based on released material.
ditto
-
Severanti was fully briefed on Morpheus.
-
Not that it really matters what a team member says or thinks unless it's part of the canon. And canon material would suggest that anyone operating as commander in the sol Theatre would be fully briefed. Bei knew about it and so did Steele, there would be no reason for Severanti, Bei's 1st backup, to not be fully briefed about it.
-
You're right, I forgot that Bei, Sr. knew about it.
-
How do you think Severanti views the state of the war now?
Do you think he thinks he was wrong and Steele's strategy is better or is he thinking "If they would have listened to me, we'd be doing better now"?
-
My guess would be "Sure this is effective, but is this really worth the cost it's exacting? We were supposed to conquer that infrastructure and not destroy it."
-
My guess would be "Sure this is effective, but is this really worth the cost it's exacting? We were supposed to conquer that infrastructure and not destroy it."
This sounds about right, not to mention the amount of pilots KIA because of Steele's aggressiveness. Carthage's entire air wing was virtually wiped out.
-
Comparing the two admirals to real life generals, would these comparisons be accurate?
Severanti-George McClellan
Steele-Ulysses Grant
-
Comparing the two admirals to real life generals, would these comparisons be accurate?
Severanti-George McClellan
Steele-Ulysses Grant
A better pairing IMO would be:
Severanti - Bernard Montgomery
Steele - George S. Patton
Montgomery was infamous for being overly cautious, with emphasize on minimizing damage and losses, famously only attacking when the odds were highly stacked in his favor. Operation Market Garden (Montgomery's plan after being urged to end the war by Christmas) was pretty much the equivalent to Severanti's follow-up after the Blitz. Patton and Steele both exhibit a very aggressive command style, and both began as a subordinate commander to the overall theater command.
Of course, Montgomery didn't get dismissed after Market Garden and Patton didn't get promoted, so you can only go so far with parallels.
-
I think both parallels have merit. The dynamic in play between Severanti and Steele and their respective approaches to warfare are certainly something that repeats itself in large and small throughout history.
-
I'm also guessing that Steele has more political sway than Patton did. After the loss of the Carthage, he managed to get an escalation of the GTVA's war commitments, rather than dismissed from his position.
-
I think the Security Council decided that when deciding between paying the cost of losing one Destroyer as storied as the Carthage and paying the cost of prolonging the war for who knows how long, the Destroyer became a price worth paying.
-
It was my understanding that they simply didn't reflect the blame onto him. The destroyer was on its way out of the theatre in part due to reliability concerns, he ordered it to withdraw when it still had plenty of time to do so successfully, and the commander simply refused to follow orders. It just wasn't his fault at any level that the Carthage was lost, so he wasn't in hot water because of it.
-
This has been a real treat to read through!
Bear in mind, though, that according to the lore, the GTVA sent in probes to recon the area and get an idea of what waited for them beyond the node. The UEF detected the probes, even apparently captured a few, and while the UEF rejoiced at the blending of Terran and Vasudan technologies, what the Alliance learned concerned them greatly - that was the predominant psychological mindset, that of Ubuntu. They viewed it as a threat to humanity's long term survival, leading to potentially a population migration back to Sol, and also that if Ubuntu were allowed to spread, it would lead to a widescale scaling-down of the military, leaving humanity vulnerable to a Shivan invasion. Their overall strategy - their endgame, as it were - was the dissolution of the Ubuntu Party (or at least its discrediting) and reestablishment of the Alliance government in Sol. In that regard, Severanti's strategy, to whittle away at UEF defenses to the maximum extent, while simultaneously (and has already been mentioned) minimizing of his own ORBAT's exposure to losses would have eventually, most likely, resulted in an Alliance victory.
Though the UEF was fighting to defend their way of life, in the eyes of the GTVA high command, they were fighting to defend humanity's existence, having had to go out and fight the monsters that lurk in the dark while everyone in Sol more or less got to stick their heads in the sand, confident in the knowledge that they were safe.
On the other hand, it took Steele to come blasting in and his heavy-handed tactics most likely awoke something in the Federation Navy, which led to the Wargods' commissioning. Ignoring the tactics and uses of the ships of each side, had more of the UEF's military been shocked to the same level of capability as the Wargods, they could have conceivably pushed the Alliance forces back through the Node, or potentially cut them off and isolated the GTVA elements within Sol to defeat in detail.
-
This has been a real treat to read through!
Bear in mind, though, that according to the lore, the GTVA sent in probes to recon the area and get an idea of what waited for them beyond the node. The UEF detected the probes, even apparently captured a few, and while the UEF rejoiced at the blending of Terran and Vasudan technologies, what the Alliance learned concerned them greatly - that was the predominant psychological mindset, that of Ubuntu. They viewed it as a threat to humanity's long term survival, leading to potentially a population migration back to Sol, and also that if Ubuntu were allowed to spread, it would lead to a widescale scaling-down of the military, leaving humanity vulnerable to a Shivan invasion. Their overall strategy - their endgame, as it were - was the dissolution of the Ubuntu Party (or at least its discrediting) and reestablishment of the Alliance government in Sol. In that regard, Severanti's strategy, to whittle away at UEF defenses to the maximum extent, while simultaneously (and has already been mentioned) minimizing of his own ORBAT's exposure to losses would have eventually, most likely, resulted in an Alliance victory.
Though the UEF was fighting to defend their way of life, in the eyes of the GTVA high command, they were fighting to defend humanity's existence, having had to go out and fight the monsters that lurk in the dark while everyone in Sol more or less got to stick their heads in the sand, confident in the knowledge that they were safe.
On the other hand, it took Steele to come blasting in and his heavy-handed tactics most likely awoke something in the Federation Navy, which led to the Wargods' commissioning. Ignoring the tactics and uses of the ships of each side, had more of the UEF's military been shocked to the same level of capability as the Wargods, they could have conceivably pushed the Alliance forces back through the Node, or potentially cut them off and isolated the GTVA elements within Sol to defeat in detail.
Are you saying that with Severanti in command, there wouldn't have been a Wargods?
-
Not necessarily. They could have been commissioned eventually, but Severanti's strategy was essentially one of attrition, to discredit Ubuntu and force the populace of Sol back into the GTVA fold. Steele's tactics brought them out a lot sooner than Severanti arguably would have IMHO. Of course, with Severanti basically under threat of replacement, due to the time his plan requires to achieve victory, his strategy is in jeopardy with Steele's brute-force approach to bring the war to a conclusion favorable to the GTVA high command. His attempt to compensate, by bombing Luna, can be considered the final stroke that brought what became the Wargods into being.