Lyran Commonwealth, Turn 3 (Fluff)
(crunch to follow when we have final numbers for turn 2 - but this scene has been stuck in my head a few days, and needed out)
The young man had charisma, she had to give him that. Tall, well built, with a broad white smile that distracted from the predator’s eyes above it. A few decades ago, he’d have turned her head. Of course, a few decades ago, he was busy being born. Still, such musings served no purpose, and her lawful civilian superior was speaking.
“I’m not saying your -wrong-, Jackie. Your Navy, I'm not. I’m saying make me understand why. Understand in a way I can explain it to the other eight.”
Jackie, aka Jaqueline Angler, FFA, NSP, ECT, and no doubt a half dozen more similar useless fripperies, was a study in contrast to the young man. Small by any standard, she was dwarfed by his height. A slender build and brown complexion had compressed and wizened over the years into something like a burl of dark, dark wood. Heavy. Hard. Something useful for making a walking-stick, someone had said once. Or a cudgel.
“You’re an Army man, Archon Marsden. In the Army, you can defend a point with.. what… a third the attacking force, in extremis? Half or two thirds, certainly. You have terrain. You can prepare defenses. Your attacker has a logisitics train to worry about. Things of that nature.”
Robert nodded, once, but said no more.
“Space isn’t like that. Theres no terrain. No cover. Fixed defenses are possible, but unless you can afford to put meaningful defenses everywhere, nothing requires the enemy to come to you. And you can’t prepare a position in a week or a month. And you have no idea the other side is coming until you get the flash of an incoming jump.”
After a moment, the Archon spoke… “So like an engagement on the open desert?”
“Yes! Exactly. If the desert was perfectly flat. And you couldn’t dig in. You’ve heard of Lanchester, maybe, in command school? He applies well enough to ground combat, but not perfectly. Terrain, cover. Limits of force density. Space isn’t like that. Tell me. Your defending a.. hill, or a city, with 8 tanks. 12 attack. You probably can repulse them, yes?”
“Doctrine is 2-1 is the minimum for offensive operation. 3-1 is better.”
“Right. In space? 12 units attack 8. The 8 flee, and do so before the first shot is fired, or they are crushed. Its math, and only slightly less inevitable than gravity. Assume that it takes the fire of 4 units to destroy 1, over, say, ten minutes. And lets assume the units are equal. These are huge assumptions, but they illustrate the problem. After ten minutes… the larger force has lost 2 ships, the smaller force 3. So 12-8 is now 10-5. In the next interval, the larger force loses another vessel, and a second suffers, formally, 25% damage. The 5 unit force loses two, and half of a third. So 8.75 vs. 2.5... and warships keep most of their firepower till they die. The weaker force if it gets lucky finishes off the damaged warship, and the stronger side reduces the weaker to a single cripple... and 4 ships have been lost to kill 8."
“And then it is all over. So what do you do, if you can’t match the larger force?”
“There’s no end of tricks that are tried. The French, under Napoleon, focused on long range accuracy and speed – taking what they could for free and running before there could be a decisive engagement. They got some damage in, but nothing decisive. And when the decisive fights happened? Nile? Trafalgar? They were crushed. Because they had trained and built for sniping and running. Inferior position had forced strategy and tactics that, while it kept them in the game for a time, made their loss inevitable. Hell, they couldn't have capitalized on a winning engagement if they had the opportunity for one. They probably couldn't have seen it as such.”
“The Germans focused on trying to catch isolated ‘bits’ of the British Fleet in WW1. Unfortunately for them, Jellicoe was not an idiot. You’ll note that the German fleet communication was arguably better. They didn’t have an idiot in charge of their Battlecruiser Squadrons – Beatty was an idiot. Just trust me on that. German ships sacrificed freeboard and sustainability – they didn’t have huge cargo bays or bunkerage, they were pure ‘come out and fight in the north sea ships’, while the British had commitments all over the world. German gunnery was better. German shells were phenomenally better – they actually worked, unlike the British shells – which mostly didn’t explode when they were supposed to. German armor was better – more internal subdivision, less need for long term habitability, and their yards could lay broader ships, which had a lot of advantages. German powder was better – it was cased, not loose, and didn’t explode nearly so casually as the British powder. And the Germans knew their powder handling better – they didn’t leave doors open, turning ships into floating bombs one penetration away from a firework show…
“I’ll stop you there. I take it you could go on a while.”
“I could. But do you know what happened? They got beaten so badly that after Jutland the German Navy never stuck its neck out again. Sure, the box score in lost ships looked better for Germany, but while most of those well built ships survived to make it back to port, their battlecruiser squadron was still beaten to ruins, and the British were still building faster than them. By a few months after Jutland, the Germans were -further- behind than they before – despite enough unforced errors on the part of the British to make a woman weep.”
“That’s enough, Jackie, I think that covers…”
“One more, Robert. Japan. USA. Terran ‘Second World War.’ The Japanese were at day one trained to a razors edge. They had a plan. They executed. Hell, Robert, they had ‘secret superweapons’ in the worst holovid sense of the word – I’d kill for something as surprising and effective compared to the rest of the world as a Long Lance Torpedo. They broke the back of the U.S. Line of Battle – missing only the carriers – at Pearl Harbor. It’s been said that if they got the carriers, at Hawaii Japan would have won. Said by idiots. Other idiots have said that the U.S. won the war when they broke Japanese codes at Midway, and sunk several carriers for one.”
“And I assume your about to tell me that it was predestined?”
“Assuming America cared to fight, yes. They could have lost their entire pacific fleet at Pearl, and lost everything they added after Pearl at Midway. The war might have lasted another six months. Year tops. Because the Americans were building more ships, faster ships, better ships, better trained, with more fuel, and more infrastructure, and more resources, and…”
Robert sighed, eloquently.
“Allright. So naval warfare is only slightly less deterministic than gravity, and its determined by weight of fire. By numbers of units. By budget. That’s all well and good, but the other Archons aren’t going to go for it. So find another way.”
The walnut woman’s shoulders slumped, head in hands.
“I used to be clever, Robert, and I’m still stubborn. My boys and girls are still clever. And stubborn. We’ve got tricks, I’ll show you some. But there really aren’t ‘other ways’. Anything we can do, they can do, better, and will, unless they are idiots. And any plan that has as its starting victory condition 'the other side is incapable of pouring piss from a boot with instructions on the heel' is... not a good plan."
"I’m not entirely sure what the Combine is up to, but the League is mass-producing big Battlecruisers - their up to 12 to our six cruisers, and I'll give you odds their laying another 8 over the next decade.. and any answer I adopt, either of them can correct in the next build cycle – and then do whatever I’m doing, harder. Oh, I’m not saying it’s over before it starts. The Combine is going to curl up like a snake and spend a decade or three digesting Rasalhauge. The League just stuck its nose into the Capellan district, so will have to watch its back. Weve got some time before the storm. But we have to USE that time, and we have to start now. Otherwise? Your good little navy boys and girls will answer the call and go die for Archon and Commonwealth. They they'll even make the snakes and the birds bleed some. Maybe bad enough that they decide the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
But unless you can get the other eight to get their heads out of their collective honorable rear ends and start acting like a star nation rather than 9 personally profitable fiefdoms, all those good brave boys and girls are going to do is that – they are going to die, and their deaths won’t matter for shit if the other team is willing to press the matter. Because we won’t be any more able to stop them if they come to fight and mean it than those poor, brave, dead French boys. Or the German ones. Or the Japanese ones. Very brave, very clever, very stubborn. Did it right. Lost. Died.”
Robert smiled ruefully “I assume you are a bit more circumspect with the other Archons?”
“You’re a soldier, Robert. They aren’t. Make them listen. Or its all ‘Maldon’ and ‘How many of them can we make die’ and our people getting their heads chopped off in the name of Combine manifest destiny – just like those poor, brave, dead Rashalhauge bastards.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Jackie. But you have to give me time.”
“Ask me for anything but time, Robert. Ask me for anything but time.”
