Did the Successor States have an unofficial agreement to dial back on warships?

[Dayton3]

I'm not entirely sure why the PTB, for all their need to wipe the skies clean of IS warships, remained sanguine to vast Clan fleets.  My anticipation is that the Clan Warship Supremacy is intended for some future plot role

To be honest I figured they just forgot about them.     After all they forgot about a mercenary unit that was the focus of a couple of novels and a scenario pack (Black Thorns).

[monbvol]

So in layman's terms "mutually insured destruction."

Except Mutually Assured Destruction is a bit harder to pull off in Battletech thanks to it's interstellar nature.

Are any of you familiar with the term "fleet-in-being"? That is, a fleet that is an effective asset in war not because it sorties and blows stuff up, but because it *might* sortie and thus forces the other side keep a fleet of its own around, powerful enough to face the fleet-in-being - or even several such fleets, depending how hard it is to cover all the place the fleet-in-being might sortie to.

If for example the FSN has one or more warships stationed at Robinson, the DCA needs enough warships to destroy or at least fight off those warships if the DCMS wants to ever attack Federated Suns worlds within a jump or two of Robinson - unless of course they want to risk their attack force being blown to bits before making planetfall, or marooned on the planet because the warships show up while the force is on the ground. Most likely they will try to have two such groups of warships, one to escort ground forces and one to protect Combine worlds in case the FSN decides to instead use the opportunity for a counterattack while the DCA warships are elsewhere. Maybe even three such groups, if there are two very valuable targets in the DC too far apart for one group to cover both.

As pointed out Fleet in Being type doctrines really don't work too well with the current limitations placed on Warships and Jumpships in the form of drive charge times and jump distance limits.

[Daryk]

Fleet-in-being doctrines work for individual worlds, but there aren't many that can afford a Fleet.  You're absolutely right about the limits set on FTL in the BattleTech universe, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks those limits are a bad thing.

[monbvol]

Not saying they are, well okay I wouldn't argue too much if the larger core of the Jumpship gave it a bit more jump range but other than that not a bad thing really.

It would create some really interesting combat doctrine though I think.  Probably could bear some superficial resemblance to our concepts of Fleet in being but instead of Warships, Jumpships, and even PWS it focuses around building defensive space stations.

[idea weenie]

Not saying they are, well okay I wouldn't argue too much if the larger core of the Jumpship gave it a bit more jump range but other than that not a bad thing really.

It would create some really interesting combat doctrine though I think.  Probably could bear some superficial resemblance to our concepts of Fleet in being but instead of Warships, Jumpships, and even PWS it focuses around building defensive space stations.

The two problems with defensive space stations are first that they have the same weapons ranges as existing ships, and second that they only have a structural integrity of 1.

The first means that a station cannot out-range its attacker.  It will have a tonnage advantage against warships (since it doesn't have to carry around a KF core), but if the attacker is in range, so is the defender.  The other option is loading up the space station with lots of fighters, which the attacker can do as well.

The second means that any hit that gets through the armor pops the station like a balloon.

Potential fixes:
Longer range modifications: weapon that have a higher range than existing, but tonnage increases to offset.  This allows a combat space station to use its larger available tonnage to get the first shot at an opponent.

Higher station SI: a combat station is built hardier than a normal station, allowing it to take damage to its internals and survive.  The fun part is that some people (me) might want to give the station higher acceleration capacity, to allow it to move around.  That would allow a station to defend both the planet and its moon(s), but anything farther away means the station (monitor) would be out of position.  Since it doesn't have a KF core, it can't relocate quickly in response to an attacker.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Why not just build a Warship without a KF drive at that point?

[Dayton3]

Why not just build a Warship without a KF drive at that point?

Aren't those called Monitors in the BT universe?

At any rate, the "compact KF drives" required by warships WAS WITHIN the capabilities of each of the Successor States during the Succession War.

But the transit drives to propel a warship through regular space from the jump point to planets and back were not.    Comstar had to authorize the technology for them to be provided to each Successor State.

[Jellico]

Except Mutually Assured Destruction is a bit harder to pull off in Battletech thanks to it's interstellar nature.

As pointed out Fleet in Being type doctrines really don't work too well with the current limitations placed on Warships and Jumpships in the form of drive charge times and jump distance limits.

Fleet in being works fine.

WarShip leaves dock on day 1 of the war. Day 7 she jumps somewhere. From that point on she is a Sword of Damocles until she is sighted again.

[Daryk]

The sheer size of the Inner Sphere makes it hard for that be really effective over a wide area.  "Furthest on circles" are a thing...

[monbvol]

Fleet in being works fine.

WarShip leaves dock on day 1 of the war. Day 7 she jumps somewhere. From that point on she is a Sword of Damocles until she is sighted again.

I'll grant it isn't completely unworkable but still the drive charge times and ranges make Fleet in Being a little more difficult to pull off.

[Dayton3]

One thing that gets me about warship combat in the Battletech universe is that it seems we have seen nothing remotely like strategy and tactics regarding warships.    Unlike 'mechs,  tanks, and infantry in which the BT universe is loaded with various strategies and tactics,   all the warship stuff seems to be nothing but "show up,  start shooting,  keep shooting  until something blows up."

[marcussmythe]

Im joining the choir, but Davion and Davion (deceased) has some naval battles worthy of early Honor Harrington, including discussions of -why- those battles happen, why choices are made, and why they work (or dont!).

[Daryk]

Admiral Jones is my favorite character in that fan fiction...

[monbvol]

One thing that gets me about warship combat in the Battletech universe is that it seems we have seen nothing remotely like strategy and tactics regarding warships.    Unlike 'mechs,  tanks, and infantry in which the BT universe is loaded with various strategies and tactics,   all the warship stuff seems to be nothing but "show up,  start shooting,  keep shooting  until something blows up."

A lot of the problem with Warship combat is there is often no terrain to provide cover, speed isn't armor, and it is surprisingly easy to force a close range engagement.

[Daemion]

I'll grant it isn't completely unworkable but still the drive charge times and ranges make Fleet in Being a little more difficult to pull off.

Use one of the many 'hidden systems' which aren't on the map.  There are lots of star systems that don't have garden worlds in them between the nice white dots on the space map.



As for space battles, the same can be said if you put two blank ground maps on the table and deployed ground forces. And, there are plenty of places on a planet that will fit that for a potential firefight engagement. Drop port, anyone? Kilometers of concrete.  So, wrinkle - the entire map is pavement. Skidding rules are in effect!

One of the reasons Star Trek and other very fast Sci-Fi naval combat could be so dynamic is because you could flee to built up terrain like a nebula or asteroid belt in short order.

BT Naval combat has only two points of interest: the launching point, and the destination. IE- Jump Points and the planet-in-question.  Unless the planet has rings, then yeah, things are out in the open.

Honestly, where ECM complicates ground games, some form of using ECM as deployable terrain might help the space game.  I kinda recall it being something in Jovian Chronicles, which is about space Mech combat, with warships.

[monbvol]

By then it becomes a bit of a gray area of if it is still Fleet in Being doctrine or Base Strike doctrine though.

[Charistoph]

One thing that gets me about warship combat in the Battletech universe is that it seems we have seen nothing remotely like strategy and tactics regarding warships.    Unlike 'mechs,  tanks, and infantry in which the BT universe is loaded with various strategies and tactics,   all the warship stuff seems to be nothing but "show up,  start shooting,  keep shooting  until something blows up."

And the only ones who have extensive experience in warship combat tend to favor highly ritualized combat rather than the slugging beat-ups we find in the wet navies.  Most naval officers tend to be rather green horns when it comes to warship combat, partly because of a general lack of warships and partly just from a lack of opportunity to gain that experience.

Space is big, and it can be very easy to hide things in there.  That having been said, a plume for a dropship or warship can be easily found based on known emergence points and general knowledge of astrogation.  That makes a deep space interception possible. 

More likely, though, it is more desired to have them at their end point to extend the engagement (if you are more powerful), while doing a running pass is more desirable (if not a complete avoidance path) if your fleet is less powerful.

Naval fights that rely on newtonian physics can be quite the pain to plot out for intercepts, especially if you try to keep it on your terms and not the enemies.

[Dulahan]

Another tidbit that came up in the First Succession War about warships.

Apparently the cessation of warship building began even before said war started (not by long) due to the break down of trade networks and the difficulty of getting some super special and rare resource required for warship building but not other stuff because it'd been exhausted building warships.

This could explain why they're rarely built even in the post Clan Invasion era.

[Nightlord01]

Another tidbit that came up in the First Succession War about warships.

Apparently the cessation of warship building began even before said war started (not by long) due to the break down of trade networks and the difficulty of getting some super special and rare resource required for warship building but not other stuff because it'd been exhausted building warships.

This could explain why they're rarely built even in the post Clan Invasion era.

Post Clan invasion, all of the Successor States were dependent on ComStar or Word of Blake to be able to acquire compact KF drives. None of the states had the know how or resources needed. ComStar slowed the production of warships in the FS and LA, although curiously not in the DC, to such a point that the FS and LA both expended the resources necessary to work out how to build their own compact drives.

WoB went all in assisting the FWL building warships, which is why the FWL ended up with such a large navy, the CC leveraged off WoB too, but to a much lesser extent with Sun-Tzu being a little brighter than the average spark and thus knowing there would be quite the price to be paid in the long run.