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VB6 Aurora > Advanced Tactical Command Academy
Forward jump point defense
Michael Sandy:
So I have a theory that people are defending the wrong side of the jump points, and why.
I think there are a lot more advantages to a fleet that is preventing a fleet from approaching a jump point than in trying to prevent a fleet from transiting it.
Okay, the setup is that you have several sensor equipped ships and buoys on the enemy side of the jump point, and a bunch of jump couriers. Expendable jump couriers, as I will get into later.
You have carriers or LAC tenders on the friendly side of the jump point, quite close to it, but completely safe from missile attack until the enemy actually gets control of the jump point. Normally, fighters and LACs have to worry about closing through an enemy missile barrage to get close enough to fire. But in forward jump point defense, they can let the enemy close to half the fighter missile range, send the carriers through, launch, and the attackers have nowhere to run.
Assuming the missiles launched by the fighters can find their target without the fighters having to remain in system.
A forward jump point defense should either bleed the attacker, or cause them to waste massive volleys of missiles where the defender simply withdraws through the jump point. This buys the defender strategic time, as the attacker has to bring up more missiles. If the defender is concerned about the attacker having missiles/mines launched on the jump point after they briefly withdraw, then send in sacrificial scouts to ensure those mines/missiles are wasted.
So why is it that most stories of jump point defense assume they are attacking the enemy after transit? I think it is a holdover from Starfire expectations. You simply could not transit away causing the enemy to waste lots of missiles in Starfire. The time scale is also completely different. In Aurora, you could transit in, transit out a couple of times, and the missiles would still be in flight.
Among the requirements of a true forward jump point defense is sensors that can provide 2 minute warning of incoming missiles. Something that gives the option of allowing a warning to be sent, the point defense ships brought in, and their weapons coming on line to prevent the sensor ships from being taken out by long ranged conventionally launched missiles.
Because you can't really afford to have a significant portion of your fleet stationed forward, the maintenance costs would be awful. You have a mobile fleet base just on the home side of the jump point, which is a bit of a strategic risk, of course, but far less than trying to stop a jump point transit at the jump point.
Bremen:
--- Quote from: Michael Sandy on March 18, 2017, 11:54:28 PM ---Assuming the missiles launched by the fighters can find their target without the fighters having to remain in system.
--- End quote ---
Unless missiles have internal sensors, the fire control that launched them has to maintain a lock on the target until they impact. So jumping the fighters out would result in the missiles losing lock and self destructing. Even if the missiles do have internal sensors, they'll just fly to the last known position of the enemy and then look for targets, so they'd probably need to have quite potent (and large) sensors.
The rest of your point is valid, but IMHO less so for fighters than for warship mounted missiles. Having your missile warships on the forward side of the jump point makes some sense, since as you point out they're virtually immune to enemy missiles; worst case is they have to jump back and lose any missiles currently in flight. Hell, even if they never launch any missiles, just keeping them there can make your opponent waste ammo before they retreat (especially if we're assuming a battle vs the AI, since I'm pretty sure it would just empty all its magazines).
OTOH, when you're defending the back side of the jump point you get to fire your missiles against blind ships (assuming you're willing to sacrifice range and mount a close in defense), which can be quite devastating as PD is really quite potent in Aurora.
Beam warships are, for obvious reasons, far more effective when on the back side of the jump point.
Michael Sandy:
I suppose I should distinguish between long term defensive operations and short term ones.
When the deployment is expected to be less than 1/3 of the deployment time of the ships in question, sure, deploy them all forward. But otherwise maintenance issues are a big thing.
Basically, a forward defense allows a slower fleet with shorter ranged weapons to nonetheless choose the range of engagement.
So what if the attackers have 400 million km ranged missiles? Either they fire a lot of them at once, in which case the scout force just ducks back across the jump point, or they fire in dribs and drabs and they just get shot down by point defense.
You could have fighters with 20+ size 1 box launchers, 20-30 million km range, normally they would have no chance of getting in range, but they could launch right in the energy beam point defense envelope. Again, you couldn't normally get those slow point defense ships within 20 million km of the enemy fleet.
The tactical and strategic options for the defender in a forward defense are quite significant, and unlike the guard the door defense, they get to see the attacker coming.
I am sure that defenses made by a lower tech defender would be crackable, given time and research, but their odds of getting unopposed kills or simply coming out ahead on cost of a missile exchange are a lot higher with the option to withdraw. And they still have the option of a jump point defense. They could selectively target the incoming jump leaders, reducing the ability of the attacker to even transit.
Another defensive option:
Fighters with really long ranged missiles, sufficient that they expect to be untargetable at launch. Normally the issue is that such fighters are not going to be able to get multiple strikes that way, or carry enough missiles to kill an equal cost fleet. But they would be able to redock with their carriers after a trip of minutes, not hours, and reload to launch another large strike. And the carriers for such a role could be virtual barges, with nothing but hangars, fuel and ammunition.
You could have fighters that are almost nothing but missile launcher +fire control, virtually no engine, and they could still expect multiple strikes.
Another defense option would be to deploy very fast beam fighters once the attackers are within about 1 minute missile flight from the jump point. Such fighters might be rather short ranged, and normally not be capable of running down a fleet, not without exposing their carriers. If the attackers have 400 million km missile range, you couldn't have fighter barge carriers launch from a mere 400 million km and expect to be safe.
But launched with a jump point to withdraw behind? A crap ton of small fast fighters that are less than 10 minutes fighter flight from their targets?
Michael Sandy:
Probably one of the most important counters to a forward jump point defense would be stealthed ships to clear the sensor platforms. If the defense has active sensors up, the ships jumping in can make use of its anti-missile warnings. If their sensor platforms get cleared out, they have to probe so that missiles that are lurking just kill the sacrificial probes. But that takes time. And if the stealthed ships are already close, they can take a toll on the defenders' ships.
A forward jump point defense seems to be one of the very few ways a technologically inferior empire could inflict a decisive defeat on a technologically superior attacker. Which I find to be quite intriguing from an RP perspective. I could see two races at a stalemate, where they both control a jump point into a nexus, but can not dislodge the other race from its access to the nexus.
El Pip:
--- Quote from: Bremen on March 19, 2017, 01:12:19 AM ---Unless missiles have internal sensors, the fire control that launched them has to maintain a lock on the target until they impact.
--- End quote ---
That isn't actually the case. All that is required is that the target is within active sensor range, a ship can launch and run off so the target is out of fire control range and the missile will still hit. The active sensor can that 'sees' the target can be on a completely different ship.
I've not checked it with ships jumping back through jump points, but I've checked it with fighters launching and then landing in a hangar and their missiles still hit.
This may be some sort of bug, and I can see why you may want to RP it that the launching ship has to maintain target lock, but that is how the game works at present.
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