Browncoat Navy
POSTED BY: Talvin
UPDATED: Friday, April 16, 2004 23:29
VIEWED: 7513
PAGE 2 of 3
Lopsided. Yep that's word.
But something to remember, no blockade is going to be 100% succesful. The goal of the blockade isn't to interfere with military units per se. It is to interfere with commerce. The point behind any blockade is to cause popular government support to dwindle. That said, colony worlds (like the south) would be very dependent on imported products.
Serenity Valley would have to have been a major point on the map (maybe like Savana?), drawing resources for the cause. So putting it aside, what was everywhere else like?
And there were some naval battles in the civil war. But they didn't amount to much. Look at the Iron Clads. Heck the south floated the first submarine.
So I would think that were some space battles. Even the testing of some innovations (nothing like the Rom cloak), though I can't think off what at this hour.
*ruminate plot on that a bit*
Since there are some major departures from the American Civil War, and they are typically to foster plot and characterization, I wouldn't be to suprised to find that the rebs had a decent sized ship. Not enough to make a difference though.
Later, I've been awake 25 hours and still have 1 more email to right.
Good thread though.
Miles Long
or Jeff
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These are all pretty good ideas. Probably, fighters are simply more effective than direct ship-to-ship actions, making the cruiser's green plasma rays just for demolishing derelicts and emergency defense. Mostly they'd just scramble their already alert fighters. While the Browncoats probably had a pretty small navy, it was certainly able to ferry Mal and Zoe to two or three planets during the war. On the other hand, they've had some supply problems, like when they didn't have any food. But I think naval actions were mostly limited to supply, transport, and blockade.
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Quote:
Originally posted by MilesLong:Quote:
Originally posted by Talvin:
2) Naval action between capital ships just really wasn't part of the war! A pretty good case can be made that this was the first ever Interstellar War (and only one so far), so alot of stuff had to be made up along the way. Ground and Air Combat tech would have been in goodly supply from Earth-that-Was, but such "navy" ships as existed were primarily Cutters and Corvettes for anti-piracy, anti-smuggling, etc. Colony Transports could be turned into Troop Transports very quickly, but Ships of the Line are another matter entirely. The Alliance Cruiser could well have come along at the end of the war, or even after. What we see of the "Cruiser" indicates that it is more of a mobile base than anything else; there to support ground troops, carry a wing of fighters, etc. It does NOT come across as a ship that thinks it will ever run into a hostile in its own class.
I would think that option 2 is the most likely. But if the Civil War inspiration holds true, then remember that there was signifigant Naval action. The Union managed a blockade that streched all along the southern states in the Atlantic. That is no small feat. The thing that makes it so forgetable is that the South never had a fleet to challange it with, nor any highly skilled Captains (with the level of competence of a Lee or Jackson). So the South lacking a Naval Hero and a Fleet for him to command, never caused a noteworthy sea battle.
Though I agree it is most likely that the Independents had a much smaller fleet than the Alliance, that does not mean they were not necessarily naval engagements.
As to the South's "lack" of skilled sea captains, I would like to remind you of Captain Raphael Semmes, commander of the CSS Alabama, a very successful commerce raider. The Alabama sunk the USS Hatteras and captured its crew. It only lost to the USS Kearsarge due to poor powder sold to them by an English merchant. The powder was of such low quality that it was slow to light or did not provide the power to accurately fire the Alabama's cannons.
There was also Capt. James I. Waddell, commander of the CSS Shenandoah. In less than a year on the seas the Shenandoah burned seven Union ships and captured two more for ransom, all with the liability of a crew less than what was necessary for the proper running of the ship. After taking on more crew in Australia, they captured four more Union ships before learning the war ended. They then sailed to Britian and gave up the Shenandoah so they could return home.
Quote:
That said there were blockade runners and such. But they wern't very successful. Heck they lost the South's diplomat to the Union Navy and the Union only released him to prevent Britan from siding with the South.
Very true. Only lack of resources and actual ships to convert to warships kept the South from having a navy of note. There were skilled officers enough, just no ships for them to command.
"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."
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"So, if you drive a ship in space, would you still be a squid?"
Oh my goodness that made me laugh. Are Space Marines Jarheads or Bubble heads? And so on...
If we are accepting the Civil War as a model for the naval aspect of the Alliance/Independents War then heterogenity will certainly rule the day. Each Independent combatant would field whatever they could improvise or appropriate (which means that capitol ships COULD have been grabbed at the outset) and then follow on with cobbled versions of ships they could build up later on.
Get this though, troops are CHEAP (no offense to any infantry folk) and ships are not. Ships cannot take ground and hold it either. So Serenity could have been a holding action for the Independents. Why?
The Alliance prolly ahd successfully interdicted the planet by then (note the siege conditions). The Alliance prolly had more warcraft at the onset than anyone else, or they concentrated faster. Not only that but resources seem to mentioned a great deal in the same breath as Alliance, which gives them the edge. Ships take years to build-and not little Fireflies, I am thinking of combat capable ships with purpose built weapons and whatnot. The CSS Virginia is an example of a cobbled together ship that fought well against a purpose built ship (the Monitor). The Virginia sunk a bunch of ships before she retired, too. Yet the scattered resources in the south prevented the Confederacy from fielding any effective CLASSES of ships, and for their purposes perhaps they didn't need too, as their opponents were in their front yard. The Union thought diffferent, as they continued to build an effective fleet to deny access to southern ports.
In space though, controlling access is everything. Logistics. Rule. Everything. If your foe can't eat or has only a few bullets or bandaids, you have already started winning.
So both the Alliance and the Indies HAD to build ships that could either control or disrupt access to strategic worlds. (or maybe the War was a series of Indie redoubts being reduced) .The Alliance prolly built a mass of ship classes after a few years went by, while the Indies had to scrape togwether a few mismatched craft from their scattered hoards of resources and on hand craft while they built ships each according totheir need.
Meaning that some interesting matches could occur in space, since the Alliance would not ever really know just what might come up on their fire control radars next.
Just like the Captain of the USS Monitor did when he steamed into Hampton Roads, on a larger scale.
"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"
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Here's an idea--
We haven't seen a whole lot of out-of-atmo weaponry, have we? I mean, sure the Alliance ship blew up the wreck the Reavers had hit, but it was a stationary target, and it was space-to-space destruction.
Maybe, there's simply not a whole lot of Space-to-Ground- or even Space-to-Atmo-capable weaponry in the war? Most of what we've seen is handheld or vehicle-mounted groundwar stuff, with occasional gunships (again, though, only in-atmo combat, unless I'm having a serious memtal lapse...).
Maybe there was never really a pressing need to develop this kind of weaponry, what with all the myriad colonies--too many, too spread out to make developing Space-to-Atmo/Ground-weapons cost effective.
Or maybe, just MAYBE, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
--The Hat
***************************
"I like smackin 'em"--Jayne
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BadgersHat don't forget Womack’s gunship's had both atmo and space missiles (They may even be the same weapon capable of dual use) and Space to Ground weapons are easy to develop heck we have them now! A Inter Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) is an example its Warhead(s) exit the atmosphere using their rocket and then renter atmo and precede to their targets with some serious accuracy (The US Navy's Trident D-5s are reported to be able to hit a football field from several thousand miles away!). Since the weapons are already in space there is no need for a massive missile just a small rocket to kick the warhead out of orbit and towards the target.
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>Help out today!
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Ahh, but the crucial difference is this-- an ICBM is launched FROM the atmosphere, OUT of the atmosphere, and BACK INTO said atmosphere.
What *I* am talking about is, a missile designed to be launched originally from a space-faring vehicle--much different. The logistics involved (stabilizing a vehicle against the launch velocity, tracking from space, launch-to-target guidance, propelling from a space-based launch site, etc)--very much difficult. Even a missile from a sattellite (sp?) isn't the same, since a satellite (I don't know how to spell it, so I'm gonna spell it differently every time I say it) a satelite is a stationary object, already well within the planetary gravity well.
Space to Ground Ballistic is not something we have now, and would probably be very difficult to develop. And, since the majority of war is won with the ground force, I wonder if they'd bother?
--The Hat
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"I like smackin 'em"--Jayne
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dumb little heat seeking missiles have to fight gravity, turbulence, air resistance and maneuver against targets. That is now. Such devices are easily feasible in future.
"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"
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Quote:
Originally posted by Kugelblitz:
dumb little heat seeking missiles have to fight gravity, turbulence, air resistance and maneuver against targets. That is now. Such devices are easily feasible in future.
B]
Actually, the dumb little heat seeking missiles don't FIGHT gravity and air resistence, they USE it to their great advantage (missiles maneuver with rudders and such, like a plane, and need air resistence to do that... and gravity is the reason we have ICBM capability in the first place)
They are, of course, feasible in the future, but it's not the "Can they?" I'm pondering, it's the "Why would they?" that I'm going for.
--The Hat
***************************
"I like smackin 'em"--Jayne
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Quote:
Originally posted by BadgersHat:
The logistics involved (stabilizing a vehicle against the launch velocity, tracking from space, launch-to-target guidance, propelling from a space-based launch site, etc)--very much difficult.
In other words they need a weapon that can function like a small ship propelling its self to a particular point in orbit reentering and hitting a target, basically a space buzz bomb.
However once you get it to a point in Atmo modern day terrain following devices (Several warships in orbit can do a scan of the topography) can be used to so Launch to Target guidance is easier since the atmo to target stage is self guiding while the space to atmo can be guided from a ship.
Quote:
Originally posted by BadgersHat:
a satelite is a stationary object, already well within the planetary gravity well.
No it is not satellites can be given vary erratic orbits to achieve their goals, usually only comm and nav sats are geosyncraness.
Quote:
Originally posted by BadgersHat:
Space to Ground Ballistic is not something we have now, and would probably be very difficult to develop. And, since the majority of war is won with the ground force, I wonder if they'd bother?
If we (Earth today) did have Space to Ground weapons no one would admit it since the nations that could develop such weapons have signed a treaty banning such weapons. During the Cold War satellite (disguised communications sats etc) based nukes and conventional space guns were strongly coincided as a first strike weapons for use against both ground and space targets (Ship/Station/Sat to Satellite weapons do exist today).
Finally why would they? Pound they enemy's infrastructure, command and control and heavy entrenched forces from the safety or orbit.
I think it was the USAF that called space "The Ultimate High Ground."
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>Help out today!
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