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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest

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Okay.
This is my third attempt at a detailed reply. My eyes keep glazing over, so this is about as much as I'll write.
Simon_Jester said:
The salvo combat model is based on the assumption that both sides fire volleys of fairly lethal missiles at each other, and that the defender can shoot down incoming missiles. We can't shoot down mass driver shots. The Lancaster laws apply, at least for large numbers... which we have here, because we're fighting battles between dozens or hundreds of ships.

I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, I know how differential equations work, and I give you my word that I can explain and prove everything that I'm saying if you'll hear me out. I am not bullshitting you here, I'm serious; we are in a situation where small increases in one side's margin of numerical advantage can have large 'rollover' effects on how many ships the other side loses.

Okay, that's fair. My apologies; I'd forgotten.

This is a misrepresentation of Mira's stated words in the text.

The current reserve is not decisive. It will not become decisive for quite some time. Probably a day or two. By the time the reinforcements we're directing into the reserve grows large enough to be decisive, it is entirely possible that the battle will already have been decided for us by the main rachni fleet.

If by your standards a reserve force cannot be committed until it becomes 'decisive,' then we are in very real danger of losing this battle before we even HAVE a reserve force to commit.

Waiting for the perfect moment to commit a large force may screw us if the enemy, settling for good-enough tactics, crushes our front-line forces right now. If it weren't for the chain of command issue, I'd be advocating joining the existing small amount of reinforcements to one of our fleets just so it would add to our strength in an engagement as opposed to contributing literally nothing.

Because this battle will be over long before we can pull off the "classic" maneuver of having a big hammer of reserves to crush the enemy's forces right at the moment they thought they were going to triumph.

Yes, but that doesn't help if the ships are two or three days' flight time away from the relay system. They still have to fly there.

Poptart told us that we have six days before those fleets are fully assembled. I believe them. I do not assume that means we'll get 20% of the fleet strength on the first day, 60% on the second day, and the other 20% spread out over the next four. That would be far too convenient; if Mira knew that would be what happens, she'd say something in the narration.

One of the realities of Mass Effect warfare is that a force scattered throughout a cluster cannot concentrate in the relay system nearly as fast as ships in relay systems can jump from relay to relay. We are now dealing with that reality.

The reserves are needed now because now is when the rachni have made a fuckup we can exploit. We won't have all, or even half, of our available reserve force for days.

If you wait for the perfect moment to act, the battle will end before the perfect moment arrives.

No that's the point. The 2nd is doing great, because of the rachni fuckups. We want to reinforce that success and free the 2nd up as quickly as possible so they can go save everybody else, instead of being bogged down hammering on the rachni fuckups.

Again, the problem is that we're not going to get a large slab of reinforcements capable of actually saving any of our endangered fleets for a day or two. By the time we have enough reinforcements to meaningfully help the 1st Battle Fleet or 3rd Raiding Fleet, those fleets will already be dead. The strategy of waiting a long time to deploy reserve forces simply will not work in this battle, because we are outnumbered and in intense combat with a numerous, powerful enemy force.

We need to defeat the enemy in detail, by concentrating as much strength as we can against the weakest enemy (the fuckup rachni from the Maroon Sea), then using the forces freed up by crushing the fuckup rachni to help the other fleets.
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1) The salvo combat model is based on the assumption we're dealing with salvos of fire, not continuous streams.
And a Mass Effect fleet does have defensive firepower. We can't shoot down mass driver shots, but we can mess up enemy targeting locks and tank hits, actively evade incoming fire, even shoot down torpedoes. ECM to shields and armor to actual point defence.

Note that the L equations fail against nukes, artillery and machineguns.

I DON'T know how differential equations work.
My professional field of training is human health, not math or physics, and I did my best to avoid calculus, successfully I might add. I am willing to take your word for the assertion that small changes can have large knockon effects.

Thing is, I don't believe Poptart is modelling a sim here either, so I don't think it's something I should worry about.

2) Decisive intervention depends on the current status of events.
And critically on timing.
I am not convinced the timing is right to throw a third of a raiding fleet into the fray.

3)The 1st and 2nd Raiding are in these two clusters. It's been several hours since the war warning went out.
Mira should know to the minute the status of her incoming reinforcements, after all the infrastructure investment in comm equipment.
She doesn't because of gameplay mechanics, and because it makes things entirely too complicated.

Regardless, a decisive reserve does not necessarily mean every single absent ship should straggle in.
How many? I don't know. Insufficient data. Just not enough.
Yet.
Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on May 31, 2019 at 7:14 PM, finished with 78 posts and 35 votes.
  • [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
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Adhoc vote count started by uju32 on May 31, 2019 at 9:06 PM, finished with 82 posts and 38 votes.
  • [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
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Reading the update again as well as the newest posts has reinforced my original feeling that we should not reinforce the Second fleet so I am changing my vote to Parthian Shot.
Adhoc vote count started by Thors_Alumni on May 31, 2019 at 7:18 PM, finished with 79 posts and 35 votes.
  • [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
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Adhoc vote count started by Thors_Alumni on May 31, 2019 at 8:58 PM, finished with 82 posts and 38 votes.
  • [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
Click to expand...

Adhoc vote count started by Thors_Alumni on May 31, 2019 at 9:25 PM, finished with 83 posts and 39 votes.
  • [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
Click to expand...

Adhoc vote count started by Thors_Alumni on Jun 1, 2019 at 11:47 AM, finished with 96 posts and 43 votes.
  • 44
    [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
Click to expand...
 
[X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once

Going to agree with reinforcing the 2nd. Then they can meaningfully reinforce one of the two other fleets.
 
[X] Plan Parthian Shot

I'd prefer to hold on to reserves to protect the civilian evacuation transports if the 3rd Raiding Fleet buckles before it can be reinforced, particularly with us taking a slow approach to the 2nd Battlefleet mopping up at its relay.
Adhoc vote count started by TaliesinSkye on May 31, 2019 at 10:15 PM, finished with 84 posts and 39 votes.
  • [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
Click to expand...

Adhoc vote count started by TaliesinSkye on Jun 1, 2019 at 12:12 AM, finished with 90 posts and 42 votes.
  • [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
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Adhoc vote count started by TaliesinSkye on Jun 1, 2019 at 12:12 AM, finished with 90 posts and 42 votes.
  • 43
    [X] Plan Slowly at First, and Then All at Once
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Commit them. You need them, meager as they are.
    --[X] They will help the 2nd Battle Fleet clean up.
    [X] Plan Parthian Shot
    -[X][1st Battle Fleet/AB-HG Relay]Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X][2nd Battle Fleet/AB-MO Relay] Reinforce the encirclement. The platforms have done their job par excellence, but the rachni will escape if this exchange rate continues. Surround and obliterate them. Of course, if you don't kill ships quickly enough, the rachni will charge you in a glory-or-death assault.
    -[X][3rd Raiding Fleet/AB-NE Relay] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X][Reserve] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
    [X] Plan Charge
    -[X] Withdraw away from the relay and try to make it to extreme range. The rachni have a massive cruiser advantage, and long range is where cruiser guns start coming into play. Try and get to extreme range, dragging them past the defense platforms on the way, and try to buy time with the slower pace of a capital ship duel.
    -[X] Dive in and shatter them. They have failed to form a formation; now make it impossible. Put an end to this assault with crushing speed so that you can reinforce one of the other fleets. Of course, rachni carry a lot of torpedoes, so if you don't shatter them, this could hurt.
    -[X] Remain at extreme range at all costs. Through good gunnery, you've taken out most of the rachni dreadnoughts, leaving you facing just one dreadnought and a bevy of battlecruisers. If you remain at extreme range, you are facing what is effectively an only slightly-larger hostile force, and you can draw this out for much longer.
    -[X] Do not commit them. You do not need them badly enough to accept the casualties of doing so just yet.
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uju32 said:
Okay.
This is my third attempt at a detailed reply. My eyes keep glazing over, so this is about as much as I'll write.

1) The salvo combat model is based on the assumption we're dealing with salvos of fire, not continuous streams.
And a Mass Effect fleet does have defensive firepower. We can't shoot down mass driver shots, but we can mess up enemy targeting locks and tank hits, actively evade incoming fire, even shoot down torpedoes. ECM to shields and armor to actual point defence.

Note that the L equations fail against nukes, artillery and machineguns.
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The Lanchester laws do cover things like infantry combat between men with rifles, though- and there are actually a lot of details involved in rifle infantry combat in real life.

I think you're greatly overestimating the degree to which simplifying assumptions have to be made to model combat as a pair of linked differential equations. A lot of things that seem fantastically complicated and make you go "wait how could you ever model this" average out when you zoom out the picture from the micro scale to the macro scale. Sure, on the micro scale the fact that Rifleman #8921 has taken cover behind a rock and is a crack marksman while Rifleman #8922 is frozen up and not firing and Rifleman #8923 has some kind of kooky idea involving a bunch of hand grenades makes big differences in how they perform. But when you zoom out to look at the behavior of a whole infantry division, a lot of that fine detail blurs together into irrelevance.

It averages out, an you wind up with a situation that can be modeled as "in one hour of combat, the division will cause 150 casualties to the enemy per 1000 soldiers it still has fighting on the front lines, which averages to 2.5 enemy soldiers put out of action per minute per 1000 of our soldiers who are IN action."

I DON'T know how differential equations work.
My professional field of training is human health, not math or physics, and I did my best to avoid calculus, successfully I might add. I am willing to take your word for the assertion that small changes can have large knockon effects.

Thing is, I don't believe Poptart is modelling a sim here either, so I don't think it's something I should worry about.
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Poptart doesn't have to be using differential equations for differential equations to describe the consequences of Poptart's actions. If Poptart throws a baseball, the path of the baseball will be modeled by differential equations too.

...

The ONLY really critical assumptions that go into the Lanchester laws are:

1) On the macro level, you can vaguely approximate a military force as a homogeneous mass of individual units- individual differences may exist, but average out, or can be aggregated away by measures like "count the tons of warships so that 100 little corvettes and two battleships are counted similarly."

2) Each side's units directly engage the other, inflicting a fixed mortality rate, something like "2 casualties per 1,000 enemy soldiers fighting the battle per minutes." This basically means each side has to be capable of intentionally singling out and shooting at enemy units. They may be missing a lot of the time, but they have to be able to shoot at individual enemies.

3) Units are allowed to gang up on one another.

Now...

(3) pretty much never breaks down.

(2) breaks down when units are blindly firing into an area, causing a mortality rate like "if you are in this area you have a 0.1% chance of dying, per minute, per enemy artillery piece firing into your vicinity" as opposed to "you have a 0.1% chance of dying per minute per enemy soldier targeting you personally." This is where you get claims that the Lanchester laws don't apply to machine gun fire (assumed to be a blind barrage), artillery fire (likewise), and nuclear weapons (assumed to be massive area of effect against ground troops). It's not an inherent property of the weapons, it's a property of how blindly firing into a large area while ignorant of whether the enemy is present differs from the act of specifically attempting to target individual enemies.

(1) breaks down if units are very heterogeneous and this is relevant tactically, say because some of your units can engage while others cannot. Or because some of your units are firing at the enemy and inflicting a fixed mortality rate on them per unit engaged, while others are doing something entirely different that can't be modeled that way.

...

Now, (1) is actually relevant to our situation, especially for 3rd Raiding Fleet, where the 3rd is in a position to deliberately exploit the way it knocked out a few enemy capital ships with lucky shots early in the engagement. This makes the opposing rachni fleet effectively weaker at long range, as if it were a force that outnumbered our ships 4:3 instead of 2:1 or something like that. That makes a huge difference in situations where Lancaster Square Law mathematics applies, or even approximately applies.

But (2) pretty much applies. Yes, various things like ECM force our ships to miss. Yes, our ships are more likely to survive a hit than theirs. All these things can still be averaged out across large formations to something approximately like "each unit firing on the enemy adds a +0.2% chance of causing a casualty among the enemy ranks per minute."

2) Decisive intervention depends on the current status of events.
And critically on timing.
I am not convinced the timing is right to throw a third of a raiding fleet into the fray.
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Again, if you wait for the perfect moment to use a weapon, the situation may change fast enough that by the time you decide to fire it, it has long since ceased to matter whether you do so or not.

3)The 1st and 2nd Raiding are in these two clusters. It's been several hours since the war warning went out.
Mira should know to the minute the status of her incoming reinforcements, after all the infrastructure investment in comm equipment.
She doesn't because of gameplay mechanics, and because it makes things entirely too complicated.
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I don't disagree.

But that said, given that we have been told point blank it will take six days for all the ships to get here, we would be remiss to assume that most of the ships will be here within one day. And the information we do have is enough to tell us not to expect heavy reinforcement from other Virmirean forces within the next several hours.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
But that said, given that we have been told point blank it will take six days for all the ships to get here, we would be remiss to assume that most of the ships will be here within one day. The information we do have is enough to tell us not to expect heavy reinforcement from other Virmirean forces within the next several hours.
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I'm just curious, did my earlier post not go through? Because I swear that I remember laying out how quickly you should expect your reinforcements, at least in general terms.
 
PoptartProdigy said:
I'm just curious, did my earlier post not go through? Because I swear that I remember laying out how quickly you should expect your reinforcements, at least in general terms.
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I got so distracted by the larger second part of your post that I committed a reading fail and did not closely read the first part. :(

Although it broadly confirms my take that we shouldn't be expecting, say, a whole raiding fleet worth of reinforcements within the next 12 hours or anything, which is a relief because that would significantly change my tactical thinking here.
 
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Negaverse: Rachni, Wrath of the Swarm
  • Sidestory
    • Someone beat me to the Negaverse omake in Victoria Falls, so I figured I'd make one here instead.

    (The opinions of users with parody usernames are not intended to reflect the opinions of the users they parody. Duh.)

    StrudelSavant said:
    Alright, that's all your rolls done, by my count. Applied in order, we get:

    NE-AB Assault: 61
    HG-AB Assault: 10
    MS-AB Assault: 1
    Battle Roll: 45 + 20 (Fleet Queen)

    Lemme just roll for Virmire real quick:
    Virmire Secret Roll 1: 66
    Virmire Secret Roll 2: 97
    Virmire Battle Roll: 40 + 26 (Legendary Admiral)

    Battle Of Attican Beta: (45+20=)65 vs (40+26=)66 (One Degree of Failure)

    hehehehehehe

    Update soon!
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    Beyta092 said:
    Their LA is still alive? Guess we can rule out Salarian, then. So much for that 'plan'.

    Between that and the Nat1 on the MS Fleet, this is a really bad start. Then again, if we can get rid of the LA here, it should make cleaning up the rest of them easier. And depending on what those secret rolls are…

    I don't think this is going to be as easy as we hoped.
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    Angel Stalker said:
    You know it's a bad day when you roll a nat1, and the enemy gets a nat97.
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    Illiterate said:
    I wonder how a Nat1 for fleet assault comes across in the narrative. Did our whole fleet jump straight into a star or something?
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    Hope said:
    We know Virmire likes defence platforms, too. We're probably parked up in front of the spaceborne equivalent of a firing squad, desperately trying to get the engines working, or something.
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    Manga_Reader530 said:
    New to the quest, just got done with the archive binge. Could someone explain what the point of divergence was? Something to do with Virmire, obviously, because there was no stellar empire there in the canon timeline, but what?
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    StrudelSavant said:
    @Illiterate Well, not quite.

    @Manga_Reader530 Since game start I've been rolling in the background for how each other faction has been coping with the war, and (about forty in-game years back) Virmire rolled a Nat100. Up until now I've been cagey about what that roll did, but I guess at this point telling you won't matter; in narrative terms, a joint Ministry of Intelligence/Ministry of War coup allowed a Legendary Martial leader to take power, and that drastically increased all of Virmire's background rolls to do with the war.

    (That Legendary Martial is the Legendary Admiral, by the way, so don't you get on my case about them having two Legendary heroes!)

    Had that not happened, you probably would have taken them out in the Y482 Battle of Sentry Omega, or at least crippled their ability to fight back (and then finished them off at your leisure over the next decade or so). Obviously your own actions have butterflied a few things, but you were still on vaguely the same track until that nat100. As such, you can consider that the main divergence from the 'ME Canon' timeline, if you'd like.

    Unfortunately, you have indeed diverged from that timeline, and so you have to deal with this.

    The First Strike​

    Relay Assault Rolls
    NE-AB Assault: 61
    HG-AB Assault: 10
    MS-AB Assault: 1

    Your fleets act in perfect sync. In three different systems, three different Relays light up, and ships pour into Attican Beta. Two fleets complete the transition from Hades Gamma and find themselves staring down a vastly outnumbered Virmirean Heavy Fleet. The Nubian Expanse fleet finds itself staring down the same Light Fleet of vessels who'd spoilt your surprise attack with their pesky raiding. The Maroon Sea fleet is the only one lacking a solid numbers advantage, facing off against a fleet with rough parity, and the Relay's attendant stationary guns.

    But the advantage of numbers is not the only factor. Thanks to some bad luck with the Relays, only the fleet from the Nubian Expanse is really ready to engage the enemy, staring down the Light Fleet at extreme range.

    From Hades Gamma, your fleets arrive perpendicular to the enemy, stacked side by side, and immediately they're forced to break apart and wheel around, so they can bring their full numbers to bear.

    Your Maroon Sea fleet doesn't have any problems with drift. In fact, they arrive almost right on top of the Relay. But that brings a whole host of other problems. Namely, it puts that entire fleet in the heart of Virmire's defensive killbox.

    For a moment, there is silence, as entire fleets take stock of their position.

    And then explosions light the void.

    * * *​

    Battle Of Attican Beta: (45+20=)65 vs (40+26=)66 (One Degree of Failure)

    Even with mere hours of warning, the Virmireans have prepared for your arrival. Immediately, all fleets are taking scattered fire as they wheel about, and though you take every opportunity to fire back, until your fleets reform their formations it is a scattered and ineffective retaliation.

    At the AB-NE Relay, the enemy Light Fleet seems to predict your formation even as you move to form it, and every movement is met by a punishing volley of battlecruiser fire. Two of your dreadnoughts are blown to pieces, a third heavily damaged and listing. Your own battlecruisers move up to take their place, the formation a little more fragile than intended but still perfectly capable, and you begin to fire back effectively at last.

    * * *​

    At the AB-HG Relay, your fleet, caught off-guard and out of position, is set upon by the Virmireans immediately. Cruisers rip into your fleet's flanks as they reposition, finally twisting enough to fire back. One of your battlecruisers twists in place, far faster than a dreadnought could have, and guts a Virmirean heavy cruiser in a single shot.

    Of course, the Virmireans retaliate almost immediately and sink enough firepower into it to shred a dreadnought, but that's not much of an issue; they're far cheaper to replace than dreadnoughts.

    Even as the outer flank of your fleet is reduced to a mess of drifting hulks, the rest of your vessels finally bring themselves around into a firing formation, and the battle begins in earnest.

    Already, Virmirean shields are flickering and bursting under your fire, as the better part of your two fleets engage at last.

    * * *​

    There is no battle at the AB-MS Relay. Your fleet transitioned, by some cruel twist of fate, right into the heart of Virmire's defences. Even before your ships have completed their deceleration from the transition, a cruiser slams into a mine head-on, and bursts into a cloud of smoke, shrapnel, and drone guts.

    It's not the only ship to suffer such a fate - the mines are everywhere, and it seems your ships trip over them at every movement.

    But remaining still is absolutely not an option - your fleet is encircled by relentless defence platforms, and the Virmirean Heavy Fleet is directing a torrent of fire wherever your fleet is thickest. You do what you can to mitigate losses, and to scrap as many platforms as possible before your fleet is wiped out, but it is made quickly apparent that it is a lost cause.

    You will make no progress through that Relay without applying reserves; the best you can do is make the transition easier on those reserves, by crippling Virmire's defences, and tie up this Heavy Fleet as long as possible, to prevent it from joining the battle elsewhere.

    * * *​

    Despite the discouraging opening minutes of the battle, you are under no illusions. The defenders at AB-NE are woefully outnumbered and fighting a force much more suitable for a pitched battle. The tide of steel is turning against the defenders at AB-HG as more and more of your ships bring their main guns to bear. Only at AB-MS are your losses intolerably heavy, and even then, the loss of a single fleet is not such a concern, if it will allow you to finally crush these upstarts.

    Given the limited space under their control, you know they cannot possess much in the way of reserves. The crippled remnants of the Quarian War Fleet, and perhaps another Light Fleet; you cannot imagine their limited economy supporting much more than that without significant strain.

    You, on the other hand, have spent close to a decade consolidating your holdings, hardening your logistics against their aggravating raids, and expanding your fleet basing capacity. You can keep the pressure on as long as you need.

    ----------------

    Such is the tactical situation. Vote options incoming.
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  • Sidestory
    • Simon_Jester said:
    The Lanchester laws do cover things like infantry combat between men with rifles, though- and there are actually a lot of details involved in rifle infantry combat in real life.

    I think you're greatly overestimating the degree to which simplifying assumptions have to be made to model combat as a pair of linked differential equations. A lot of things that seem fantastically complicated and make you go "wait how could you ever model this" average out when you zoom out the picture from the micro scale to the macro scale. Sure, on the micro scale the fact that Rifleman #8921 has taken cover behind a rock and is a crack marksman while Rifleman #8922 is frozen up and not firing and Rifleman #8923 has some kind of kooky idea involving a bunch of hand grenades makes big differences in how they perform. But when you zoom out to look at the behavior of a whole infantry division, a lot of that fine detail blurs together into irrelevance.

    It averages out, an you wind up with a situation that can be modeled as "in one hour of combat, the division will cause 150 casualties to the enemy per 1000 soldiers it still has fighting on the front lines, which averages to 2.5 enemy soldiers put out of action per minute per 1000 of our soldiers who are IN action."

    Poptart doesn't have to be using differential equations for differential equations to describe the consequences of Poptart's actions. If Poptart throws a baseball, the path of the baseball will be modeled by differential equations too.

    ...

    The ONLY really critical assumptions that go into the Lanchester laws are:

    1) On the macro level, you can vaguely approximate a military force as a homogeneous mass of individual units- individual differences may exist, but average out, or can be aggregated away by measures like "count the tons of warships so that 100 little corvettes and two battleships are counted similarly."

    2) Each side's units directly engage the other, inflicting a fixed mortality rate, something like "2 casualties per 1,000 enemy soldiers fighting the battle per minutes." This basically means each side has to be capable of intentionally singling out and shooting at enemy units. They may be missing a lot of the time, but they have to be able to shoot at individual enemies.

    3) Units are allowed to gang up on one another.

    Now...

    (3) pretty much never breaks down.

    (2) breaks down when units are blindly firing into an area, causing a mortality rate like "if you are in this area you have a 0.1% chance of dying, per minute, per enemy artillery piece firing into your vicinity" as opposed to "you have a 0.1% chance of dying per minute per enemy soldier targeting you personally." This is where you get claims that the Lanchester laws don't apply to machine gun fire (assumed to be a blind barrage), artillery fire (likewise), and nuclear weapons (assumed to be massive area of effect against ground troops). It's not an inherent property of the weapons, it's a property of how blindly firing into a large area while ignorant of whether the enemy is present differs from the act of specifically attempting to target individual enemies.

    (1) breaks down if units are very heterogeneous and this is relevant tactically, say because some of your units can engage while others cannot. Or because some of your units are firing at the enemy and inflicting a fixed mortality rate on them per unit engaged, while others are doing something entirely different that can't be modeled that way.

    ...

    Now, (1) is actually relevant to our situation, especially for 3rd Raiding Fleet, where the 3rd is in a position to deliberately exploit the way it knocked out a few enemy capital ships with lucky shots early in the engagement. This makes the opposing rachni fleet effectively weaker at long range, as if it were a force that outnumbered our ships 4:3 instead of 2:1 or something like that. That makes a huge difference in situations where Lancaster Square Law mathematics applies, or even approximately applies.

    But (2) pretty much applies. Yes, various things like ECM force our ships to miss. Yes, our ships are more likely to survive a hit than theirs. All these things can still be averaged out across large formations to something approximately like "each unit firing on the enemy adds a +0.2% chance of causing a casualty among the enemy ranks per minute."

    Again, if you wait for the perfect moment to use a weapon, the situation may change fast enough that by the time you decide to fire it, it has long since ceased to matter whether you do so or not.

    I don't disagree.

    But that said, given that we have been told point blank it will take six days for all the ships to get here, we would be remiss to assume that most of the ships will be here within one day. And the information we do have is enough to tell us not to expect heavy reinforcement from other Virmirean forces within the next several hours.
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    I feel like you've really overstated the general applicability of Lanchester's law.
    On the theoretical side, there are a number of assumptions that I think you've elided: on your third assumption, units need to not only be able to gang up on one another, but every unit needs to be constantly fighting, and able to switch targets as soon as (that is, instantaneously) another unit is destroyed. Every ship also has to be firing at specific units, rather than general areas (else we fall back into a dependence on area, rather than force strength (particularly relevant given the distances between ships). Moreover, the laws assume that no reinforcements come (relevant for obvious reasons).
    On the practical side, we know that we can't just blindly throw Lanchester's law at a battle because it does not match the historical data. H.K. Weiss (Weiss, Herbert K. "Combat Models and Historical Data: The U.S. Civil War." Operations Research, vol. 14, no. 5, 1966, pp. 759–790. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/168777.) did a case study on the civil war, and found that not, "In battles other than attacks on fortified lines the casualty ratios appeared to be independent of force ratios." In fact, it gets even worse for Lanchester: "For the large battles, high force ratios appeared to be associated with high casualty ratios (a side tends to lose men in proportion to the number committed, regardless of enemy strength" (where large, here, means > 15,000). D. Willard did a study for the army (https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/297375.pdf) on land battles from 1618 to 1905 and found that, "this value [of gamma, a constant he was trying to estimate] seems to imply that the rate at which one side suffers casualties increases as its opponent's strength is reduced" -- which is the exact opposite of what Lanchester argues for. Helmbold did a 1961 study that suggested that defender's become more effective as force ratios increase in favor of the attacker. Dr. Janice Fain, while explicitly trying to pick conflicts more appropriate for Lanchester's law, used an analysis of sixty WWII land engagements from four Italian armies and found the same damn thing.
    The problem, as depicted in this US army monograph (https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a225484.pdf), is that in most battles not all forces are fighting at the same time, and it's a Big Goddamn Assumption to assume they are here, especially while dressing it up as being obvious.

    As a further aside, can you please stop assuming that people are arguing about whether or not your math is right? Lanchester's law is two ordinary differential equations. You set up dA/dt = -kB && dB/dt = -kA, impose initial conditions, and then literally just integrate. What I (and I think others) have questioned is their applicability for solving for (casualties in) battles.
     
    I think people are getting a little too caught up in the specific math Simon Jester is bringing up. The ideas are what are important in this.

    First, having a larger force than the enemy means you get to kill them faster than they kill you: if you can bring more guns to the party than the people you're trying to kill, go to the party with all your guns, and if you can't, just don't go to the party.

    Second, as per Poptart, if we send the quarter of a Raid Fleet or whatever we have to assist at the MS relay, then they'll help counter any rush the rachni might make at the picket sphere, making the primary danger of the tactic a little less dangerous. It might not be critical, but it is explicitly helpful. And that's all I'm expecting out of those ships and all I really think we can expect out of those ships, to be honest.

    PoptartProdigy said:
    Realistically, the reserves would deploy as a group to counter any rushes the Rachni make on the picket sphere, as opposed to integrating their command structures with the 2nd's while directing fire.

    In general, you should assume that forces explicitly held in reserve are in good position to actually serve as a reserve to the theater of operations they are servicing.
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    Faith said:
    Someone beat me to the Negaverse omake in Victoria Falls, so I figured I'd make one here instead.

    (The opinions of users with parody usernames are not intended to reflect the opinions of the users they parody. Duh.)
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    I like this! This might be the best negaverse I've seen in a long time! Nicely done, Faith. :D Added to Sidestory as a Negaverse entry.
     
    Strange9 said:
    I feel like you've really overstated the general applicability of Lanchester's law.
    On the theoretical side, there are a number of assumptions that I think you've elided: on your third assumption, units need to not only be able to gang up on one another, but every unit needs to be constantly fighting, and able to switch targets as soon as (that is, instantaneously) another unit is destroyed. Every ship also has to be firing at specific units, rather than general areas (else we fall back into a dependence on area, rather than force strength (particularly relevant given the distances between ships). Moreover, the laws assume that no reinforcements come (relevant for obvious reasons).
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    If units need time to retarget or down time spent not fighting, and those amounts of time are consistent across your formation

    Plus, we're in a space battle, so "ships engaged in a battle are trying to bring harm to the enemy more or less continuously, and are able to switch targets rapidly" are pretty good assumptions.

    You're right that ships have to be targeting individual targets, not blindly bombarding an area; I mentioned that repeatedly. But that, too, is a good assumption in this battle. I don't know the full details of our gunners' training regimen, but I'm pretty sure they do not eyeball it. These are weapons of mass destruction, they are not cowboys shooting from the hip. ;)

    If reinforcements show up, you press "pause" on the outcome and set up a new differential equations problem.

    On the practical side, we know that we can't just blindly throw Lanchester's law at a battle because it does not match the historical data. H.K. Weiss (Weiss, Herbert K. "Combat Models and Historical Data: The U.S. Civil War." Operations Research, vol. 14, no. 5, 1966, pp. 759–790. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/168777.) did a case study on the civil war, and found that not, "In battles other than attacks on fortified lines the casualty ratios appeared to be independent of force ratios." In fact, it gets even worse for Lanchester: "For the large battles, high force ratios appeared to be associated with high casualty ratios (a side tends to lose men in proportion to the number committed, regardless of enemy strength" (where large, here, means > 15,000). D. Willard did a study for the army (https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/297375.pdf) on land battles from 1618 to 1905 and found that, "this value [of gamma, a constant he was trying to estimate] seems to imply that the rate at which one side suffers casualties increases as its opponent's strength is reduced" -- which is the exact opposite of what Lanchester argues for.
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    Speaking roughly, 1618 to 1905 takes us to the era of volley fire by blocks of infantry firing volleys into other blocks of infantry, plus command and control limitations that tended to keep large armies artificially compressed into smaller spaces where a smaller army. That is exactly the kind of situation that promotes the Lanchester Linear Law: lots of effectively unaimed fire at blocks of men that then take casualties roughly proportionate to their density on the ground.

    Honestly I'd expect the Lanchester Square Law to be a better model of ancient fighting with melee weapons than of Napoleonic musketeers.

    It's like, yes, obviously, there are combat situations that the Lanchester Square Law doesn't model. Or where you can't model an entire battle that way because what actually happened was a series of separate engagements, which would in any good differential-equations model require you to stop after each engagement and begin again in the new one with new parameters.

    I am not expressing blind zombie idiot faith in the Lanchester Square Law. Sometimes the Lanchester Linear Law applies. Sometimes a hybrid (something like a 1.5th power law) applies, because a mix of blind-fire and direct aimed fire are being used. Sometimes combat, even in the moment of the combat itself, is too weird to be modeled by any reasonably straightforward set of differential equations.

    This is not mysticism or worship.

    But the specific context of our space battles is almost ideally suited for the Lanchester Square Law, inasmuch as both fleets consist of a collection of point targets firing at each other in the midst of a huge expanse of vacuum.

    Helmbold did a 1961 study that suggested that defender's become more effective as force ratios increase in favor of the attacker. Dr. Janice Fain, while explicitly trying to pick conflicts more appropriate for Lanchester's law, used an analysis of sixty WWII land engagements from four Italian armies and found the same damn thing.

    The problem, as depicted in this US army monograph (https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a225484.pdf), is that in most battles not all forces are fighting at the same time, and it's a Big Goddamn Assumption to assume they are here, especially while dressing it up as being obvious.
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    Over a week-long land battle, this is very likely to be correct. In the kinds of fighting we're dealing with right here? So far, probably going to apply.

    It's like, if you point to a two week period during which large groups of soldiers clashed on and off across a 100-mile area as one big engagement to be modeled with a single one-step calculation using the Lanchester Square Law, yes you are going to get a bad fit. This is sort of like how you will get a bad fit for the laws of motion describing an ideal projectile flying through the air on a ballistic path, if you throw the ball into a tornado.

    None of that invalidates the point that, as @Kinruush pointed out, when large groups ARE directly engaged in combat and firing on each other and are in fact all capable of directly targeting the enemy, which describes the exact scenario we now find ourselves in, concentration of fire into a killzone that the enemy occupies is a very effective way of finishing them off rapidly, before they can return fire to good effect and freeing up the forces manning the killzone to go do something else. Which is my point.
     
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