Dilgar vs Earth Early Years

[l33tpenguin]

"In terms of realism, swarm tactics in an advanced combat environment never work. Fielding ten times the number of units against an enemy with a dramatic technological edge will not grant a win (It actually makes for just a target rich enviroment...). "

Well sometimes yes and sometimes no.
The Soviets using sheer grunt, numbers and efficient use of lower level tech worked very well against the Germans once they got their shite together. That sort of thing has happened a few times, particularly when the more high tech side (and usually therefore the one more dependent on supplies and resources and more vulnerable to dirt, grime and maintenance) is over stretched and unable to focus firepower and resources where its really needed along with the lower tech side being tactically astute enough to pick its battles which the EA certainly would be here with the league taking the brunt of the fighting.

The irony I find with the Dilgar war is that because the Dilgar went so mad in their war, attacking everyone and anyone indiscriminately, they over stretched themselves. Furthermore, their tactics when in occupation forced their opponents to fight to the last and made any kind of arrangement impossible. If they'd just picked an enemy like the Drazi and focused all their attention on them they'd would've taken a new home world and forged an empire without little problem.

It depends on a gap of the technology.
A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with a full complement of fighters would have totally offset the war in the Pacific, not to mention what an entire modern carrier group, complete with strike and reconnaissance aircraft, Ticonderoga class guided missile destroyers, Los Angeles class attack submarines and additional escort and support ships, would have done.
A single platoon of M1A2 Abrams tanks could have rolled from Normandy into Berlin, only ever having to stop to refuel and rearm along the way (I'm not even sure the much feared PaK 88 would be capable of penetrating the depleted uranium armor).
A squadron of F-16s would have torn the Luftwaffe out of the sky and been home for dinner while A-10s would have had a turkey shoot across the German front lines.
B2 stealth bombers would have ended the war within a day or two, dropping precision munitions with impunity against any target in the European or Pacific theater.

Or, if you wanted to be extremely vulgar, a handful of LGM-30G Minuteman III ballistic missiles would have reduced the armies Germany, Russia, Japan and Italy (or, at least, the primary political and industrial centers of those countries) to ash in the blink of an eye, being launched from the safety of the continental United States

This is a difference in technology spanning only 60 years.

What the difference between the EA and the Dilgar at that time was? I don't know. The way they are done in ACtA indicates to me a level of technology far surpassing EA:EY.

Earth's Warlock-Class destroyer is on par with the Sharlin War Cruiser, the ship which most know for falling upon Earth in such numbers that they blotted out the sky. And the Dilgar were fielding equally capable war vessels.

Maybe I've just been subjected to too much Earth Propaganda about how utterly Earth Force crushed the Dilgar...

 

[cthol24601]

"What the difference between the EA and the Dilgar at that time was? I don't know. The way they are done in ACtA indicates to me a level of technology far surpassing EA:EY."

I don't read it that way at all. I more read it as a Soviet/German level of tech difference. Especially since the EA seems, even then, to have access to toys the Dilgar would have loved to possess such as interceptors and beams. I read the Dilgar as more on a par with the other League worlds but with less nuance, niceties and no moral boundaries due to racial attitudes and the mad panic of finding one's sun going NOVA. On this front they have heaps of nasty toys like MOD, mass drivers and biochechemical warfare etc which are not out of range of any other race but unexplored for ethical reasons.

I also think the EA for whatever they claim about lower tech did have some toys like interceptors coupled with beams and the ability to pick and choose their battles as a strike force had a lot of overwhelming advantages.

On the other side while we have had massive advances in the past 60 years this doesn't seem to be as much the case in the B5 world where tech seems to be quite slowing down compared to the present. Many ships a century or more old are still fully functional and deadly where as such a thing would be ludicrous today.

 

[Tzarevitch]

I got the impression from the old AoG fluff that the Dilgar were technologically a bit ahead of the EA and mid-tech-level league races like the Drazi but significantly behind the advanced tech league races like the Abbai, Hyach and the Yolu. What they had was superior numbers, excellent tactical doctrine and a willingness to fight and die if they had to.

The advanced league races seemed almost loathe to fight and allowed themselves to be surprised, separated and bottled up by the Dilgar, and that spelled doom for the weaker races. They all seemed to hope the Dilgar would be someone else's problem . . . until the problem became their problem.

Tzarevitch

 

[Joe_Dracos]

The Soviets using sheer grunt, numbers and efficient use of lower level tech worked very well against the Germans once they got their shite together.

The soviets of WWII actually had superior technology to that of the germans in the opening stages of Barbarossa. While there were examples of lower technology such as the T-26 and the T-35 still around, they still had far better weapons systems then the germans.

The T-34 and KV tanks were far superior to that of their german counterparts and the PPsH sub machine gun was also a far superior weapon then the German Kar-98. Why the germans did so well was because of superior doctrines (such as blitzkrieg) and better comunication between there units, not to mention that the Red Army officer corps had been decimated by a rampantly paranoid Stalin.

As far as my limited understanding of the dilgar war is, I thought the Hyperion and the Nova were supposed to be superior to almost all dilgar ships? Mind you I haven't done much reading into this.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Er... the KAR-98 is a bolt-action rifle. How can you compare that to a submachinegun? :?

 

[Joe_Dracos]

when most soviet soldiers perdered it over their own bolt action rifles. Not to mention half of them were armed with them.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

when most soviet soldiers perdered it over their own bolt action rifles. Not to mention half of them were armed with them.

What? I don't understand what you're trying to say.

 

[Joe_Dracos]

okay, it doesn't matter... we're straying off topic here anyway.

 

[captainsmirk]

Ever heard of a little gun called the MP38 or the MP40? The Germans had quite a few of those...

As for why the Russians had lots of submachine guns compared to rifles is similar to why they have the Kalashnikov today, a cheap simple weapon that a soldier with little or no training can just spray bullets in the general direction of the enemy and might just hit something which he's unlikely to do with a bolt action rifle...


Nick

 

[Da Boss]

Gotta admit I'm a little surprised that story is still doing the rounds, been a while since it left the boards

The copy out on the net is the draft copy, no editing, no proof reading, essentially put in electronic print thirty seconds after I wrote it. Usually each chapter took me 10 to 12 hours which sounds a lot, but is apparently quite fast. Naturally speed tends to throw up little errors

My aim is to work on a 'Perfect' version for the future, there was some 30 months between start and end during which time I think I became a better writer. I'll be adding more at the start, especially with Garibaldi, the Space Race and the main Warmasters.

But thats the future, right now I'm messing around with the last 6 months of the Minbari war

Most enjoyable peice of work and made me get interested in the era - look forward to the EM war stuff Gave me a whole new perspective on a number of races. Greg leant me the AOG Dilgar war supplement which was interesting but I like your war better - even if the EA are probbaly a mite too hard :wink:

have you been reading Talon's Orieni-Centauir War?

re the Dilgar - I saw them (mostly from your work) as a mid range League power technologically - ahead of EA but not the League powers.

 

[locarno24]

As far as my limited understanding of the dilgar war is, I thought the Hyperion and the Nova were supposed to be superior to almost all dilgar ships? Mind you I haven't done much reading into this.

That's certainly the impression LC's book gives - I don't know if there's an 'official' position. The Nova-class dreadnought should in theory be bigger and 'arder than the Hyperion-class heavy cruiser, so simply comparing ACTA stats doesn't really help you. Since the various companies who've done bits and bobs in the B5 universe seem constitutionally unable to agree on what warship weight designations like 'dreadnought' actually mean, your guess is as good as mine.

A single platoon of M1A2 Abrams tanks could have rolled from Normandy into Berlin, only ever having to stop to refuel and rearm along the way (I'm not even sure the much feared PaK 88 would be capable of penetrating the depleted uranium armor).

Not without the rest of the American army in support, because that replacement fuel and ammunition doesn't materialise in situ. Nor do you have any means of getting across a demolished bridge, or much chance of fending off an artillery barage or minefield - which may not kill you but will wreck a track quite happily - nor, unless you're bringing the GPS satellite network back with you, do you have a subtantially better idea of where you are - and certainly not where the enemy is - than they do you.

Very rarely is there a gap in technology which is unassailable until you bring 'magic' technology into the equation. A firing line of 88's to the front will probably not trouble Chobham armour (incidentally it's the antitank rounds, not the armour, with a uranium component) - with modern stuff being somewhere over twenty times as good as steel plate against antitank rounds - but a bunch of panzerfausts sneaking round the side will take out unarmoured tracks and possibly road wheels just the same as cold war Soviet RPGs and contemporary Iraqi EFP mines. An immobilised tank is not a good place to be.

Earth's Warlock-Class destroyer is on par with the Sharlin War Cruiser, the ship which most know for falling upon Earth in such numbers that they blotted out the sky. And the Dilgar were fielding equally capable war vessels.

Again, based off ACTA stats yes, but fitting background it seems unlikely. The Minbari where centuries ahead of anyone elses technology, and someone being able to match their primary heavy capital ship with the technical and technological resources of one world - no matter how motivated - is unlikely in the extreme. The Warlock is a bit of an exception as it has elements of Minbari and Shadow-derived technology in it, not just human hardware.
"Ship X is equivalent to ship Y" in ACTA tends to be a product of only having 6 levels for them to be at....

With the combination of Jump Gates, supply lines and strategic targets there will always be bottlenecks that can be defended but can also be worked around more easily than land-based blockades. As the series pointed out time and time again, the jump gate networks are virtually essential for supply and transport, with only very large and millitary vessels having jump engines on board.

Agreed. That's the difference between bypassing an enemy position for a raid: i.e. in and out with jump-capable units - and bypassing somewhere as part of the advance: i.e. sending supply lines past it.
Freighters aren't fast, aren't jump capable and won't be able to go far off the hyperspace beacon at all. If you can bypass somewhere by using a different route, all well and good, but if you're passing by a system's jump gate beacon when the system is still hostile you're asking to fly into an ambush.

In realspace, of course, holding any sort of useful line of battle is next to impossible because of the volume of space you have to cover, so you get patrolled areas around strategic points and then hope you get lucky to spot people outside that region (I suppose if a race with an older fashioned fusion reaction drive lights up its engines, you can probably see it from quite a long way away even in orbital terms - IF you know where to look!).

 

[Greg Smith]

I beleive AoG had the Nova as superior in firepower to even the Omega.

 

[Triggy]

I beleive AoG had the Nova as superior in firepower to even the Omega.

But IIRC it cost fewer points because it simply didn't have the reactor power to fire enough guns at once as well as keeping up its engines, EW, etc.

 

[CZuschlag]

B5 Wars on the subject (which might be about as Canon as we're going to get outside of ACtA):

Dilgar Tratharti-G (Tikrit of today): 900
Dilgar Targrath: 580 + 4 flights
Dilgar Ochliavita: 525
Dilgar Mishakur-D: 1250
EA Nova: 1350 + 4 flights
EA Omega (Alpha): 925 + 4 flights
EA Hyperion (Theta): 705 + 1 flight

B5Wars, mind you, had a far stronger opinion of the Nova than, well, virtually anyone else.

Given that a flight of Thorun is worth about 300 points (B5W fighters were EXPENSIVE for their value), I think I can say that at this point, the Targrath was at absolute worst a level competitor with the modern Hyperion, if not superior. It probably significantly outclassed the old one from the actual Dilgar wars. The Tratharti-G was below the current Omega, but not by a great deal, especially if you take ACtA's revaluation of the fighter into account.

Great resource for some Dilgar ideas!


The Nova ... now, in B5W, that thing is a beast!

 

[Da Boss]

Was the Hecate (nastier batttlecrusier version of the Hyperion) an AOG ship? Only know it from LC (and I borrowed the concept - with permission)

 

[CZuschlag]

Actually, AoG's version was a "Testbed Cruiser" (615) that was the predecessor of the Hyperion Theta. It was better than the Hyperion Alpha (575), which was the same value as the Targrath, but without the fighters. The Hecate Alpha was the first to use the more modern Medium Laser/Plasma armament that only got upgraded by buying Narn Heavy Laser technology during the Earth-Minbari war. There was also a unique Beta version that experimented with captured Bolter technology. EA abandoned that effort -- I don't know why.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

I've read about 200 pages of LC's dilgar war story, and while the scope and plot are both very good, the prose and dialogue needs a lot of work, and a proofreader wouldn't have gone astray due to his constant mixing of posessives and contractions. It's a very noteworthy effort, but to say it's the best B5 ficiton outside the show is either hyperbole or damning with faint praise.

grammar, spelling and a near total lack of proofreading aside i found it an extremely enjoyable read (have reread it several times as well).

as for only reading 200 pages of it.... that says it all really.

I should have said 200 pages thus far, as I am slowly working my way through it. And I do consider the scope and effort that went into it to be more than worthwhile, and it's good to see LC is working on a revised manuscript. Putting that much effort into something that you cna neve rmake money from is phenomenal, and my criticism was meant as constructive, not flaming.

 

[tneva82]

Earth's Warlock-Class destroyer is on par with the Sharlin War Cruiser

Now is it? In ACTA yes. In background? No-one really knows. Sharlin for sure isn't equally nasty as in series and ACTA in many ways don't represent series accuratly taking liberties in name of making good game.

No point using ACTA for estimating series background.

 

[tneva82]

A firing line of 88's to the front will probably not trouble Chobham armour (incidentally it's the antitank rounds, not the armour, with a uranium component) -

Actually it's also used in tank armour. Quoting wikipedia(albeit it might be erroneous but I could swear I have read reference to DU armour elsewhere as well):

The armour configuration of the first western tanks using Chobham armour was optimised to defeat shaped charges as guided missiles were seen as the greatest threat. In the eighties however they began to face improved Soviet kinetic energy penetrator rounds of various sorts, which the ceramic layer was not particularly effective against: the original ceramics had a resistance against penetrators of about a third compared to that against HEAT rounds, for the newest composites it is about one-tenth. For this reason many modern designs include additional layers of heavy metals to add more density to the overall armour package.

The introduction of more effective ceramic composite materials allows for a larger width of these metal layers within the armour shell, given a certain protection level provided by the composite matrix. They typically form an inner layer placed below the much more expensive matrix[9], to prevent extensive damage to it should the metal layer strongly deform but not defeat a penetrator. They can also be used as the backing plate for the matrix itself, but this compromises the modularity and thus tactical adaptability of the armour system; furthermore, due to their extreme hardness, they deform insufficiently and would reflect too much of the impact energy to the ceramic tile. Metals used include a tungsten alloy for the Challenger 2[10] or, in the case of the M1A1HA (Heavy Armor) and later American tank variants, a depleted uranium alloy[11].

Dense stuff that depleted uranium is. Useful for armour as such it is!

 

[blackphoenix]

B5 Wars on the subject (which might be about as Canon as we're going to get outside of ACtA):

Dilgar Tratharti-G (Tikrit of today): 900
Dilgar Targrath: 580 + 4 flights
Dilgar Ochliavita: 525
Dilgar Mishakur-D: 1250
EA Nova: 1350 + 4 flights
EA Omega (Alpha): 925 + 4 flights
EA Hyperion (Theta): 705 + 1 flight

B5Wars, mind you, had a far stronger opinion of the Nova than, well, virtually anyone else.

Given that a flight of Thorun is worth about 300 points (B5W fighters were EXPENSIVE for their value), I think I can say that at this point, the Targrath was at absolute worst a level competitor with the modern Hyperion, if not superior. It probably significantly outclassed the old one from the actual Dilgar wars. The Tratharti-G was below the current Omega, but not by a great deal, especially if you take ACtA's revaluation of the fighter into account.

Great resource for some Dilgar ideas!


The Nova ... now, in B5W, that thing is a beast!

Well you do have to remember, that even though b5wars fighters were expensive they could and would often do significant amount of damage to ships.

The Nova on the other hand, she is a beast, but you do have to compare the right era ships. B5wars has some alpha or earlier models of ships to work in the Dilgar War era.

Hyperion Alpha:
575pts and carried 1 flight. It also carried three forward facing plasma cannons and two side plasma cannons. In addition it had the three particle beams turreted for 360 fire and instead of heavy lasers it had a pair of particle cannons. It would be onpar or slightly better (based on your tactical choice) with the Ochlavita.

Nova Alpha:
950pt and carriered 4 flights. But it carried a fearsome array of weapons. Four medium lasers mounted forward, five medium lasers to each side, and four more lasers to the rear. It did have a power plant issue with powering all of those, but only required one gun being powered off to be ok. Given its weapon arcs and lack of mobility, it was possible, rare, but possible to get two front, two rear, and five side lasers all directed into a single target. I'll tell you now, there isn't much that could withstand that sort of firepower.

The upgraded Nova replaced the lasers with Laser/Pulse arrays allowing it to fire as medium pulse cannons or medium lasers. Plus it upgraded the power plant so no long had a power deficiet, but upped to 1350pts. Again, I have seen a Sharlin get too close to one of these before and not live to regret it.

The Dilgar Targath was nice for the 580pts, it did sport a pair of Heavy Bolters in the front and had some lighter weaponry, but it was mainly a strike carrier, punch the enemy with the pair of guns, drop the fighters and let them rip through the enemy.

The Mishakur is actually 975pt for the "basic" ship, but it carries a pair of Thorun flights. It had a fair amount of weaponry, at just about every range. Heavy Bolters, missile launchers, medium lasers, quad pulsars, scatter pulsars, and plasma torches.