OBT Forum

BigFuckingRock I suspect...

While BFRs are the ultimate in orbital bombardment they are not entirely a problem free doomsday weapon.
Using BFRs are a time consuming process that have a big window of exposure to detection and countermeassures. Throwing them at space stations is not a sure thing, the station keeping drive of most SS would have more than enough thrust dodge a BFR given some warning. BRF operations are not fast operations giving the enemy plenty of time to detect and respond to them, but if they are not detected in time they can be devastating.

Another point about defending SLOCs or, more importantly, the convoys that use them, is that convoys are not just a defensive tool, they are in fact also an offensive tool for locating and eliminating enemy commerce raiders.  

For example space, in the understatement of all time, is just a wee bit large.  A single dropper or jumpship, viewed at tens of thousands of km, will look similar to several traveling together.  Additionally, having them all running around seperately, just increases the number of targets and makes creating an escort force that is effective almsot impossible.  Also, if your stupid enough to scatter your merchants you are probably putting together the biggest misnomer of naval warfare - hunter killer groups.  They dont work.  The sail around whilst the commerce raiders avoide them and kill isolated merchies.

However, mass all you transports together with a massed escort.  Now either the raiders show up and get crushed, or see the escort and stay the hell away.  This is why you form convoys and escort them, you gain two fold benifit of protecting the merchants and causing attrition of enemy raiders.

BigFuckingRock I suspect...

While BFRs are the ultimate in orbital bombardment they are not entirely a problem free doomsday weapon.
Using BFRs are a time consuming process that have a big window of exposure to detection and countermeassures. Throwing them at space stations is not a sure thing, the station keeping drive of most SS would have more than enough thrust dodge a BFR given some warning. BRF operations are not fast operations giving the enemy plenty of time to detect and respond to them, but if they are not detected in time they can be devastating.

BFR operations don't have to be fast, and detection isn't going to be nearly as easy as you might suspect.  And those things can actually get moving pretty fast.  Keep in mind their initial velocity would match the speed you were traveling when fired, and would only pick up from there.  Now imagine someone jumps out at pluto's orbit for example (well outside the detection range for an emergence wave and in fact WAY outside the jump point range).  They spend a few rounds picking up speed, happily screened by a planet which will simply move out of the way eventually.  If they even keep going for a mere hour that rock starts out at a healthy 35,000 m/s clip.  And it is falling into a gravity well picking up more speed the whole time.

And how would you detect this rock?  See it coming?  The sky is huge, the only reason WarShips are so easy to 'see' in space is because of their massive drive plumes (heck, strategic ops even specifically states that spotting a Mckenna Battleship in space with optical sensors is a pain without the drive plume).  Radar?  Heck, we have the materials to defeat radar NOW.  Radio Triangulation?  What transmissions will the rock make.  Thermal Detection?  That rock will probably be thermally no different from any other rock in space.

By the time you did see such a rock coming (lets be generous here and assume you do) it is quite possible that by the time you spot the now very fast moving rock that there isn't enough time to get the facility out of the way.  Heck, if I was especially clever I could even put it on a path where if it doesn't strike anything it will ultimately destroy a city on the planet surface which won't be able to move which gives you the choice of losing the facility or losing a population center.  Either way you pick I end up winning.

Are these trivial problems to overcome for an attacker?  Not really as it requires accurate system information to carry out.  But by the same token the problems for the defender are at least as numerous.

In any case, as previously stated the point is moot as BattleTech doesn't have BFR's.