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There have been several posts (including places other than 'a.b.d-w') by various people on the possible uses of Shrikes (and variants) in conjunction with a wall of battle. I have my own thoughts on this subject.
As shown in Second Hancock, Shrikes are stealthy enough to get into easy energy range of large enemy forces. Besides ambushing those forces directly, they can be used to attack missile pods (thus gravely weakening the offensive punch of that force). I believe that Shrikes, in conjuction with a Medusa/Harrington SD(P), can also increase the first strike punch of any Alliance wall of battle. The SD(P) drops off pods, the Shrikes pick up these pods (one per Shrike) and join the wall (80% of their maximum acceleration is over 500 Gs after all).
As an example, let's assume the following forces:
Attacking (Haven); 40SDs with lots of missile pods (say a total of 1000). The mission goal is to destroy the naval base in this system. The task force includes a small fleet train (safely hidden away in hyper) that contains a missile pod reload. This allows the ops plan to have the option replenishing its missile pod load after defeating the defending squadron if it defended away from the Naval base and its forts.
Defending (Alliance); 24 SDs (including 2 Medusas) and a carrier squadron (the forts are out of play for this scenario; also this system has not yet been converted to the new three-stage capital missiles - otherwise, this battle is no contest).
Possible Defensive setup:
The carriers stay out of range; 4 wings of LACs join the Alliance wall. The Medusas drop off pods and the LACs pick them up. This will result in more than doubling the initial missile launch (slight surprise). Meanwhile the other 4 wings sneak up to the Haven fleet, get into range and attack the pods with graser fire (just like in Hancock). They then attack the screen of the Haven wall with missiles and leave (to go back to the carriers to reload missiles). The four wings with the wall peel off, rendevzous with the other LACs and all eight wings do a mass missile launch (16 thousand cruiser class missiles) at the Haven wall. January 11, 2001 Note: Having seen more of Ashes of Victory since writing the above, I am now of the opinion that only damaged SDs would really be in danger. But there should be more than a few damaged SDs.
Evaluation:
The Haven Ops plan assumed that their initial missile launch would contain 15K+ missiles (with a sustained of 1600). At a guess, they were expecting to destroy 15 SDs or so. They would had been expecting to see less than 3500 missiles from the Manticore force. At worse, that would destroy or damage 7 SDs. This would give them close to a three to one advantage, sufficient to win the battle easily. Instead they lose 14000 missiles from their initial launch and receive 7500 missiles.
Results:
The initial missile exchange destroys (just a guess) at least 10 Haven SDs and damages several more and damages several Manticore SDs (possibly destroy one, but that requires a last minute juggling of all the PN ships firing orders). However, the surviving Haven wall should still 50% more launchers than the Manticore one (even with the two Medusas) and can absorb 50% more damage. Whether this is enough to win or not is rendered moot by the LACs. Going through the entire cycle of launching missiles, going back to the carriers to reload, and then return to attack will take the LACs some time. But, I suspect that the Haven admiral (especially a smart one like Guiscard, Theisman, or Tourville) will break off the action before the cycle is repeated more than once. January 11, 2001 Note: The damaged SDs of the Manticore Alliance force can withdraw before being destroyed; the damaged Haven SDs can't run and can't hide.