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Old 05-07-2021, 01:36 PM   #3
Ulzgoroth
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Default Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

Quickly springing to mind is the Manticore Wormhole Junction, justification for the Star Kingdom of Manticore's ridiculous economic surplus and occasional strategic target.

Most Honorverse FTL travel is done in a largely unblockable manner - ships can go FTL anywhere outside a hyper limit from major masses, and emerge likewise. Intercept and combat in hyper is possible, but probably very unlikely against a force that is trying to avoid contact by taking less optimal paths. But hyper travel takes not insignificant time. Wormhole travel is instant over whatever distance the wormhole ends provide.

The junction is defended against an invasion force coming through it by massive battlestations closely placed around it. The junction is big by many settings' standards - a light-second across - but in setting almost all shipboard weapons have effective ranges longer than that. This was assisted by the wormhole having a detailed tonnage limitation mechanism so that you couldn't cram an entire sixth-of-a-cubic-lightsecond of warships through at once (Though that would be a bit less than it sounds like because the space drive forces a relatively large spacing between craft).


At least one Miles Vorkosigan book had a big focus on a jump point blockade battle. But I haven't read it in a while, so I don't remember all the details.


Settings that have had wargamers poke at them sometimes end up having specialized weapons designed to be launched through bottlenecks like this, usually to attempt to reduce bottleneck defenses before the less disposable fleet elements come through.

Many settings have the FTL bottlenecks be artificial gateways. Often built by some kind of precursors and impossible to reproduce in the modern age.
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