The Apollo Triple Ripple

Kytheros wrote:Chin having hypered in or not hypered in has no bearing on whether or not McKeon and Kuzak should have pre-deployed and pre-stacked salvos in advance to take on Tourville. Which is something they should have started doing once they cleared the Junction. The only reason they didn't is because the Plot required them to be less prepared for a fight. The only in-universe explanation I can think of is that they were all thrown off their game and weren't thinking clearly.

Similarly, there's a Plot-Induced-Screwup with the placement of Manticore's System Defense Missile Pods. They were held back from the fighting because Manticore didn't want Tourville shooting at them and risk hitting the planet(s). System defense MDM pods should not be close enough to anything vital for anybody shooting at them to be at risk of hitting what they're protecting to be a concern. They're MDMs - light minutes of powered range. You can park shoals of them five or ten light seconds off, and it's not going to make any difference whatsoever. Nobody's going to miss their target by five light seconds.

munroburton wrote:
I tend to agree with that take on it - people do screw up occasionally. And whilst nobody can call them incompetent, I think McKeon was a little on the unimaginative side and Kuzak was solidly from the old combat paradigm - hell, she was an Admiral of the Green before the first war even started and had never fought an engagement with MDMs before(never mind Apollo). If anyone screwed up, it was BuPers for not beaching or at least grounding all the pre-war Admirals they still had - you aren't going to convince me they couldn't find younger talent after a ten years war and a technical revolution that reduced crew sizes by 75%.

One interesting point to consider - the only time Theisman's Navy really made an mistake not arising from faulty intelligence, it was under the command of their oldest admiral: Giscard at Trevor's Star. IIRC, Theisman later implied that based on post battle assessments from the other elements of Thunderbolt that Giscard could have inflicted decisive strategical damage before withdrawing.

Theemile wrote:

munroburton wrote:One interesting point to consider - the only time Theisman's Navy really made an mistake not arising from faulty intelligence, it was under the command of their oldest admiral: Giscard at Trevor's Star. IIRC, Theisman later implied that based on post battle assessments from the other elements of Thunderbolt that Giscard could have inflicted decisive strategical damage before withdrawing.

I tend to think Giscard was trying to see tgh big picture. If the op was penetrated here, where else was penetrated and how many other arms of the op were bushwacked as well. It turns out only Sidemore, but if the entire op was penetrated and the Manties laid traps like they did in the first war, Giscards force would be the only strategic reserve of the republic, and his may have been the only force to able to withdrawl intact. Sometimes buck fever can ge your friend, other times it can bite you hard. Like Theisman at 4th Yeltsin, he could have pushed for a tactical victory, but only to face a strategic defeat.

Kytheros wrote:Chin having hypered in or not hypered in has no bearing on whether or not McKeon and Kuzak should have pre-deployed and pre-stacked salvos in advance to take on Tourville. Which is something they should have started doing once they cleared the Junction. The only reason they didn't is because the Plot required them to be less prepared for a fight. The only in-universe explanation I can think of is that they were all thrown off their game and weren't thinking clearly.