Anti-pod 'spoiler' missile attacks

kzt wrote:There are exceptions. BoM is an exception. Home fleet assumed that the acceleration drop of 2nd was due to pod deployment outside the wedge, so naturally they responded to this by ignoring it. After all, what could possible go wrong if you allow a force that massively outnumbers you to spend as much time as they need to set up the battle they came here to fight?

No, they didn't assume it was pods.

D'Orville nodded. Pods towed inside a ship's wedge didn't degrade its acceleration. That, after all, was exactly what his own pre-pod designs were doing with the tractor-equipped pods glued to their hulls. But superdreadnought wedges were huge; for the Peeps to be towing so many pods they couldn't fit them all inside their wedges, they'd have to have hundreds of tractors per ship. So they had to be up to something else.

So D'Orville considered and rejected the possibility of pods, which is why he didn't do anything about it.

D'Orville was an idiot.

Even if you assume an opponent is not laying pods, you have to assume that they will.

You therefore lay down enough fire to discourage them from doing so.

He should have assigned lighter MDMs armed units ( perhaps BC(P)s ) and Nikes) to lay down continuous fire

Duckk wrote:

kzt wrote:There are exceptions. BoM is an exception. Home fleet assumed that the acceleration drop of 2nd was due to pod deployment outside the wedge, so naturally they responded to this by ignoring it. After all, what could possible go wrong if you allow a force that massively outnumbers you to spend as much time as they need to set up the battle they came here to fight?

No, they didn't assume it was pods.

D'Orville nodded. Pods towed inside a ship's wedge didn't degrade its acceleration. That, after all, was exactly what his own pre-pod designs were doing with the tractor-equipped pods glued to their hulls. But superdreadnought wedges were huge; for the Peeps to be towing so many pods they couldn't fit them all inside their wedges, they'd have to have hundreds of tractors per ship. So they had to be up to something else.

So D'Orville considered and rejected the possibility of pods, which is why he didn't do anything about it.

namelessfly wrote:He should have assigned lighter MDMs armed units ( perhaps BC(P)s ) and Nikes) to lay down continuous fire

It's not like he was short on ammo, given that his most optimistic estimates had him and all ships being obliterated before they could fire 50% of his ammo.

namelessfly wrote:D'Orville was an idiot.

Complete lack of preplanning and fundamental threat analysis of worse case scenarios made him an idiot. So, yes, D'Orville is/was an idiot.

What I think you meant to imply; D'Orville was stupid. Stupid, as in could not fully grasp implications under battlefield conditions quickly enough to avert disaster.

Two different things. Did you mean both? Or only one? Many folks use the word "idiot" in the vernacular where the attached meaning is stupid. One is not necessarily the other. Though being stupid can lead to being an idiot.

boballab wrote:
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These ships don't drop out of hyper and in 10 mins are in combat. The attacker has hours to stack the initial salvo prior to getting into effective range and the simple fact is the RMN/GSN has the longest effective range so they typically get off the first shot. So you will not really be able to force the RMN/GSN to fire off the salvo that much earlier than they want to. The following salvos are typically not as large if two MDM powers are fighting each other, however in the case of the Sollies vs RHN, RMN/GSN or IAN that is not the case since they cannot get into their own range to stop the stacking.

The point is they will drop out of hyperspace and cross the hyper limit in 10 minutes or so. Any ship group that lingers outside the hyper limit for an hour will be jumped by old school SD and engaged at energy weapon range. The 3 times as many energy weapons of old school SD will kill both the SD(P) and their pods. Let alone anyone with a grav lance and energy torpedoes. You want to kill the SD(P) advantage. Hyperspace in an hour out of range of the defenders.

Remember with a 20 odd minute hyper limit that means the entire inside the hyper limit is well within range. Plus 30-50 million KM. Outside the hyper limit and even a Sollie SD can blast you at point blank range with its lasers grasers PD CM and even its 9 million km tube missiles.

I meant both.

It is well understood by the beginning of AaC that pod based combat is effective because it enables massive salvos. SOP should be to keep an enemy under fire to scheme soft kills to ensure that they can't stack pods.

Mistletoe would have worked perfectly.

J6P wrote:

namelessfly wrote:D'Orville was an idiot.

Complete lack of preplanning and fundamental threat analysis of worse case scenarios made him an idiot. So, yes, D'Orville is/was an idiot.

What I think you meant to imply; D'Orville was stupid. Stupid, as in could not fully grasp implications under battlefield conditions quickly enough to avert disaster.

Two different things. Did you mean both? Or only one? Many folks use the word "idiot" in the vernacular where the attached meaning is stupid. One is not necessarily the other. Though being stupid can lead to being an idiot.

namelessfly wrote:I meant both.

It is well understood by the beginning of AaC that pod based combat is effective because it enables massive salvos. SOP should be to keep an enemy under fire to scheme soft kills to ensure that they can't stack pods.

Mistletoe would have worked perfectly.

[

Having some of those cute little recon drones would have helped a lot.

kzt wrote:

namelessfly wrote:I meant both.

It is well understood by the beginning of AaC that pod based combat is effective because it enables massive salvos. SOP should be to keep an enemy under fire to scheme soft kills to ensure that they can't stack pods.

Mistletoe would have worked perfectly.

[

Having some of those cute little recon drones would have helped a lot.

Why not use the wedges of ordinary RDs to shred those pods? Mistletoe is designed for dealing with at least heavy cruiser sized units.

kzt wrote:

namelessfly wrote:Mistletoe would have worked perfectly.

[

Having some of those cute little recon drones would have helped a lot.

No. Only Honor gets to use them.

Gotta think about the plot man!

PLOT PLOT PLOT!

PS> With an onboard fusion plant, RD's can easily create a massive EMP wave of their own by simply letting the fusion plant self destruct. Who needs added warheads! Ok. Warheads with their grav forcusing will give better stand off range. But...

munroburton wrote:
Why not use the wedges of ordinary RDs to shred those pods? Mistletoe is designed for dealing with at least heavy cruiser sized units.

Because a recon drone ramming it's wedge into a towed pod that's only 4 - 5 hundred km behind a waller is a damned obvious target.

You probably aren't going to be able to run over more than a couple pods before someone in the wall pots you with a PDLC and ends your little rampage.


With mistletoe the big explosion gets all the pods within range and leaves nothing for the point defense to attack.


tl;dr - mistletoe's nuke should kill more pods than ramming would.