So now that we are through the manditory filler books.....

martin wrote:
72 Mk 23s with their wedges up, a few kilometres wide, closely 'clumped and following their mk23E launched on a well observed trajectory adjusted by recon drones. where is the problem? Sure sone will slip thru the gaps but there were 3 barricade launches.

And the LACs don't tow any pods. The LACs are for missile defence. The Charles Ward dropped off the missiles and those 4 UMV distribution units handled them. Each could stow up to 300 pods.

SPOILERs









The problem is the UMVs are unpowered. They require a tug or another ship for motion. In the text 2 of the LACs pull them separately from Tremaine's force and drop the pods in front of Tremaine's force. The LACs are never seen by the opposition, their stealth is just that good, and they are each able to tow 300 pods plus the carrier.

The more I read that battle sequence, the less I understand how it happened. Read it again and try to figure how 2 BC(p)s worth of pods travel across the system without the carrier craft moving while being towed by 2 20 Kton LACs and getting there faster than a Sag-C at 80% power without being seen.

George J. Smith wrote:(4) The SL CNO has already determined that the SLN cannot face up to the GA, and has decided on commerce raiding tactics instead.

Any other GA targets I agree, but the idea of the Beowulf strike is they can't defend it now.

kzt wrote:In my eArc [the LACs] are towing the million and a half ton unit.

Rember space, no friction. All increasing the weight does is slow the acceleration.

Soban wrote:

kzt wrote:In my eArc [the LACs] are towing the million and a half ton unit.

Rember space, no friction. All increasing the weight does is slow the acceleration.

Yes, to 30g or less, as you are running without a compensator. How does this allow them to get the pods where David said it was in the time frame he said it got there?

kzt wrote:

Soban wrote:(kzt quote: In my eArc [the LACs] are towing the million and a half ton unit.)

Rember space, no friction. All increasing the weight does is slow the acceleration.

Yes, to 30g or less, as you are running without a compensator. How does this allow them to get the pods where David said it was in the time frame he said it got there?

That was my point in my commentary (item 14 "RMN LACs appear to have eaten their spinach"). You can only match both velocity and location when there is a big difference in acceleration if you first accelerate forward, then backwards long enough to attain a significant negative velocity, and then forward again (to match velocity at the location). Tremaine's taskforce didn't do the 3rd part.

Do we get to see SLN commerce raiders discovering that sending one or two SLN BCs or smaller ships out in pairs is a REALLY BAD IDEA when they bump into RMN/RHN DDs and Crusiers who can saturate their missle defense from twice+ the range of the SLN missiles and so can usually engage from way outside the SLN's ability to fight back?

You don't really have to do more than kill a ship's ability to get back into hyper to take it out of the raiding scenario. At that point, they can either surrender or possibly do something really stupid like try to get to where they can use ballistic shots at the local system's spaceborn infrastructure is and inflict "punishment" for "assisting" the GA- at which point the GA ships will just fire for effect to vaporize them.

I suspect that unless the SLN sends out sizable individual packages of raiders in a given sweep (or even if they do) there are going to be a LOT of SLN warships that are just going to vanish until such time as the GA decides to notify the SLN that they have been captured or destroyed.

Brigade XO wrote:Do we get to see SLN commerce raiders discovering that sending one or two SLN BCs or smaller ships out in pairs is a REALLY BAD IDEA when they bump into RMN/RHN DDs and Crusiers who can saturate their missle defense from twice+ the range of the SLN missiles and so can usually engage from way outside the SLN's ability to fight back?

Davids war porn kick is a really bad idea.

kzt wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Do we get to see SLN commerce raiders discovering that sending one or two SLN BCs or smaller ships out in pairs is a REALLY BAD IDEA when they bump into RMN/RHN DDs and Crusiers who can saturate their missle defense from twice+ the range of the SLN missiles and so can usually engage from way outside the SLN's ability to fight back?

Davids war porn kick is a really bad idea.

At the rate Admiral Gold Peak is knocking out FF units, Manticore will have its entire manufacturing infrastructure completely manned with fully trained workers before FF can organize the first commerce raid and choose a target.

Sending them against Beowulf after the end of SoV would be a disaster since Mycroft should be fully deployed. They no longer have the Meyers Sector to launch attacks against Talbott quadrant. Their best bet would be to try and ambush the Lacoon II flotillas guarding the worm holes in nominally Solaran space. Enough ships could force a retreat, maybe. At least the SLN could think so.

kzt wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Do we get to see SLN commerce raiders discovering that sending one or two SLN BCs or smaller ships out in pairs is a REALLY BAD IDEA when they bump into RMN/RHN DDs and Crusiers who can saturate their missle defense from twice+ the range of the SLN missiles and so can usually engage from way outside the SLN's ability to fight back?

Davids war porn kick is a really bad idea.

People enjoy it when the arrogant guys fail. They follow the logic that the UMVs were launched with the LACs at Charles Ward's velocity, so minimal adjustment is required to stay between the 2 forces. They don't think it's porn. People who call it porn are really saying they could do better. Really? Readers enjoy David's books. This is 'a really bad idea'.... Because???

Brigade XO wrote:Do we get to see SLN commerce raiders discovering that sending one or two SLN BCs or smaller ships out in pairs is a REALLY BAD IDEA when they bump into RMN/RHN DDs and Crusiers who can saturate their missle defense from twice+ the range of the SLN missiles and so can usually engage from way outside the SLN's ability to fight back?

kzt wrote:
Davids war porn kick is a really bad idea.

martin wrote:People enjoy it when the arrogant guys fail. They follow the logic that the UMVs were launched with the LACs at Charles Ward's velocity, so minimal adjustment is required to stay between the 2 forces. They don't think it's porn. People who call it porn are really saying they could do better. Really? Readers enjoy David's books. This is 'a really bad idea'.... Because???

Let's look at that a moment. "Porn" in its extended literary sense is any scene that's there to satisfy a class of readers' desire for an emotional kick from that kind of scene and which does not advance the plot, develop character or fill in setting other than in a minor, perfunctory way.

So. Does that battle advance the plot? Only in the sense that it fills in an expected scene: the cavalry riding (oops, RMN sailing) to the rescue of one of the rebellions. Again, according to established convention, if the scene can be expected by the reader, it need not be there.

Does it establish character? Not really. On the RMN side, these are people we've seen before, acting in ways we've come to expect. On the SLN side, these are people we haven't seen before and are unlikely to ever see again. Spear carriers.

Does it fill in details of the setting? No again. The ships are doing what they've been doing for a lot of books.

I agree with kzt. It's war porn. It's there because Honorverse fans expect a major space battle somewhere in the book, and, as far as I can tell, for no other reason.