Saganami Island lessons: the Battle of Manticore

Have tried to find a similar thread but haven't yet...

Let's say you are an instructor at Saganami Island PD 193X and the evil empires are dead, but you're trying to teach the latest round of upperclassmen, etc. the best lessons in "fleet engagements" using the Battle of Manticore as an example, and avoiding losing Home Fleet or Kuzak's Third Fleet. You even have McKeon's missile ships to play with, but no more.

OR

You're the Havenites, going for the win, and you might even figure that Eighth Fleet is going to jump you "pretty soon"

How do you fight your forces differently? at which points in the battle?

The ATC simulators (eh... okay, the forum comment space) are yours...

SharkHunter wrote:
How do you fight your forces differently?

Is this a straight line or what?


Ok, 3rd rolls pods. Lots of pods.

3rd engages with Apollo as soon as you exit hyperspace and focuses on punching out the least damaged RHN ships. That should get the last damaged (hence most combat effective) 30 or so ships in 5th.

As soon as you reach the edge of powered range of the non-Apollo Mk23s you engage with the mass of the fleet. By that time the Apollo ships should be winchester, so they take over control of some of the pods deployed by the other ships. Use a maximum controllable salvo for the first say 5 volleys, then possibly wait 2 minutes and resume, with the Mk23s programmed to ignore ships that are making less then x acceleration, have separated from the main body or no longer have a wedge up.

SharkHunter wrote:How do you fight your forces differently?

kzt wrote:Ok, 3rd rolls pods. Lots of pods. 3rd engages with Apollo as soon as you exit hyperspace and focuses on punching out the least damaged RHN ships. That should get the last damaged (hence most combat effective) 30 or so ships in 5th.

As soon as you reach the edge of powered range of the non-Apollo Mk23s you engage with the mass of the fleet. By that time the Apollo ships should be winchester, so they take over control of some of the pods deployed by the other ships. Use a maximum controllable salvo for the first say 5 volleys, then possibly wait 2 minutes and resume, with the Mk23s programmed to ignore ships that are making less then x acceleration, have separated from the main body or no longer have a wedge up.

My problems with those solution is that first, Home Fleet got toasted before 3rd arrived, and 2nd, I'm not sure how that's different enough from what Kuzak & D'Orville actually did.

Plus I'm realizing there's an "I dunno" component here. Did Home Fleet have many ships in play with Mark 19's as those are the key to my solution.

SharkHunter wrote:Plus I'm realizing there's an "I dunno" component here. Did Home Fleet have many ships in play with Mark 19's as those are the key to my solution.

Mk 19s? Aren't those single drive capital ship missiles?
Sure, all the non-refit SDs and DNs in home fleet should have magazines full of single drive capital ship missiles.

But whats your plan for using them from way outside their max powered range?


Now I'd have had Home Fleet open fire with its pods earlier. We know in hindsight that it died with many of them unlaunched, so saving them for a better firing solution didn't work out so well, and firing a constant barrage early might keep the Havenites from being able to stack such a large alpha strike. Make them use or lose their donkey towed pods.

Also McKean's ships died with Apollo pods in their bays. But from what were're told a single Keyhole II has enough channels to FTL control an entire 6 ship squadrons stacked launch. So he had fire control to spare. Roll say half his pods early and have other SD(P)s take them in tow. You might lose some to incoming fire, but that should let him launch quite a few much bigger FTL controlled Apollo launched and gut the hell out of 3rd. Instead of sniping one SD(P) per salvo he should be able to smash them in half dozens at least.

The Mark 19's are dual drive, in general the range is stated to be about 30 million kilometers, about half that of the Mark 23's unless there's a ballistic component involved.

But if there are a number of Sag C's and Nikes deployed, they can fire them early and in copious quantities, and that leaves the SD(p)'s and remaining Mark 23's in reserve ready to play when the time comes.

SharkHunter wrote:Plus I'm realizing there's an "I dunno" component here. Did Home Fleet have many ships in play with Mark 19's as those are the key to my solution.

Jonathan_S wrote:Now I'd have had Home Fleet open fire with its pods earlier. We know in hindsight that it died with many of them unlaunched, so saving them for a better firing solution didn't work out so well, and firing a constant barrage early might keep the Havenites from being able to stack such a large alpha strike. Make them use or lose their donkey towed pods.

Bingo on my solution. I'm thinking that if the screening formations were assigned a missile pod suppression role ONLY and kept up a constant peppering of Mark-19s aimed at any deploying pods, it would have forced Tourville's ships to manuever, and the Havenites would have never had the chance to stack their launch. They're not going to damage the Havenite SD's but then again, they're not going into the teeth of the SD countermeasures, but PAST them. Even if a partial deployment is achieved, once one "donkey link" is broken, that whole line of pods is now uncontrolled and unpowered, aka useless (?).

So let's have the screen start peppering 2nd Fleet almost immediately... Now then, Lester being the clever fellow that he is, has to counter our missile suppression ships...

SharkHunter wrote:The Mark 19's are dual drive, in general the range is stated to be about 30 million kilometers, about half that of the Mark 23's unless there's a ballistic component involved.

But if there are a number of Sag C's and Nikes deployed, they can fire them early and in copious quantities, and that leaves the SD(p)'s and remaining Mark 23's in reserve ready to play when the time comes.

Sorry, but the range is stated in what source?

SDMs at the time of the Trojan rollout were Mk-27C. The Mk-19 were the initial laserhead missiles from the 1870s.


If there were any dual drive missiles in the Gryphon's magazines, they have never been mentioned.

Some few of the ships in Home Fleet of Kuzak's Third Fleet would have had the original Mk-41 capacitor MDMs, but they didn't build any dual drive capital ship missiles anywhere in the text. So I think you have confused the capacitor MDMs with a dual drive missile.

Rob

SharkHunter wrote:The Mark 19's are dual drive, in general the range is stated to be about 30 million kilometers, about half that of the Mark 23's unless there's a ballistic component involved.

But if there are a number of Sag C's and Nikes deployed, they can fire them early and in copious quantities, and that leaves the SD(p)'s and remaining Mark 23's in reserve ready to play when the time comes.

Those are Mk-16, not 19.

And they cannot be fired from regular tubes (lack the power connections), or from the Mk 23's launchers (author's fiat.)

Rob

edited

Oops Brain fart. Was re-reading the series again and have the old missile numbers on the brain. I meant the Mark 16 DDMs/

That is the missile that I am referring to. Did Home Fleet have ships with the Mark 16? I know that mostly Eighth Fleet is getting the new ship types, which is why some of the cruisers coming in from Trevor's star are sent to drive away the junction scouts....