Saganami Island lessons: the Battle of Manticore

It's hard to do this because we know what happened. For the RHN, the best strategy would have been for Chin to hyper in sooner, in order to hit 3rd for longer, then hyper out quicker, as soon as 8th arrives. Maybe have some destroyers come out of hyper to get the location of 8th, then come out of hyper in close range to 8th fleet.

Wow, kzt, you must be in a hurry. You don't usually have these type of errors --you explained this better the first time.

SharkHunter wrote:
How do you fight your forces differently?

kzt wrote:

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.

Did anyone ever test whether the pods might get lost in the wormhole transit? She may have considered the risk of pod loss as too high. Or, did any RMN unit ever roll pods prior to the actual attack (before BoMa, I mean)? I don't remember an instance of that, except in the defense.

I thought all the Apollo pods were with 8th Fleet? So McKeon's squadron had the only Keyhole II remotes with Kuzak, and likely the only Apollo pods. The main junction nexus where she was assembling her forces prior to the short jump to the edge of the resonance zone is a bit too far for any recon drones; how would she know which of Tourville's ships were the most damaged before she makes the jump? The main sensor platforms would be closer to the planet, not the junction.

Although, the sensors around the planet would have been sending, so she had data no more than 6 minutes old. Good enough, and I concede that point altogether.

Also, a minor nit, Chin had 5th; Tourville had 2nd Fleet.

kzt wrote: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.

How does the powered range of the Mk23 with Apollo differ from the powered range of the Mk23 without Apollo? I take it "winchester" means out of ammo, but they wouldn't be doing anything that a Keyhole I equipped ship would do.
The only difference I see between your solution and the original text is rolling pods before transiting the wormhole. We don't even know--as far as I know, the author never said--that all of McKeon's ammo was Apollo pods. It might not have been.


Regards,

Rob

SharkHunter wrote: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....

In building up 10th Fleet, I think Henke told her staffers that the Aggies were going to go to 8th and Home Fleet; and Home Fleet has(or, had) all those detachments everywhere else. I expect there were some there, but D'Orville never mentioned them, either as pod-layers or as ships with external pods.

Regards,

Rob

Bad idea but different

Leave much of the home fleet in hyper so it can emerge at interesting locations. With perfect hindsight "they fired a gazillion missiles at us, with 16 minute flight times. A shame we are leaving at t=15."

Yes. I am sure people will explain why this will not work, but with sufficiently long missile ranges and missile control systems at interesting points like planetary surfaces etc missiles eventually become less useful.

SharkHunter wrote: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...

Jonathan_S wrote:

SharkHunter wrote: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.

My secondary objective is to get Chin's force to jump in while 3rd is outside the RZ. Which I wouldn't know about but, if I go to immediate fire I can't send big salvos. The mission of 3rd, which Kuzak managed to miss in all the excitement, was to keep 2nd from blowing hell out of the 2nd most important of Manticore's industrial mode. This best accomplished by starting to immediately kill as much of 2nds combat power as far from Sphinx as possible. Spending 30 minutes rolling pods is 30 minutes that 2nd closes on Sphinx and 30 minutes for the CO of 2nd to make plans. If I start killing his best ships immediately he has other problems to think about.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Wow, kzt, you must be in a hurry. You don't usually have these type of errors --you explained this better the first time.

SharkHunter wrote:
How do you fight your forces differently?

kzt wrote:

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.

Did anyone ever test whether the pods might get lost in the wormhole transit? She may have considered the risk of pod loss as too high. Or, did any RMN unit ever roll pods prior to the actual attack (before BoMa, I mean)? I don't remember an instance of that, except in the defense.

I thought all the Apollo pods were with 8th Fleet? So McKeon's squadron had the only Keyhole II remotes with Kuzak, and likely the only Apollo pods. The main junction nexus where she was assembling her forces prior to the short jump to the edge of the resonance zone is a bit too far for any recon drones; how would she know which of Tourville's ships were the most damaged before she makes the jump? The main sensor platforms would be closer to the planet, not the junction.

Although, the sensors around the planet would have been sending, so she had data no more than 6 minutes old. Good enough, and I concede that point altogether.

Also, a minor nit, Chin had 5th; Tourville had 2nd Fleet.

kzt wrote: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.

How does the powered range of the Mk23 with Apollo differ from the powered range of the Mk23 without Apollo? I take it "winchester" means out of ammo, but they wouldn't be doing anything that a Keyhole I equipped ship would do.
The only difference I see between your solution and the original text is rolling pods before transiting the wormhole. We don't even know--as far as I know, the author never said--that all of McKeon's ammo was Apollo pods. It might not have been.


Regards,

Rob

I'm on my phone between sets at the gym.

You roll pods after you emerge from hyper. Unlike what Kuzak did, which was NEVER roll pods until she opened fine.

I'm planning on firing Apollo ballistically, but holding the non Apollo missiles until you reach powered range. So the Apollo capable ships immediately start firing quad patterns while everyone else gets ready to rumble by rolling huge amounts of pods.

When you reach powered range you fire all ships at maximum rate of fire, give a change for the lame to fall out, then hammer them again until you run out of ammo or targets.

kzt wrote:I'm on my phone between sets at the gym.

You roll pods after you emerge from hyper. Unlike what Kuzak did, which was NEVER roll pods until she opened fine.

I'm planning on firing Apollo ballistically, but holding the non Apollo missiles until you reach powered range. So the Apollo capable ships immediately start firing quad patterns while everyone else gets ready to rumble by rolling huge amounts of pods.

When you reach powered range you fire all ships at maximum rate of fire, give a change for the lame to fall out, then hammer them again until you run out of ammo or targets.

How can you type on a phone? I dislike even a laptop like this one. Trackpads are not my friends.

Thanks, that clarifies the range issue. But Tourville was already in range for his MDMs to fire at Sphinx's space station and industrial nodes--he could have fired with a ballistic phase himself, so Kuzak trying to get a massive first-salvo in would be to keep his ships from getting into close range of the planet. But he would already have been in attack range, if he stopped worrying about losing lock and hitting the planet.

In fact, if the salvo looked like it would destroy too much of his fleet, he might just go ahead and fire on the infrastructure anyway.

Last point, without the arrival of Chin's fleet, Kuzak would probably have succeeded in finishing off Tourville. Are you being a bit harder on her than she deserves? No one in the series is quite clairvoyant. Well, so far.

Regards,
Rob

If 5th is willing or planning on committing an edict violation the only option open to 3rd to stop that was immediate surrender. But as the RHN had NEVER done this before, it's pretty safe that they are not going to do this. Do not take council of your fears.

This ignores David saying that the RHN was destroying the orbital infrastructure of Zanzibar from the hyper limit, in which case the BOM would consist of the RHN just gone directly for Manticore and Sphinx's infrastructure with ballistic attacks.

phillies wrote:Bad idea but different

Leave much of the home fleet in hyper so it can emerge at interesting locations. With perfect hindsight "they fired a gazillion missiles at us, with 16 minute flight times. A shame we are leaving at t=15."

I tried that one once. Home fleet is based at Sphinx. Deep inside the RZ and the hyper limit.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:In building up 10th Fleet, I think Henke told her staffers that the Aggies were going to go to 8th and Home Fleet; and Home Fleet has(or, had) all those detachments everywhere else. I expect there were some there, but D'Orville never mentioned them, either as pod-layers or as ships with external pods.

Jumping back into the "early fray" For the sake of discussion, I'm thinking whatever Aggies are with Home Fleet plus any Saganami(s), given the single order to time their salvos not at max rate fire but at "min rate necessary to make sure that 2nd Fleet never gets a good salvo stacked", maybe starting at around T minus twenty, the moment the RMN detects the invading ships decelerating in the least, with a ballistic phase long enough to get into "2nd phase" range. If need be some of the SD(Ps) can add to the mix with rolled pod Mark-23's for time on target. So my question for this part is, assuming that strategy, would 2nd Fleet have even survived long enough for Tourville to have called Chin in? AKA, what's the counter strategy to the hindsight-developed RMN strategy "do all things necessary to stop the RHN from stacking pods"?