Kudos for an excellent analysis, but may I add a couple of additional points?
You're quite right missile production should resume soon; the original projection was ten month's, or some time in December 1922, but thanks to Beowulf's high tech, and indirectly the RoH ending the war, production was expected to begin month's earlier, so by the time Anton met HA-H in October they could be back in production, albeit at less that the war production peak rate before OB yet, but give the SEM a few more month's and who knows?
The original textev stated the Agamemnon's would run out of pods in less than 20 minutes, leading some of us to project they only carried 288 pods for just 18 minutes sustained fire, or 14.4 minutes at 20 pods per minute, but RFC refused to confirm although he did say it carried more than 288 pods, and the Honorverse Wikia says 330 pods, obviously it hasn't been updated by the HoS data yet.
In fact given that 288 was 72% of the pods RHN SDP's carried, and after Apollo had become available, there were those at the bar like me proposing that the Agamemnon was the cheapest and quickest solution to equalize the RHN's numerical advantage of 1200 SDP U/C etc, building as many as possible to fill the gap before the roughly two years required for the fresh SDP construction compared to something around 10 month's [IIRC] in smaller yards etc, but RFC shot it down.
But you'll notice despite their apparent vulnerability, which is played up too much in HoS, they are still assigned to the fleet.
Why?
Because they can carry more Apollo pods for the Keyhole 2 Invictuses, so 85+ means another 30,600 Apollo pods or almost a quarter million more Apollo's; those 360 more pods means that the nearby Apollo SDP could kill another 14 RHN SDP's real easy before they both reload.
Against the BF it means another 24-30 SD's easily killed, so I think we'll continue to see some Agamemnon's serving with the fleet in division or squadron strength, while the SLN remains clueless about any possible class vulnerabilities, because they won't see that much of them before they're destroyed.
Although against the SLN and particularly the BF their vulnerabilities are almost meaningless given their massive volleys to swamp the SLN's pathetic defenses.
Just a pair [with a suitable screen] could probably ruin a typical FF base's day, so dozens of them could be taken out simultaneously, so yes I don't see much of the SLN surviving the next six month's, let alone the year.
Taking the BF reserve out will be the immediate mission after the Beowulf attack is resolved either way by major GA TF's, but Agamemnon's have little to fear from active BF SD's, so if it weren't for having plenty of SDP's, the GA might use them on the smaller BF bases as well.
Your point about the disparate composition of the various SLN sector detachments is very well taken, and a pair or two of Agamemnon's attached to each wormhole TG could do excellent work until Moriarty's or Mycroft's were installed in a year or so, if not reinforced with SDP's earlier, ie after there are no more suitable targets.
Regarding rear area defense, given the older BC's can tractor 70-80 MDM pods, enough to kill up to 4 BF SD's if need be, they will do even better against FF BC's.
Again kudos for the excellent points.
L
Armed Neo-Bob wrote:*quote="Hutch"*Depending on how many Nike's are available. Using House of Steel as my reference, there were only 12 Nikes in service just prior to the BoM, and while they were in full-scale production, only the 'initial' production run would have been completed prior to Oyster Bay.
So maybe 60 additional Nikes', totally 72 in service, of which 16 are in Talbott with Mike's Tenth Fleet.
There are still 85+ Agamemmnons' out there, so they may be employed in the raiding missions.
We shall see, eventually.*quote*
*quote="munroburton"*Conversely, those Agamemmnons might be assigned to rear areas or 'less likely' SLN targets(such as Gryphon during 2nd BoM) and not to front line action in order to prevent giving the SLN a strong hint of the BC(P) concept, even if said concept has been evaluated as ultimately undesirable by the GA navies.
They have more than enough SD(P)s to compensate for absent BC(P)s, not to mention how many SD(P)s would be freed up by the BC(P)s' relegation to rear area duty.*quote*
*quote="Hutch"*I like that idea a lot more than mine, monroburton; in fact, I may have to start a thread on it...*quote*fallsfromtrees wrote:I like this idea as well. Since one of the major problems with the Agamemmnons is the tendency to shoot themselves dry, serving in a system defense role, where they are effectively acting as a mobile command center makes a lot of sense, since they will not, in general, be using their internal magazines, and in fact, will be able to reload from a central depot in the system. Makes a lot of sense.
Fallsfromtrees, remember who and what they were facing when they shot themselves dry. Actually, we' ve never seen that happen in text, however much it has been discussed.
First, we don't know much about FF and BF nodes-- are they in the same places? Using the same supply ships? Or are they separate? Different bases in different systems, with BF in the Core, while FF bases mostly in the Shell (closer to the Verge)?
The biggest question is really, will the offensive kick off before New Years? By that time, if the projected reconstruction efforts were accurate, some replacement missiles will be available from San Martin. (I am not including defending Beowulf as part of the offensive here.)
The Aggies ammunition supplies run out fast, but only if they need to stack and launch everything in a do-or-die, last ditch effort. Against Sollie ships, they should be ok, as long as they are up against FF (which had no wallers).
For those who don't have House of Steel yet, here are the numbers.
The Aggies had 360 pods, with 14 missiles, or 5040 missiles total; Mk 16 missiles with a powered range around 3 to four times that of the Solarian Ships (using Javelin/Spatha). They fire 56 missiles in a salvo, every 12 seconds, without even stacking their fire. Which is 90 salvos, 3 times as many as a Saganami-C, with a heavier salvo density (especially if they stack them). They actually had more salvos than the original Medusas with the Mk-41 MDMs, or the original Mk-23s (before the flat-pack pods, a Medusa had 82 salvos).
By they time they "shoot themselves dry" the opposition (Nevadas? and smaller) will be scrap. And they can always either run away, or duck into stealth if they start running low. And, however they get deployed, it will be a division or small task group, not single ships.
Because of that firepower, I disagree with the notion of them in rear areas. I don't think Aggies will be in the back corners, even if the Nikes are better armored and defended. I think once the RMN takes the gloves off to operate offensively in Sollie-space, they will want to operate in as many systems as possible; I also believe that whatever the SLN may want to do, they're not going to get much done in less than a year. Meaning, I think there is enough time for Manticore to get some production started.
Genovese Sector had Indefatigables, as did Madras. But Nolan had Commodore Chalker's Rampart squadron, headed up by SLNS Lancelot. How many "Nolan" type detachments are there?
And officially, Maya as a sector only had a flotilla of destroyers and some second-rate "subscription ships;" how much opposition do you guys think will actually be there?
The Solarian League has always depended on the threat of its huge fleet, not the physical presence of powerful ships. It is big in the aggregate, but in individual systems, it isn't.
A Wolfhound could kill Chalker's flagship (Lancelot) without effort; an Aggie is gross overkill against anything less than a waller. If it isn't taking capital ship fire, the weaknesses of its armor will not be apparent to the SLN.
Also, there were around 85 Saganami-B's and a similar number of the Reliant III/IV (like Black Rose) which still significantly outgun Sollies. . . at least for now. If you got your hands on a list of FF fleet dispositions you could play hell against the older ships. Zilwicki can't be the only hacker in the Honorverse capable off hacking the Navy. Pat Givens probably won't even need any help from "Uncle Jaques".
Assuming combat ops off-screen didn't result in lots of losses in any of these classes in the last couple years. Which they certainly could have.
YMMV, as always.
Rob
