Monica attacking Lynx Terminus - Would you take the offer?

saber964 wrote:

Relax wrote:Something that has not been brought up:

Can the SLN BC cruiser grade missiles actually take down the Hercules SD? No, barely even penetrate or not penetration at all of the SD's sidewall. Would end up in a graser duel. At which point all 14 BC's are so much toast against the single SD. As was seen in SVW against a DN and once again in FiE against BB's. BB's are far better than pipsqueek BC's...

Do remember that David's coached argument in favor of a squadron of BC's taking down an SD was their missile totals. In this example he was thinking of RMN missiles. SLN laser head throughput is ~.~.~..... in comparison.

So, best bet would be for the 14 BC's to not attack the SD at all. Pound the planets and other light ships and wait for FF to show up. Of course the Hercules is then free to take out the junction pods with proximity kills. So, toasted.

It was never about Monica taking/holding quadrant unless one is delusional. It was sending for help, OFS, FF in time to "settle" the situation.

Not quite, In SVW it was a DN vs BC's.

But 14 BC's vs a over the hill SD, not a chance Hercules would be violently installing portholes in all those BC's. It would probably be analogous of fourth Yeltsen

I can't remember MWW's argument about BCs taking on wallers. I do think it required that the BCs hold the initiative and begin the engagement on favourable terms(as they did at First Hancock).

None of which applies to a Monican BC force which may be damaged taking the Lynx Terminus and then forced to hold it, a spot outside the hyper limit, against counterattacks from two possible directions.

It would be trivially easy for a single RMN picket to monitor them, pop up into hyper and guide Hercules and screen in. Under such circumstances, a Monican admiral playing staked goat would have to be very unhappy.

No, kzt, we are not talking SLN SD verses SLN Indefatigable BC.

Back to the discussion:

Throughput BC Graser = many 'x' greater than a laser head. Graser verses X-ray to start with.

In SVW: RHN BC's grasers/lasers only dented a DN WITHOUT a sidewall at full strength. The rest were reflected away. So what will a much lower powered laser head accomplish?

Do remember the "leap" in fighting came about because of Capital grade laser heads that could actually get through a capital ships SIDEWALL. Before this it was a NO-CHANCE-IN-HELL. Pod warfare simply accelerated this modern warfare. MDM's just made it that much worse.

Lets get quoting the man himself: Pearl 78: "Hence when HMS Bellerophon took out Admiral Pierre's BCs in The Short Victorious War, she was showing what a superdreadnought could have done to a considerably larger force of BBs, but the disparity in firepower on a ship-for-ship basis was very much the same."


SVW ch 14 [i]"Bellerophon's suddenly interposed sidewall. Most of them achieved absolutely nothing as the sidewall bent and degraded them, but red lights bloomed on Avshari's damage control display as half a dozen minor hits cratered her massive armor". Uh, a BC's Grasers and Lasers are multiple times greater than any cruiser grade warhead. In fact, they are many times greater than any capital grade laser warhead. See introduction of Shrike in EoH.

Pearl 90:
"(And if the Peep force hadn't split up, she would almost certainly have taken out all of Theisman's BBs in the initial exchange, as well, and probably without suffering much--if any--heavier losses than she actually took.)"[/i]
6SD verses ~50+ BB or 8+BB/SD where BB's had capital missiles and capital grasers with which to inflict damage.

BC, Indefatigable, especially, a crappy ex SLN BC with the super ancient and SUPER craptastic "pluvian???" missiles provided to Monica certainly could not. The RMN, first turned out a laser head CA/BC missile in the Mark-13 in 1883PD. At this time, the SLN didn't even have the laser head... Effectively, the BC's provided to Monica were outfitted with DD/CL "laser heads".

It should be noted that in SVW, all of the ships destroyed were destroyed by capital grade missiles from the pods, or the mines. Outside of this, the BC's/CA's in Sarnow's squadron did jack squat all to Chin's Dreadnaughts even though they had been firing for over 30 total minutes. It should also be noted that the Ex-SLN BC's effectively have NO missile defense at all against RMN ships, though for this discussion, President Tyler and Monican Admiralty did not know that.

Those ships were toast any way you slice it.

PS. Sorry did not look up the "sneer" and lip curling produced by the RMN R&D department when they got their hands on the ex-SLN ships/missiles to evaluate them in??? MoH??? Junk, hopelessly outdated junk.

No, this has nothing to do with that. It was a brief discussion by David of the advantages and disadvantages of using a single ex-SLN SD as the planetary defense force for an isolated system against a "pirate" force consisting of up to a squadron of the sort of BCs the SLN keeps 'losing'. You can look it up, the the TL;DR version is that a well trained and commanded BC squadron can defeat a single SD, but it will not be cheap or easy (there will be considerable attrition of the BCs) and no pirate would be willing to do that without a hell of a big prize.

Relax wrote:SVW ch 14 [i]"Bellerophon's suddenly interposed sidewall. Most of them achieved absolutely nothing as the sidewall bent and degraded them, but red lights bloomed on Avshari's damage control display as half a dozen minor hits cratered her massive armor". Uh, a BC's Grasers and Lasers are multiple times greater than any cruiser grade warhead. In fact, they are many times greater than any capital grade laser warhead. See introduction of Shrike in EoH.

I'd not in passing that Honorverse energy weapons appear to be strongly range sensative. So a BC weight laser head has vastly less power that a BC graser at the beam sourse; but the difference seems less pronounced when you factor in that the laserhead is engaging from 30-50,000 km while the graser starts off back at about 400,000 km.

Those laserheads don't have the punch of captial ship missiles; but no ship, not even an SD, is going to enjoy getting hit with dozens of them. (If absolutely nothing else shots that hit the hull will damage sensors, antenna, nodes and other surface mounted hardware that're impossible to armor)

I also note, no one looked up the Monican missile Pilums range: 5.9Mkm...

True, BC's have accel advantage, but Hercules will have FTL RD's, so should be able to keep range open for a long while. 8 vrs 6 Mkm. Unless those BC's split up into 2 groups...

I also note, kept waiting for it, that no one brought up during the 1 SD verses 14 BC engagement, the BC's should throw most of their missiles at the throat/kilt as there is no sidewall there and they have saturation with missiles to kill.

Yes, that's why David felt a well led BC squadron could take an SD. You end up with multiple BCs able to target the throat or skirt, and they will eventually cripple it. Still won't be cheap or easy.

kzt wrote:Yes, that's why David felt a well led BC squadron could take an SD. You end up with multiple BCs able to target the throat or skirt, and they will eventually cripple it. Still won't be cheap or easy.

Yes, but David's math was only 1 SD, no escorts. The SD should have lighter ships in formation covering the wedge openings. The BCs can always beat on the escorts, but it will be more costly For them...

Still say it comes down to the BC's have no missile defense, pathetic missiles and are facing missiles that are both capital grade and longer ranged. Toast

I reread the book about two months ago, and I remember paying attention to the rational given for why Monica should do it; what struck me is the greed-factor, 'just imagine if you controlled, and how rich you would get?' Now this was tempered with some believalble rhetoric concerning quality of ships, the technodyne upgrades and the support Monica could expect.

I found the premise as presented to be totally belivable.

Tail Twitcher wrote:I reread the book about two months ago, and I remember paying attention to the rational given for why Monica should do it; what struck me is the greed-factor, 'just imagine if you controlled, and how rich you would get?' Now this was tempered with some believalble rhetoric concerning quality of ships, the technodyne upgrades and the support Monica could expect.

I found the premise as presented to be totally belivable.

Do you mean that it sounded like an honestly good deal, with an attractive ratio of reward to risk, or that it's believable that Tyler was swayed by rhetoric and Anisimovna's legs into making a plausible but bad decision?