Hypothetical Tactical Option Question.

Duckk wrote:

exiledtoIA wrote:Duckk - there is textev that SOME sollies are already thinking about 3 drive missiles. I can't recall their names, but the two junior intel analysts back on Earth HAVE discussed the possibility of Manticore having put 3 drives in some of their missiles.

That's my point. Three-drive missiles aren't in the realm of impossibility anymore for the SLN. Once they extrapolate from the numbers they already have, they can hit on a reasonably accurate estimate of the Alliance's full range.

Therefore, continuing to hold back those capabilities may one day lead a GA force into a situation similar to where Roszak found himself in Second Torch. Within range of enemy units when they had lots of legs left on their missiles.

It happened at BoMA2, actually. Parts of Grand Fleet was within range of 11th Fleet despite the enormous range superiority available to it.

Duckk wrote:

exiledtoIA wrote:Duckk - there is textev that SOME sollies are already thinking about 3 drive missiles. I can't recall their names, but the two junior intel analysts back on Earth HAVE discussed the possibility of Manticore having put 3 drives in some of their missiles.

That's my point. Three-drive missiles aren't in the realm of impossibility anymore for the SLN. Once they extrapolate from the numbers they already have, they can hit on a reasonably accurate estimate of the Alliance's full range.

Prior to Operation Buttercup actually being launched, Admiral Caparelli gave orders to certain divisions of Medusa/Harringtons to conceal the exact nature of their pod rolling design, and full power of their missiles while they were trolling the Peeps into attacking Grendlesbane.


Similarly, the SLN currently does not know the exact full power of Alliance missiles, they know that Manticore + friends have at least two drives, but may suspect that any third drive is just the same core ideal of THEIR MDMs (namely a counter-missile bootstrapped to the warhead itself)

Both at the Second Battle of Manticore, and Battle of Spindle, neither Filareta nor Crandall deigned to detach even a single destroyer (or DB) to act as a spotter, just in case things went bad. Nor was any SLN observer around for First Manticore (any civilian ships that were trying to use the Junction ran for hyper, and the ones that stayed around, is a bit much to assume all of them had upgraded sensor packages). So it is highly unlikely the SLN has any sensor recordings of any full-powered Alliance missiles being slung around.


Sure the Alliance stuff is better than SLN, but keeping even a bit of an ace up the sleeze with regards to concealing Alliance tech advantage is going to be pretty ingrained into all Manticoran flag officers during the war against Haven.

Potato wrote:

kzt wrote:Due to plot, once you activate the tractors on a pod you will burn the pod reactor out in a week. Now it's possible that some of you might have some idea how to sidestep that but no.

Jesus Christ man, are you physically incapable of not thread crapping any time you post? You do this in practically every thread.

"It's his way" -J.T. Kirk, Star Trek IV

Who would you be revealing the 3d stage and Apollo FTL to, who could report back?
By the time any rescued prisoners were repatriated it wouldn't matter.

Potato wrote:Jesus Christ man, are you physically incapable of not thread crapping any time you post? You do this in practically every thread.

If people wouldn't propose solutions that violate the ground rules of the Honorverse it would be unnecessary to point them out. But you cannot just attach pods to your ship and roam around with them, once you activate the tractors you are either going to fire them or trash them in a week or so.

kzt wrote:

Potato wrote:Jesus Christ man, are you physically incapable of not thread crapping any time you post? You do this in practically every thread.

If people wouldn't propose solutions that violate the ground rules of the Honorverse it would be unnecessary to point them out. But you cannot just attach pods to your ship and roam around with them, once you activate the tractors you are either going to fire them or trash them in a week or so.

It's not what you say. It's that you seem incapable of saying it without dripping contempt for both the target of the post and whatever your current pet peeve de jour is with RFC's universe. I'm personally sick of listening to it, and it seems I'm not alone.

Theemile wrote:Consider the following:

It's late 1922PD, and your 8 ship Roland division has just been deployed to the "Blah-Blah" sector of the SL to protect several newly liberated Protectorates. The 2 Systems under your care, XYZ and ABC are just ~2 hours apart in hyper. You've taken an abandoned mining habitat in orbit of a Gas giant outside of the hyperlimit in XYZ, as your base, allowing you to quickly get from 1 system to another.

2 days ago, a Freighter dropped off what your crews are call a "PASS" comtainer - it contains Pods, Ammo, Spares and Supplies to enable your division to stay on station for an extended period without a supply ship or proper base. A 9th destroyer, an old Chanson, is currently headed toward your base to refuel after dropping off a small diplomatic mission.

Suddenly, the DB you left watching ABC while your DDs partook of the PASS container erupts out of hyper screaming a warning - 2 Squadrons of SLN BCs just entered ABC space and are headed for the major extraction platform in ABC space. You forward the DB on to the next largest RMN response force, a 4 ship Sag-C division ~4 days away in hyper.

The Chanson promises to watch the base and destroy the PASS if necessary, while you head to ABC to deal with the Threat.

The PASS contains all brand new hardware with the newest software upgrades (as do your onboard systems after the uploads from the PASS), and 3 types of Pods - it has flatpacks of all 3 varieties, Apollo, Mk23D, and Mk16G.

Each Roland has 240 missiles in it's internal mags and can haul 15 flatpacks. Your standing orders are not to reveal the FTL nature of Apollo nor the Mk 23's 3rd stage, and you are not to needlessly endanger your platforms.

Given your division is running to danger on it's own, what pod load-out would you take, and why?

Send only 4 Roland's plus the Chanson armed with Mk 23's. The Roland's will hit fast, hard and without mercy from as far as possible without degrading accuracy too much. The Chanson is there to act as a DB incase the need arises but the 4 Roland's will start with the Mk 23's first and if need be will switch over to internal munition if the SLN needs more convincing.


Why send only 4 DD's? In Saltash 5 DD's annihilated 4 BC's, with the pods the Roland's should be able to destroy half of the force if not more forcing the rest to surrender while the 4 Roland's will be held in Reserve incase someone tries to be sneaky and attacks their supply base. Sending all 8 or even 6 Roland's leaves the second system exposed and I would want as much firepower there as possible. A Sector commander might deem it worthy to sacrifice 16 BC's to regain the region or might even Draw the 8 Roland's out and blow their supplies after all how many FF Sector commanders would want to deliver one of only a few "victory" scenarios? Even if he loses 16 BC's but he still regains the 2 systems because the defending destroyers are out of Ammunition. And after the 2nd Battle of Manticore that ammunition is worth its weight in any material you want to name.

Can Apollo's performance be dialed down to mimic a performance somewhere in-between an Mk 16 and an Mk 23 that will mission kill enough enemy ships to make up for less of an Mk 16's loadout, without giving away FTL or using the 3rd stage -- somewhat incremental performance?

If so, I'd take as many Mk 23s as I can stuff. Seems crazy to have them and not stock them.

Isn't it better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them?

This entire scenario has reminded me of a question I always had. Consider Eighth Fleet. I know that Eighth Fleet was armed across the board with Apollo. Does that mean that there were only Apollo pods? Would she have had any pods other than Apollo?

I ask because I'm having the recurrence of the problem I've mentioned before of carrying baggage from other sources. Namely, in this case, the Battle of Midway.

Yamamoto was caught trying to rearm his planes with torpedoes in place of the bombs. Similarly, if an Honorverse fleet has rolled Mk 16s but later deems it needs the full up three stage capability of Apollo, is the mechanics of pods such that the ships can retrieve (unroll) and reroll appropriately and timely, assuming that a fleet has access to both?

cthia wrote:Can Apollo's performance be dialed down to mimic a performance somewhere in-between an Mk 16 and an Mk 23 that will mission kill enough enemy ships to make up for less of an Mk 16's loadout, without giving away FTL or using the 3rd stage -- somewhat incremental performance?

If so, I'd take as many Mk 23s as I can stuff. Seems crazy to have them and not stock them.

IIRC, don't the MK16 and MK23 have roughly similar accelerations, the MK23 just has a third drive? If so, if you're not using the MK23's third drive then the MK16 ought to basically be just as good in terms of raw performance numbers considering their upgraded warheads.

There are two things that might change that. First, we know that even without KHII platforms, apollo-directed missiles are more accurate and better at penetrating missile defenses. And second, whether you bring apollo along or not, while we know that the MK16G's warhead pumps out beams as destructive as those of a capital missile, could the MK23 have morelasing rods than the MK16?

Either of those could make MK23s more dangerous than the MK16s, the question is more just if it's *enough* more effective to make up for the MK16's greater ammo reserves. My gut feeling is probably no, considering just how overwhelmingly destructive the MK16G has already shown itself to be against sollie BCs. The MK23 might be technically more lethal, but it seems to me like it'd be overkill - a case of just pulverizing the debris slightly more finely - and in that case if either missile blows em up about as well, might as well have more missiles.

This entire scenario has reminded me of a question I always had. Consider Eighth Fleet. I know that Eighth Fleet was armed across the board with Apollo. Does that mean that there were only Apollo pods? Would she have had any pods other than Apollo?

I ask because I'm having the recurrence of the problem I've mentioned before of carrying baggage from other sources. Namely, in this case, the Battle of Midway.

Yamamoto was caught trying to rearm his planes with torpedoes in place of the bombs. Similarly, if an Honorverse fleet has rolled Mk 16s but later deems it needs the full up three stage capability of Apollo, is the mechanics of pods such that the ships can retrieve (unroll) and reroll appropriately and timely, assuming that a fleet has access to both?

Well, we had some discussion of how tricky it was to reload pods and remount them on the rails in Honor Among Enemies, when they were recovering and reloading the pods used to blow up Warnecke's heavy cruisers at Sidemore. Namely, that it was a hugely finicky process and an all-around pain in the rear.

However, that's the very first prototype iteration of the pod-laying concept, and we can almost certainly presume that pod-handling mechanics/procedures have improved since then. However, whether they'd be up to quickly and easily remounting pods under combat conditions...? Dunno. Even if they could remount pods in battle, I can't possibly imagine it being anywhere near as quick as deploying them, so given how long it can take to roll some of the giant patterns of pods we've seen, remounting them would take ages, so I'd guess it wouldn't be practical.

Either way, I doubt that they'd have mixed pod loadouts anyway. The manties seem to have decided that SD(P)s get MK23s and BC(P)s get MK16s, which is probably a sensible decision. Wallers have enough ammo stowage that they don't need the MK16 pods' extra capacity, and there's very little reason why a waller would ever want to shoot MK16s when it could be shooting apollo-guided MK23s anyway. Meanwhile, BC(P)s *do* need the extra ammo, can't use apollo, and aren't normally supposed to be shooting at anything the MK16 can't handle anyway.

It is pretty clear that you don't want a pod core full of pods with the reactors running. It's unclear if you can shut down the reactor after start. If you can, it is further unclear if the pod is unusable until you can get depot level maintenance on it to rebuild/replace the reactor and capacitors or if it can simply be restarted. If it can be restarted, how many times?