Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:I'm sure you're right about the programmer. And I'm sure I'm right about his awe.


Barely passing and crushing it is a Grand of a Canyon apart.


Besides, I've never bought into that propaganda. I will maintain that when the two of them weighed in on the Crusher someone had their boot under the lip of the scales.

IMO, that prewar Crusher was decent, but nothing really special. How could it be? They weren't fighting any wars and so could only accrue real experience from skirmishes with pirates and slavers.

The Crusher - indeed the entire training process - 15-20 years later, after the first few years of war with Haven, was an different animal even before Honor was appointed ATC's commander.

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--

cthia wrote:Alice Truman watched in horror as the Havenite flail came down on Alistair McKeon's squadron.

Was it deliberate? she wondered. Were they able somehow to figure out where Apollo was coming from? Or was it just the luck of the draw?

Not that it mattered.

* * *
How the heck did I miss that there were four Apollo capable ships in McKeon's squadron? And with four Apollo capable ships he could only manage to kill one Peep ship at a time? What the hell? Talk about a massive missile gone limp in McKeon's hands. He was like kryptonite to Apollo! Honor sent McKeon though with four Apollo ships and he still managed to get himself killed?

Now, about that little matter of the Peeps able to so quickly identify and destroy four Apollo capable ships that were all somehow in range. H-O-W!?

Perhaps it's just me hitting the pipe this time. <shrugs>

Reason I snipped is tactical. Until 5th fleet showed up, the tactical plan was probably, ok. Afterwards, sheer missile count would have got to McKeon's ships whenever.

My "tactical thought" after is that Yanakov et. all had previously used Apollo to take out one SD(p) at a time at Solon, so that was the newly evolved SOP. Might have also been computing related, by the way.

All things being equal with hindsight in play, I think if I'd been in Alistair's shoes I've had been throwing 1/4 the count at 4 times the ship count, in hopes of taking out the flagships command and control abilities down to the squadron level, say 70 shipkillers per, and coordinating fire with the rest of 3rd to supply the remaining shipkillers (though less coordinated, maybe 1/3 of a second later than the Apollo-guided core) in a time on target salvo on the same 4 ships per.

Thoughts?

Yes! I nominated a similar plan a while back -- though nowhere as detailed and in a general sense of decapitating the command structure to throw the attack in a momentary disarray. Throughout the series it was accepted that the command structure of a fleet, certainly Peep, was at the center of the formation and Apollo can target specific ships with ease.

Apollo can decapitate the snake's head, buying time before it can regenerate (pass command and regroup).

cthia wrote:

munroburton wrote:
Raoul Courvoisier?

Also, bear in mind that Pavel Young and Elvis Santino, amongst others, passed the same Crusher as Honor.

I'm sure you're right about the programmer. And I'm sure I'm right about his awe.


Barely passing and crushing it is a Grand of a Canyon apart.


Besides, I've never bought into that propaganda. I will maintain that when the two of them weighed in on the Crusher someone had their boot under the lip of the scales.

We all know, there's passing a course and Aceing a course and how wide a gulf that can be.

And always remember - What do you call the person who finishes dead last in his Medical School class?

Doctor

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm sure you're right about the programmer. And I'm sure I'm right about his awe.


Barely passing and crushing it is a Grand of a Canyon apart.


Besides, I've never bought into that propaganda. I will maintain that when the two of them weighed in on the Crusher someone had their boot under the lip of the scales.

IMO, that prewar Crusher was decent, but nothing really special. How could it be? They weren't fighting any wars and so could only accrue real experience from skirmishes with pirates and slavers.

The Crusher - indeed the entire training process - 15-20 years later, after the first few years of war with Haven, was an different animal even before Honor was appointed ATC's commander.

Very good point. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.

However, it begs to answer another rather pointed question. In its present form, who can pass it now? Who would fail?

Good thing you don't have to renew your certification like your DL at the Department of Motoring Victims.

In lieu of your enlightenment, I would suppose the on-ship sims are more challenging than the old Crusher.

Do forgive this repost, but I have got to know...

Can Apollo be fired in anticipation of ships exiting hyper after evidence of the azure bleed of the sails, and when the entire bridge is dealing with the nausea? The real question I'm posing here -- and what I think is a yet unused advantage and tactic of Apollo -- is to fire missiles before 'missile lock' -- with the intent of achieving missile lock on-the-fly?

cthia wrote:Do forgive this repost, but I have got to know...

Can Apollo be fired in anticipation of ships exiting hyper after evidence of the azure bleed of the sails, and when the entire bridge is dealing with the nausea? The real question I'm posing here -- and what I think is a yet unused advantage and tactic of Apollo -- is to fire missiles before 'missile lock' -- with the intent of achieving missile lock on-the-fly?

A hyper generator can transition things that are outside the ship up to a fair distance away (but it's never been addressed whether there might be any interaction problems if those other items had wedges up, or were on significantly different vectors that the ship jumping out.

Now if you're under sails, as your "azure bleed" mentioned, that means you were riding a grav wave in hyper. A missile launched within a grav wave would be unlikely to survive long enough to light off it's wedge (which would instantly destroy it).

But even in that situation I don't see what would physically limit you from having timed your missile launch so the missiles cleared the tubes milliseconds after you'd hit n-space. Though if you're wrong about what you're facing that's either a very hostile act or a waste of missiles (since you can't recover them once fired)
However at the moment Apollo is only available in pod launched missiles - it takes a little longer to get those off. You could have the pods roll clear milliseconds after you hit n-space but it take a little longer between rolling pods and firing that it does between a missile exiting a tube and it's wedge kicking on. OTOH that might give you time to abort the launch if you don't have a target. On the gripping hand we're now necessarily talking about a single stacked salvo; not the more usual double to quad stacked ones. So your getting off a quick but light shot. And your target has multiple minutes of missile flight time to react - so it's not like being two seconds faster off the mark will let you wipe them out by surprise.


Anyway that's probably enough rambling from me on this. (at least for one post)

cthia wrote:Do forgive this repost, but I have got to know...

Can Apollo be fired in anticipation of ships exiting hyper after evidence of the azure bleed of the sails, and when the entire bridge is dealing with the nausea? The real question I'm posing here -- and what I think is a yet unused advantage and tactic of Apollo -- is to fire missiles before 'missile lock' -- with the intent of achieving missile lock on-the-fly?

I think Adm Gold Peak's sim -- where an Apollo Brood was fired early (without a target) as a "fast-recon" followed by an Apollo missile swarm and another "fast-recon" Brood -- demonstrates that Apollo can be fired without targets and updated enroute with specifics.

I don't know that it would be particularly economical to use the capability all that often, but it is possible.

Detecting an emergence from Hyper before it actually happens is probably the harder part of your scenario. I don't recall anything that would suggest it would confer any tactical advantage over waiting for target identification and numbers; probably only a difference of a few seconds at most.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Do forgive this repost, but I have got to know...

Can Apollo be fired in anticipation of ships exiting hyper after evidence of the azure bleed of the sails, and when the entire bridge is dealing with the nausea? The real question I'm posing here -- and what I think is a yet unused advantage and tactic of Apollo -- is to fire missiles before 'missile lock' -- with the intent of achieving missile lock on-the-fly?

A hyper generator can transition things that are outside the ship up to a fair distance away (but it's never been addressed whether there might be any interaction problems if those other items had wedges up, or were on significantly different vectors that the ship jumping out.

Now if you're under sails, as your "azure bleed" mentioned, that means you were riding a grav wave in hyper. A missile launched within a grav wave would be unlikely to survive long enough to light off it's wedge (which would instantly destroy it).

But even in that situation I don't see what would physically limit you from having timed your missile launch so the missiles cleared the tubes milliseconds after you'd hit n-space. Though if you're wrong about what you're facing that's either a very hostile act or a waste of missiles (since you can't recover them once fired)
However at the moment Apollo is only available in pod launched missiles - it takes a little longer to get those off. You could have the pods roll clear milliseconds after you hit n-space but it take a little longer between rolling pods and firing that it does between a missile exiting a tube and it's wedge kicking on. OTOH that might give you time to abort the launch if you don't have a target. On the gripping hand we're now necessarily talking about a single stacked salvo; not the more usual double to quad stacked ones. So your getting off a quick but light shot. And your target has multiple minutes of missile flight time to react - so it's not like being two seconds faster off the mark will let you wipe them out by surprise.

Anyway that's probably enough rambling from me on this. (at least for one post)

Thanks for the reply Johnathan. But I was referring to an Apollo ship already in n-space firing on an enemy exiting hyper while they're experiencing disorientation and nausea. (Harold responded likewise.) I always thought it'd take a moment for sensors, or the attendant officers, to function properly, so that perhaps an Apollo salvo can be launched then go ballistic without an enemy ship knowing. Sort of a stealth launch, because sensors were temporarily inoperable and the attendants momentarily incapacitated.

Thanks for answering a question I wasn't astute enough to conceive. As Harold opined, "now if I can just find the right questions."

Jonathan_S wrote:However at the moment Apollo is only available in pod launched missiles - it takes a little longer to get those off. You could have the pods roll clear milliseconds after you hit n-space but it take a little longer between rolling pods and firing that it does between a missile exiting a tube and it's wedge kicking on.

No, you have the pods tractored to the hull. When you exit hyper you have the tractors reverse and throw themselves away from the ship. Remember you have no sidewalls up. So you have an expanding cloud of missile pods surrounding your ship, which you then deploy missiles from.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:However at the moment Apollo is only available in pod launched missiles - it takes a little longer to get those off. You could have the pods roll clear milliseconds after you hit n-space but it take a little longer between rolling pods and firing that it does between a missile exiting a tube and it's wedge kicking on.

No, you have the pods tractored to the hull. When you exit hyper you have the tractors reverse and throw themselves away from the ship. Remember you have no sidewalls up. So you have an expanding cloud of missile pods surrounding your ship, which you then deploy missiles from.

Yes, I didn't go into pre-tractored pods. But it still take a little longer to throw the pods clear, then fire the missiles clear of each other using the pods grav-drivers than it does to fire missile clear using the tubes grav drivers.

Not a lot longer; but a little bit. And cthia's proposal (even as I misread it) seemed to be looking for advantages is fractions of a second faster response.