"In Enemy Hands" - different ship.

In "In Enemy Hands" Honor et al gets captured in the Prince Adrian, an old Prince Consort class CA seconded to the GSN, when scouting ahead of the convoy her squadron was protecting.

What if instead of the ancient Prince Adrian, Honor was on a new Star Knight or (better) an Alvarez. Could they have survived the ambush?

Its significantly increased armament, more powerful sidewall generators, heavier armor, better electronic warfare capabilities, and more numerous point defense systems make it at least thirty percent tougher than the Prince Consorts.

HoS very helpfully provides that datum in the Star Knight's description. So it probably could have lasted a few salvoes longer than the Prince Consort.

However, a tougher unit is more difficult to kill. It's possible that the salvo which crippled Prince Adrian wouldn't have dented Fearless(or Alvarez). Subsequent salvoes would be required to drive it to the state Prince Adrian was in.

It's equally possible that those additional salvoes would end up destroying the more modern vessel. Indeed, by now Havenites know that Star Knights are very tough nuts indeed, so they would pile on even more.

Of course, if we up the stakes even more and make it a Sag-C, we know Tourville isn't going home.

I dont recall the exact correlation of forces for that fight, but I suspect it would have taken a Sag-C to tip the scales, assuming the Havenites would have even engaged at that point.

The Sag A and B were large CAs, whereas the the Sag-C is in essence a pocket BC, plus the off bore capabilities of the new build units.

munroburton wrote:

Its significantly increased armament, more powerful sidewall generators, heavier armor, better electronic warfare capabilities, and more numerous point defense systems make it at least thirty percent tougher than the Prince Consorts.

HoS very helpfully provides that datum in the Star Knight's description. So it probably could have lasted a few salvoes longer than the Prince Consort.

However, a tougher unit is more difficult to kill. It's possible that the salvo which crippled Prince Adrian wouldn't have dented Fearless(or Alvarez). Subsequent salvoes would be required to drive it to the state Prince Adrian was in.

It's equally possible that those additional salvoes would end up destroying the more modern vessel. Indeed, by now Havenites know that Star Knights are very tough nuts indeed, so they would pile on even more.

Of course, if we up the stakes even more and make it a Sag-C, we know Tourville isn't going home.

The thought was to limit it to what ships were available then - And you're right, if we bring in a Sag-C, the only question will be whether the Sag runs out of targets or ammo first.

Theemile wrote:What if instead of the ancient Prince Adrian, Honor was on a new Star Knight or (better) an Alvarez. Could they have survived the ambush?

No. The surrender to Tourville set up the entire book, so Plot required that they be in an untenable solution; even if you upgraded to an Invictus SD(P) the ambush would have to be upgraded to match or there would have been no story.

if it had been a Star Knight.... I think they actually might not have engaged period, and stayed covert.

By that time, the People's Republic knew Star Knight were very tough customers, and we didn't actually see any of Tourville's BC's involved in the ambushes. So in CA on CA combat, coming in from all vector's like they did would have resulted in tremendous casulties for little gain. After all, from the Havenite perspective, singleton Star Knights had been engaged with upto 4 Sultan BC's and still managed to send two of the BC's back to the yards for more than superficial damage. By that math, 1 Star Knight works out to be loosely a Sultan each, and by coming in across many different vectors, Tourville's heavy cruisers would be unable to provide each other with supporting CM fire, each ship would have to intercept on it's own.

And by extension, if the Prince Adrian (as a Star Knight rather than a Prince Consort) had more or less scared the Havenites into staying covert, there would have been at least one Mars-class right on top of the convoy, notably the PNS Nuada who was the key ambusher in forcing the Adrian to stop. The other ship that was ideally placed to intercept the convoy was only the Sword-class PNS Katana.

Sure Honor could have warned the convoy, exactly like she did, but by the time the message came in, and before their hyper generators could finish cycling, the Mars and Sword would have been firing into the merchies. So a Star Knight (or other similar era CA) version of Prince Adrian would have 'saved' Honor from going to Cerberus, but at the cost of severely blackening her career, and totally excluding the rest of the ripple effect from the Cerberus visit & escape.

Weird Harold wrote:

Theemile wrote:What if instead of the ancient Prince Adrian, Honor was on a new Star Knight or (better) an Alvarez. Could they have survived the ambush?

No. The surrender to Tourville set up the entire book, so Plot required that they be in an untenable solution; even if you upgraded to an Invictus SD(P) the ambush would have to be upgraded to match or there would have been no story.

Why does this remind me so much of *The Final Countdown - A modern aircraft carrier is thrown back in time to 1941 near Hawaii, just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

A single modern carrier said that they could handle everything the 1941 Japs could throw. But it never happened, couldn't happen, though the script teased the ever lovin' hell outta ya!

* https://youtu.be/HBErRh-1CFk full movie
.

Weird Harold wrote:

Theemile wrote:What if instead of the ancient Prince Adrian, Honor was on a new Star Knight or (better) an Alvarez. Could they have survived the ambush?

No. The surrender to Tourville set up the entire book, so Plot required that they be in an untenable solution; even if you upgraded to an Invictus SD(P) the ambush would have to be upgraded to match or there would have been no story.

Except if you upgraded the Prince Adrian to something like an Invictus podnought, uhh.... you can list the total number of systems they'd be ambushed for in on one hand. Manticore Binary, Grayson, Grendlesbane, and Trevor's Star... and to punch out the system defences in those systems.... well Tourville wouldn't have been commanding that.


Which then puts the whole plot into breakdown anyways, because it HAD to be Tourville commanding the ambush, so that he almost gets axed by Randsom, that Foraker turns into a cold-eyed, politically correct (and suspicious) tac witch instead of an oblivious one, and so on and so forth.

Prince Adrian was disabled by a wave of 84 capital missiles on the forward defenses.

At that time with those counter missiles, ECM and PDLCs. A Reliant BC is not coming through that unscathed.

The biggest plot device was that the Prince Adrian survived at all!

Though not a far stretch,IMO. Accuracy being what it was. Much easier to destroy the structural and electrical stability to an impeller ring, through the hammerhead, than to hit the order of magnitude smaller fusion plant.

To expect not lose even one of 16 Alpha nodes renders the whole thing moot.

Have fun,
T2M

cthia wrote: quote="Weird Harold"]

Theemile wrote:What if instead of the ancient Prince Adrian, Honor was on a new Star Knight or (better) an Alvarez. Could they have survived the ambush?

No. The surrender to Tourville set up the entire book, so Plot required that they be in an untenable solution; even if you upgraded to an Invictus SD(P) the ambush would have to be upgraded to match or there would have been no story.

Why does this remind me so much of *The Final Countdown - A modern aircraft carrier is thrown back in time to 1941 near Hawaii, just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

A single modern carrier said that they could handle everything the 1941 Japs could throw. But it never happened, couldn't happen, though the script teased the ever lovin' hell outta ya!

* https://youtu.be/HBErRh-1CFk full movie
.[/quote]


Try reading John Birmingham's Axis of Time Trilogy. A modern carrier battle group (ford class carrier) jumps from 2021 to June 2 1942 near Midway Island.