"In Enemy Hands" - different ship.

I'd like to nitpick here and say that Honor/McKeon only localized Katana a few minutes before the launch was going to happen.

Which would be enough time to pump out Mk16s to take out Katana. Given the range, they could even use the max acceleration profile for one of the drive stages instead of the half-power setting.

Duckk wrote:

I'd like to nitpick here and say that Honor/McKeon only localized Katana a few minutes before the launch was going to happen.

Which would be enough time to pump out Mk16s to take out Katana. Given the range, they could even use the max acceleration profile for one of the drive stages instead of the half-power setting.

If we updated the Prince Adrian to a Sag-C, then if we assume the Haven ships were updated to approximately same, we're still in almost identical tactical scenario the only differences is both sides can throw (and soak) far more damage.

But in my point, if the Prince Consort had picked up Katana earlier than they had, they would have had more tactical options, ranging from new evasion to possible offensive action. The moment they actually did detect the Mars, it was too late to really do anything they were committed to approximately 30 minutes of missile fire regardless of their options.

The big tactical decisions were around the ECM being used, better in the case of the Havenites with ultra-new upgrades, and rather stupidly in the case of the Manticorans, along with the intercept/evasion courses.

Even excluding Honor's decision to shape her initial escape route to deliberately draw off the Havenite ambushers, entirely on the same plane, once the convoy was away she stayed on that plane. That allowed the Katana to get really close without having to push her wedge, which meant the ECM was more effective than it might have been, which lead to the difficulty in detection, which ultimately led to the eating the pod launched missiles and the freak node hits.

If we updated the Prince Adrian to a Sag-C, then if we assume the Haven ships were updated to approximately same, we're still in almost identical tactical scenario the only differences is both sides can throw (and soak) far more damage.

Which is a fair argument to make, but not for the scenario I posited and discussed.

Somtaaw wrote:If we updated the Prince Adrian to a Sag-C, then if we assume the Haven ships were updated to approximately same, we're still in almost identical tactical scenario the only differences is both sides can throw (and soak) far more damage.

We'll have to wait for the second Compendium to come out to be sure, but Haven didn't deploy brand new classes of cruisers into the second war. Even at First Manticore, they were still using Warlord-Cs - with their offensive weapons removed in favour of missile defense equipment.

They're not incapable of developing DDM cruisers - but thanks to the GSN section in House of Steel, we can guess at what it would take for them to do so.

The Mars-class needed 477,250 tons to mount a total of 28 SDM launchers.
Star Knight, 305,000 tons, 30 launchers.
Saganami-A, 393,000 tons, 34 launchers.
Saganami-B, 422,000 tons, 44 launchers.
Saganami-C finally creeps past the Mars(barely!) at 483,000 tons. It has 40 DDM launchers.

Granted, ship design is a lot more complex than a straight tonnage-to-weapons ratio, but that's a stark give-away to me. They need at least 50% more mass to come within shouting distance. Fits in with the 3 to 2 SD ratio some of the characters mentioned.

To counter the Sag-C, Haven needed 750,000 ton heavy cruisers. No wonder they gave up and concentrated on SD(P)s and LACs.

munroburton wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:If we updated the Prince Adrian to a Sag-C, then if we assume the Haven ships were updated to approximately same, we're still in almost identical tactical scenario the only differences is both sides can throw (and soak) far more damage.

We'll have to wait for the second Compendium to come out to be sure, but Haven didn't deploy brand new classes of cruisers into the second war. Even at First Manticore, they were still using Warlord-Cs - with their offensive weapons removed in favour of missile defense equipment.

They're not incapable of developing DDM cruisers - but thanks to the GSN section in House of Steel, we can guess at what it would take for them to do so.

The Mars-class needed 477,250 tons to mount a total of 28 SDM launchers.
Star Knight, 305,000 tons, 30 launchers.
Saganami-A, 393,000 tons, 34 launchers.
Saganami-B, 422,000 tons, 44 launchers.
Saganami-C finally creeps past the Mars(barely!) at 483,000 tons. It has 40 DDM launchers.

Granted, ship design is a lot more complex than a straight tonnage-to-weapons ratio, but that's a stark give-away to me. They need at least 50% more mass to come within shouting distance. Fits in with the 3 to 2 SD ratio some of the characters mentioned.

To counter the Sag-C, Haven needed 750,000 ton heavy cruisers. No wonder they gave up and concentrated on SD(P)s and LACs.

The Mars A was probably as close to a Star Knight as the PRN could get in 1908 - and that took a 451,750 ton ship to do so, so nearly a 50% increase over the 305,250 ton Star Knight.

And we're assuming that the RHN could build a ship big enough to fire a DDM out of a tube - Don't forget the SDs don't have broadside tubes due to the missile size, and every other DDM or MDM we've seen (Andermani, Erewhonese) has also been pod based due to it's size. Everyone other than Manticore has been taking a brute force approach when building their missiles, that even their locally built DDMs have been bigger than Mk 41s. Since we didn't see any update in Havenite MDM missile size during the 2nd war, I doubt any RHN DDM would have been more proportionally compact, and also not able to be tube fired.

Somtaaw wrote:

Duckk wrote:If we're talking about just dropping in a Sag-C with no other changes in the scenario, then it's going to come home for a number of reasons:

1. They localized Katana (the CA with the pods) long before they got into missile range. They could simply blow it out of space before getting into the Peep's range. Coupled with the Sag-C's higher accel, they could destroy the Katana, avoid Nuada's missile envelope (or just blow her up too), then leisurely leave the system without the Peeps able to fire a shot in return.

I'd like to nitpick here and say that Honor/McKeon only localized Katana a few minutes before the launch was going to happen. They had just enough time to roll ship in preparation for the anticipated 'possible pods' threat, give or take a few minutes before PNS Katana launched. If they'd had any more warning, they may have gone ahead and adjusted course to close with Nuada and stay entirely away from Katana. They knew the Sword was older, and how powerful her wedge could be (thus lacking pods), and they also knew they hadn't ever even heard of the Mars-class Katana (or how powerful their wedges were) for the possible pod load, so they tried to balance the threats of known versus unknown.

So even a Star Knight would have had a considerably better chance, simply because if they'd had those better sensors to burn through Katana's stealth earlier, they would have had even more time to see exactly how many pods she was towing, and to just go "oh hell no". It was the purely defensive stance of "lets try to blitz our way through and take whatever fire we need to hyper out" is what truly screwed the Prince Adrian, when they should have gone to full avoid the total unknown and take our chances in a closer range engagment with somebody we absolutely know we can take

To clear up a possible source of confusion, Katana was the PRN Sword-class CA with pods on tow, while Nuada was the PRN Mars-class CA that left pods behind at it's initial position in order to chase Prince Adrian.

And the PRN Mars-class was the much larger CA that was almost equivalent to a pre-war PRN BC in terms of size. The PRN Sword-class was equivalent to the RNM Crown Prince/Prince Consort class in terms of size:

In Enemy Hands, Chapter 14 wrote:Like Katana, PNS Dirk, the ship responsible for the middle interception zone in Turner's sector, was one of the older Sword-class ships. That was why the ops plan relegated her to the inner, less risky station and assigned the bigger Nuada to play the role of beater, closing in from three and a half light-minutes beyond the hyper limit to cut any target's retreat. The Mars class were expected to come as a nasty surprise to the Manties: almost as large as some of the PN's prewar battlecruisers, they took full advantage of the improved EW systems the Navy had acquired from its contacts in the Solarian League . . . and by reducing magazine space they'd also managed to pack in nearly twice the broadside of a Sword-class ship but gave up less than twenty gravities in maximum acceleration to do it.

In Enemy Hands, Chapter 16 wrote:Her eyes flicked to Luchner's face, but the exec's attentive expression gave no sign of the exasperation she knew he had to share. Katana had gone to five percent power the moment it became clear the Manty's maneuvers were going to bring the enemy ship back towards her. Katana's EW could hide that weak an impeller signature even from Manticoran sensors at anything over thirty light-seconds, and Zachary, Luchner, and Allworth had made an almost perfect estimate of the Manty's course. Unless she changed heading in the next twenty-three minutes, she would enter Katana's missile envelope, headed almost directly towards the Republican cruiser . . . and still a good half-hour's flight inside the hyper limit.
Under other circumstances, that would have made Zachary nervous. The citizen captain was no coward, but only a fool (which she also was not) would try to deny the combat edge Manticoran ships enjoyed. But Katana had powerful support ready to hand in the form of PNS Nuada, which would enter extreme engagement range barely ten minutes after Katana opened fire. More than that, the system defenders had been given ample time to identify their target. It was one of the older Prince Consort-class cruisers, not a more modern Star Knight, which meant she and Katana would be well matched.
Or would have been, Zachary thought with a sharklike smile, if not for the half-dozen missile pods trailing astern of her own ship.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

Vince wrote:To clear up a possible source of confusion, Katana was the PRN Sword-class CA with pods on tow, while Nuada was the PRN Mars-class CA that left pods behind at it's initial position in order to chase Prince Adrian.

And the PRN Mars-class was the much larger CA that was almost equivalent to a pre-war PRN BC in terms of size. The PRN Sword-class was equivalent to the RNM Crown Prince/Prince Consort class in terms of size

eh, for the most part, we've all remembered there was a Sword-class, and a Mars that were the ships that hammered the Prince Adrian. So we've all gotten the specific ships a bit backwards is a good nitpick, but at least we weren't totally mistaking the classes involved.


Good catch though, nonetheless

Kytheros wrote:

Relax wrote:You can't go anywhere in hyper with battle damage to your impellers when the star system in question resides in a Grav wave... Impeller nodes are bare ass naked to damage. Sure, there is armor. No class below at least BC can withstand a capital laser head hit in their impellers without blowing parts of them to bits. Even BC class is highly doubtful.

Entirely true ... but hits aren't automatically going to get the impeller rings in such a way that damage control can't patch things enough to get away. It all depends on the hit(s) taken.
For that matter, hits aren't guaranteed to get the alpha nodes at all.

If your alpha nodes do get hit in that situation, yeah, you're screwed.
But a better ship might have been able to stop the missile that caused irreparable alpha node damage. That's the main point, I think.


And, technically, you can still jump out with a grav wave, you just have to turn your wedge off, and not run into a disturbance in the grav wave before getting out of it (depending on the wave, that could mean changing hyper bands or needing to leave hyper altogether). Which is a risk that nobody's really going to run, and so the theoretical possibility should be discounted.

Actually that's what happens if you've lost one Alpha ring (one sail)

The aftermath of the grav-wave ambush against the Mantie convoy in SVW explains than with only 1 sail a ship could stabilize itself and survive (barring heavy turbulence) but had to be towed clear. But if it had no sails it would be instantly destroyed.

So that makes running with a damaged set of Alpha even crazier than you were saying

Slight diversion but still on the different ship speculation, in the main battle in A Call To Arms an ambush by a modern LAC, Roland or even better a Medusa would have been interesting.
Don't forget in the unlikely event that someone comments to mark it as a spoiler if you give out any details.

Daryl wrote:Slight diversion but still on the different ship speculation, in the main battle in A Call To Arms an ambush by a modern LAC, Roland or even better a Medusa would have been interesting.
Don't forget in the unlikely event that someone comments to mark it as a spoiler if you give out any details.

If you dig around we have an amusing thread about that shortly after ACtAs was released (or when the eARC was; don't remember).

It even got silly enough to wonder how a modern pinnace would do in that battle. It certainly has far more acceleration than anything that old - but apparently it's laser is still far weaker than the warship lasers of the era