The Apollo Triple Ripple

Weird Harold wrote:

Vince wrote:Eighth Fleet released the five thousand Apollo pods which had been tractored to its SD(P)s' hulls, then spent another three minutes rolling additional pods. In all, it deployed a total of 7,776, almost exactly half its total ammunition allotment, given the Andermani ships' lighter magazine capacity.
Then it fired.

Boldface is my emphasis.

Note that Honor left all her CLACs at Trevor's Star prior to bringing in the remainder of her SDs through the Junction in a mass transit, so the figure of 38 is all wallers.

That doesn't change the point in any way. 8th fleet dumped half its ammunition allotment in one salvo; that is NOT a normal salvo for 8th fleet and must therefore be a maximum or near maximum for what 8th Fleet could control.

Maybe, maybe not. Remember that Eighth Fleet (Honor) still had to either force the surrender of 2nd Fleet (Tourville) or destroy it and therefore needed to retain enough ammunition on-board to do the job if Tourville wasn't taken in by Honor's bluff (the single salvo of less than 60 missiles fired at empty space near 2nd Fleet).

Vince wrote:Maybe, maybe not. Remember that Eighth Fleet (Honor) still had to either force the surrender of 2nd Fleet (Tourville) or destroy it and therefore needed to retain enough ammunition on-board to do the job if Tourville wasn't taken in by Honor's bluff (the single salvo of less than 60 missiles fired at empty space near 2nd Fleet).

Whatever the reason Honor held back half he missile load, she definitely did not fire a minimum control capacity salvo. That "minimum capacity" assertion is what I was refuting. 8th Fleet fired something closer to maximum than minimum.

Harold, nobody that I can see here has ever asserted that this was a 'minimum control capacity' salvo. [the phrase is nonsense anyway, since the minimum capacity would the number that they _have_ to fire for the system to work, and it's self-evident that that number is 1 pod] What has been said is that these numbers provide a lower limit on the maximum capacity of 38 SD(p)s, and they do. It is clear and evident that those pods were under full control, therefore it is reasonable to say that there must have been at least that many slots available in the fleet fire-control system. The reason that it's a lower limit is that there _are_ valid reasons for 8th Fleet not to fire everything they can in one go and it is therefore impossible to say that they could or could not have fired more. One can, with properly-supported reasoning, argue that the stated number represents any arbitrary percentage of the maximum available capacity, but one cannot simply assert it.

Weird Harold wrote:

Vince wrote:Maybe, maybe not. Remember that Eighth Fleet (Honor) still had to either force the surrender of 2nd Fleet (Tourville) or destroy it and therefore needed to retain enough ammunition on-board to do the job if Tourville wasn't taken in by Honor's bluff (the single salvo of less than 60 missiles fired at empty space near 2nd Fleet).

Whatever the reason Honor held back half he missile load, she definitely did not fire a minimum control capacity salvo. That "minimum capacity" assertion is what I was refuting. 8th Fleet fired something closer to maximum than minimum.

Vince wrote:Go back and look at Theemile's full post. It specifically refers only to 8th fleet (Harrington) controlling missiles in the salvo it fired at 5th Fleet (Chin). It isn't concerned with D'Orville's (Home Fleet), Kuzak's (3rd Fleet) fire at 2nd Fleet (Tourville), or Alistair McKeon's (attached to 3rd Fleet) fire at 5th Fleet (Chin).

So how come Alistair's Apollo attacks on Chin's forces were only using a limited amount of missiles. If they can stack 3 or 4 salvos of Apollo pods, they could have been doing a hell of a lot more damage to Chin's forces.

Rakhmamort wrote:So how come Alistair's Apollo attacks on Chin's forces were only using a limited amount of missiles. If they can stack 3 or 4 salvos of Apollo pods, they could have been doing a hell of a lot more damage to Chin's forces.

Because Kuzak was smoking crack and ordered the fleet to not roll pods.

kzt wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:So how come Alistair's Apollo attacks on Chin's forces were only using a limited amount of missiles. If they can stack 3 or 4 salvos of Apollo pods, they could have been doing a hell of a lot more damage to Chin's forces.

Because Kuzak was smoking crack and ordered the fleet to not roll pods.

But McKeon's ships were autonomous and tasked to take on Chin's forces. McKeon could have stacked lots and lots of pods before he launched them in a big wave and slapped Chin's forces silly.
Or if Keyhole II could have handled that much missiles, he could have chosen to totally wreck the fleet inside the hyper limit so 3rd fleet would only be under fire from one direction.

Since he didn't do it, either he's not really that good a combat commander or the equipment he has couldn't handle the salvo size.

Weird Harold wrote:

Vince wrote:Maybe, maybe not. Remember that Eighth Fleet (Honor) still had to either force the surrender of 2nd Fleet (Tourville) or destroy it and therefore needed to retain enough ammunition on-board to do the job if Tourville wasn't taken in by Honor's bluff (the single salvo of less than 60 missiles fired at empty space near 2nd Fleet).

Whatever the reason Honor held back half he missile load, she definitely did not fire a minimum control capacity salvo. That "minimum capacity" assertion is what I was refuting. 8th Fleet fired something closer to maximum than minimum.

You all are forgetting something. The range was beyond the range that the apollo control missile could talk to honors SDP's.

She used a hermes buoy as a relay. The data capacity of the ship to Hermes buoy to missiles was 60 pods. My guess is that the limitation is in keyhole two. IMO 60 Mk-23-E missiles is probably the limit that one keyhole 2 pod could control. The other option would be 30 missiles per keyhole 2, or 60 per ship, but IMO this is unlikely, because it provides no redundancy and a maximum 1 minute salvo size.

darrell wrote:You all are forgetting something. The range was beyond the range that the apollo control missile could talk to honors SDP's.

She used a hermes buoy as a relay. The data capacity of the ship to Hermes buoy to missiles was 60 pods. My guess is that the limitation is in keyhole two. IMO 60 Mk-23-E missiles is probably the limit that one keyhole 2 pod could control. The other option would be 30 missiles per keyhole 2, or 60 per ship, but IMO this is unlikely, because it provides no redundancy and a maximum 1 minute salvo size.

Less than 60 missiles, not 60 pods (60 pods would equal 480 attack/ECM missiles plus 60 Apollo control missiles).

And while 8th Fleet (Honor) was out of range of 2nd Fleet (Tourville), 8th Fleet was outside the hyper limit. For 2nd Fleet to escape back across the hyper limit, I strongly suspect 2nd Fleet would have to come into range (either normal or extended with Apollo) of 8th Fleet. If nothing else, 8th Fleet could have done the same thing to 2nd Fleet that Oversteegan did to Thurgood at Meyers.

darrell wrote:
You all are forgetting something. The range was beyond the range that the apollo control missile could talk to honors SDP's.

She used a hermes buoy as a relay. The data capacity of the ship to Hermes buoy to missiles was 60 pods. My guess is that the limitation is in keyhole two. IMO 60 Mk-23-E missiles is probably the limit that one keyhole 2 pod could control. The other option would be 30 missiles per keyhole 2, or 60 per ship, but IMO this is unlikely, because it provides no redundancy and a maximum 1 minute salvo size.

Huh? What? Where are all these things written? A Hermes bouy being used as control links for 60 pods worth of missiles, range limits of Apollo etc...

Rakhmamort wrote:But McKeon's ships were autonomous and tasked to take on Chin's forces. McKeon could have stacked lots and lots of pods before he launched them in a big wave and slapped Chin's forces silly.

No, they were under her control and attached to 3rd fleet, so when she directed 3rd fleet to not roll pods because of PLOT they didn't roll any pods.

It's all PLOT. All of the insane things that Kuzak directs 3rd fleet to do are there solely to efficiently get them destroyed so Honor can come in to save the day. Hence, after she and her CoS list all the advantages 3rd fleet has on 2nd she then methodically throws every single one away without anyone objecting. There is a reason I refer to AAC as that awful book.