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Stupid Apollo Tricks

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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by drinksmuchcoffee   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 5:57 pm

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Just a pet peeve.

Battlecruisers were historically used by Manticore for deep raids on enemy system infrastructure. In spite of this there are relatively few examples (the only ones I can think of were a few of the Sanskrit raids in At All Costs) of such raids any of the Honorverse books.
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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by Somtaaw   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 6:08 pm

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drinksmuchcoffee wrote:Just a pet peeve.

Battlecruisers were historically used by Manticore for deep raids on enemy system infrastructure. In spite of this there are relatively few examples (the only ones I can think of were a few of the Sanskrit raids in At All Costs) of such raids any of the Honorverse books.



Well actually that's the Battlecruiser role in general, Manticore's favorite ship just happens to be the BC too.

For actual usage of battlecruisers in a raider role, Tourville in Silesia when Honor was doing her thing in the merchant cruisers was a battlecruiser raid force.
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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by kzt   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 6:15 pm

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drinksmuchcoffee wrote:Battlecruisers were historically used by Manticore for deep raids on enemy system infrastructure. In spite of this there are relatively few examples (the only ones I can think of were a few of the Sanskrit raids in At All Costs) of such raids any of the Honorverse books.

When they tried to carry out their long planned "glory to the battlecruiser" raid plans the peeps crushed the BCs like bugs.

So they stopped doing that.
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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by runsforcelery   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 6:18 pm

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When did that happen? Not saying it didn't; I just can't remember writing that battle, right off hand. Of course, I've written a lot of battles by now . . . . .


kzt wrote:
drinksmuchcoffee wrote:Battlecruisers were historically used by Manticore for deep raids on enemy system infrastructure. In spite of this there are relatively few examples (the only ones I can think of were a few of the Sanskrit raids in At All Costs) of such raids any of the Honorverse books.

When they tried to carry out their long planned "glory to the battlecruiser" raid plans the peeps crushed the BCs like bugs.

So they stopped doing that.


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by munroburton   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 6:28 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:When did that happen? Not saying it didn't; I just can't remember writing that battle, right off hand. Of course, I've written a lot of battles by now . . . . .


kzt wrote:When they tried to carry out their long planned "glory to the battlecruiser" raid plans the peeps crushed the BCs like bugs.

So they stopped doing that.


It happened off-screen - a Peep BB skipper(Oliver Diamoto's captain) who later got killed at 2nd Hancock had previously ambushed two or three RMN BCs on such a raid.
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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by caias   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 6:29 pm

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drinksmuchcoffee wrote:
caias wrote:...
I'm personally curious about what some of those tricks might be. I can imagine, for example, a division of Rolands or Sag-Cs showing up and trashing the industrial infrastructure of any given system while declining to engage the defensive forces in system, for example, just by utilizing stealth and speed. Show up, broadcast your intentions so the civvies can evacuate, and just pull the fleet presences all over the place. Relatively light force commitment for relatively high return.


One of the practical concerns with your strategy is that if you launch a broad-based attack with relatively light forces everywhere your enemy can concentrate their forces in a small number of places and bushwhack you.


No they won't. SL RDs aren't stealthy enough to operate near RMN ships, their ships aren't fast enough to keep up, and they don't have enough missile range to effectively execute mousetraps, especially given their demonstrably sloppy astrogration. In addition, if the RHN has difficulty localizing RMN destroyers in stealth, I'm pretty sure the SLN won't detect them at all if the RMN doesn't want them to.

But, even taking for granted that for some reason it wouldn't work, the question at hand isn't really "What is the best strategy for the GA to pursue", but "What could the GA do with the tech advantages they haven't bothered to expose to the Sollies yet".

EDIT: Edited the first paragraph for clarity.
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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by Annachie   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 6:40 pm

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Why bother with the reserve fleet?

Now fleet bases ...

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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by kzt   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 7:48 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:When did that happen? Not saying it didn't; I just can't remember writing that battle, right off hand. Of course, I've written a lot of battles by now . . . . .

It was a comment you made here or on the bar, basically they ran into the rear area security BBs and got their heads handed to them when someone asked you about BC raids. I don't think you ever wrote it into a story.

It's also an example to about how the RMN didn't get everything right when they planned out how they were going to fight the peeps.
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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by Duckk   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 8:01 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:When did that happen? Not saying it didn't; I just can't remember writing that battle, right off hand. Of course, I've written a lot of battles by now . . . . .


http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/102/1
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Re: Stupid Apollo Tricks
Post by Vince   » Sun Aug 14, 2016 9:31 pm

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Duckk wrote:
runsforcelery wrote:When did that happen? Not saying it didn't; I just can't remember writing that battle, right off hand. Of course, I've written a lot of battles by now . . . . .


http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/102/1

Also:
Echos of Honor, Chapter 30 wrote:Everyone knew battleships couldn't fight proper ships of the wall and that battlecruisers were even more outclassed by battleships than battleships were by superdreadnoughts. Fortunately, ships of the wall usually couldn't catch battleships, and battleships usually couldn't catch battlecruisers. Unfortunately for the Royal Manticoran Navy, that rule didn't always hold true. It especially didn't hold true when the battleship's captain had the nerve to take her own impellers off-line and just sit there like a hole in space until the Manties were actually in extreme missile range. Hall had that kind of nerve, and less than a month after Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville blew out the Adler System picket, she had neatly ambushed a trio of raiding Manty battlecruisers. They hadn't had the remotest suspicion she was even there until they'd built vectors which gave them no choice, even with their superior acceleration rates, but to come into her engagement range.
RMN battlecruisers were tough customers, especially given the superiority of the Star Kingdom's EW and missiles. Many Republican officers would have hesitated to engage three of them at once, even if she did out-mass them by almost two-to-one. That, in fact, had been Citizen Commander Young's earnest recommendation. Hall hadn't taken it, however . . . and she'd blown two of her enemies right out of space. The third had gotten away, but with enough damage to keep her out of action for months, whereas Schaumberg's repairs had required only five weeks of yard time. It had been a small-scale action, but it had also been a very difficult assignment, and Diamato had been on the bridge when it all went down. Despite the Manties' numerical advantage—not to mention the two destroyers screening them—Hall had made it seem almost routine. The only people who'd appeared more confident than her of her ability to handle it had been her bridge crew (aside from Young), and as Diamato watched their crisp efficiency, he had realized something he'd never quite grasped before.
Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

As you said, runsforcelery, you've "written a lot of battles by now . . . . ." What you left out is 'in multiple books and multiple series'.

It's one of the problems of being the author, instead of the reader. Even within a single series this problem of continuity occurs (having multiple series just compounds the problem). And the problem only gets worse as more stories are published.

The reader sees only the final stories as published, plus anything the author chooses to reveal in public. Including any errors that makes their way through to publication that shouldn't have (like The Universe of Honor Harrington short story published in the More Than Honor anthology derived the an outdated version of the tech bible).

The author has in his head every story published, all the edits, all the story ideas that didn't make it to publication, all the stories currently being written, all the story ideas that he hasn't written yet, plus the entire backstory for the stories (series), and all those revisions, both published and unpublished.

Its a wonder that an author can do that, and my hat's off to anyone who can do it. As a reader, I just enjoy the stories.
Last edited by Vince on Sun Aug 14, 2016 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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