Honorverse Analytics: Why Manticore Won the War

Jonathan_S wrote:An SD should be able to tow twice as many pods at HMS Nike, so instead of a broadside of 35 - 37 missiles each would then launch over 1400! (Well except that even an SD likely can't control that many in a salvo, so it'd be a few launches of 450ish; which still lets you get off your pods before losing them to return fire).

You grossly overestimate their capability. To quote from the awful book, in 1920 "But the older, pre-pod ships could control only a hundred apiece". I really, really doubt they could control more in 1904.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:An SD should be able to tow twice as many pods at HMS Nike, so instead of a broadside of 35 - 37 missiles each would then launch over 1400! (Well except that even an SD likely can't control that many in a salvo, so it'd be a few launches of 450ish; which still lets you get off your pods before losing them to return fire).

You grossly overestimate their capability. To quote from the awful book, in 1920 "But the older, pre-pod ships could control only a hundred apiece". I really, really doubt they could control more in 1904.

Unfortunately, in the older books RMN SDs were towing 12-15 pods apiece and throwing them in the first salvo to avoid proximity nukes. ( which never made sense, since you had 3 minutes for the enemy missiles to reach you, so you might as well use the pods in 3 or 4 heavy launches, combined with your broadside launchers.) And because the fire control limitation has since been proven an issue, the SDS had to launch a fair percentage without control.

Theemile wrote:

kzt wrote:You grossly overestimate their capability. To quote from the awful book, in 1920 "But the older, pre-pod ships could control only a hundred apiece". I really, really doubt they could control more in 1904.

Unfortunately, in the older books RMN SDs were towing 12-15 pods apiece and throwing them in the first salvo to avoid proximity nukes. ( which never made sense, since you had 3 minutes for the enemy missiles to reach you, so you might as well use the pods in 3 or 4 heavy launches, combined with your broadside launchers.) And because the fire control limitation has since been proven an issue, the SDS had to launch a fair percentage without control.

(I shouldn't post when I'm that tired because I made an order of magnitude error in my earlier post. 14 pods is 140 missiles, not 1400 )


But good point on only 100 average being low. In SVW the BC Nike (normal broadside 22 missiles) alone fired off 70 capital missiles at the Peep wallers. I have a hard time believing that an SD 6 times the mass, with a normal broadside of 60% more tubes has only 40% more fire control.

In Flag in Exile's prologue we had 24 SD's flush 3,200 missiles from towed pods (133.33 average missiles per SD)

Though Honor's SD's at 3rd Yeltson had only 10 pods (100 missiles) each; apparently all they could tuck inside their wedges.

I'd find 150 or so control links for an older SD to be reasonable. That'd be about 35% more fire control redundancy on an early war SD than on a 1905-era BC.
(I'd bet the few Gryphons refit for internal MDMs also got additional fire control for pods - but the other old SDs may not have gotten any significant overhaul in that department)

Jonathan_S wrote:
Though Honor's SD's at 3rd Yeltson had only 10 pods (100 missiles) each; apparently all they could tuck inside their wedges.

When you only have a couple of hundred cubic km of space available I can see how a dozen 0.000005 cubic km pods could fill it all up.

I think it's important to note the Manties would see an attack on Manticore attack coming, the same way that they knew about the attack on Yeltsin.

That would let them be more clever than they were during the Battle of Manticore that happened in the books. On the other hand, Parnell would be leading the Op force, and he doesn't tend to panic.

The other thing is at least some of the BBs were needed where they were. Also there's a need to keep forces at Fleet Bases on the border to protect them in case the single assault wasn't definitive. Taking 100% of your wall sounds good in theory but "real" militaries need to hedge their bets.

noblehunter wrote:I think it's important to note the Manties would see an attack on Manticore attack coming, the same way that they knew about the attack on Yeltsin.

That would let them be more clever than they were during the Battle of Manticore that happened in the books. On the other hand, Parnell would be leading the Op force, and he doesn't tend to panic.

The other thing is at least some of the BBs were needed where they were. Also there's a need to keep forces at Fleet Bases on the border to protect them in case the single assault wasn't definitive. Taking 100% of your wall sounds good in theory but "real" militaries need to hedge their bets.

Manticore actually didn't know there was any attack coming on Yeltsin, because they used counter-intelligence to MAKE the attack on Yeltsin happen. Remember, they officially pulled 4 squadrons out from covering Yeltsin, when they actually put 4 squadrons into Yeltsin (2 from Home Fleet being officially ordered to Grendlesbane, and 2 from somewhere else); which made Parnell think Yeltsin suddenly got really weak.

And they didn't know about the Stalking Horse objective until the very moment Honor was sitting there, after duelling the other Steadholder (forget the name), and talked with Yu after they arrived "of course, they lured us out to go protect Grendlesbane".



Haven just had way too much experience, and a large enough fleet, Manticore couldn't completely track everything at all times. They'd know Haven pulled a significant portion to somewhere they couldn't find, but uhh, somewhere in Storm from the Shadows, apparently direct assaults on the home system of a first-tier star nation is almost unheard of. So Manticore would never actually expect Haven to pull a BoMa, whether 1905 or 1920.

Somtaaw wrote:Manticore actually didn't know there was any attack coming on Yeltsin, because they used counter-intelligence to MAKE the attack on Yeltsin happen. Remember, they officially pulled 4 squadrons out from covering Yeltsin, when they actually put 4 squadrons into Yeltsin (2 from Home Fleet being officially ordered to Grendlesbane, and 2 from somewhere else); which made Parnell think Yeltsin suddenly got really weak.

And they didn't know about the Stalking Horse objective until the very moment Honor was sitting there, after duelling the other Steadholder (forget the name), and talked with Yu after they arrived "of course, they lured us out to go protect Grendlesbane".

Haven just had way too much experience, and a large enough fleet, Manticore couldn't completely track everything at all times. They'd know Haven pulled a significant portion to somewhere they couldn't find, but uhh, somewhere in Storm from the Shadows, apparently direct assaults on the home system of a first-tier star nation is almost unheard of. So Manticore would never actually expect Haven to pull a BoMa, whether 1905 or 1920.

It's been ages since I've read the books on the first Havenite war. Thanks for the clarification.

On the other hand, once they found out that the entire Havenite wall had pulled out from their stations, it'd would be reasonable for the Admiralty to assume there could be only one target. Though I don't remember how much warning they had on fleet movements prior to the BoMa, which is the one of the closest things we've seen to fleet movements on that scale.

I think it was Steadholder Dog Food, though maybe that was just after Honor was done with him.

noblehunter wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Manticore actually didn't know there was any attack coming on Yeltsin, because they used counter-intelligence to MAKE the attack on Yeltsin happen. Remember, they officially pulled 4 squadrons out from covering Yeltsin, when they actually put 4 squadrons into Yeltsin (2 from Home Fleet being officially ordered to Grendlesbane, and 2 from somewhere else); which made Parnell think Yeltsin suddenly got really weak.

And they didn't know about the Stalking Horse objective until the very moment Honor was sitting there, after duelling the other Steadholder (forget the name), and talked with Yu after they arrived "of course, they lured us out to go protect Grendlesbane".

Haven just had way too much experience, and a large enough fleet, Manticore couldn't completely track everything at all times. They'd know Haven pulled a significant portion to somewhere they couldn't find, but uhh, somewhere in Storm from the Shadows, apparently direct assaults on the home system of a first-tier star nation is almost unheard of. So Manticore would never actually expect Haven to pull a BoMa, whether 1905 or 1920.

It's been ages since I've read the books on the first Havenite war. Thanks for the clarification.

On the other hand, once they found out that the entire Havenite wall had pulled out from their stations, it'd would be reasonable for the Admiralty to assume there could be only one target. Though I don't remember how much warning they had on fleet movements prior to the BoMa, which is the one of the closest things we've seen to fleet movements on that scale.

I think it was Steadholder Dog Food, though maybe that was just after Honor was done with him.

I don't remember if they even had warning for BoMa, but they did get warning during McQueen offensives when it was still the CPS. Each time McQueen started preparing for an offensive, we had a little segment where Admiral Givens would mention something about losing track of X squadrons of Peep wallers/battleships and they haven't turned up anywhere. And while the active Havenite wall for the 1920 BoMa was larger than the entire Peep wall of battle in 1900-1905, I don't believe it was significantly larger?

And depending on issuing order timing, by the time Manticoran scouts would realize "hey, wait a second, aren't there supposed to be Peep warships here?" and then get back to their sector hq's or bases, and the HQs & Bases to send that intel back to Manticore... the bad news would have bypassed the intel, and Peep ships would already be occupying Manticore, Sphinx and Gryphon before the intel arrives.

While discussing, SD Gryphons is nice, the RMN only had ~30 of them at the beginning of 1905 out of 186. Started the war with ~20 Bellerphon DN's out of 121.

Half of the RMN's capital ships were DN's, and effectively the same number of missile tubes as Honor's NIKE.... Half of the DN's were equivalent to the old SD's.

Half of the capital ships in RMN service were built/designed before missile combat or beginning of missile combat, so wouldn't have been optimized for it like the Gryphon(SD)/Bellerphon(DN) ships were to a greater extent.

So, no, a large portion of the RMN fleet wouldn't have had huge numbers of tractors, nor extra control links for missile pods. Would have had plenty, don't get me wrong, just not as much as shown in later battles during the 1st Havenite war.

Relax wrote:While discussing, SD Gryphons is nice, the RMN only had ~30 of them at the beginning of 1905 out of 186. Started the war with ~20 Bellerphon DN's out of 121.

Half of the RMN's capital ships were DN's, and effectively the same number of missile tubes as Honor's NIKE.... Half of the DN's were equivalent to the old SD's.

Half of the capital ships in RMN service were built/designed before missile combat or beginning of missile combat, so wouldn't have been optimized for it like the Gryphon(SD)/Bellerphon(DN) ships were to a greater extent.

So, no, a large portion of the RMN fleet wouldn't have had huge numbers of tractors, nor extra control links for missile pods. Would have had plenty, don't get me wrong, just not as much as shown in later battles during the 1st Havenite war.

What I really want to know is, If a Gryphon, an SD built with pods in mind, can only tow 15 or so pods via tractor, why can a Nevada BC, in a navy who was just gifted pods a month or two ago, tractor 24 per ship in SoV? It is another of those huge inconsistencies from Tremaine's battle which just does not make sense. The Nevada's should have been limited to towing 6-10 oversized missile pods (these were massive Cataphract-C models), similar to what a Reliant could in 1905.