Honorverse Analytics: Why Manticore Won the War

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:I have a different question.

Why does any ship not designed with pods in mind, have any number of tractors greater than 2 or so? Say, one at each end and even then... why? Isn't that what boat bays are for? Oddball sized stuff for some oddball mission?

Didn't they use tractor beams for the towed missile decoys off each sidewall? You'd want some redundancy on such a critical function (multiple tractor per broadside) even if you had no extra use for tractors.

A Nevada refit for Halo is designed to have dozens of towed platforms, which I assume gave them the happy benifit of being able to tow dozens of pods.

I would assume so, but that does not help hold pods on a ships rear end. Hammerhead would block them. Unless said tractors are on the hammerhead themselves and the decoy's deploy out of the hammerheads. This is possible. Broadside limitation? Though, aren't those decoy's described as broadside deployed? Technically, part of the broadside could be part of the hammerhead, port/starboard.

PS. Nevada was designed for around a handful per broadside I believe is the quote, though I also believe the quote was rather open ended and did not give a specific number. Hrmm, somewhere in SFTS...

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Didn't they use tractor beams for the towed missile decoys off each sidewall? You'd want some redundancy on such a critical function (multiple tractor per broadside) even if you had no extra use for tractors.

A Nevada refit for Halo is designed to have dozens of towed platforms, which I assume gave them the happy benifit of being able to tow dozens of pods.

I would assume so, but that does not help hold pods on a ships rear end. Hammerhead would block them. Unless said tractors are on the hammerhead themselves and the decoy's deploy out of the hammerheads. This is possible. Broadside limitation? Though, aren't those decoy's described as broadside deployed? Technically, part of the broadside could be part of the hammerhead, port/starboard.

PS. Nevada was designed for around a handful per broadside I believe is the quote, though I also believe the quote was rather open ended and did not give a specific number. Hrmm, somewhere in SFTS...

Good memory on the old decoys and the Halo platform count.

Here's the quote from OBS about the decoys (which is the only place I remember them being discussed in detail)
[quote=On Basilisk Station; Ch 30]Honor opened her mouth to snap orders, but Rafael Cardones had the reflexes of the very young. He had already reacted. The tactical board flashed as his ECM sprang from standby to active, and two fifty-ton decoys snapped out of their broadside bays, popping through specially opened portals in Fearless's sidewalls. Tractors moored them to the cruiser, holding the driveless lures on station to cover her flanks, as passive sensors listened to the incoming missiles, seeking the frequencies of their active homing systems, and jammers responded with white noise in an effort to blind them while fire control systems locked on the small, weaving targets.[/quote]
I'd forgotten they were broadside deployed and would have assumed that, like recon drones, they were dumped out through the ventral boat bays.


I think I found the description of Halo you were thinking of, but it was over in ToF, not SFTS.

Torch of Freedom wrote:But Halo didn't depend on single platforms. It depended on multiple platforms—five of them in each broadside, for an Indefatigable, more for ships-of-the-wall—to generate multiple false targets and provide remote jammer nodes in carefully integrated defensive plans. And since they were small enough to be carried in substantial numbers, they could be quickly replenished as they eroded—as planned—under incoming fire.

Though an unrelated tidbit in SFTS caught my eye.

Storm from the Shadows wrote:The battlecruisers' Keyhole platforms were already deployed, but the Keyholes' mass was low enough that the Nikes' acceleration curves hadn't been significantly affected. Deploying the missile pods, still tractored to their motherships but clear of those motherships' sidewalls (and wedges), was another matter entirely, and the task group's acceleration dropped from six hundred and three gravities to only five hundred and eighty.

Given that the 5th generation SD version of Keyhole I was 65,000 tons I wouldn't call a pair of BC(L) scale ones exactly low in mass...

Jonathan_S wrote:

I think I found the description of Halo you were thinking of, but it was over in ToF, not SFTS.

Torch of Freedom wrote:But Halo didn't depend on single platforms. It depended on multiple platforms—five of them in each broadside, for an Indefatigable, more for ships-of-the-wall—to generate multiple false targets and provide remote jammer nodes in carefully integrated defensive plans. And since they were small enough to be carried in substantial numbers, they could be quickly replenished as they eroded—as planned—under incoming fire.

Though an unrelated tidbit in SFTS caught my eye.

Storm from the Shadows wrote:The battlecruisers' Keyhole platforms were already deployed, but the Keyholes' mass was low enough that the Nikes' acceleration curves hadn't been significantly affected. Deploying the missile pods, still tractored to their motherships but clear of those motherships' sidewalls (and wedges), was another matter entirely, and the task group's acceleration dropped from six hundred and three gravities to only five hundred and eighty.

Given that the 5th generation SD version of Keyhole I was 65,000 tons I wouldn't call a pair of BC(L) scale ones exactly low in mass...

If memory serves, the Keyhole modules have their own wedges - self propulsion would negate the issue of mass drag on mothership's acceleration. Note that the above quoted paragraph specifically describes the pods as being tractored and causing the drag, while no mention of tractors is used for the Keyholes. The mass comment does seem odd, though, given what we know that no Keyhole variant (even the early, limited function testbeds) has been mentioned to be smaller than 20Ktons, which is still more massive than ~8 pods per deployed keyhole.

[quote="Theemile"
If memory serves, the Keyhole modules have their own wedges - self propulsion would negate the issue of mass drag on mothership's acceleration. Note that the above quoted paragraph specifically describes the pods as being tractored and causing the drag, while no mention of tractors is used for the Keyholes. The mass comment does seem odd, though, given what we know that no Keyhole variant (even the early, limited function testbeds) has been mentioned to be smaller than 20Ktons, which is still more massive than ~8 pods per deployed keyhole.[/quote]
They do, but David says they don't usually use them.

"Keyhole -- and Keyhole-2 -- are both towed systems, and they are not towed on any physical tether. They are towed on tractors, and they are primarily powered by transmission from the mothership. They do have some onboard propulsive capability, using the same impeller hardware which was developed for the Ghost Rider recon drones, but that capability is purely secondary. In theory, they could maintain the station on their onboard drives while remaining in the basket to be hit by power transmissions from the mothership and to continue to perform their relay functions. In fact, it's simpler and less complicated to operate them in what amounts to full-time towed mode. There are less things to go wrong, and if the ship takes battle damage sufficient to cut it off from a still functional Keyhole, the ship in question is probably so far up the creek already that it's not going to worry about bells and whistles."

From SftS, when Henke was facing down Byng.

"CIC's just picked up a status change," the operations officer said. "The Sollies have deployed some sort of passive defensive system."
"Such as?" Michelle asked, crossing to Adenauer's console and gazing down at the ops officer's displays.
"Hard to say, really, Ma'am. Whatever it is, Max and I don't think they've brought it fully on-line yet. What it looks like is a variation on the tethered decoy concept. From what the recon platforms can tell us, each of their ships has just deployed a half-dozen or so captive platforms on either flank. They have to have a defensive function, and I don't think they're big enough to carry the sort of on-board point defense stations our Keyhole platforms do.

6 HALO platforms from either side, for a total of 12, and let's be generous and say since these are Indefatigables and Nevadas, assigned to Frontier Fleet (not Battle Fleet), they actually have enough operational experience to give at least some consideration to battle damage and have a 50% reserve for 9 tractors per broadside and a total of 18.

This is actually a 50% increase over what Peep Battleships had, considering Peep battleships had more tractors per ton than any other Peep warship in space, prior to podnought era.

Somtaaw wrote:From SftS, when Henke was facing down Byng.

"CIC's just picked up a status change," the operations officer said. "The Sollies have deployed some sort of passive defensive system."
"Such as?" Michelle asked, crossing to Adenauer's console and gazing down at the ops officer's displays.
"Hard to say, really, Ma'am. Whatever it is, Max and I don't think they've brought it fully on-line yet. What it looks like is a variation on the tethered decoy concept. From what the recon platforms can tell us, each of their ships has just deployed a half-dozen or so captive platforms on either flank. They have to have a defensive function, and I don't think they're big enough to carry the sort of on-board point defense stations our Keyhole platforms do.

6 HALO platforms from either side, for a total of 12, and let's be generous and say since these are Indefatigables and Nevadas, assigned to Frontier Fleet (not Battle Fleet), they actually have enough operational experience to give at least some consideration to battle damage and have a 50% reserve for 9 tractors per broadside and a total of 18.

This is actually a 50% increase over what Peep Battleships had, considering Peep battleships had more tractors per ton than any other Peep warship in space, prior to podnought era.

Those have to be Nevadas, since the ToF comment with 10 Halo Decoys was for Indefatigables.

SO (for our details):

Indefatigable BC (Flight IV Aegis upgrade)- 10 Halo decoys (5 per broadside)

Nevada BC - 12 Halo Decoys (6 per broadside)

Scientist/Vega SD (Fleet 2000 Aegis Upgrade) - 16 Halo decoys (8 per broadside)

Theemile wrote:
Those have to be Nevadas, since the ToF comment with 10 Halo Decoys was for Indefatigables.

SO (for our details):

Indefatigable BC (Flight IV Aegis upgrade)- 10 Halo decoys (5 per broadside)

Nevada BC - 12 Halo Decoys (6 per broadside)

Scientist/Vega SD (Fleet 2000 Aegis Upgrade) - 16 Halo decoys (8 per broadside)

It's a mix of classes. Back in chapter 23, as Michelle's battlecruisers slip into Monica Artemis' CIC IDs Byng's BCs as 8 Nevadas and 9 Indefatigables.

And the the phrasing "half-dozen or so" is vague enough that it could have actually been 5 per broadside rather than 6 for all of them.
Or it might have been reported imprecisely because some (Nevadas) deployed 6 while others (Indefatigables) deployed 5 which led CIC to be unsure of their exact counts.

But the report is indefinite enough I don't think we can say more than that the Nevada's might mount an extra pair of Halo platforms.

Jonathan_S wrote:It's a mix of classes. Back in chapter 23, as Michelle's battlecruisers slip into Monica Artemis' CIC IDs Byng's BCs as 8 Nevadas and 9 Indefatigables.

And the the phrasing "half-dozen or so" is vague enough that it could have actually been 5 per broadside rather than 6 for all of them.

Or it might have been reported imprecisely because some (Nevadas) deployed 6 while others (Indefatigables) deployed 5 which led CIC to be unsure of their exact counts.

But the report is indefinite enough I don't think we can say more than that the Nevada's might mount an extra pair of Halo platforms.

But as it turned out in the end, it wasn't enough. Not for Byng, Crandel or Filareta.

It makes me wonder what the defenses of the various Malign starships are going to look like and how effective will they be? I'm a firm believer from real life in preparing to fight not this war or the next but the next 4 or 5 after those.

Their passive and active countermeasures and anti-missile systems aren't going to be copied from the Sollies or any Solarian allies (assuming they have any.)

For planning purposes, given the number of times Haven had surprised Mantacore and vice-versa, if I were on the Admiralty planning staff I'd be working from the assumption that those defensive systems were at least as good as the best my ships have available or in development.

Paranoid? Maybe, but I want as many of my people and ships to come home again without holes poked in them as I can arrange for. And I'd want them to have maybe not the BIGGEST Hammer to drop on the other guy, but the MOST EFFECTIVE ones, those best able to fine ways around or through MaN defenses.

robert132 wrote:It makes me wonder what the defenses of the various Malign starships are going to look like and how effective will they be? I'm a firm believer from real life in preparing to fight not this war or the next but the next 4 or 5 after those.

That's totally silly. It's 1915 in the US, how do you prepare to fight the 6th war to come? That's the 1990 Iraq war. Please explain how much effort you are going to put into training on tank table VIII and recruiting helicopter pilots in vs training your infantry troops on accurate shooting on the m1903 Springfield?

Which will likely pay more dividends on the battlefield?

kzt wrote:

robert132 wrote:It makes me wonder what the defenses of the various Malign starships are going to look like and how effective will they be? I'm a firm believer from real life in preparing to fight not this war or the next but the next 4 or 5 after those.

That's totally silly. It's 1915 in the US, how do you prepare to fight the 6th war to come? That's the 1990 Iraq war. Please explain how much effort you are going to put into training on tank table VIII and recruiting helicopter pilots in vs training your infantry troops on accurate shooting on the m1903 Springfield?

Which will likely pay more dividends on the battlefield?

To some extent that depends on how you define a war.

You could also count it as:

Occupation of Haiti
Sugar Intervention (Cuba)
Occupation of the Dominican Republic
WWI
Russian Civil War
WWII

But even so some of your effort needs to be focused 20 or more years out, to steer R&D, more needs to be looking about 10 years or so out to steer major weapons development projects, and a lot looking 2-5 years out looking at acquisitions and training.
How many wars there may be in that time isn't as relevant as keeping a useful planning horizon. (Though it's a good idea not to lock yourself into the assumption that you're always going to be fighting in the same area and terrain)