Tamaguchi's biggest Mistake in SoV

Weird Harold wrote:

Potato wrote:Uhh...no. The Marksman-class are CLs roughly the size of a Star Knight. By no means are they anything close to a SD(P).

OK, CLs rather than BCs, but read what I wrote: They are HALF an SD(P); the tactical section half. The magazines and pods are launched from the modular arsenal ships.

I get what you’re talking about operationally they’re a pod oriented design with externally supplied pods; though I’d bet they’re closer to the fire control of a BC(P) than an SD.

OTOH they seem to be an expected unbalanced “glass cannon” design with nothing like the defensive firepower of a BC(P), much less the half SD(P) you compared them to.

Still for for an interim rush job they’re far from useless. Just very vulnerable if their offensive throw weight can’t crush an enemy before it can sink it’s teeth into the Marksman.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
OK, CLs rather than BCs, but read what I wrote: They are HALF an SD(P); the tactical section half. The magazines and pods are launched from the modular arsenal ships.

I get what you’re talking about operationally they’re a pod oriented design with externally supplied pods; though I’d bet they’re closer to the fire control of a BC(P) than an SD.

OTOH they seem to be an expected unbalanced “glass cannon” design with nothing like the defensive firepower of a BC(P), much less the half SD(P) you compared them to.

Still for for an interim rush job they’re far from useless. Just very vulnerable if their offensive throw weight can’t crush an enemy before it can sink it’s teeth into the Marksman.

The marksmen were only able to control 60 missiles each with the control plugs. They were also able to do a semi managed mode, where they could control 180 missiles, but at a lower success rate. That's awesome for a CL, but SD(p)s control between 300 and 800 missiles, without Apollo.

Jonathan_S wrote:I get what you’re talking about operationally they’re a pod oriented design with externally supplied pods; though I’d bet they’re closer to the fire control of a BC(P) than an SD.

They are explicitly stated as an interim solution until Erewhon can ramp up to SD(p) production. They're not up to fully duplicating an RMN SD's firepower, but they were intended to counter SLN SD's on a one-to-one basis (counting the marksmen and arsenals as "one.")

Theemile wrote:The marksmen were only able to control 60 missiles each with the control plugs. They were also able to do a semi managed mode, where they could control 180 missiles, but at a lower success rate. That's awesome for a CL, but SD(p)s control between 300 and 800 missiles, without Apollo.

IIRC, 60 missiles or 180 with time-sharing, compares favorably with a Scientist-class SD; the intended opponents of the Marksmen.

Weird Harold wrote:

Theemile wrote:The marksmen were only able to control 60 missiles each with the control plugs. They were also able to do a semi managed mode, where they could control 180 missiles, but at a lower success rate. That's awesome for a CL, but SD(p)s control between 300 and 800 missiles, without Apollo.

IIRC, 60 missiles or 180 with time-sharing, compares favorably with a Scientist-class SD; the intended opponents of the Marksmen.

Very true. The Scientist only has about 50 missile control channels in a broadside. If necessary, Marksmen could put 3and a half missiles downstream for every missile the Scientists could ( from pods, scientist tubes are around 1 min/ launch). But they are just not in podlayer territory.

It seems odd to me that the SLN sees the need for deploying pods against the RMN. But if they do not have the control links, what is the point? The battle is over far sooner in this era than in the pre-FTL good old days against the Peeps where using their ship launched tubes after the massive salvo is available. The strategy of a massive launch is to overwhelm the enemy defense. If you have to stagger because you lack the control links, while facing Manty defensive fire to boot?... shrug

cthia wrote:It seems odd to me that the SLN sees the need for deploying pods against the RMN. But if they do not have the control links, what is the point? The battle is over far sooner in this era than in the pre-FTL good old days against the Peeps where using their ship launched tubes after the massive salvo is available. The strategy of a massive launch is to overwhelm the enemy defense. If you have to stagger because you lack the control links, while facing Manty defensive fire to boot?... shrug

This is an illustration of how out of date SLN design philosophy is. I think the old Peep BBs that were considered not quite up to front line service by just about everyone in the first Havenite war, have more missile control links than SLN SDs. As for the pods, I think the need for them is a combination of they allow the biggest war heads, and the other side uses them so we need to also.

Jonathan_S wrote:OTOH they seem to be an expected unbalanced “glass cannon” design with nothing like the defensive firepower of a BC(P), much less the half SD(P) you compared them to.

When they're paired with Arsenal ships, yeah, they're kind of extreme glass cannons. But the last time we checked in on Maya they had their first proper BC(P)s so they won't be needing the arsenal ships anymore. So the Marksmen can get their missing missile tubes back and return to being roughly the CL cousins of Sag-Bs.

Hegemon wrote:Even odder than that, 8 BCs and 8 DDs control a total of 500 Cataphract-C missiles each (62 missile per BC+DD), even though Admiral Filareta's SDs could control no more than 40 Cataphract-C missiles each (427 SDs could control 17000 missiles). It seems odd even for SLN a BC/DD pair can jointly control half again as many missiles as a SD.

Maybe not as much as you'd think. The Nevada class have 28 tubes in each broadside, and even War Harvest class have at least 6. Wiki claims the Rampart class have 10, though I don't remember this being confirmed anywhere.

Even taking the War Harvest figures, double broadsides from the destroyers plus standard broadsides from the battlecruisers would be 40 missiles per salvo - a 50% redundancy in ships that do see combat doesn't seem too excessive and would provide the 60 missiles per salvo of fire control.

Edit, and with the Rampart figures, a combined broadside (double for the DDs) of 48 requires only a 25% redundancy in fire control overall.

Part of me wonders whether Tamaguchi shouldn't have forced Tremaine's hand to go on and execute that tricky microjump, perhaps forcing him into a mistake. I would liked to have seen that maneuver.

Theemile wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
Very true. The Scientist only has about 50 missile control channels in a broadside.

A small correction: in ART Filareta says that his 427 Scientists can control 17000 missiles. That is exactly 40 missiles per ship, not 50.