cthia wrote: snip
And they weren’t maneuvering — didn’t even have their wedges up. They were frigging sitting ducks, and I was so damned confident I held all the cards that I just let the fucking Hypatians kill a couple of hundred of my people and take out my entire un-deployed supply of missiles.
snip
cthia wrote:The SLN just entered a system meaning business. But if they meant business, why wouldn't all their ships keep their wedges up?
runsforcelery wrote:Because we're talking about freighters with commercial grade impellers, not his warships; because they didn't need them against zero defenses; because they were in orbit and not maneuvering; because leaving them up when not needed eats into how long they last between overhauls; because worn nodes are less efficient (and more subject to catastrophic failure) than unworn nodes; and because their warships did have their wedges up.
cthia wrote:Thanks for reply. I understand that they were freighters. I certainly understand powering down all unessential systems to save wear and tear from
PACMAN gobbling up widgets, sprockets, cogs and nodes. But why did the passage allude to the fact that they were not maneuvering nor had any wedges up? Was that simply literary sugar injected solely for the reader?
I guess ultimately what I'm getting at is why did Hajdu make it so easy to kill his freighters - which were stock full of missiles? Even if it were a situation that wasn't as important - as in a board game - wouldn't a player naturally arrange for his missiles to be surrounded by protection? And to also have them tactically deployed in the best manner possible? Shouldn't paranoia surrounding your depot of missiles be a given? In every similar situation involving the Manties, they took extra precautions to insure the safety of their missile supply. I realize that Hajdu didn't foresee any danger. I also acknowledge that ultimately, dealing with Manty stealth, the result may have been unchanged in the end, but it still seems like a mistake of inexperience. ::tactical shrug::
runsforcelery wrote:It's not a factor of inexperience. The inexperience is in failing to successfully sanitize the system and figure out there were bad guys present.
His thought about the wedges being down is because the attack only worked against a target with no wedge or with one that the recon drone could avoid on its way in. In other words, he's not saying: "Damn! I should have had those wedges up because of the possibility of an attack!" He's saying: "Damn! If their wedges had been up [for whatever reason] they couldn't have gotten away with that!" And his missiles were surrounded by oodles of protection: like his entire damned fleet. The protection in question simply didn't see the attack coming because the attack birds were Ghostrider drones that started in close (they were left behind) and closed very, very slowly until the instant in which they executed their actual attack runs. (And, BTW, I don't immediately recall any situation in which the Manties found themselves in a similar situation.)
In other words, they succeeded only because they carefully took advantage of circumstances which made their attack possible. Don't forget that to make this work, the targets in question also had to be effectively fixed and the drone had to get into knife range without being spotted and engaged by the targets' (or someone else's point defense) on the way in. In othe words, the Manties were able to generate a "perfect storm" situation Hajdu never saw coming . . . and not because of tactical inexperience except in the sense that no one had ever launched that sort of attack against anyone, at least since the very early days of impeller-drive missiles.
Thanks again O Weber of Wizardry. I never doubted for a moment that it was my own disconnect, that you have now connected. Some of your fans didn't graduate Sag Isle. This is why I cry foul in the fact that Pavel Young passed. That idiot was copying off of
my paper! LOL
When I alluded to the Manties always taking precautions, I never meant to infer any similar situations. But I do recall specific instances of holding back the freighters or
sending them back into hyper. The latest of such a call was the decision to hold back the Charles Ward, to the dismay of Helen. And she's heavily armed clean up to her brassiere, my dear. Though her neck is still exposed.
Hajdu jad no reason or need (so far as he knew) to leave his primary ammunition supply outside the hyper limit when he headed in-system. So far as he knew/could tell, he was moving against a civilian, unprotected objective. To get his missiles where he was likely to need them. he had to take them with him. He was then allowed to enter orbit unchallenged, with no indication that anyone was likely to be shooting at him (or, indeed, that there was anyone in the system who
could shoot at him). In the instances in which you've seen Manty support ships sent off into hyper or to the other side of a terminus, (1) they had reason to think action might be imminent and (2) the support ships in question literally
could get into hyper or transit the terminus. As deep inside a hyper limit as Hajdu was, neither of those was an option for any of his ships. So unless he'd chosen to deploy his missiles for the Buccaneer strike, then send the colliers back across the limit, he couldn't get them a lot farther from any in-system threat than they were.
As I say, it's obvious after the fact that he
should have had their wedges up, but without a clue those highly stealthy recon drones were in a position to ram their wedges into his missile colliers, he had every reason to consider that the 90-plus BCs, plus supports, in company with them should have been sufficient to cover them. And, for that matter, what hostile admiral in his right mind would waste a potential "sneak shot" taking out freighters that couldn't possibly shot at
him instead of trying to whittle down the warship odds before attacking? Tactically, taking out the missile ships couldn't even save Hypatia, because he had more than enough missiles in his internal magazines
and already deployed to take care of any target the system offered.
Phantom and her squadron chose to destroy the freighters because Koutic was out to kill TF 1030's
strategic reach and save the
next potential target on Hajdu's list. Well, and to reduce Hajdu's ammo supply if/when TF 1030's survivors went ahead and executed its attack on Hypatia itself.
The truth was that he'd already written off his own ships' survival, and his only real hope where
Hypatia was concerned was that he might inflict enough damage --- and/or kill off Hajdu and Yang-O'Grady, putting someone less bloodthirsty in charge --- that the Sollies opted not to carry through on Hajdu's timeline. It never occurred to him that he might destroy so many Solly warships that their survivors would be
incapable of trashing the system infrastructure and killing millions, and he was right about that. Only
Arngrim's bluff gave Yountz sufficient cover for him to call off an attack he didn't want to launch anyway.
