Hit rates and size of pre-Apollo MDMs

kzt wrote:It has been suggested/implied by people in contact with David Weber that certain battles are less carefully worked it terms of hit rates, interception rates, etc. which implies that some are not so carefully done. No ideas as to how accurate this is.

Hegemon wrote:[snipping heavily]Side discussion 2:
- RHN should know that Admiral Harrington would have the moral courage to order Task Force 34 withdrawal if she sees from the initial MDM exchange that her force cannot win, and would certainly not wait for the enemy SD(P)s to be resupplied with pods and get back before fleeing into hyper.
- TF 34 capital ships still had a small acceleration advantage, so Admiral Harrington would order the same lateral evasion maneuver on the nearest direction to the hyper limit actually used by Admiral Tourville.
- That maneuver would prevent the two forces closing to SDM or energy range, so the only way for Admiral Tourville that can prevent it would be the destruction of the Task Force 34 capital ships by long-range MDM fire. The rest of Second Fleet units (34 pre-pod SDs, 8 CLACs with ~2,000 LACs and 24 BCs) would not be able to prevent the retreat of TF 34 in any way.
- In order to destroy or mission-kill the 6 SD(P)s, 25 SDs, 11 DNs and 4 CLACs of Task Force 34, each of them would need to be hit by at least 250 MDMs, or a total of minimum 11,500 MDM hits.
- The Second Fleet's 12 SD(P)s each carry 500 pods of 10 MDMs each, for a total of 60,000 MDMs.
- Therefore, the RNH Second Fleet would have to generate 11,500 hits using only 60,000 MDMs, which results in a needed hit rate of at least 19.2%, which is 3-4 times higher then its highest rate achieved by Havenite SD(P)s in combat (see above).
- The total of 60,000 MDMs supposes that no Havenite SD(P) gets destroyed or mission-killed by the enemy before firing its 5,000 MDMs, while the total 11,500 hits supposes an uniform distribution of hits (no overkill on some ships while others escape lightly).
- If, for example, Admiral Harrington's 6 Medusa-class SD(P)s manage to destroy 6 Havenite SD(P)s with half of their pods still in their cores before being destroyed themselves and an average of 300 hits on RMN capital ships is needed to ensure that no ship is hit by less than 250 MDMs, the needed hit rate of RHN MDMs jumps to 30.7% !
Conclusion 2 (you will like this): Admiral Marquette (chief of RHN staff) was high on the good stuff when he estimated that 12 SD(P)s would be anywhere near enough to destroy Task Force 34. Even under the best conditions Admiral Marquette should have allocated at least 24-32 SD(P)s to ensure the destruction of Task Force 34 at Marsh or should have nixed the operation. Perhaps Admiral Tourville should have pointed this out to him.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd point out 2 things.
First, the hit rate is likely not independent of the target set. SD(P)s pack vastly more defensive firepower, ECM, and decoys than most of their tube-based predecessors. That makes them much tougher targets and should seriously reduce the hit rate against them. (So conversely Task force 34 with its heavy leavening of obsolete DNs should be much easier to hit that Honor's forces at Solon.

Jonathan_S wrote:(Further the RMN soft kill tech should have improved from Marsh to Solon so even against the same RMN ships you'd expect lowered hit rates as the RMN gets more experience fooling RHN MDMs)

Jonathan_S wrote:Second it's hard to blame the chief of RHN staff for being unaware of the real world hit rates when the forces for Marsh were dispatched (before any real world RHN MDM fire had occurred)

Hegemon wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Second it's hard to blame the chief of RHN staff for being unaware of the real world hit rates when the forces for Marsh were dispatched (before any real world RHN MDM fire had occurred)

Maybe he did not have a real meter-stick, but rates of 20%-30% were wildly optimistic. And again, if he envisioned such high hit rates, why waste 8 SD(P)s to attack 3 RMN SD at Maastricht ? Why not send 4 SD(P)s and 4 SDs at Maastricht and give two full SD(P) squadrons to the Second Fleet for the attack on Marsh ?

Jonathan_S wrote:Hmm. Possible the units used for Maastricht became available only after the forces were dispatched towards Marsh. Remember the units used to attack Honor had to be on their ways a couple months before the rest of the operation. (Or else the Peeps were only willing to cut that many SD(P)s loose from their strategic reserve for a quick out and back operation against a frontier system - where they could be back in position before word of the attack could let Manticore respond)

Also Maastricht had some, sadly under-strength, fixed defenses that Marsh wouldn't. The peeps may have assigned that many SD(P)s to Maastricht for their combined defensive capabilities in case they blundered into range of a shoal of system defense MDM pods.

Jonathan_S wrote:But you're right that just looking at the size and composition of the defensive fleets the forces assigned to Maastricht look grossly oversized relative to those dispatched to Marsh.