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[SPOILERS]Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.

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[SPOILERS]Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:34 pm

TFLYTSNBN

Just reading the snippets on Hypatia.
Saggy B's are powerful ships but a homogeneous force of Mark 16 combatants would have kicked ass.
I know that the RMN and GSN have about 100 of them.
Use them!
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by kzt   » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:41 pm

kzt
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TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just reading the snippets on Hypatia.
Saggy B's are powerful ships but a homogeneous force of Mark 16 combatants would have kicked ass.
I know that the RMN and GSN have about 100 of them.
Use them!

There is never a tactical reason to carry Mk16s in a BC(P). There might be logistic or plot related version, but I cannot think of anything that you can do with a Mk16 pod that isn't done better with a Mk23 pod.
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Fri Aug 24, 2018 6:17 pm

TFLYTSNBN

kzt wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just reading the snippets on Hypatia.
Saggy B's are powerful ships but a homogeneous force of Mark 16 combatants would have kicked ass.
I know that the RMN and GSN have about 100 of them.
Use them!

There is never a tactical reason to carry Mk16s in a BC(P). There might be logistic or plot related version, but I cannot think of anything that you can do with a Mk16 pod that isn't done better with a Mk23 pod.




Agreed

Honor might not have gotten Mike Henke captured and her ass kkicked at Salon if she had loaded the Aggies with Mk-16s
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by Bill Woods   » Fri Aug 24, 2018 9:32 pm

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kzt wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just reading the snippets on Hypatia.
Saggy B's are powerful ships but a homogeneous force of Mark 16 combatants would have kicked ass.
I know that the RMN and GSN have about 100 of them.
Use them!

There is never a tactical reason to carry Mk16s in a BC(P). There might be logistic or plot related version, but I cannot think of anything that you can do with a Mk16 pod that isn't done better with a Mk23 pod.

Cost, or volume? The Apollo warheads are great, but I don't get the impression that they're getting a whole lot of value out of the third drive on the Mk23. In the recent incident, the difference in flight time from 60 e9m would have been less than four minutes.
----
Imagined conversation:
Admiral [noting yet another Manty tech surprise]:
XO, what's the budget for the ONI?
Vice Admiral: I don't recall exactly, sir. Several billion quatloos.
Admiral: ... What do you suppose they did with all that money?
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by Weird Harold   » Fri Aug 24, 2018 11:49 pm

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kzt wrote:There is never a tactical reason to carry Mk16s in a BC(P).


40% more missiles isn't a good reason?
.
.
.
Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by kzt   » Sat Aug 25, 2018 12:46 am

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Weird Harold wrote:
kzt wrote:There is never a tactical reason to carry Mk16s in a BC(P).


40% more missiles isn't a good reason?

Each missile does significantly less damage and is easier to intercept. And has a much shorter effective range. And, due to BC(P) control channel limitations, you can't control that many missiles anyhow, so you might as well use the most effective missiles.
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by runsforcelery   » Sat Aug 25, 2018 7:22 am

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kzt wrote:
kzt wrote:There is never a tactical reason to carry Mk16s in a BC(P).


Weird Harold wrote:40% more missiles isn't a good reason?


Each missile does significantly less damage and is easier to intercept. And has a much shorter effective range. And, due to BC(P) control channel limitations, you can't control that many missiles anyhow, so you might as well use the most effective missiles.



The Mk-16G is capable of taking out any BC (and most SDs) in the various navies of the galaxy. It has an equally long effective range (assuming a ballistic phase; it just takes longer to get there), its ECM is capable of penetrating Havenite long range missile defenses, you can carry 40% more of them, and they are available (now) in considerably greater numbers than the Mark-23.

The Mark-23 can kill anything in space with a very small number of hits; the Mk-16G can kill almost anything in space with about twice the same number of hits. It can, however, kill anything in the SLN's inventory,

It might, indeed, have been better to send a few Agamemnons along to Hypatia . . . if they'd been available. Most of them are being used with Grand Fleet, Tenth Fleet, and the covering forces earmarked for places like Erewhon and Maya should the Sollies find out about certain plans maturing in those areas, and the intended covering force for Hypatia would have been fully adequate to dedend it against Hypatia.

Insisting that the Aggies be loaded with Mk-23s to deal with Solarian raiding forces is sorta like insisting that every world war ii heavy cruiser had to carry 12" guns.


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Sat Aug 25, 2018 11:14 am

TFLYTSNBN

:D
runsforcelery wrote:


The Mk-16G is capable of taking out any BC (and most SDs) in the various navies of the galaxy. It has an equally long effective range (assuming a ballistic phase; it just takes longer to get there), its ECM is capable of penetrating Havenite long range missile defenses, you can carry 40% more of them, and they are available (now) in considerably greater numbers than the Mark-23.

The Mark-23 can kill anything in space with a very small number of hits; the Mk-16G can kill almost anything in space with about twice the same number of hits. It can, however, kill anything in the SLN's inventory,

It might, indeed, have been better to send a few Agamemnons along to Hypatia . . . if they'd been available. Most of them are being used with Grand Fleet, Tenth Fleet, and the covering forces earmarked for places like Erewhon and Maya should the Sollies find out about certain plans maturing in those areas, and the intended covering force for Hypatia would have been fully adequate to dedend it against Hypatia.

Insisting that the Aggies be loaded with Mk-23s to deal with Solarian raiding forces is sorta like insisting that every world war ii heavy cruiser had to carry 12" guns.



The advantages of 8" gun cruiser vs 12" gun cruiser become very apparent when you have the Des Moines-class cruisers with autoloading 8" guns. Savo island demonstrated that under the right circumstances, even 8" and 6" gun cruisers could mission kill even a battleship. A 12" gun Alaska makes sense only when the threat of German and Japanese fast battleships and battlecruisers had not yet been eliminated and you were starting to build Kentucky class BBs rather than continue production of the much faster Iowas.

The logistical advantages are obvious.

Intended covering forces fully capable of defending Hypatia from Hypatia? Typo? Defending Hypatia from the SLN?
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by kzt   » Sat Aug 25, 2018 5:00 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:The Mk-16G is capable of taking out any BC (and most SDs) in the various navies of the galaxy. It has an equally long effective range (assuming a ballistic phase; it just takes longer to get there), its ECM is capable of penetrating Havenite long range missile defenses, you can carry 40% more of them, and they are available (now) in considerably greater numbers than the Mark-23.

The Mark-23 can kill anything in space with a very small number of hits; the Mk-16G can kill almost anything in space with about twice the same number of hits. It can, however, kill anything in the SLN's inventory,

Sure. But are the Gs really available in that large a number? They are a late arriving upgrade. Does the RMN recall all their deployed ships so their missiles can be remanufactured and then loaded back on those ships when an upgrade is released? Or do they build new missiles that get loaded on new ships and put into the stockpile and the old deployed missiles get worked on when (say) their 6 or 10 year depot inspection and service interval comes around?
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Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party.
Post by runsforcelery   » Sat Aug 25, 2018 5:09 pm

runsforcelery
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kzt wrote:
runsforcelery wrote:The Mk-16G is capable of taking out any BC (and most SDs) in the various navies of the galaxy. It has an equally long effective range (assuming a ballistic phase; it just takes longer to get there), its ECM is capable of penetrating Havenite long range missile defenses, you can carry 40% more of them, and they are available (now) in considerably greater numbers than the Mark-23.

The Mark-23 can kill anything in space with a very small number of hits; the Mk-16G can kill almost anything in space with about twice the same number of hits. It can, however, kill anything in the SLN's inventory,

Sure. But are the Gs really available in that large a number? They are a late arriving upgrade. Does the RMN recall all their deployed ships so their missiles can be remanufactured and then loaded back on those ships when an upgrade is released? Or do they build new missiles that get loaded on new ships and put into the stockpile and the old deployed missiles get worked on when (say) their 6 or 10 year depot inspection and service interval comes around?



First, the standard Mk-16 can kill anything smaller than an SD out there with no sweat, It's already well over twice as powerful as the standard SLN cruiser-grade warhead. Since they are no longer fighting SLN SDs, that makes the question moot in a lot of ways. However, there are a lot more "G" warheads available for refitting to existing missiles than there are Mark-23s to waste on operations where they aren't needed in the first place. I think that's part of the point that's getting missed here. The "standard" Mark-16 is fully adequate for any mission the GA is likely to face short of, oh, an invasion of the Sol System or 11th Fleet arriving at Manticore. For those waller-vs-waller battles, the Mark-23 is clearly the weapon of choice and that's largely what they're being conserved to fight. For anything less than that, the Mark-16 works just fine, a given ship can carry more of them, and the GA has one heck of a lot more of them.

Would the US Army prefer to send every one of its troops off to war in an M-1 tank? Possibly. Can they do that? No damned way. You use the forces you have, and if they're not the ideal ones, then you make do the best you can.


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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