The big problem of late Honorverse

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:2nd fired 524,000 missiles. Maximum control was 84K without rotating links, 134Ksome with. Stated they used no more than 80% of maximum. So somewhere between 5 and 8 salvos.

ToF was 7.5 minutes, total battle was 11.9 minutes.

Given those numbers that's 4.4 minutes between first and last salvo. So
5 savlos would be about 53 second intervals,
6 salvos would be about 44 seconds intervals,
7 salvos would be about 38 seconds intervals, or
8 salvos would be about 33 seconds intervals

They didn't need to roll more pods between the salvos (or at least not many) - so the intervals wouldn't be dictated by pod roll time. And at that range they're not going to have time to get a damage assessment and retarget between salvos anyway - so no need I can see to space it out. I'd guess towards the tighter sequenced smaller salvos; but that's just a guess.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Wasn't this the first operational deployment of the donkey? If so, then D'Orville couldn't have known Tourville had donkeys and wouldn't know the size of the salvo Second Fleet could produce.

As for translating into alpha, I didn't mean for fleeing. I meant exactly the translation: as Honor used in the Battle of Sol (around Jupiter), you can just evade the entire missile swarm, however big, by not being there, then translating back elsewhere. Tourville would still have over 200 SD(P) at that point and would be a match for either Home or Third Fleets until they linked up, defeating each in detail.

Galactic Sapper wrote:As for running into hyper, 2F didn't start deploying donkeys until they were 40+ minutes of flight time inside the hyper limit. Their acceleration dropped after they'd seen HF start moving to intercept, and HF would have required at least 40 minutes to get underway since they started with cold nodes. 2F was firmly committed to running past Sphinx by the time HF could have been in a position to launch even at maximum range.

Bruno Behrends wrote:Dilandu and others in this thread point out (correctly in my view) that the space battles vis-a-vis the SLN are very one-sided. And yes of course they would be more suspenseful if they were more even.

However: I have to defend our CeleryRunner hewre because reading through this thread it seems to me you guys are not taking into account why the battles are written this way.

There is a reason. And its not that DW suddenly can't write interesting space battles anymore.

The reason is that we are in a completely different part of the story now. A story with a different priority. We are not in the Manticore vs. Haven part anymore in which the space battles were a main component of suspense. That part of the series finished with the big 'season finale' of AAC.

We are now in the Grand Alliance vs Mesan Alignment part. Another season if you will. In this part the story is about identifying, defending against and actually finding a shadowy opponent who uses stealth and subterfuge instead of overwhelming military might.

The space battles are now a side-show. As is the whole 'war' against the SL. That's a cover up designed by the Alignment. (I know you guys know that. That I point it out anyway is because this thread seems to indicate to me that while knowing it you still don't figure it in your calculations.)
The real story is about finding out about the real opponent and thwarting their schemes.

And in order to make the story work the war against the SL has to be both much shorter and much more winnable for the GA than the Alignment figured. (That's the thwarting their plans part.) If it weren't the Alignment would win. Yes, you guys are a bit disappointed that the 800 pound gorilla has been flailing around so ineffectively but DW has been pointing out what would happen once the SL got its feet under it and its doctrine and tech updated. The GA would be flattened in short order.

In order to keep the story on the rails (and the rail is centered against the Alignment, NOT against the League) the League fight had to be designed the way it is. A distraction staged by the Alignment that had to get out of the way as quickly as possible in order to get to the real threat.

Yes, for fans of suspenseful space-battles that's suboptimal. (And I count myself among them).

But its the story we have here in season 2. It has another focus. Lets enjoy what we have. The shadow war.

tlb wrote:

Bruno Behrends wrote:Dilandu and others in this thread point out (correctly in my view) that the space battles vis-a-vis the SLN are very one-sided. And yes of course they would be more suspenseful if they were more even.

However: I have to defend our CeleryRunner hewre because reading through this thread it seems to me you guys are not taking into account why the battles are written this way.

There is a reason. And its not that DW suddenly can't write interesting space battles anymore.

The reason is that we are in a completely different part of the story now. A story with a different priority. We are not in the Manticore vs. Haven part anymore in which the space battles were a main component of suspense. That part of the series finished with the big 'season finale' of AAC.

We are now in the Grand Alliance vs Mesan Alignment part. Another season if you will. In this part the story is about identifying, defending against and actually finding a shadowy opponent who uses stealth and subterfuge instead of overwhelming military might.

The space battles are now a side-show. As is the whole 'war' against the SL. That's a cover up designed by the Alignment. (I know you guys know that. That I point it out anyway is because this thread seems to indicate to me that while knowing it you still don't figure it in your calculations.)
The real story is about finding out about the real opponent and thwarting their schemes.

And in order to make the story work the war against the SL has to be both much shorter and much more winnable for the GA than the Alignment figured. (That's the thwarting their plans part.) If it weren't the Alignment would win. Yes, you guys are a bit disappointed that the 800 pound gorilla has been flailing around so ineffectively but DW has been pointing out what would happen once the SL got its feet under it and its doctrine and tech updated. The GA would be flattened in short order.

In order to keep the story on the rails (and the rail is centered against the Alignment, NOT against the League) the League fight had to be designed the way it is. A distraction staged by the Alignment that had to get out of the way as quickly as possible in order to get to the real threat.

Yes, for fans of suspenseful space-battles that's suboptimal. (And I count myself among them).

But its the story we have here in season 2. It has another focus. Lets enjoy what we have. The shadow war.

I disagree; because I believe RFC is quite capable of writing the story in a way that makes the SLN less of a paper tiger, but still allows the GA to foil the plan for the RF to take over the remnants of the SL. However this would not fit in the limited number of mainline books, without dropping much of the Firebrand stories in the Verge. Since I expect that Firebrand is intended to be a major part of the "second season", that would be a problem.

However; my main problem with the ineffectual SLN is that the Detweiler Plan intended to force the battle between the SLN and the victor in the Haven Quadrant, with the sides even enough to destroy both. Since the Malign was keeping eyes on the war between Manticore and Haven, it should have been apparent to them that the SLN had been too emasculated and the beginning stages should have been delayed to address the imbalance. That this did not happen, I can only attribute to panic at the events in the Talbot Quadrant after the discovery of the Lynx terminal.

kzt wrote:The ridiculous barricade 'battle', with the LACs each towing millions of tons of pods at 700g while being totally undetected due to 'stealth' is just terrible writing. "Insert pointless one-sided space battle here".

The SLN popping out a wormhole and their careful search for mines not spotting the LACs? Yeah, right, a vastly larger LAC with a running reactor and containing humans at 270 Kelvin is far more stealthy than a tiny mine built of RAM and cooled to virtually the 4 Kelvin background temp. No, it's just terrible writing. "Insert pointless one-sided space battle here".

It's not all that bad, but those were bad.