The big problem of late Honorverse

kzt wrote:Yes. David was required to approve all the stuff they published. May not be ‘canon’ but it was true at the time. It might come from Davids background or invented for the game, not sure.

It appeard to me that it was sponsored by Manpower, but it wasn’t stated to be.

We've seen some variance from the SITS info to what was later in canon - but so far it's only a 1-2% variance, and there usually is an explanation for the difference somewhere (Like King Edward II also used the Reign name King George IIRC). Most of us who have the texts will usually state the data's source if we are using SITS or Jayne's.

If you are interested, the 3 shipbooks, the 3 setting books, and the 2 Jayne's books are still available in PDF form online at Drive Thru RPG

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/140093/Saganami-Island-Tactical-Simulator-Rule-Book

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.

1) It appears the Honorverse has active stealth measures, not merely passive stuff like RAM. A LAC without it's wedge could easily be stealthier than a mine.

2) Range. Mines are basically missile warheads--max range is therefore 50,000km. The spinal weapons of the LACs are more akin to what was used in the battle at Hades--highly effective at 1,000,000km. (And the LAC weapons would actually fare better as Honor had to shoot on the long axis of her targets, the LACs are coming from the side and thus don't have as much to shoot through.)

tlb wrote: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.

The proper reaction of the MAlign to the Lynx discovery would be to pull back and rethink. I think they also seriously underestimated Apollo.

However, the personalities we have seen in the MAlign aren't good at basically throwing a multi-century plan in the trash with no replacement on the horizon. Instead they went into panic-stupid mode trying to salvage it and careened from one disaster to another. They think they're so superior they can play puppetmaster, they never considered that their puppets might decide to climb their strings.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It wasn't until the Battle of Monica and especially until Second New Tuscany, both in 1921, that RMN's superiority gap became clear, including to the RMN. If the RMN didn't know it was that far ahead, how could a third party relying on third-hand information come to a more accurate conclusion?

No--they still way overallocated their missiles at Spindle. That makes it clear they didn't know how far ahead they were--and even then it wasn't a battle test of Apollo.

Furthermore, consider the battle at Manticore. In hindsight Honor realizes she could have held her fire in the face of the missile storm. That means that even then they didn't know how far ahead they were. There's also the battle between the destroyers and the battlecruisers--once again, they don't know how far ahead they are.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:It wasn't until the Battle of Monica and especially until Second New Tuscany, both in 1921, that RMN's superiority gap became clear, including to the RMN. If the RMN didn't know it was that far ahead, how could a third party relying on third-hand information come to a more accurate conclusion?

No--they still way overallocated their missiles at Spindle. That makes it clear they didn't know how far ahead they were--and even then it wasn't a battle test of Apollo.

Furthermore, consider the battle at Manticore. In hindsight Honor realizes she could have held her fire in the face of the missile storm. That means that even then they didn't know how far ahead they were. There's also the battle between the destroyers and the battlecruisers--once again, they don't know how far ahead they are.

Yes, they allocated 400 missiles per SD at Spindle. For the first time fighting SLN SDs, that was a good, conservative number. But they were already supremely confident in winning. They might not have known exactly how good they were against SDs, but that they were far superior was already established. I maintain that Second New Tuscany was the point where the MAlign should have pulled back, but didn't. It's all Anisimovna's doing.

As for Second Manticore, yes, Honor could have held back. She could have also aborted the launch when it became clear that there were not a lot of follow-on salvos from Eleventh Fleet. But hindsight is 20-20 and you're always going to have armchair coaches questioning your decisions. In the heat of the battle, you don't have such luxuries. You fight for winning and to protect your own people. The enemy made the choice of firing, despite Second New Tuscany, despite Spindle, despite the show that they were actually outnumbered even in SD hull numbers, so the consequences are on them. You don't ignore a 431 SD threat.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Yes, they allocated 400 missiles per SD at Spindle. For the first time fighting SLN SDs, that was a good, conservative number. But they were already supremely confident in winning. They might not have known exactly how good they were against SDs, but that they were far superior was already established. I maintain that Second New Tuscany was the point where the MAlign should have pulled back, but didn't. It's all Anisimovna's doing.

Of course they knew they were superior. The point is the overallocation shows that they didn't realize how superior. The intent was to rough up the ships to encourage them to surrender, not blow them out of space.

As for Second Manticore, yes, Honor could have held back. She could have also aborted the launch when it became clear that there were not a lot of follow-on salvos from Eleventh Fleet. But hindsight is 20-20 and you're always going to have armchair coaches questioning your decisions. In the heat of the battle, you don't have such luxuries. You fight for winning and to protect your own people. The enemy made the choice of firing, despite Second New Tuscany, despite Spindle, despite the show that they were actually outnumbered even in SD hull numbers, so the consequences are on them. You don't ignore a 431 SD threat.

I'm not talking about armchair coaches, I'm talking about Honor herself. She shot back because she didn't realize how little threat Filareta's fleet posed. Once again, evidence that the GA didn't realize how far ahead they were.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I'm not talking about armchair coaches, I'm talking about Honor herself. She shot back because she didn't realize how little threat Filareta's fleet posed. Once again, evidence that the GA didn't realize how far ahead they were.

She couldn't be sure the Solarians hadn't come up with something to make their missiles more effective. Not FTL Apollo level of effective, but a launch that large even with Apollo level of control in autonomous mode would have meant a very bad day for the Manticoran Home Fleet.

FTL control is going to take a lot of R&D for anyone else to duplicate; the networked forward control nodes are technically far easier to duplicate. It would have been extremely unlikely for the Sollies to have a similar capacity that quickly, but it wouldn't be entirely impossible. So rather than saying the GA didn't realize how far ahead they were, it's better to phrase it as the GA couldn't be entirely sure they were still as far ahead as they thought they were.

Galactic Sapper wrote:She couldn't be sure the Solarians hadn't come up with something to make their missiles more effective. Not FTL Apollo level of effective, but a launch that large even with Apollo level of control in autonomous mode would have meant a very bad day for the Manticoran Home Fleet.

FTL control is going to take a lot of R&D for anyone else to duplicate; the networked forward control nodes are technically far easier to duplicate. It would have been extremely unlikely for the Sollies to have a similar capacity that quickly, but it wouldn't be entirely impossible. So rather than saying the GA didn't realize how far ahead they were, it's better to phrase it as the GA couldn't be entirely sure they were still as far ahead as they thought they were.

Right. Once the battle is joined, you apply the First Rule of Warfare: don't let the enemy kill you. Until they surrender or are combat-ineffective, you hammer them. The quicker you do, the fewer of your own people die in the process. Honor couldn't have known that killing only 20 of the 200+ SDs she actually took out of action would have made the Sollies surrender. But that would have left 410 SDs available to continue fighting if they didn't surrender.

She later had doubts herself, but that was an emotional response. Intellectually she knew she did what she had to.

And in full view of the Admiralty and Theisman. If any of them had doubts, they'd have told her there and then.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:She couldn't be sure the Solarians hadn't come up with something to make their missiles more effective. Not FTL Apollo level of effective, but a launch that large even with Apollo level of control in autonomous mode would have meant a very bad day for the Manticoran Home Fleet.

FTL control is going to take a lot of R&D for anyone else to duplicate; the networked forward control nodes are technically far easier to duplicate. It would have been extremely unlikely for the Sollies to have a similar capacity that quickly, but it wouldn't be entirely impossible. So rather than saying the GA didn't realize how far ahead they were, it's better to phrase it as the GA couldn't be entirely sure they were still as far ahead as they thought they were.

Right. Once the battle is joined, you apply the First Rule of Warfare: don't let the enemy kill you. Until they surrender or are combat-ineffective, you hammer them. The quicker you do, the fewer of your own people die in the process. Honor couldn't have known that killing only 20 of the 200+ SDs she actually took out of action would have made the Sollies surrender. But that would have left 410 SDs available to continue fighting if they didn't surrender.

She later had doubts herself, but that was an emotional response. Intellectually she knew she did what she had to.

And in full view of the Admiralty and Theisman. If any of them had doubts, they'd have told her there and then.

As was, some of her people did die - 200 LACs were lost with their 2000 crewmembers. If she sat and took the fire, how many more would die? As stated above, the first rule of combat is not to let the enemy kill you (and your forces). If she had done anything short of eliminating the threat the Sollie fleet represented as swiftly as possible, more friendly lives would be lost, and that would have been on her.

Theemile wrote:As was, some of her people did die - 200 LACs were lost with their 2000 crewmembers. If she sat and took the fire, how many more would die? As stated above, the first rule of combat is not to let the enemy kill you (and your forces). If she had done anything short of eliminating the threat the Sollie fleet represented as swiftly as possible, more friendly lives would be lost, and that would have been on her.

I don't think they lost 200 LACs. Some of those KIAs were aboard mildly damaged warships.

SDs can survive a great deal of damage, but they still have crew exposed outside the core hull - gun crews and such - who are exposed to minor hits.

The point stands, though. Even if your task force is "only" golf-balled and doesn't lose a single ship, a lot of your crews died.