Battle of Spindle

Theemile wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--
Not because of the parts of 10th Fleet with Henke, but because the Sag Cs are out of position relative to the stash of missiles near the planet, have to focus their attentions on enemies on divergent threat axis. An example: say the SLN has a couple squadrons of SDs pop across the hyper limit with their attack axis effectively behind the populated planets and in system infrastructure from the Sag C's where the RMN can't just toss a poopload of pod-launched missiles past the home team's turf... and a more interesting battle ensues.

Thoughts?

Any other vector other than the cone closest to the hyperlimit greatly increases the distance (and Transit time) to the planet. In the Sol system, the distance from the close hyper locus to Earth is ~12 light minutes, but coming out of hyper opposite from the planet is ~32 light minutes (opposite side of the sun). Given the duration of each Transit (even the close one) and the lack of stealth moving a couple dozen SDs at speed entails, one of the other pincers of Spindle's defense couple easily move to interdict, or the CAs could reposition to face both.

Even at a 90 degree angle, they can get to less than the 32 light minutes with a littl authorial flexibility. Any of which would have been more interesting than boom-flash done. Or that couldn't have been slightly more challenging, let a few SLN ships escape, or whatever, yes?

Theemile wrote:Any other vector other than the cone closest to the hyperlimit greatly increases the distance (and Transit time) to the planet. In the Sol system, the distance from the close hyper locus to Earth is ~12 light minutes, but coming out of hyper opposite from the planet is ~32 light minutes (opposite side of the sun). Given the duration of each Transit (even the close one) and the lack of stealth moving a couple dozen SDs at speed entails, one of the other pincers of Spindle's defense couple easily move to interdict, or the CAs could reposition to face both.

The only way that a multi-vector assault works is with time-on-target. Otherwise, the defenders can focus their attention on each force in isolation - defeat in detail. But in order to achieve time-on-target, the forces that translate farther from the planet would need to arrive sooner, as they have a longer transit. That gives the defenders more time. If they refuse to be suckered out of position, at best you gain nothing. Since the defenders had the range, they didn't need to leave orbit to face the attackers as previous forces would need to.

SharkHunter wrote:Say for example that Crandall pops over the hyper limit with about half a dozen superdreadnoughts, sufficient cruisers to look good, etc. and does the exact same thing... warning Spindle blah blah blah, and at the time limit, all of her remaining ships pop across the hyper limit from three divergent directions to the planet... a much more difficult battle ensues.

Loren Pechtel wrote:This wouldn't be any harder. Whether the fleet is together or dispersed makes no difference, they're still hammered to bits before they enter their effective range. Popping in behind them had no effect on the battle, it was just to keep them from running.

SharkHunter wrote:Hopefully I left the right quotes in place. Keeping in mind that both Crandall and Filerata obligingly show up "in the trap", and I don't have too much trouble with RFC's authorial choices there... I don't think for a second that there's any path where the SLN achieves much, but a divergent attack can still amass overwhelming forces to avoid defeat in detail. But I still argue that the battle could have been made much more difficult.

Not because of the parts of 10th Fleet with Henke, but because the Sag Cs are out of position relative to the stash of missiles near the planet, have to focus their attentions on enemies on divergent threat axis. An example: say the SLN has a couple squadrons of SDs pop across the hyper limit with their attack axis effectively behind the populated planets and in system infrastructure from the Sag C's where the RMN can't just toss a poopload of pod-launched missiles past the home team's turf... and a more interesting battle ensues.

Thoughts?

Not a chance that Crandall would have done anything of the sort. in the first place, it would have been showing a degree of respect for the barbarians that would never do for the mighty SLN, and in the second place, it would have been in violation of the SLN doctrine for dealing with upstart barbarians - you amassed overwhelming force, and went straight at the enemy - none of this namby pamby dancing around. If RFC had written it any other way, there would have been endless discussion about how he had danced around the SLN doctrine.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Not a chance that Crandall would have done anything of the sort. in the first place, it would have been showing a degree of respect for the barbarians that would never do for the mighty SLN, and in the second place, it would have been in violation of the SLN doctrine for dealing with upstart barbarians - you amassed overwhelming force, and went straight at the enemy - none of this namby pamby dancing around. If RFC had written it any other way, there would have been endless discussion about how he had danced around the SLN doctrine.

--Snipped the priors --
I agree with your assessment of the authorial sense of Crandall's psychology controlling how the battle was fought, which is why I don't have any real nits to pick with it. The "structural weakness" in many of the later Honorverse writing of battle sequences is that the RMN captains and admirals in 10th fleet seem to get the psychology of the SLN commanders right every time.

Using the Battle of Spindle as an example, RFC could have given us a more complex "battle space" whee Crandall thinks she's set up an "time on target" force attack, just not on one threat axis, with pre-battle planning by the RMN that maybe misses on a few stitches in the execution, and without any "namby-pamby" ness. The SLN ships would have still pretty much been slaughtered, because she dinked around for three days, which would give the RMN plenty of time to go from one big mousetrap to three smaller ones and coordinate their own attacks via the FTL com. Heck, maybe Khumalo and Hercules are part of one of the forces and he gets his combat command ticket punched, when his group punches out a big chunk of whatever SLN ship is facing his group, etc., having to get three different surrenders, etc.

OR -- in Filereta's Folly, maybe if he'd had about 25% of his forces aimed at Gryphon or a percentage to threaten the junction, etc. at least it doesn't fit all the SLN forces into what is effectively a "kill box" as easily. The MAlign can't then do a "kill the flag deck" with one bomb thing, etc.

Very interesting complications in the writing, no? My point isn't that RFC did anything wrong in his set-pieces, or that the SLN ever had a sliver of a chance of success using any alternate strategies. All I am saying is that the SLN single threat axis battles aren't nearly as much fun when I read through them.

Take First Hancock (in Short Victorious War). which though mainly a single axis battle, still had 3-D dimensioning in terms of the mousetrap, the repair base's relative positioning, the faked SD's using recon drones, Danislav's arrival, the splitting of Chin's dreadnoughts, etc. Another good read? how Terekhov designed a strategy that had some complicated pieces -- to take out the two StateSec ships and capture the freighter, etc. no matter the psychology of the ships.

Thoughts still welcome.

SharkHunter wrote:Using the Battle of Spindle as an example, RFC could have given us a more complex "battle space" whee Crandall thinks she's set up an "time on target" force attack, just not on one threat axis, with pre-battle planning by the RMN that maybe misses on a few stitches in the execution, and without any "namby-pamby" ness. The SLN ships would have still pretty much been slaughtered, because she dinked around for three days, which would give the RMN plenty of time to go from one big mousetrap to three smaller ones and coordinate their own attacks via the FTL com. Heck, maybe Khumalo and Hercules are part of one of the forces and he gets his combat command ticket punched, when his group punches out a big chunk of whatever SLN ship is facing his group, etc., having to get three different surrenders, etc.

The problem with this ever happening is that by Crandall's own psychology and the extent of what the SLN knew at the time, she would never do that. It doesn't matter that Khumalo, Terekhov and Gold Peak guessed right or wrong, Crandall doing anything different would mean she's an entirely different person. And if she were, she'd never be there in the first place. The MAlign selected her because of her arrogance, so she'd charge through the meatgrinder without looking first.

The other Madras sector battles could have been different. Some of the commanders could have had brains enough to set more difficult traps for Tenth Fleet. The way that RFC wrote them, they were too dispersed in penny packets to have any realistic strategy. Oh, they tried: stealthed ships abound. But look at what happened when 4 stealthed BCs went against 5 DDs at Saltash.

SharkHunter wrote:OR -- in Filereta's Folly, maybe if he'd had about 25% of his forces aimed at Gryphon or a percentage to threaten the junction, etc. at least it doesn't fit all the SLN forces into what is effectively a "kill box" as easily. The MAlign can't then do a "kill the flag deck" with one bomb thing, etc.

Now, that is different. Filareta could have used a different strategy and he was smart enough to think about them and exercise his squadrons. He'd never attack the Junction, though: the forts were still intact and he knew they'd make mincemeat of any force he sent there. Besides, as we've argued in the Parnell thread, Manticore is the key: if Manticore falls, you get the Junction; if you get the Junction, you'll have to fight the RMN coming to take it back.

Filareta's strategy however had two enormous problems: 1) he relied on the faulty intel that in order for Oyster Bay to have happened, the attacker must have gone through the MBS system defences and taken out a good chunk of Home Fleet (which, post Beatrice, was already depleted) and 2) he was pitting himself against freakin' Honor and Theisman! The two foremost strategists in the Galaxy, with White Haven, Chin, Tourville, and Yanakov as second bench! Those two set a trap for him instead.

They showed him what he wanted to see so he'd cross the hyper limit and remain inbound long enough to have no escape. We don't know what fallback plans they had in case Filareta had split his forces and gone after Gryphon, but we know that the RHN Second Fleet in hyper could have easily jumped behind the Eleventh Fleet half that went that way, blocking their escape. And he wouldn't have split before first arriving in Manticore in the biggest fleet ever assembled by anyone ever and seeing for himself what defences there were. Honor showed him enough SDs (40 + 60) that he would need all of his forces, but not enough that he'd turn back and run away. Spreading them out in a multi-vector assault didn't make sense: he was going for Sphinx, which was less than 2 light-minutes from the hyper limit.

Very interesting complications in the writing, no? My point isn't that RFC did anything wrong in his set-pieces, or that the SLN ever had a sliver of a chance of success using any alternate strategies. All I am saying is that the SLN single threat axis battles aren't nearly as much fun when I read through them.

I can't disagree, but RFC has to stay true to the parameters he set up. We the readers loathe when characters act uncharacteristically stupid, but should as well if they were to have sudden bouts of intelligence.

I think the war would have lasted longer and become more interesting if the Solarian Constitution had been amended and money flowed into research projects. It would have taken at least a year to produce anything to begin to rebalance the odds so that the battles would become more interesting, while at the same time investigations and media recriminations because of the Mesan Atrocity were flung towards the GA. The liberation of the Madras sector and the creation of the Maya Autonomous Regional Sector would also have played an important part. Finally, the financial impact of Lacoön I (the withdrawal of the merchant service) would begin to show in the SEM.

That's what I thought would happen for 80% of UH, up until Beowulf Alpha blew up. I thought we'd have another 3-book cycle (CS, SI and HH) before the war ended, with the GA winning, but weakened (or not, because they'd have continued on war footing for another year). I don't know why RFC did it this way, maybe he wants to keep to his estimate of another 6 main series book to wrap everything up.

In effect, the entity that acted uncharacteristically was the MAlign. Though now that I think of the timeline, Albrect, who had been the brains behind it for about a century, had been dead for 6 months when Fabius was planned.

SharkHunter wrote:I agree with your assessment of the authorial sense of Crandall's psychology controlling how the battle was fought, which is why I don't have any real nits to pick with it. The "structural weakness" in many of the later Honorverse writing of battle sequences is that the RMN captains and admirals in 10th fleet seem to get the psychology of the SLN commanders right every time.

It's not that they're guessing the SLN commander's psychology correctly, it's that they're betting (correctly) that the commander will follow SLN fleet doctrine. That doctrine simply does not allow for the missile threat that currently exists; they're stuck in the pre-pod swarm missile defense paradigm. Primarily that means they respond to a larger missile threat by piling more SDs into a tighter formation to make the massed point defense more effective. The more you pile together, the more effective it is.

Every bit of doctrine, training and even small scale battle experience they have indicates that more ships piled together are more effective - and against any sort of wall of battle pre-podnaughts they'd have been absolutely correct. If Crandall had faced what White Haven defended Yeltsin with in SVW it may well have gone her way regardless of the FTL recon drones. Even with the level of missile combat advantage Manticore had back then, hitting 48 SDs with 73 SDs would not have gone especially well for the defenders. She'd have gotten hurt far worse than her worst case estimates but she probably could have won - at worst broken even and retreated in good order.

So what we're really arguing here is why characters wouldn't consider doing something they believed would give them far worse results than following the doctrine they'd spent their entire careers building and following.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think the war would have lasted longer and become more interesting if the Solarian Constitution had been amended and money flowed into research projects. It would have taken at least a year to produce anything to begin to rebalance the odds so that the battles would become more interesting, while at the same time investigations and media recriminations because of the Mesan Atrocity were flung towards the GA. The liberation of the Madras sector and the creation of the Maya Autonomous Regional Sector would also have played an important part. Finally, the financial impact of Lacoön I (the withdrawal of the merchant service) would begin to show in the SEM.

I'm pretty sure the first thing we're going to see is a class of destroyers specialized solely for missile defense, built in massive numbers to screen whatever capital ships the SL devise to meet the MDM threat. Basically replicating the Katana fleet defense function in purpose built hyper capable hulls since that can be done faster than the LAC/carrier combo can be from scratch. With the SL industrial capacity, even building a thousand of them and then scrapping them three years later isn't the complete waste of resources it would be for anyone else.

cthia wrote:And again, there were 1500 orphaned 23E's and at least 5000 orphaned dazzlers and dragons teeth with nothing else to do.

The 23E's have to be behind and might have a pretty narrow cone of where until their birds are spent and thus might not be able to make the intercept, but the dazzlers are spent when the enter countermissile range--plenty of time to line up and ram. The dragon's teeth still have a mission but I don't see anything about the geometry that should keep them from trying to ram.

Due to it's extreme deadliness I do not think ramming will actually happen other than against an idiot--the threat of ramming will force the defender to keep his wedges to the missile storm and thus degrade his ability to shoot at it. It's like covering fire is meant to keep the enemy's head down rather than to actually kill him.

SharkHunter wrote:Not because of the parts of 10th Fleet with Henke, but because the Sag Cs are out of position relative to the stash of missiles near the planet, have to focus their attentions on enemies on divergent threat axis. An example: say the SLN has a couple squadrons of SDs pop across the hyper limit with their attack axis effectively behind the populated planets and in system infrastructure from the Sag C's where the RMN can't just toss a poopload of pod-launched missiles past the home team's turf... and a more interesting battle ensues.

Thoughts?

The missiles were hidden behind the planet--that means that they already bear on a fleet coming from the other direction. All it takes is for a few Sag Cs to move far enough to the side that the planet isn't blocking their view.

SharkHunter wrote:Even at a 90 degree angle, they can get to less than the 32 light minutes with a littl authorial flexibility. Any of which would have been more interesting than boom-flash done. Or that couldn't have been slightly more challenging, let a few SLN ships escape, or whatever, yes?

The MAlign didn't want ships to escape. Thus the deliberately picked a commander that wouldn't plan the battle in a way to allow leakers.