Third Fleet and Apollo ships in the Battle of Manticore

I've been rereading my way through the series, and saw a quote in Storm from the Shadows -- the action at Solon, point in time where Henke's squadron is holding fire and she's thinking about how he would be"sorely tempted to throw at least a few salvos of all-up MDMs... into Bogey Four's face..." etc.

Brought me to a returning thought that McKeon's choice -- using Apollo to kill an SD at a time -- was a sub-optimal response. Instead, wouldn't it have made sense to try to inflict some damage on ALL of Chin's mouse-trapping SD(P)s? Divide each salvo to perhaps 4-6 targets and getting significant hits on all of them. Then toss a salvo or two towards 2nd Fleet to go after Tourville, et. al?

Thoughts?

Probably wouldn't do enough damage to be worth it. Taking one at a time all the way out decreases 5th Fleet's combat capacity more surely than a handful of hits on many that aren't likely to impair them more than a few percent of capacity. Maybe he'd get lucky once or twice and get a kill or mission kill with only that handful of hits, but it's not worth giving up the sure kills.

A better argument is why he's shooting at 5th Fleet at all, when the rest of 3rd Fleet is firing at 2nd Fleet. Maybe they didn't want the competing salvos interfering with each other or something?

SharkHunter wrote:I've been rereading my way through the series, and saw a quote in Storm from the Shadows -- the action at Solon, point in time where Henke's squadron is holding fire and she's thinking about how he would be"sorely tempted to throw at least a few salvos of all-up MDMs... into Bogey Four's face..." etc.

Brought me to a returning thought that McKeon's choice -- using Apollo to kill an SD at a time -- was a sub-optimal response. Instead, wouldn't it have made sense to try to inflict some damage on ALL of Chin's mouse-trapping SD(P)s? Divide each salvo to perhaps 4-6 targets and getting significant hits on all of them. Then toss a salvo or two towards 2nd Fleet to go after Tourville, et. al?

Thoughts?

I brought up the same concern about McKeon in the kzt thread. I thought McKeon wasted Apollo's capability. One ship at a time? Really? I was so disappointed in him.

Your other notion reminds me of a question I've had for a long time. If McKeon had chosen to target Second to assist Third, how would McKeon's ship have avoided targeting the same ships as Third, thus wasting missiles, targets, and launches?

Your fleet command system needs the ability to distribute targets as one of its essential functions. Apollo was in range of 2nd pretty much as soon as it exited hyper. It is totally absurd to have your snipers engage in bayonet charges.

SharkHunter wrote:Brought me to a returning thought that McKeon's choice -- using Apollo to kill an SD at a time -- was a sub-optimal response. Instead, wouldn't it have made sense to try to inflict some damage on ALL of Chin's mouse-trapping SD(P)s? Divide each salvo to perhaps 4-6 targets and getting significant hits on all of them. Then toss a salvo or two towards 2nd Fleet to go after Tourville, et. al?

Thoughts?

I don't think so. He was under fire and therefore couldn't stack large salvos - only eighteen pods at a time, perhaps thirty-six.

This provides 144(or 288) attack/EW missiles. Havenite anti-missile defense can generally account for up to 30% of Apollo salvos and it's mentioned somewhere that ONI estimated a Havenite SD(P) needed approximately 150-250 laserhead hits to be destroyed/mission killed.

Splitting that few missiles between so many targets would result in better anti-missile defense for Fifth Fleet, since they wouldn't be so oversaturated. Sidewalls, for example, can absorb some limited damage and regenerate for the next salvo.

kzt wrote:Your fleet command system needs the ability to distribute targets as one of its essential functions. Apollo was in range of 2nd pretty much as soon as it exited hyper. It is totally absurd to have your snipers engage in bayonet charges.

Is your thought that McKeon should have started salting 2nd Fleet immediately? Hmmm. That is something I hadn't considered yet -- and makes sense because the likelihood of a miss is lower enough as to not have to worry about Sphinx.

munroburton wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Brought me to a returning thought that McKeon's choice -- using Apollo to kill an SD at a time -- was a sub-optimal response. Instead, wouldn't it have made sense to try to inflict some damage on ALL of Chin's mouse-trapping SD(P)s? Divide each salvo to perhaps 4-6 targets and getting significant hits on all of them. Then toss a salvo or two towards 2nd Fleet to go after Tourville, et. al?

Thoughts?

I don't think so. He was under fire and therefore couldn't stack large salvos - only eighteen pods at a time, perhaps thirty-six.

This provides 144(or 288) attack/EW missiles. Havenite anti-missile defense can generally account for up to 30% of Apollo salvos and it's mentioned somewhere that ONI estimated a Havenite SD(P) needed approximately 150-250 laserhead hits to be destroyed/mission killed.

Splitting that few missiles between so many targets would result in better anti-missile defense for Fifth Fleet, since they wouldn't be so oversaturated. Sidewalls, for example, can absorb some limited damage and regenerate for the next salvo.

Thinking about this, and mildly disagreeing. [I'm assuming the 3 pod stack, by the way.] Let's assume instead of 4, McKeon targets three.

For nearly the entire distance, the RHN wouldn't know which three were targeted, breaking towards their final target relatively late. So I don't think the CM count rises all that much. But I'll leave the Peeps a 30% hit ratio... meaning that each gets about seventy full-power hits per stacked salvo.

How many flag or command decks, pod launch rails, impeller rooms (ruins the formation) inertial compensators (kills the crew), attack missile control links, sensors, and SD(P) launches are getting wiped out "a third of a ship" at a time.

It's not so much a guaranteed mission kill as the "sow disarray" approach. This would be analagous perhaps to having divisions of troops in an infantry charge going against three modern (M85) mortar teams. You wouldn't concentrate all your fire on one unit at a time; you'd want to be dropping your frag rounds all over the place to disrupt the charge.

Plus -- textev anyway -- Kuzak didn't give any orders to protect her deadliest ships, etc. which doesn't make much sense. Finally, if I'd been in her shoes I would have told the remaining ships to slave 2/3 of their MDMs to McKeon's squadron's control, and not stack the Apollo salvos at all. (Use an early version o the same technique 10th Fleet used at Spindle). Yes, it would be like having 20 sniper shots out of 200 missiles, but now the Apollo capable ships are hitting half a dozen SD(P)s per salvo, with the rest of the missiles are sort of carpet bombing wherever the sniper has aimed.

It would then have only taken five salvos to begin inflicting force-disruptive levels of damage on either 5th or 2nd fleet.

--snipping--

Galactic Sapper wrote:A better argument is why he's shooting at 5th Fleet at all, when the rest of 3rd Fleet is firing at 2nd Fleet. Maybe they didn't want the competing salvos interfering with each other or something?

We actually have the textev for that. McKeon states that the newly arrived ships (5th Fleet) are the deadliest because they have no battle damage and full missile loads.

That said, picture this exchange (Kuzak giving the command). "Contact Sphinx System Command, have them launch a single massive salvo on McKeon's mark" (enough to saturate 2nd Fleet). Meanwhile, 3rd Fleet does a single full saturation launch at 5th Fleet slaved to McKeon's ships fire control.

We then resume the battle as listed. 3rd Fleet may still get effectively wiped out, but very little of Beatrice Bravo survives, no?

Yes, McKeon should have fired as soon as he came out of hyper. It's unstated what the range is at 3rds emergence, but it's looks under 70 million KM. Based on the results he got later he could have killed the 30 most combat effective ships in 2nd by the time he ran his ships out of ammo.

Or until when 5th jumps in, which is what I would expect would happen pretty much as soon as 3rd enters the RZ when 2nd fleets SD(P)s start blowing up.

SharkHunter wrote: Thinking about this, and mildly disagreeing. [I'm assuming the 3 pod stack, by the way.] Let's assume instead of 4, McKeon targets three.

For nearly the entire distance, the RHN wouldn't know which three were targeted, breaking towards their final target relatively late. So I don't think the CM count rises all that much. But I'll leave the Peeps a 30% hit ratio... meaning that each gets about seventy full-power hits per stacked salvo.

For most of the interception window, it doesn't matter which ships are targeted. That Apollo salvo still has to penetrate a countermissile defense envelope in range of every ship in Fifth Fleet and quite possibly PDLC range as well. Formations like these do not spread out, they tighten up(closely enough that wedge-on-wedge collisions is a risk sometimes) so their wedges can help block each other's more vulnerable aspects.

100 wallers in a wall - 10 by 10. With 300x300km wedges and allowing 1000km between ships' wedges for safety, this colossal formation is only 13,000 by 13,000km wide. If it has line of sight, a PDLC on ship number one can conceivably engage a missile targeting ship number 100 up until the point it fires.

My math was slightly off - I thought he only had 3 SD(P)s for some reason. That brings up his single-pattern salvoes up to 24, for 192 attack/EW missiles. Taking the EW platforms out takes us back to 144 attack missiles per salvo, though.

I don't buy the notion that he could have been stacking pods at all after the ambush was revealed. Fifth Fleet had 100 SD(P)s, Second still had around 150 and both of them were hammering Kuzak's entire formation of ~55.

AAC wrote:In fact, the four Apollo-capable ships of McKeon's squadron were killing Havenite wallers in rapid succession, and Slowacki was too caught up in his task to realize that while he'd been killing five superdreadnoughts, the Havenites had already killed nine of Admiral Kuzak's. And it wouldn't be long before-
"Incoming!" someone shouted, and Intransigent lurched indescribably as the first deadly hits slammed home.

That happened five minutes after Fifth Fleet dropped out of hyperspace. In other words, McKeon's squadron only had time to fire five or six salvos.

There's another reason not to spread the damage across Chin's ships - because they were outside the hyper limit. A sufficiently damaged SD(P) might simply hyper back out - and whilst that might have been tactically acceptable at that moment, it could have possibly meant a follow-up salvo missing it. Given enough time, might even repair itself and rejoin the battle.

And if you leave the enemy with fractions of SD(P)s, he can add them up. This podnought, with a damaged stern? Have it control pods launched by that other podnought with damaged fire controls and sensors.