Third Fleet and Apollo ships in the Battle of Manticore

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't remember the text: did she have any CLACs?

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't remember the text: did she have any CLACs?

Yes, but instead of having the LACs deploy into the outer missile defense zone a few million KM towards 2nd like doctrine said they should the LACs were just milling about.

Nothing Kuzak did after exiting hyper and starting the charge towards 2nd makes any sense.

Galactic Sapper wrote:While that was doctrine, it turned out it keeping them close is the only reason any of 3rd fleet survived. If they'd been properly positioned against 2nd fleet, 5th fleet would have finished 3rd fleet off due to lack of missile defense. It made the difference between "wrecked" and "no survivors".

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I'd imagine that warships in a time of war already have their hulls covered with pods as much as they can. There's no point in rolling pods from internal storage until those on the hull are nearly exhausted, not to mention there's not much hull left to limpet to. Even if you didn't have enough Apollo pods: in a battle, you don't want to shoot yourself dry, so I'd fill the ship or the hull with older pods to fire after exhausting the Apollo birds.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:When you're defending your home system, the Single Point of Failure of the entire Alliance, that would not be a consideration. Remove all the safety interlocks too. Fire from however far you need to, maximum effect.

Chin did realise very quickly what Honor was doing, when she found out. Not immediately, but in fairly short order. The problem is that the missiles had just over 9 minutes travel time, the SDs take multiple minutes to translate to alpha and the order takes some measurable time to propagate through the fleet. Remember: Chin's tactical officer first ordered all ships to move before telling Chin that the missiles were incoming.

A completely useless move, regardless of Apollo.

SharkHunter wrote:Let's assume by the Battle of Manticore, they've revised their count to 500-600 hits to mission kill an SD, which is about 90 pods, less Penaids, etc. Then the numbers make a bit more sense... and is why McKeon's ships should have been targeting 2nd Fleet right off the bat.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I haven't had a chance to cross reference my memory with textev, so I'll play it safe. Whatever tactic McKeon adopted when he joined the fray, he couldn't exceed the range of Apollo that had already been revealed. If he had, Chin would have immediately known the fire that came from Harrington's fleet was no bluff, and she would have known to hyper out immediately.

As it stood, McKeon remained within the range and capability that had already been revealed. Saving the gravy for Honor. McKeon was under the obligation not to spill any wine before it's time.

I know you said you didn't get a chance to look up the exact distances - but even without exact distances what target do you think McKeon might have even had that would exposed Apollo's max range?

Remember that a Lovat, before Apollo was revealed, Giscard thought that Honor's trap force has screwed up their astrogation by dropping in too far back for their MDMs to be truly effective against his larger force of SD(P)s. (Exact range, per AAC, 54,900,000 km)

Having been shown Apollo was lethally effective at that range, and hoping to trap the Apollo equipped 8th fleet, the entire point of Chin's trap was to emerge close enough to minimize the difference between light-speed and FTL control of the missiles - so far closer than the already revealed Apollo range from Lovat. So when McKeon immediately engages her her entire fleet is closer than anything Apollo has shot at before. (Exact range 41,700,000 km - and she'd wanted to be 10 million closer[1])

The only more distant target is the remains of 2nd fleet (and if McKeon had fired immediately on them it would have been before he knew Chin was even coming). And yes, 3rd fleet didn't engage the damaged 2nd fleet immediately after hypering in. But they were withing powered MDM range, they just wanted to wait until the hit percentages of the non-Apollo MDMs which were the vast majority of their weapons, were better. I don't think McKeon engaging would have revealed significantly more Apollo range than at Lovat. (And looking it up, the range was 60,000,000 km - so slightly more than Lovat but not a huge difference)


But Honor dropped in so far back her missiles needed a ballistic coast segment (exact range 72,930,000 km) - which is why Chin thought she was bluffing. McKeon literally didn't have any target he could have fired on that was that far out.

So this whole tangent seems moot - there was never any need to decide whether or not to reveal Apollo's max range. And just remembering the plan was for Chin to engage closely enough Apollo wasn't a major factor, and Honor engaged from far enough she needed a ballistic phase should have made that clear - even without exact ranges.



[1] "Chin's astrogation had been off by a good ten million kilometers, although it was hard to fault her for that. She'd had only a handful of minutes to adjust her position after MacArthur's arrival"

Loren Pechtel wrote:Chin realized it quickly but not quickly enough. Had he seen the true potential of Apollo he would have known a beyond-range shot was still lethal and would have hypered out--leaving him free to return with a decent portion of Honor's ammo gone.

kzt wrote:No, second was already going to destroy them. They were losing 1-3 ships per salvo (every 24 seconds) from second alone, which was far faster then 2nd was losing ships. Not surprising, as Kuzak had deliberately thrown away every advantage that 3rd had.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:So everyone knew that whoever ended up in possession of the Manticore-A orbitals after this battle would be the winner of the war.