Third Fleet and Apollo ships in the Battle of Manticore

If Haven holds them the war is over. If they don't hold them then the war continues. 2nd not blowing up Sphinx in passing was a major mistake.

If he’d gotten Sphinx and then 5th got it’s ass shot off taking out Manticore Haven probably wins.

cthia wrote:This is where we disagree. Why should Haven roll over?

The Battle of Manticore was their all in game to stop the war before Manticore was able to produce Apollo in sufficient numbers to close their window of vulnerability.

Apollo Missile production is not 'questionable' from their viewpoint. Theisman knows what's up and the book is quite clear on that.

It's also a pretty simple calculation. Eighth Fleet used thousands of pods at Lovat. They used two or three times that many at Manticore a couple of months later. This alone is indicative of mass production already in progress.

kzt wrote:If he’d gotten Sphinx and then 5th got it’s ass shot off taking out Manticore Haven probably wins.

In what universe?
Apollo missile production still continues. There is no reason to think they were producing all of them in Sphinx orbit.
Manticore could afford to lose all major ship construction at that point really. All they need is enough missiles to arm the ships already out of the yards by that point.

Star Knight wrote:

cthia wrote:This is where we disagree. Why should Haven roll over?

The Battle of Manticore was their all in game to stop the war before Manticore was able to produce Apollo in sufficient numbers to close their window of vulnerability.

Apollo Missile production is not 'questionable' from their viewpoint. Theisman knows what's up and the book is quite clear on that.

It's also a pretty simple calculation. Eighth Fleet used thousands of pods at Lovat. They used two or three times that many at Manticore a couple of months later. This alone is indicative of mass production already in progress.

I'm not disagreeing. I'm saying that a lesser mortal, may. Honor needed to nail Chin so she wouldn't have to lose sleep over somebody's crazy thinking. Besides, again, 8th Fleet is pinned at home and Shannon has some breathing room to counter Apollo. Honor certainly didn't know how many ships will be available from Bolthole or any other innovations from Shannon.

Whether I'm right or wrong, it is amusing that it all reminds me of the last battle where Honor and Theisman met where Honor's death ride had Theisman running for the hyper limit, only to reverse course when he had a chance to reassess the tactical situation.

"They're reversing course Milady." Honor bluffed.

Honor needed to get Chin, to dispell any Peep hope of an ultimate win.

Star Knight wrote:

kzt wrote:If he’d gotten Sphinx and then 5th got it’s ass shot off taking out Manticore Haven probably wins.

In what universe?
Apollo missile production still continues. There is no reason to think they were producing all of them in Sphinx orbit.
Manticore could afford to lose all major ship construction at that point really. All they need is enough missiles to arm the ships already out of the yards by that point.

Sure. There is probably protype production gear on the Gryphon platform. But it’s not mass production. And the most likely place where the big stockpiles of missiles are kept would be the big naval bases that you blowed up.

So will 8th be protecting their surviving industrial node or the capital when the next 600 SD(P)s jump in? Oddly enough, not all in one group...

Loren Pechtel wrote:Disagree--if you're not going to lose them to incoming fire you should be rolling pods as fast as you can. That means it's longer until you deplete your already-rolled pods and your weight of fire drops.

Not exactly disagreeing. I agree with what you saiad: if you are able to fire all of those and not lose them to proximity kills, you roll pods at the same time as you use the externally-mounted ones. What I meant was when you can't do that. If you have to fire in a certain sequence, you start with those on your hull.

You have to start with those on the hull anyway to unblock sensors, PDLC and CM tubes.

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.

Even if she had notice and hypered immediately saving most of her fleet, I maintain that the battle was won and Chin wouldn't come back.

Star Knight wrote:

cthia wrote:This is where we disagree. Why should Haven roll over?

The Battle of Manticore was their all in game to stop the war before Manticore was able to produce Apollo in sufficient numbers to close their window of vulnerability.

Apollo Missile production is not 'questionable' from their viewpoint. Theisman knows what's up and the book is quite clear on that.

It's also a pretty simple calculation. Eighth Fleet used thousands of pods at Lovat. They used two or three times that many at Manticore a couple of months later. This alone is indicative of mass production already in progress.

I disagree again. It only showed that mass production was in progress. Again, Theisman would be remiss if he didn't consider that OB killed that missile production.

The point that you're missing is that neither do the Manties control Haven's orbitals, and as it stands 8th Fleet has to go through the motions to control Peep orbitals. Since Honor knocked out Chin. Eloise may go ahead and throw in the towel, for certain. Without the need for a final sortie by 8th Fleet, however much time that would take, and whatever innovations Shannon prouduced. Honor likes to be clearly decisive, and I don't blame her.

You don't want to have to count on your enemy's sanity being equal to your own, that thinking led to BoM.

cthia wrote:I disagree again. It only showed that mass production was in progress. Again, Theisman would be remiss if he didn't consider that OB killed that missile production.

Oyster Bay didn't happen until 9 months later.

Missiles would also have been forward deployed to Trevor's Star. After all, that's where Eighth Fleet was based. That's where it would rearmed. Eighth wasn't returning to Manticore to rearm and then go back through the Junction. It's far easier to move the pods through the Junction.

The point that you're missing is that neither do the Manties control Haven's orbitals, and as it stands 8th Fleet has to go through the motions to control Peep orbitals. Since Honor knocked out Chin. Eloise may go ahead and throw in the towel, for certain. Without the need for a final sortie by 8th Fleet, however much time that would take, and whatever innovations Shannon prouduced. Honor likes to be clearly decisive, and I don't blame her.

You don't want to have to count on your enemy's sanity being equal to your own.

First of all, stop calling them Peeps. There hadn't been a People's Republic for 7 years. Thinking of them as Peeps was a serious mistake in the Manticoran intelligence and the bad psychology led to bad assumptions and bad decisions. And if there was one officer who wasn't thinking of the Havenites as Peeps any more, it was Honor.

Anyway, as I've said above, if Chin had extricated 90 of the 100 SD(P)s she brought into the battle instead of 30, the extra 60 ships would only be 20% more to the RHN TOE. And many of them had already been damaged, requiring repairs, so they wouldn't be immediately combat-effective. True, Bolthole was churning ships like there was no tomorrow and Theisman had 300 older SDs whose crews could migrate to new SD(P)s, but 700 SD(P)s wouldn't be sufficient to stop the Alliance any more.

Destroying the infrastructure in Manticoran planets would have, since it would have made the Alliance conserve resources (Monica had already happened, so Manticore had to think of what to do with the League). Since that didn't happen, the war ended.

kzt wrote:Sure. There is probably protype production gear on the Gryphon platform. But it’s not mass production. And the most likely place where the big stockpiles of missiles are kept would be the big naval bases that you blowed up.

So will 8th be protecting their surviving industrial node or the capital when the next 600 SD(P)s jump in? Oddly enough, not all in one group...

I may be wrong but i have the impression there's more military production at Gryphon than Sphinx or Manticore. I don't see any reason to assume Apollo mass production is Happening only at Manticore or Sphinx.

But for the sake of argument, say Sphinx is taken out and Manticore loses fifty percent of their Apollo production capacity.
So what? They've been building up this production capacity within half a tyear. They could simply continue expand the production going on at Manticore and Gryphon at could probably cover half of the production lost at Sphinx.

That's the worst case and it's more than enough. By the time Haven could jump in another 600 of the wall (a tyear later ??), Eighth Fleet would not only be completely rearmed and reinforced by IAN units and new RMN wallers build before the Battle of Manticore. There'd be a hell of a lot system defense pods too.

As for the tactial challenge of defending two targets with one fleet - just defend from outsight the hyper limit. Even if Haven jumps in with two fleet 300 of the wall each you have enough time to defeat them in detail.

No, all of Manticore is gone. It's all in one platform. When it gets hit with a hundred MDMs it's all gone. Along with all the industrial staff for both Sphinx and MAnticore because the RMN didn't order an evac because reasons.