Third Fleet and Apollo ships in the Battle of Manticore

Still, no reason not to evacuate after 2nd Fleet walked over Home Fleet. You simply don't know what the RHN will do. Their unprecedented attack raised the stakes well into unknown territory.
Their next move could be a long-range attack against the Sphinx defense platforms. Or the Admiralty might decide to use them before losing them and trigger a full-scale response by 2nd Fleet.
As station commander, you simply don't know and that's why you order the evacuation as soon as things go south.

You need every second. They needed to start to evacuate as soon as 2nd fleet exited hyper.

kzt wrote:I really doubt that. If it’s lose the war or blow up people who are being held hostage on a target, i wouldn’t want to be on that platform.

You and me both.

There's a difference between premeditatedly adopting a foreign policy that includes the wanton targeting of civilians, it's quite another to use it when there's no other option, without malice.

Sometimes it just might be true when someone says "This is going to hurt me, more than it hurts you."

Star Knight wrote:Still, no reason not to evacuate after 2nd Fleet walked over Home Fleet. You simply don't know what the RHN will do. Their unprecedented attack raised the stakes well into unknown territory.
Their next move could be a long-range attack against the Sphinx defense platforms. Or the Admiralty might decide to use them before losing them and trigger a full-scale response by 2nd Fleet.
As station commander, you simply don't know and that's why you order the evacuation as soon as things go south.

Ditto, you don't know what the RHN will do. You can't know what any snake or navy will do when it's backed in a corner.

Which is why I caution ThinksMarkedly when he maintains that Chin wouldn't have hypered back in. Peeps continuously underestimated Honor's willingness to take a death ride. Chin could have chosen a death ride of her own, for some other payoff. Maybe even Honor's head. The unlikely tactic could have been what was meant to kill Honor in the alternate universe. Which would have been ironic, just plain wrong, had Honor died at the hands of someone using one of her own tactics against her.

cthia wrote:

Star Knight wrote:Still, no reason not to evacuate after 2nd Fleet walked over Home Fleet. You simply don't know what the RHN will do. Their unprecedented attack raised the stakes well into unknown territory.
Their next move could be a long-range attack against the Sphinx defense platforms. Or the Admiralty might decide to use them before losing them and trigger a full-scale response by 2nd Fleet.
As station commander, you simply don't know and that's why you order the evacuation as soon as things go south.

Ditto, you don't know what the RHN will do. You can't know what any snake or navy will do when it's backed in a corner.

Which is why I caution ThinksMarkedly when he maintains that Chin wouldn't have hypered back in. Peeps continuously underestimated Honor's willingness to take a death ride. Chin could have chosen a death ride of her own, for some other payoff. Maybe even Honor's head. The unlikely tactic could have been what was meant to kill Honor in the alternate universe. Which would have been ironic, just plain wrong, had Honor died at the hands of someone using one of her own tactics against her.

One relatively easy way to fit that in: 8th launches at 5th, which 5th dodges by jumping out. 8th then has to fire itself nearly dry finishing off 2nd. Chin then reappears, having guessed that 8th fleet would be nearly out of ammo, at which point Harrington lures 5th into following them over the hyper limit, then reverses and chases 5th into an energy engagement. The planned "let it end here" message gets sent just before the ragged remnants of 8th fleet reach energy range of 5th fleet.

8th fleet dies as thoroughly as Home and 3rd fleets before it, but kicks enough crap out of 5th fleet that (insert even smaller squadron here) is able to see them off. The Lynx or Basilisk pickets are not negligible and so far unaccounted for, but for them to work 5th fleet would have to have enough stuffing kicked out of them for a squadron or two of standard podnaughts to finish them off.

kzt wrote:I really doubt that. If it’s lose the war or blow up people who are being held hostage on a target, i wouldn’t want to be on that platform.

Is it worth winning if you can't look yourself in the mirror afterwards? (I don't expect an answer, this is just food for thought)

Maybe more concretely: is it worth winning this way if in a generation they're going to come back for your nation? Or you'd have to keep boots on the ground under an oppressive regime to prevent that from happen? The RoH definitely did not want either.

Evacuating the stations could probably be done in under an hour. They are huge, but clearly military targets, so the defenders really ought to have their evacuation plans up-to-date. An hour is long enough that you need to basically control the system, but short enough that you don't have to worry about reinforcements from New Berlin, Yeltsin or some nodal force elsewhere.

kzt wrote:You need every second. They needed to start to evacuate as soon as 2nd fleet exited hyper.

You may want to start evacuating all non-essential personnel, but essential will remain until the last minute. Especially defenders: those who man the weapons and marines to prevent boarders. Those will only evacuate if the battle is lost.

But that doesn't mean evacuation would be done. Until they started drilling evacuations later in the year, it probably took hours.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

cthia wrote:Which is why I caution ThinksMarkedly when he maintains that Chin wouldn't have hypered back in. Peeps continuously underestimated Honor's willingness to take a death ride. Chin could have chosen a death ride of her own, for some other payoff. Maybe even Honor's head. The unlikely tactic could have been what was meant to kill Honor in the alternate universe. Which would have been ironic, just plain wrong, had Honor died at the hands of someone using one of her own tactics against her.

There are two aspects here: first, whether Chin would come back; second, whether Honor could assume Chin wouldn't. The second is easiest: Honor couldn't and wouldn't. She had to remain at station for some time, at least until Tourville surrendered. Once he did, he surrendered the battle and if Chin reappeared, she'd be bound by the same surrender. If Chin violated the surrender, then Tourville and Second Fleet would be forfeit. And this is why Honor fired from 150 million km away and proved she could blast RHN2nd from that far. And just in case, she would continue rolling pods and be ready to fire. Recovering rolled but unfired pods is cheap and easy, but having them out would really ruin Chin's day.

Now, to the first: would Chin immediately double back, if she had escaped with 90 SD(P)s? I don't mean go to Haven (4-6 weeks round-trip) or some staging point nearby. It would take at least 20 minutes to gather her forces from a ragged upwards translation, form into a combat wall, cycle the hypergenerators and translate back. In that time, Eight Fleet had the time to shift its position by 4 million km -- not a lot, but enough to make an ambush impractical (they had been in system only 10 minutes before Chin translated out, so not a large base velocity to contend with). Don't forget she had already got her approach to Third Fleet off by 10 million km when she had the time to calculate and now she doesn't. More importantly, she knows that Honor in those 20 minutes could have rolled more pods. And she knows Apollo-capable ships can control a bigger volume of fire than her own ships.

Jumping back into the teeth of an alert enemy, without intel, is reckless. Not to mention that she may jump back into a surrendered battle.

One relatively easy way to fit that in: 8th launches at 5th, which 5th dodges by jumping out. 8th then has to fire itself nearly dry finishing off 2nd. Chin then reappears, having guessed that 8th fleet would be nearly out of ammo, at which point Harrington lures 5th into following them over the hyper limit, then reverses and chases 5th into an energy engagement. The planned "let it end here" message gets sent just before the ragged remnants of 8th fleet reach energy range of 5th fleet.

8th fleet dies as thoroughly as Home and 3rd fleets before it, but kicks enough crap out of 5th fleet that (insert even smaller squadron here) is able to see them off. The Lynx or Basilisk pickets are not negligible and so far unaccounted for, but for them to work 5th fleet would have to have enough stuffing kicked out of them for a squadron or two of standard podnaughts to finish them off.

Why would Alliance8th shoot itself dry finishing off RHN2nd? Tourville had already shot himself nearly dry and was carrying considerable damage, fighting Home Fleet and Alliance3rd. Where were his LACs at this point? If he had 80 SD(P)-equivalent force--and I think that's a high number--Honor needed less than 10000 pods to to finish him off entirely and that's less than half her total ammunition stores. And she could also take her time while Tourville was in the middle of nowhere, not threatening the infrastructure, so she wouldn't even be close to exhausting her supply when Chin came back.

If that happened, then Honor would simply fire all those pods she had rolled at Chin before Chin could hyper back out. Even if Chin had spent 15 of the 20 minutes she was out rolling pods, she knows she can't put a volume of fire as big as Honor's. RHN5th would die before all of its missiles hit home, at which point the missiles in autonomous mode would be even less effective against Alliance8th's defences.

Galactic Sapper wrote:8th fleet dies as thoroughly as Home and 3rd fleets before it, but kicks enough crap out of 5th fleet that (insert even smaller squadron here) is able to see them off. The Lynx or Basilisk pickets are not negligible and so far unaccounted for, but for them to work 5th fleet would have to have enough stuffing kicked out of them for a squadron or two of standard podnaughts to finish them off.

According to David, the only substancial reinforcement was the Lynx force, consisting of 12 Medusas, which was over a hour off the terminus, and arrived shortly after the shooting had ended.

All the other terminus forces were forts and cruiser level mobile forces, unable to substantially assist in the defense of the Home System.

--snipping--

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If that happened, then Honor would simply fire all those pods she had rolled at Chin before Chin could hyper back out. Even if Chin had spent 15 of the 20 minutes she was out rolling pods, she knows she can't put a volume of fire as big as Honor's. RHN5th would die before all of its missiles hit home, at which point the missiles in autonomous mode would be even less effective against Alliance8th's defences.

I don't know about that, Honor's pod supply can be roughly calculated... RFC says she fired of half of 8th Fleet's supply in the first salvo, so with a 90% survival rate, while out in hyper and prepping for the return, any admiral worth their salt is going to "calculate the cannonballs", i.e they have mass readings on the RMN SD(P)s so just by replaying their tac-recordings they could figure out what 8th Fleet has left.

With RHN missile colliers waiting, Chin can selectively hyper into a position far enough to cycle her hyper generators before the RMN missiles could arrive, issue a warning to evac the stations and protect the planets, hyper back out, and on the next cycle launch a deadly but ballistic salvo at Hephaestus, Vulcan, and Weyland which they can't dodge.

Secondarily, Tourville isn't Theisman so he can only surrender his own fleet. Ergo, plot wise, 5th Fleet's SD(s) had to mostly be mission killed. About all she could do (and presumably did "off screen" is pop an observinng ship with a quick hyper cycle time back into Manticoran space, get the report that 2nd Fleet has surrendered, then head home to RHN space.