TEIF errors?

jaydub69 wrote:My point about the final battle being rushed was not the actual battle but the writing of said battle being rushed. For example, if that final suicide launch had been say- 110,000 missiles with 10,000 getting through to attack range. 10,000 missiles taking out 22 capital ships and damaging others seems more reasonable based on earlier battles we've seen.

It's not just the final launch--basically everything about Galton is wrong.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

jaydub69 wrote:My point about the final battle being rushed was not the actual battle but the writing of said battle being rushed. For example, if that final suicide launch had been say- 110,000 missiles with 10,000 getting through to attack range. 10,000 missiles taking out 22 capital ships and damaging others seems more reasonable based on earlier battles we've seen.

It's not just the final launch--basically everything about Galton is wrong.

Well, yes.

jaydub69 wrote:True, they may have been more capable missiles but launching 11000 against the most powerful and experienced fleet in existence they take out 22 ships of the line with the <1000 surviving warheads?

It's pretty funny seeing someone complain about proofreading issues who then keeps conflating the ships which died in that final salvo and treating them all as ships of the wall(line). There were only 11 SD(P)s, 4 CLACs and 7 BCs killed in that strike.

TEiF wrote:At that speed, with weapons of that power, it was all over in the blink of a thousand thermonuclear eyes, and eleven superdreadnoughts, four LAC carriers, and seven battlecruisers of Grand Fleet were gone, destroyed outright or ripped into disintegrating wreckage, just as quickly.

I do not think a BC, not even the RMN's Nike, has the same toughness as a SD(P)(and those could have been old style BCs instead of all Nikes). Nor does CLACs - they might have just enough anti-missile capacity to stand in a battle wall, but they don't really have the same kind of in-depth, internal protection that SD(P)s do, however tough their external armour is.

munroburton wrote:

jaydub69 wrote:True, they may have been more capable missiles but launching 11000 against the most powerful and experienced fleet in existence they take out 22 ships of the line with the <1000 surviving warheads?

It's pretty funny seeing someone complain about proofreading issues who then keeps conflating the ships which died in that final salvo and treating them all as ships of the wall(line). There were only 11 SD(P)s, 4 CLACs and 7 BCs killed in that strike.

TEiF wrote:At that speed, with weapons of that power, it was all over in the blink of a thousand thermonuclear eyes, and eleven superdreadnoughts, four LAC carriers, and seven battlecruisers of Grand Fleet were gone, destroyed outright or ripped into disintegrating wreckage, just as quickly.

I do not think a BC, not even the RMN's Nike, has the same toughness as a SD(P)(and those could have been old style BCs instead of all Nikes). Nor does CLACs - they might have just enough anti-missile capacity to stand in a battle wall, but they don't really have the same kind of in-depth, internal protection that SD(P)s do, however tough their external armour is.

Less than 1000 missiles made it to attack range. Would 1000 missiles have enough hits between them even if they were all focused on just the 11 SDs to destroy every single one of them? 80-90 missles per SD? The hit percentage is much less than 100%, sometimes it's in the single digits. There's many examples in previous books of SDs taking dozens of hits and shrugging them off to continue fighting. Even with apollo it takes something like 200 reaching attack range to guarantee a kill against a SD. But they were not concentrated, 11 other ships were destroyed. Honor's ship took hits, presumably others did too.

And that's if you believe any of the 11000 cataphracts would make it past the defences of the most powerful and best defended fleet in history.

But all this detail is missing the point. These battles don't seem to have the same attention to detail that is DWs signature. I loved this book overall but these are details that throw me out of the story when reading it.

jaydub69 wrote:
Less than 1000 missiles made it to attack range. Would 1000 missiles have enough hits between them even if they were all focused on just the 11 SDs to destroy every single one of them? 80-90 missles per SD? The hit percentage is much less than 100%, sometimes it's in the single digits. There's many examples in previous books of SDs taking dozens of hits and shrugging them off to continue fighting. Even with apollo it takes something like 200 reaching attack range to guarantee a kill against a SD. But they were not concentrated, 11 other ships were destroyed. Honor's ship took hits, presumably others did too.

And that's if you believe any of the 11000 cataphracts would make it past the defences of the most powerful and best defended fleet in history.

Don't forget the fact that every RMN, GSN, and IAN SD would have had Keyholes and would have rolled their wedges to block the incoming salvos.

I can understand the BCs - the IAN and the RHN never built Keyhole BCs and fewer than 150 Agamemnons, Couvosier II, and Nikes were built, so many escorts which could not roll their wedge would be vulnerable. But CLACS should either be kept back with the support craft or screened by the fleet, depending on their defenses. So losing 4 Minotaur/Hydras just feels like a rookie mistake, that Honor would not make.

jaydub69 wrote: Less than 1000 missiles made it to attack range. Would 1000 missiles have enough hits between them even if they were all focused on just the 11 SDs to destroy every single one of them? 80-90 missles per SD? The hit percentage is much less than 100%, sometimes it's in the single digits. There's many examples in previous books of SDs taking dozens of hits and shrugging them off to continue fighting. Even with apollo it takes something like 200 reaching attack range to guarantee a kill against a SD. But they were not concentrated, 11 other ships were destroyed. Honor's ship took hits, presumably others did too.

And that's if you believe any of the 11000 cataphracts would make it past the defences of the most powerful and best defended fleet in history.

But all this detail is missing the point. These battles don't seem to have the same attention to detail that is DWs signature. I loved this book overall but these are details that throw me out of the story when reading it.

Those are not the more primitive Cataphracts we've seen in previous books. They were probably extra-large system defense variants with ten or twelve lasing rods each. Certainly, not every missile which manages to fire its payload achieves hits. Only 10%, 20% or whatever of those 10,000 lasers ignored the decoys, the EW, etc. and broke through the sidewalls without being bent into the wedge.

Jonathan_S' post a page back does a much better job of explaining why Grand Fleet's systems weren't quite on top form in this particular situation than I ever could.

Jonathan_S wrote:What I can't remember from TIEF, is whether or not that posthumous surprise launch had any fire control support, or if it was totally blind-fired like the one at Hypatia. Any fire control support would have made it massively more effective.

I've already stated that I think this final strike was basically aimed at HMS Imperator, a last-ditch attempt to kill our eponymous heroine. Basic fire control may have been supplied by all "Those orbital habitats, those industrial platforms and shipyards [which] had just made themselves legitimate targets". It just wasn't good enough and most of their last missiles reacquired other Invictuses, because they looked like HMS Imperator, with the other 11 non-wallers simply being unlucky.

From a certain perspective, it means Galton threw everything they could at one specific ship... and couldn't kill it because the fleet around it was such an effective distraction.

And it's fortunate for Galton that they failed. Consider the implications if they had managed to kill HMS Imperator: Honor wouldn't have been around to give her restrained response. Someone else, suddenly thrust into command, might have blown those habitats away.

Theemile wrote:Don't forget the fact that every RMN, GSN, and IAN SD would have had Keyholes and would have rolled their wedges to block the incoming salvos.

I can understand the BCs - the IAN and the RHN never built Keyhole BCs and fewer than 150 Agamemnons, Couvosier II, and Nikes were built, so many escorts which could not roll their wedge would be vulnerable. But CLACS should either be kept back with the support craft or screened by the fleet, depending on their defenses. So losing 4 Minotaur/Hydras just feels like a rookie mistake, that Honor would not make.

It's a tough call. What if some surprise force dropped out of hyper and the LACs she took in-system ran out of countermissiles? Tactical reloads, plus the carriers' own defensive contributions, could be sorely missed.

munroburton wrote:Those are not the more primitive Cataphracts we've seen in previous books. They were probably extra-large system defense variants with ten or twelve lasing rods each. Certainly, not every missile which manages to fire its payload achieves hits. Only 10%, 20% or whatever of those 10,000 lasers ignored the decoys, the EW, etc. and broke through the sidewalls without being bent into the wedge.

We know that Galton had better warheads than the SLN ever had. This was explicit in the text. But it boggles the mind that even an improved Cataphract-C could do that much damage against a latest-generation Invictus, Adler or Sovereign of Space. I don't think the Apollo-generation Mk23 warheads can do that.

Unless those were a previously-unknown Cataphract-D system-defence variant that was even larger than the Cs that the SLN fired from pods. But we're told that the best that Galton had to offer -- especially the graserheads -- had already been fired and used up by this point.

Jonathan_S' post a page back does a much better job of explaining why Grand Fleet's systems weren't quite on top form in this particular situation than I ever could.

Jonathan_S wrote:What I can't remember from TIEF, is whether or not that posthumous surprise launch had any fire control support, or if it was totally blind-fired like the one at Hypatia. Any fire control support would have made it massively more effective.

Massively more effective than an uncoordinated launch, sure. So yes, massively more effective than Hypatia.

The problem is that even a coordinated and controlled launch shouldn't have been enough to do that much damage.

I've already stated that I think this final strike was basically aimed at HMS Imperator, a last-ditch attempt to kill our eponymous heroine. Basic fire control may have been supplied by all "Those orbital habitats, those industrial platforms and shipyards [which] had just made themselves legitimate targets". It just wasn't good enough and most of their last missiles reacquired other Invictuses, because they looked like HMS Imperator, with the other 11 non-wallers simply being unlucky.

How would they know which of the 50-100 Invictus/Harrington II in the fleet was Imperator? Light-speed transmissions never came from Honor's ship, she only used FTL. Any of the other top RMN admirals would also be in a similar ship in a similar squadron, so there should be at least a dozen identical setups, and this is assuming a GSN formation could be told apart from an RMN one.

I'm sure they would have wanted to attack Imperator. I just don't think it believable that they had any idea which ship that was and in which squadron. At best, they'd have selected any of a number of squadrons for pretty much an arbitrary reason. Then if 10% of the missiles that weren't intercepted lost track and fired on any Invictus they could find, there's a 40% chance that one shot was at Imperator.

And it's fortunate for Galton that they failed. Consider the implications if they had managed to kill HMS Imperator: Honor wouldn't have been around to give her restrained response. Someone else, suddenly thrust into command, might have blown those habitats away.

That is true.

Theemile wrote:I can understand the BCs - the IAN and the RHN never built Keyhole BCs and fewer than 150 Agamemnons, Couvosier II, and Nikes were built, so many escorts which could not roll their wedge would be vulnerable. But CLACS should either be kept back with the support craft or screened by the fleet, depending on their defenses. So losing 4 Minotaur/Hydras just feels like a rookie mistake, that Honor would not make.

munroburton wrote:It's a tough call. What if some surprise force dropped out of hyper and the LACs she took in-system ran out of countermissiles? Tactical reloads, plus the carriers' own defensive contributions, could be sorely missed.

They didn't have to be all the way back to the hyperlimit. They just had to be back in the formation, further away from the front facing the Galton remnants. But that's also not a good idea because you can't screen them properly if they're hanging out back. Honor didn't feel the need to do anything different than what had worked for the past full week: she'd successfully defended her CLACs and fleet train against dozens of attacks. After all, she parked a full light-minute away, so any possible attack would take at least 200 seconds to arrive, assuming the enemy had true MDMs as capable as a GA one.

munroburton wrote:Those are not the more primitive Cataphracts we've seen in previous books. They were probably extra-large system defense variants with ten or twelve lasing rods each. Certainly, not every missile which manages to fire its payload achieves hits. Only 10%, 20% or whatever of those 10,000 lasers ignored the decoys, the EW, etc. and broke through the sidewalls without being bent into the wedge.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:We know that Galton had better warheads than the SLN ever had. This was explicit in the text. But it boggles the mind that even an improved Cataphract-C could do that much damage against a latest-generation Invictus, Adler or Sovereign of Space. I don't think the Apollo-generation Mk23 warheads can do that.

Unless those were a previously-unknown Cataphract-D system-defence variant that was even larger than the Cs that the SLN fired from pods. But we're told that the best that Galton had to offer -- especially the graserheads -- had already been fired and used up by this point.

That is not precisely what the book says; unfortunately I will have to manually type the quote from page 672 (out of 696):

They weren't armed with graserheads, Galton had exhausted its graserhead production arming the Hasta IIIs and the Cataphracts in the larger, more capable missile pods Adebayo had been forced to destroy before Honor crossed the hyper-limit. These were "only" laserheads, and they streaked in through the lattice of counter-missiles and point defense lasers at 173,000 KPS.

That can either be read as the larger pods were more capable then the ones that were left to fire at the end or as the graser headed missiles were more capable than the laser headed ones. But it says nothing about the size of the warhead.

The point that strikes me is this is something that needed to be in place before the battle started, ready at the end to execute the stab from "Hell's Heart" on command. So these were not leftovers, but perhaps something built specifically for the purpose.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:How would they know which of the 50-100 Invictus/Harrington II in the fleet was Imperator? Light-speed transmissions never came from Honor's ship, she only used FTL. Any of the other top RMN admirals would also be in a similar ship in a similar squadron, so there should be at least a dozen identical setups, and this is assuming a GSN formation could be told apart from an RMN one.

Bold to assume that many Invictus were there - I was thinking maybe just two squadrons with the rest being made up out of all the other classes, including Harrington-IIs distinctive enough for even unassisted missiles to pick out and ignore. Even with Mycroft platforms, I think they're going to leave enough ships behind for there to be an effective Home Fleet.

HMS Imperator has been Honor's flagship since she took command of Eighth Fleet aside from that short period after Solon while it was being repaired. When Grand Fleet arrived, they didn't hide anything:

“How much coverage do we have?” Montalván asked.
“Virtually total.” Auberjonois sounded more than a little bitter. “They’re not even trying to knock back our drones. They want us to know what they have.”
“Of course they do,” Karoline Adebayo said from Montalván’s com. He looked back at her, and she shrugged. “It’s not like they ever thought they could sneak up on us. And when they’re that far out-system, they must figure there’s not much we can do with anything they show us. So they might as well make sure we know how big their hammer is. They may even hope we’ll just throw in the towel if they do.”

They weren't hiding when they came into Galton orbit either.

There's no textev actually saying that Galton specifically identified HMS Imperator and went for it. My original suggestion was that the final salvo simply concentrated on all the Invictuses, expecting to nail Imperator among them.

At the end of the day, to me it looks like 12 SD(P)s was the primary target of that final salvo and the RMN might still use six-ship battle squadrons. Either the RMN really only sent 12 Invictuses or Galton figured out which battle squadrons included HMS Imperator.

I concede that it's quite speculative but everytime I reread Adeboyo's final scene, her final thought about "sometimes, it does not matter how competent you are" coupled with the "I stab at thee and spit my last breath at thee" line, it seems like she's confident that her last shot will take Harrington with her.

It so nearly did.

tlb wrote:That can either be read as the larger pods were more capable then the ones that were left to fire at the end or as the graser headed missiles were more capable than the laser headed ones. But it says nothing about the size of the warhead.

The point that strikes me is this is something that needed to be in place before the battle started, ready at the end to execute the stab from "Hell's Heart" on command. So these were not leftovers, but perhaps something built specifically for the purpose.

I think that final shot was the best non-graser missiles they had. It was a deliberate attempt to provoke an atrocity, they would have made it hit as hard as it possibly could.