TEIF errors?

The biggest error I found is that no Spider Drive ships were involved in the Galton battle. The GA knew about them from the Beowulf and Manticore raids. So why is everyone relieved at the end of the book that they wiped out the Alignment? The most inexperienced Intelligence Officer or Rating should have seen that from several light-years away with their unaided eyes.

SW_Wis wrote:The biggest error I found is that no Spider Drive ships were involved in the Galton battle. The GA knew about them from the Beowulf and Manticore raids. So why is everyone relieved at the end of the book that they wiped out the Alignment? The most inexperienced Intelligence Officer or Rating should have seen that from several light-years away with their unaided eyes.

I agree that's an error, but it's not a continuity error. It's an in-universe, unforced error by the MAlign leadership.

The discussion is why RFC felt the need to introduce Galton if it didn't actually accomplish the hiding.

SW_Wis wrote:The biggest error I found is that no Spider Drive ships were involved in the Galton battle.

Wasn't a mistake.

TEIF Mistake is saying that 10,000 LAC's + 200 SDP + 80 CLAC with 3 and a half minutes time, with ability to launch literally hundreds of thousands of CM's, and hundreds of thousands of PDLC lasers firing(book said a hilariously inacurate 12,000 PDLC each with ~8+ lasers a piece) can't annihilate a mere 11,000 Hasta missiles with normal missile drives even before ECM or Loreli/Keyhole...

TEIF error would be saying a mere 1000 LAC survived to final battle... If this were the case, then there shouldn't have been ANY surviving SD'p either as said Galton missiles are not aiming at the LAC's...

Relax wrote:

SW_Wis wrote:The biggest error I found is that no Spider Drive ships were involved in the Galton battle.

Wasn't a mistake.

TEIF Mistake is saying that 10,000 LAC's + 200 SDP + 80 CLAC with 3 and a half minutes time, with ability to launch literally hundreds of thousands of CM's, and hundreds of thousands of PDLC lasers firing(book said a hilariously inacurate 12,000 PDLC each with ~8+ lasers a piece) can't annihilate a mere 11,000 Hasta missiles with normal missile drives even before ECM or Loreli/Keyhole...

TEIF error would be saying a mere 1000 LAC survived to final battle... If this were the case, then there shouldn't have been ANY surviving SD'p either as said Galton missiles are not aiming at the LAC's...

Right, exactly my point. We have multiple recent battles where a similar number of cataphracts or havenite MDMs were launched against manty forces that were just a few cruisers or battlecruisers, or in the case of solon- 2 SDs and change- and in those battles they handled the missiles without much bother.

At solon, they withstood 3 Waves of 11,000 missiles each before being hit with the Moriarty wave of 17,000 missiles and they lost one SD and some lesser ships. At Galton, they had literally 100 times as many SDs and at least 10 times as many lacs available + the lorelei decoys for defense to take out the attacking missiles and we're to believe 1000 got through? And then we're to believe those 1000 missiles achieved enough hits to destroy 22 ships, including 11 SDs?

Makes me remember similar thoughts about the solly attack on Beowulf. 5000 apollo missiles taking out 400 or so battlecruisers from far past any control range.....

jaydub69 wrote:Makes me remember similar thoughts about the solly attack on Beowulf. 5000 apollo missiles taking out 400 or so battlecruisers from far past any control range.....

At least there we have technological reasons for believing it was possible. When you combine the inadequacy of the Solarian Navy to defend against missile attacks with the ability of the Apollo command missiles to pool information across their network (even without support from Mycroft); you then have a superior missile attack striking an inferior defense.

tlb wrote:

jaydub69 wrote:Makes me remember similar thoughts about the solly attack on Beowulf. 5000 apollo missiles taking out 400 or so battlecruisers from far past any control range.....

At least there we have technological reasons for believing it was possible. When you combine the inadequacy of the Solarian Navy to defend against missile attacks with the ability of the Apollo command missiles to pool information across their network (even without support from Mycroft); you then have a superior missile attack striking an inferior defense.

That's true, and that makes it easier to believe but it still felt a bit too successful. Then again, ganymede station couldn't stop a couple thousand missiles with literally hundreds of thousands of countermissles and point defences shooting at them, so yeah....

jaydub69 wrote:Makes me remember similar thoughts about the solly attack on Beowulf. 5000 apollo missiles taking out 400 or so battlecruisers from far past any control range.....

That's because it was Apollo vs the SLN. We still haven't seen any substantial improvements in Sollie missile defense. They simply aren't prepared to deal with relativistic inbounds and the EW birds play havoc with the countermissiles.

Loren Pechtel wrote:That's because it was Apollo vs the SLN. We still haven't seen any substantial improvements in Sollie missile defense. They simply aren't prepared to deal with relativistic inbounds and the EW birds play havoc with the countermissiles.

Indeed.

Meanwhile, those missiles that rained on Honor were moving more slowly. A Cataphract's terminal velocity, assuming a 50000 gravity first stage and 150k second (these numbers are probably not correct, but not too far off), is 0.61c, which is less than three quarters the final speed a Mk23 crashes on its targets. What's more, the SLN force at Beowulf consisted of Battlecruisers, so even 400 of them couldn't face against the storm of Apollos. Another aspect is that even these evolved Cataphracts probably only compare, if I'm being very generous, to late RHN missiles in penetration capability.

Honor had 250 SDs, 80 CLACs (half of which should have some kind of missile defence), 1000 LACs at a minimum and at unknown number of other escorts.

munroburton wrote:The Galton deception won't stand up to a proper investigation, but those takes time. For a while, the GA should indeed think the Alignment is ended. How long until they start to suspect otherwise? Between a year to five years, I'd say.

It all depends. Partially on plot, but realistically, whose paranoid enough to think there is an even more secret base? Whose going to take them seriously as opposed writing them off as paranoid nuts?

And basically the MA and the MAN need to pull the hole in after them. No contact with anyone, so no freighters flying back to Moscow center, there isn't anyone left to talk to. You let the entire network fall apart other then some very carefully selected and managed multi-hop couriers on random schedules who only deal with a very few selected folks. If you do this for a few decades, then maybe.

But the whole second MA world is pretty clearly a retrocon. It's very well done.

jaydub69 wrote:
At solon, they withstood 3 Waves of 11,000 missiles each before being hit with the Moriarty wave of 17,000 missiles and they lost one SD and some lesser ships. At Galton, they had literally 100 times as many SDs and at least 10 times as many lacs available + the lorelei decoys for defense to take out the attacking missiles and we're to believe 1000 got through? And then we're to believe those 1000 missiles achieved enough hits to destroy 22 ships, including 11 SDs?

Well, the typical ratio with Haven capital ship missiles was 400 hits per SD destroyed. And RHN MDMs have a much larger warhead. So yeah, just a tiny bit high. I'd give them 2 SDs if every single missile concentrated on that squadron. But if you assume they actually have a pretty good idea about how their defenses work I can see that number leaking. I just can't see it doing much.

A significantly more ground down fleet would have made more sense.

The whole spider thing doesn't make much sense to me either. I'd have just arranged that it was a super-secret elite unit that nobody outside had any knowledge of, and it, the manufacturing and R&D was on a special platform that somehow got blowed up real good, along the entire R&D/manufacturing with no survivors.

The larger spiders do have the problem that they can simply flee invisibly, so the GA will be out looking for them for a while.

It appears more that they are trying to simply claim they don't exist. The graser warheads could do what the torpedoes did. The only person who says they exist is a defector who has no first hand knowledge, just a rumor.