Apollo Redundancy

Hi All,
We know that the Apollo Pods contain 8 Mk23 MDM's and one Apollo command missile. So attacks by podlayers normally have 8 attack birds to each Apollo Control Missile. But I would expect some redundancy. We know that the Apollo's can network via their lightspeed comms and control the Mk23's by Lightspeed coms.

So if an Apollo missile is taken out by counter fire or just fails can it's M23's be redistributed between the other Apollo's in the Salvo ?
Can A Medusa add Tube lanched M23's to the Salvo and integrated them with the Pod Apollo's ? Perhaps additional EW rounds.

If for instance the Apollo's had enough BW to support 16 MDM's then a SD(P)'s 6 pods could be 4 Apollo Pods and 2 older Mk23 pods for 84 Attack Birds and 4 Control Birds rather than 48 & 6.

I suspect the ratio of Dazzelers and Dragon's teeth is set when the Pod's are loaded so probably not something that can be changed after they are rolled. So integrating ship launched missiles with the whole becomes important.

Thoughts ?

Captain Golding wrote:So if an Apollo missile is taken out by counter fire or just fails can it's M23's be redistributed between the other Apollo's in the Salvo ?

if an Apollo ACM is taken out by counter-fire, whether laser or counter-missile, the Mk23's it was controlling are a heartbeat from detonating. So there's no point to another Apollo missile trying to give them last second instructions. Not even a last microsecond abort command can stop the attack at this point. The missile is already oriented by RCS thruster, the laser rods are pointed at a target, the gravity lens is probably already spinning upto full strength, and the nuke itself is milliseconds away from detonating which will destroy the nearby Apollo's.

Captain Golding wrote:Can A Medusa add Tube lanched M23's to the Salvo and integrated them with the Pod Apollo's ? Perhaps additional EW rounds.

If for instance the Apollo's had enough BW to support 16 MDM's then a SD(P)'s 6 pods could be 4 Apollo Pods and 2 older Mk23 pods for 84 Attack Birds and 4 Control Birds rather than 48 & 6.

I suspect the ratio of Dazzelers and Dragon's teeth is set when the Pod's are loaded so probably not something that can be changed after they are rolled. So integrating ship launched missiles with the whole becomes important.

It's possible you could thicken up a launch with internally launched Mk23s, but from some of the vague wording, it appears 8 is currently the max Apollo can control.... for now anyways. They are only first-gen after all, and Manticore has done amazing progress after the first generation of anything it's developed in the past 60 years.

And while they undoubtedly up the amount of missiles Apollo can control, they'll also be working to try and miniaturize it as much as possible, so we'll probably see a return to 10 attack missile pods Soon™. They might be slightly larger pods than present flatpack Mark 17-D pods, but Manticore seemed to really like using pods with 10 attack missiles, that was their common theme going all the way back to Hancock Station. They only had more missiles per pod when they experimented at loading cruiser-weight Mk16's into the pods instead of waller-weight Mk23's.


They'll try to engineer Apollo down, or scale pods up, enough to squeeze 10 birds + Apollo into a single pod, then focus on the range things. Increasing the autonomous ability of Apollo, increasing it's FTL comm array to allow for even longer ranges, stuff like that, because adding more attack birds to an Apollo doesn't notably increase the lethality anymore.

Somtaaw wrote:

Captain Golding wrote:So if an Apollo missile is taken out by counter fire or just fails can it's M23's be redistributed between the other Apollo's in the Salvo ?

if an Apollo ACM is taken out by counter-fire, whether laser or counter-missile, the Mk23's it was controlling are a heartbeat from detonating. So there's no point to another Apollo missile trying to give them last second instructions. Not even a last microsecond abort command can stop the attack at this point. The missile is already oriented by RCS thruster, the laser rods are pointed at a target, the gravity lens is probably already spinning upto full strength, and the nuke itself is milliseconds away from detonating which will destroy the nearby Apollo's.

Captain Golding wrote:Can A Medusa add Tube lanched M23's to the Salvo and integrated them with the Pod Apollo's ? Perhaps additional EW rounds.

If for instance the Apollo's had enough BW to support 16 MDM's then a SD(P)'s 6 pods could be 4 Apollo Pods and 2 older Mk23 pods for 84 Attack Birds and 4 Control Birds rather than 48 & 6.

I suspect the ratio of Dazzelers and Dragon's teeth is set when the Pod's are loaded so probably not something that can be changed after they are rolled. So integrating ship launched missiles with the whole becomes important.

It's possible you could thicken up a launch with internally launched Mk23s, but from some of the vague wording, it appears 8 is currently the max Apollo can control.... for now anyways. They are only first-gen after all, and Manticore has done amazing progress after the first generation of anything it's developed in the past 60 years.

And while they undoubtedly up the amount of missiles Apollo can control, they'll also be working to try and miniaturize it as much as possible, so we'll probably see a return to 10 attack missile pods Soon™. They might be slightly larger pods than present flatpack Mark 17-D pods, but Manticore seemed to really like using pods with 10 attack missiles, that was their common theme going all the way back to Hancock Station. They only had more missiles per pod when they experimented at loading cruiser-weight Mk16's into the pods instead of waller-weight Mk23's.


They'll try to engineer Apollo down, or scale pods up, enough to squeeze 10 birds + Apollo into a single pod, then focus on the range things. Increasing the autonomous ability of Apollo, increasing it's FTL comm array to allow for even longer ranges, stuff like that, because adding more attack birds to an Apollo doesn't notably increase the lethality anymore.

Pardon my bold.

That may change when attacking Darius. The control missiles may be naked against an invisible enemy with invisible toys. If taking out one control bird isn't a fluke, then we must entertain that any additional control birds have been lost as well. If it IS a fluke or just plain old good malignant luck, I doubt it would be worth it. Only eight missiles are in question. If the brood of missiles are in AM range when the MK-23 is lost (autonomous mode), then no problem anyway we'd like to think. But even that isn't written in stone against an invisible enemy where the launch might need to be led all the way in to the slaughter.

At any rate, I don't think thickening a launch is possible because of the limited range of the control missile. IINM, one reason the missiles are clumped so closely together is because of the limited range of the MK23-E. Thickening the launch would increase the distance of the extra missiles from the MK23-E, possibly beyond control range.

The FTL range of the MK-23E is far greater than its sublight range. Its brood of eight missiles have no FTL receiver.

Late edit:

BTW, I have always envisioned the brood of eight missiles arranging themselves in a compass like fashion. N S W E NE NW SE SW. Leaving no position to fit other missiles in the puzzle.

Captain Golding wrote:Hi All,
We know that the Apollo Pods contain 8 Mk23 MDM's and one Apollo command missile. So attacks by podlayers normally have 8 attack birds to each Apollo Control Missile. But I would expect some redundancy. We know that the Apollo's can network via their lightspeed comms and control the Mk23's by Lightspeed coms.

So if an Apollo missile is taken out by counter fire or just fails can it's M23's be redistributed between the other Apollo's in the Salvo ?
Can A Medusa add Tube lanched M23's to the Salvo and integrated them with the Pod Apollo's ? Perhaps additional EW rounds.

If for instance the Apollo's had enough BW to support 16 MDM's then a SD(P)'s 6 pods could be 4 Apollo Pods and 2 older Mk23 pods for 84 Attack Birds and 4 Control Birds rather than 48 & 6.

I suspect the ratio of Dazzelers and Dragon's teeth is set when the Pod's are loaded so probably not something that can be changed after they are rolled. So integrating ship launched missiles with the whole becomes important.

Thoughts ?

Adding to what others said:

Grayson practice is currently to include tube launched ECM missiles to thicken the standard ECM package in their pods - those extra ECM are not controlled by Apollo.

Medusas (but not Invicti)have extra broadside tubes, so they can thicken a salvo with extra ECM if they want to. However, Medusas have Mk 41 tubes, so their broadside missiles are capacitor birds, not fusion, so have a lower ECM performance due to less power.

RMN has several pod loads with 1-2 ECM missiles, with different loadouts of dragons teeth and dazzlers (so 5 different pod loadouts), which the tac officer can select from the missile queue.

Missile warheads can be changed in the field, but not at a moment's notice; so a special pod load with (for Ex.) all Dazzler's is possible if required, but not a normal loadout.

Somtaaw wrote:if an Apollo ACM is taken out by counter-fire, whether laser or counter-missile, the Mk23's it was controlling are a heartbeat from detonating. So there's no point to another Apollo missile trying to give them last second instructions. Not even a last microsecond abort command can stop the attack at this point. The missile is already oriented by RCS thruster, the laser rods are pointed at a target, the gravity lens is probably already spinning upto full strength, and the nuke itself is milliseconds away from detonating which will destroy the nearby Apollo's.

Not necessarily, and especially not against Mk21 CMs.

The RMN and now GA CM doctrine begins intercepting from very far away. Against Cataphracts, Sir Martin Lessem used 5 waves of CMs during the Battle of the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge. Mk23 would have a higher relative velocity if it's at the end of its second stage or into the third stage, which would limit the number of waves that there can be in the interception range of CMs.

But the point is that the outer interception range is 2 million km, or nearly 7 light-seconds. That's 8.3 seconds of flight time, even at terminal velocity, assuming negligible relative velocity between the ships being attacked and the launch platform. So it's entirely possible for a CM to take out ACMs way before the controlled missiles are ready to attack.

This hasn't been an issue against the SLN because the SLN CMs were low in density, slowly fired, and terrible at long ranges. The Mk23 came crashing down usually across a single CM wave, then practically immediately after that they fired. But against an opponent that has had time to improve their CMs and their doctrine to fight 3-stage MDMs, that has to be taken into account.

In fact, that must have been taken into account because the Apollos were designed to fight the RHN and those could fire multiple CM waves. It just happened that the war ended before they developed the doctrine and our seeing it in action. The two times where Apollos were used against the RHN were the Battle of Lovat, which is the first time they were used, and the Battle of Manticore, when Chin was too busy trying to escape Honor and Alistair's missiles were mixed in the rest of Third Fleet's salvos.

It's possible the first gen Apollos didn't have a way to do hand-over, because they were somewhat rushed to the front. But that technique can't have been far behind, because if the war had lasted, it would be used.

By the time of the Battle of Galton, I'm sure it was in place. The Galton Navy representing the MAlign was not stupid and they did have some surprises up their sleeves; they had been following the war with Haven very closely.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:if an Apollo ACM is taken out by counter-fire, whether laser or counter-missile, the Mk23's it was controlling are a heartbeat from detonating. So there's no point to another Apollo missile trying to give them last second instructions. Not even a last microsecond abort command can stop the attack at this point. The missile is already oriented by RCS thruster, the laser rods are pointed at a target, the gravity lens is probably already spinning upto full strength, and the nuke itself is milliseconds away from detonating which will destroy the nearby Apollo's.

Not necessarily, and especially not against Mk21 CMs.

The RMN and now GA CM doctrine begins intercepting from very far away. Against Cataphracts, Sir Martin Lessem used 5 waves of CMs during the Battle of the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge. Mk23 would have a higher relative velocity if it's at the end of its second stage or into the third stage, which would limit the number of waves that there can be in the interception range of CMs.

But the point is that the outer interception range is 2 million km, or nearly 7 light-seconds. That's 8.3 seconds of flight time, even at terminal velocity, assuming negligible relative velocity between the ships being attacked and the launch platform. So it's entirely possible for a CM to take out ACMs way before the controlled missiles are ready to attack.

This hasn't been an issue against the SLN because the SLN CMs were low in density, slowly fired, and terrible at long ranges. The Mk23 came crashing down usually across a single CM wave, then practically immediately after that they fired. But against an opponent that has had time to improve their CMs and their doctrine to fight 3-stage MDMs, that has to be taken into account.

In fact, that must have been taken into account because the Apollos were designed to fight the RHN and those could fire multiple CM waves. It just happened that the war ended before they developed the doctrine and our seeing it in action. The two times where Apollos were used against the RHN were the Battle of Lovat, which is the first time they were used, and the Battle of Manticore, when Chin was too busy trying to escape Honor and Alistair's missiles were mixed in the rest of Third Fleet's salvos.

It's possible the first gen Apollos didn't have a way to do hand-over, because they were somewhat rushed to the front. But that technique can't have been far behind, because if the war had lasted, it would be used.

By the time of the Battle of Galton, I'm sure it was in place. The Galton Navy representing the MAlign was not stupid and they did have some surprises up their sleeves; they had been following the war with Haven very closely.

Even with the Mk 31/32 CMs, the outer intercept range is in the 3-3.5 million KM range, or just over 10 light seconds. MDMs would be coming in at ~.5c, so we're talking about the last ~20 seconds of the missile life. At that point, the Missiles are settling down on their attack runs and have "final" attack profiles. Jammers will be on or programmed to come on, and missile will already have assigned targets.

Also, The ACM is multiple thousand KM behind the attack missiles, and is using them for protection, like a quarterback, it can use missiles as armor to defend itself against CMs by interposing the attack missile wedges between CMs and the ACM.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The RMN and now GA CM doctrine begins intercepting from very far away. Against Cataphracts, Sir Martin Lessem used 5 waves of CMs during the Battle of the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge. Mk23 would have a higher relative velocity if it's at the end of its second stage or into the third stage, which would limit the number of waves that there can be in the interception range of CMs.

But the point is that the outer interception range is 2 million km, or nearly 7 light-seconds. That's 8.3 seconds of flight time, even at terminal velocity, assuming negligible relative velocity between the ships being attacked and the launch platform. So it's entirely possible for a CM to take out ACMs way before the controlled missiles are ready to attack.

Can't shoot what you can't see though. Depending how good your initial launch was, and more importantly... how far out, your targets may not even begin to guess where your missiles are. Remember what Henke did with, what we saw as her literal first simulation with Apollo, she launched from so far out her "targets" couldn't localize her missiles which delayed their counter-missiles.

Storm From The Shadows, Ch 13 wrote:Entering those commands took her twenty-five seconds, in which the attack missiles traveled another 3,451,000 kilometers. It took just under four seconds for her commands to reach from Artemis to the Apollos. It took another twelve seconds for her instructions to be receipted, triple-checked, and confirmed by the Apollo AIs while the shrouds on the attack missiles were jettisoned. Forty-five seconds after the first pod's missiles had jettisoned their shrouds, the follow-on salvo opened its eyes, looked ahead, and saw its targets, still two and a quarter million kilometers in front of it. They were 4.4 light-minutes from Artemis . . . but their targeting orders were less than sixty seconds old, and the computers which had further refined and analyzed the reports from the first pod's Apollo were those of a superdreadnought, not a missile, however capable.

The simulated targets' fire control had only a relatively imprecise idea of where to look for the attack missiles before their third-stage drives came suddenly on-line. They'd still been so far out when they shut down for the ballistic leg of their flight that the defenders' on-board sensors hadn't been able to fully localize them. The target ships had gotten enough to predict their positions to within only a few percentage points of error, but at those velocities, and on such an enormous "battlefield," even tiny uncertainties made precise targeting impossible. And precise targeting was exactly what was necessary for a counter-missile to hit an attack missile at extended range.

Henke's first on-screen simulation with Apollo, somewhere around a week after being first briefed on the weapon system. Sure she was engaging Solarian SDs, but her missiles were ballistic and clean to within 2.25 million km before they opened their eyes, not even (quite yet) activating their third stage drives. I'm sure she's only gotten better since then at planning/scheming how to sneak attack missiles even closer.

And if you don't bring up your third stage until you're already within 2 million km, then it doesn't matter if you're using let's call them Mark 32 CMs which have say 6 million range instead of the actual Mark 31's which have a respectable 3.6 million km range. If you can't see and precisely locate the incoming missiles, you don't dare launch any counter missiles because you'll miss and likely get caught with nothing in the tubes when the incoming attack missiles finally go live with third stage for terminal maneuvers they can't achieve with purely RCS.

Having ultra-long range CMs only work if your enemy LETS you. Apollo is almost perfectly designed to deny giving potential enemies that chance at seeing long-distance missiles until it's far too late.

Theemile wrote:Even with the Mk 31/32 CMs, the outer intercept range is in the 3-3.5 million KM range, or just over 10 light seconds. MDMs would be coming in at ~.5c, so we're talking about the last ~20 seconds of the missile life. At that point, the Missiles are settling down on their attack runs and have "final" attack profiles. Jammers will be on or programmed to come on, and missile will already have assigned targets.

Also, The ACM is multiple thousand KM behind the attack missiles, and is using them for protection, like a quarterback, it can use missiles as armor to defend itself against CMs by interposing the attack missile wedges between CMs and the ACM.

Generally the MDM's would be coming in hotter than 0.5c. That's their velocity after just 24.5 million km; which is less than a Mk16 can do. In contrast even without Apollo the engagements generally opened up by about 50 million km -- and at that range the MDM's terminal velocity would be 0.71c [total flight time 471 seconds]

With Apollo they're often opening up beyond 65 million km, allowing them terminal velocities of 0.8c [after 535 seconds of acceleration; leave 5 seconds in reserve] from rest.


In the 50 million km range engagement, they'd reach
47 million km (Mk31 range) 14.35 seconds out, at 0.69c; then
48.5 million km (normal CM range) 7.12 seconds out, at 0.70c.

In my 535 second engagement, they'd reach
3 million km from target 12.59 seconds out, at 0.79c
1.5 million km from target 6.26 seconds out, at 0.80c

And of course until the 2-stage CMs at Galton the RMN/GSN hadn't ever faced an enemy with CMs that could reach beyond about 1.5 million km.


As you note the ACM trails its brood, as it needs to generate the up the skirt line of sight necessary to maintain its control links to them, so it'd be marginally behind those times.

If the ACM was killed 6-8 seconds before impact that would do a little -- but I suspect at that point, while the Mk23s aren't yet deploying their lasing rods, their final attack orders are locked in and unlikely to change much -- each missile knows what it's target is and has an excellent onboard lock on it. The AMCs will have already networked and decided on the initial jamming and decoy strategy for the salvo -- though they've probably collectively reserved a few dazzlers and dragon's teeth to come up slightly deeper into the point defense basket. And even their initial orders about evasion of the CMs will have gone out before those CMs reach them.

Even if you kill ACMs at 12-15 seconds before impact the situation won't be much worse of the Mk23s.

I think to be really effective you'd need to kill them at least 10-20 million km short of the target. (And even then their Mk23s should be more far more effective than non-Apollo ones launched at the very effective range of 35 million km)

I don't think the Apollo pod missiles are going to be involved in any fratricide against their pod mates or those of other pods in the same launch. While these are using nuclear warheads energizing the lazing rods, the explosions of the warheads are not going to be close enough to their pod mates to vaporize them and without the kind of blast propagation you would get if you were in an atmosphere. There appears to be or a spread pattern for each pod and it also seems like even intube launched missile volleys you are giving enough distance when closing to engagement range of the warheads that they are forcing any CM or energy defensive fire to not be able to take out more than one warhead. Plus, we have seen many times that warheads that don't get close enough to fire because they are just outside of their engagement envelope, will go on and try to shoot at anything that does come inside their engagement envelope before they self destruct at the end of their runs. Also, how many times have we seen missiles just start to or have already started to overfly a target- or pass in front or behind the target, and then fire including down the throat or up kilt or just slightly behind their direction of travel? If the energy storm being created on the side of the target of the incoming missiles didn't take out their brothers that were going to need to go "just a little further", then they should not hurt the other missiles in their launch.

Brigade XO wrote:I don't think the Apollo pod missiles are going to be involved in any fratricide against their pod mates or those of other pods in the same launch. While these are using nuclear warheads energizing the lazing rods, the explosions of the warheads are not going to be close enough to their pod mates to vaporize them and without the kind of blast propagation you would get if you were in an atmosphere. There appears to be or a spread pattern for each pod and it also seems like even intube launched missile volleys you are giving enough distance when closing to engagement range of the warheads that they are forcing any CM or energy defensive fire to not be able to take out more than one warhead. Plus, we have seen many times that warheads that don't get close enough to fire because they are just outside of their engagement envelope, will go on and try to shoot at anything that does come inside their engagement envelope before they self destruct at the end of their runs. Also, how many times have we seen missiles just start to or have already started to overfly a target- or pass in front or behind the target, and then fire including down the throat or up kilt or just slightly behind their direction of travel? If the energy storm being created on the side of the target of the incoming missiles didn't take out their brothers that were going to need to go "just a little further", then they should not hurt the other missiles in their launch.

True, but there's a few reasons for that. One is that we know attack missiles have gravity lens "cups" that refocus their nuclear explosions towards the target, that will create minor 'deadzones' around the missiles for a moment or two, which is more enough time for missiles that were directly beside it to survive and go on scorching past for throat/kilt or farside detonations rather than suffer from fratricide. After all, if I have pods being tractored along behind my ship, they are somehow in direct risk from proximity softkills by your attack missiles detonating near me. Even if I pick off every single one that might have gone for a kilt detonation, and they all detonate near the throat of my wedge (complete opposite side of my ship) apparently that's close enough for the pods to become useless.


Second reason, the Apollo missiles are both notably behind the attack missiles, and using them as shields to ensure it's able to transmit & receive FTL orders as long as possible. So one would imagine it's actually directly following one missile or another, specifically so it will plow directly into an explosion to be vaporized and leave little to no hardware that could be possibly be salvaged.

Molycircs that slag themselves can do a lot to stop reverse engineering circuitry and software. But things like MDM baffles & FTL grav-pulse are physical hardware that not even slagging the circuitry can stop. But nobody can reverse-engineer physical hardware from hot plasma, in this universe anyways.

Off-hand, you'd need someone like Q from Star Trek, or Marvel Doctor Strange with the Time Stone levels of plot-hack devices to turn hot plasma back into a physical Apollo missile that you can (try to) hack it's secrets.