Pod layers.

I wonder if RFC could be in line for a reward?
Just read an article about how the US Air Force and its allies are looking into using C17 Globemasters and Hercules to lay missile pods out from their rear hatches.
Either cruise missiles or air to surface missiles.

Daryl wrote:I wonder if RFC could be in line for a reward?
Just read an article about how the US Air Force and its allies are looking into using C17 Globemasters and Hercules to lay missile pods out from their rear hatches.
Either cruise missiles or air to surface missiles.

50 years ago or so, the Air Force dropped a Minuteman out the back end of a C-5. The bird fired its first stage as proof of concept, then fell into the Pacific.

Consider the difference in survivability of Home Fleet as it was at BoM compared to 200 8 mt converted freighters stuffed full of pods and covered with fire control systems. Would less RMN ships have survived the battle? Given that none survived, I’d suggest they would have done just as well as the very expensive SDs that all blowed up real good. And with more fire control…

kzt wrote:Consider the difference in survivability of Home Fleet as it was at BoM compared to 200 8 mt converted freighters stuffed full of pods and covered with fire control systems. Would less RMN ships have survived the battle? Given that none survived, I’d suggest they would have done just as well as the very expensive SDs that all blowed up real good. And with more fire control…

You mean mass produce fire control tac sections in standard shipping modules, build KHII control mounts that fit in the flank Door openings, and give each KHII drones, in addition to filling them with KHII pods?

Glass bulldozers... but they would crack a lot of eggs.

Theemile wrote:

kzt wrote:Consider the difference in survivability of Home Fleet as it was at BoM compared to 200 8 mt converted freighters stuffed full of pods and covered with fire control systems. Would less RMN ships have survived the battle? Given that none survived, I’d suggest they would have done just as well as the very expensive SDs that all blowed up real good. And with more fire control…

You mean mass produce fire control tac sections in standard shipping modules, build KHII control mounts that fit in the flank Door openings, and give each KHII drones, in addition to filling them with KHII pods?

Glass bulldozers... but they would crack a lot of eggs.

OTOH the BoM was an outlier even for most 2nd war podnaught battles - most where nowhere near that deadly; and the ships' defenses, decoys, sidewalls, and armor usually made massive differences in their possibility of survival.

Honor never would have survived Solon or the other cutworm raids if Manticore had build these glass cannons instead of the Invictus class.

So it's asking a bit much for a navy to build ships that would die in regular battles just so they might have some more of them (despite losses in earlier more regular battles?) if they do ever have to fight a mutually annihilistic battle of armageddon.

kzt wrote:Consider the difference in survivability of Home Fleet as it was at BoM compared to 200 8 mt converted freighters stuffed full of pods and covered with fire control systems. Would less RMN ships have survived the battle? Given that none survived, I’d suggest they would have done just as well as the very expensive SDs that all blowed up real good. And with more fire control…

Theemile wrote:You mean mass produce fire control tac sections in standard shipping modules, build KHII control mounts that fit in the flank Door openings, and give each KHII drones, in addition to filling them with KHII pods?

Glass bulldozers... but they would crack a lot of eggs.

Jonathan_S wrote:OTOH the BoM was an outlier even for most 2nd war podnaught battles - most where nowhere near that deadly; and the ships' defenses, decoys, sidewalls, and armor usually made massive differences in their possibility of survival.

Honor never would have survived Solon or the other cutworm raids if Manticore had build these glass cannons instead of the Invictus class.

So it's asking a bit much for a navy to build ships that would die in regular battles just so they might have some more of them (despite losses in earlier more regular battles?) if they do ever have to fight a mutually annihilistic battle of armageddon.

It should be pointed out that KZT might be saying that Apollo capable freighters would have fared better than either Home Fleet or Kuzak's fleet; which is undeniably true, but that does not make it the best choice when they could build ships like those that Honor commanded. If the freighters were not Apollo capable, then it should be pointed out that he did not mention them having ANY missile defense (aside from the wedge).

tlb wrote:It should be pointed out that KZT might be saying that Apollo capable freighters would have fared better than either Home Fleet or Kuzak's fleet; which is undeniably true, but that does not make it the best choice when they could build ships like those that Honor commanded. If the freighters were not Apollo capable, then it should be pointed out that he did not mention them having ANY missile defense (aside from the wedge).

I disagree that freighters would have fared as well as Third Fleet did. Home Fleet effectively died in the first salvo; Third Fleet kept taking pounding after pounding before becoming crippled. If it had been made of freighters, Chin would have been able to send the same amount of missiles towards them, but direct to more targets at a time and still kill them. Third Fleet would be dead before Honor dropped from hyperspace, so Fifth Fleet would have been moving towards the hyperlimit to sync up with Second Fleet, so it would have opened up the range more. (Of course, Honor would have known this would happen so she wouldn't have translated where she did)

tlb wrote:It should be pointed out that KZT might be saying that Apollo capable freighters would have fared better than either Home Fleet or Kuzak's fleet; which is undeniably true, but that does not make it the best choice when they could build ships like those that Honor commanded. If the freighters were not Apollo capable, then it should be pointed out that he did not mention them having ANY missile defense (aside from the wedge).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I disagree that freighters would have fared as well as Third Fleet did. Home Fleet effectively died in the first salvo; Third Fleet kept taking pounding after pounding before becoming crippled. If it had been made of freighters, Chin would have been able to send the same amount of missiles towards them, but direct to more targets at a time and still kill them. Third Fleet would be dead before Honor dropped from hyperspace, so Fifth Fleet would have been moving towards the hyperlimit to sync up with Second Fleet, so it would have opened up the range more. (Of course, Honor would have known this would happen so she wouldn't have translated where she did)

It has been a long time since I have read At All Costs, so I do not remember Kuzak's tactics, but I remember very well that they have been heavily criticized in this forum. Would Apollo capable freighters have put themselves in the the same position as Kuzak's fleet? Would they even be within the hyperlimit?

I will accept that if freighters put themselves into the same position as Kuzak's ships, then they could have suffered at least as badly (whether Apollo capable or not). On the other hand, among Kuzak's ships only Alistair McKeon's squadron (with Apollo) engaged Admiral Genevieve Chin's fleet; while all Apollo equipped freighters could have.

PS: I realize that only Honor's ships had Apollo in the actual battle, but that was due to supply problems and a lack of foresight by the Admiralty.

tlb wrote:It has been a long time since I have read At All Costs, so I do not remember Kuzak's tactics, but I remember very well that they have been heavily criticized in this forum. Would Apollo capable freighters have put themselves in the the same position as Kuzak's fleet? Would they even be within the hyperlimit?

Well, no, with different ships the tactics would necessarily be different too. They'd have known their ships were less survivable.

I will accept that if freighters put themselves into the same position as Kuzak's ships, then they could have suffered at least as badly (whether Apollo capable or not). On the other hand, among Kuzak's ships only Alistair McKeon's squadron (with Apollo) engaged Admiral Genevieve Chin's fleet; while all Apollo equipped freighters could have.

PS: I realize that only Honor's ships had Apollo in the actual battle, but that was due to supply problems and a lack of foresight by the Admiralty.

Indeed, but that changes little. The fact is that only McKeon's squadron was firing Apollo because it was the only squadron that had them. There were no more Apollo pods available, whether the ships that could fire them were freighters, Keyhole-less Medusas, or Keyhole II-equipped Invictus. So replacing the superdreadnoughts with freighters would just have caused the platforms to die sooner. And we can't be talking about Apollo because if the defenders had had that, the tactics would have been different in the first place.

Third Fleet was a mobile fighting force meant to defend either Trevor's Star or the MBS, whichever came under attack. It could be composed of a larger number of freighters so it could deliver a bigger punch in its Alpha Strike. Those freighters would need to be specially designed so they could dump their charged pods into space as fast as possible. That's MUCH faster than the doors on an SD(P) could, because it's conceivably the only strike they could perform, as they wouldn't have survived for a second. And they'd have to have the commensurate number of control links to make that an effective strike.

I'm not sure how much cheaper those ships would be. We're not talking about off-the-shelf freighters. We're talking about freighter-sized ships with milspec sensors and compensators, plus the aforementioned missile control links. And we're still talking about a large crew aboard, which costs money to train, so you'd expect the ship would have an effective evacuation procedure. So what are you saving in making such a ship? Armour? Point defence? If you skimp on those, the enemy would send a LAC squadron to deal with you.

tlb wrote:It has been a long time since I have read At All Costs, so I do not remember Kuzak's tactics, but I remember very well that they have been heavily criticized in this forum. Would Apollo capable freighters have put themselves in the the same position as Kuzak's fleet? Would they even be within the hyperlimit?

I will accept that if freighters put themselves into the same position as Kuzak's ships, then they could have suffered at least as badly (whether Apollo capable or not). On the other hand, among Kuzak's ships only Alistair McKeon's squadron (with Apollo) engaged Admiral Genevieve Chin's fleet; while all Apollo equipped freighters could have.

PS: I realize that only Honor's ships had Apollo in the actual battle, but that was due to supply problems and a lack of foresight by the Admiralty.

The hypothetical Apollo capable freighters likely wouldn't have crossed the hyper limit (not that it would have mattered). As they'd presumably have civilian drives even with Tourville's cripples he should have a significant acceleration advantage on them -- so not much point in chasing him.

As it was Kuzak's 3rd fleet charged in hard to catch Tourville's 2nd fleet in a vice between them and Shinx's defenses. At closest approach he'd have been under 33 million km from 3rd fleet and also 39 million km or so from Sphinx. At that range non-Apollo MDMs are very effective and he'd have been torn apart. (But if she didn't keep the pressure on him he'd be free to maneuver and fight a duel just with the planetary defenses)

However, by this point 2nd fleet is far enough inside the hyper limit that I believe it's beyond Apollo FTL control range from it. So these freighters would need to trust to Apollo's autonomous capabilities after it outran their Keyhole II control -- and that's something Manticore had no combat experience with at this point.


Still; whether or not the freighters crossed the hyper limit seems irrelevant. The trap was sprung almost immediately and their hyper generators wouldn't have yet recharged. Even if they were outside the hyper limit they wouldn't have been able to flee from Chin's fleet without first weathering many salvos -- something they wouldn't survive. They could take a much bigger chunk out of Chin's fleet as they died -- but die they would. And without having a chance to do much to Tourville's 2nd fleet which was still closing on Sphinx.

Honor would still need to come in and try to trap Chin in return -- but whereas Chin was still battering away at 3rd fleet when Honor arrived, against defenseless Apollo freighters that whole force should have been long dead. Chin might even have hypered back out before Honor showed up -- which would really limit Honor's options as she wouldn't want to risk whatever was left of Chin's forces making another pounce from hyper. And yet, Honor would still need to deal with Tourville's force way in-system -- who would probably be in better shape as he wouldn't have been engaged in that running duel with 3rd fleet -- who kept their teeth into him even as Chin's forces battered them.