Battle of Manticore

cthia wrote:My definitive stance.

With the introduction of Apollo, slate wiping technology, I simply feel that the RMN should have pulled in their horns and deployed to defend the Home System. A preemptive strike could have destroyed production and ended their chances to ever use the weapon. The argument is that bottlenecks were unanticipated. Well lets go with that. We do not foresee any bottlenecks. So let's deploy to protect 'liege and lady' and our most important production facilities to date. I know that strategic initiative and certain systems would have fallen. That would have been a moot point if later, Eighth Fleet would have been sitting off the coast of Haven ready to pounce, completely unchallenged. Everything lost would have been recovered. I know it could have been bad, but as bad as what almost happened?

If you unveil insurmountable technology, it automatically hits the top of your opponents strategic considerations. The US makes preemptive strikes against Weapons of Mass Destruction all the time.

The RMN prayed that it would find Bolthole so it could seek out and destroy it.

Haven knew where the RMN's bolthole was.

No-brainer.

With all due respect, your definitive stance is wrong.

Have a nice day!

cthia wrote:My definitive stance.

With the introduction of Apollo, slate wiping technology, I simply feel that the RMN should have pulled in their horns and deployed to defend the Home System. A preemptive strike could have destroyed production and ended their chances to ever use the weapon. The argument is that bottlenecks were unanticipated. Well lets go with that. We do not foresee any bottlenecks. So let's deploy to protect 'liege and lady' and our most important production facilities to date. I know that strategic initiative and certain systems would have fallen. That would have been a moot point if later, Eighth Fleet would have been sitting off the coast of Haven ready to pounce, completely unchallenged. Everything lost would have been recovered. I know it could have been bad, but as bad as what almost happened?

If you unveil insurmountable technology, it automatically hits the top of your opponents strategic considerations. The US makes preemptive strikes against Weapons of Mass Destruction all the time.

The RMN prayed that it would find Bolthole so it could seek out and destroy it.

Haven knew where the RMN's bolthole was.

No-brainer.

Cthia, please remember that one reason why the RMN sent Eighth Fleet to raid Havenite systems, was to keep the RHN so occupied with scrambling to defend Haven's star systems that it could not get organised enough to raid the Manticoran Alliance's minor member systems, as happened at Zanzibar.

Manticore had a moral and legal responsibility to defend the Manticoran Alliance's minor members, but too few ships equipped with Apollo to deploy any of them to each member system. Without Apollo-equipped ships, the RMN had only older-generation podnaughts and smaller classes available to deploy thusly, and as Zanzibar demonstrated, too few of THEM to meet its treaty obligations, cover the Manticoran system AND deploy offensively.

The RMN had to make a strategic decision on what to do with its limited number of Apollo-equipped podnaughts, and since it made no sense to disperse them in pocket-sized deployments to all of the Alliance's minor member systems, it chose to concentrate them into a single offensive fleet and use its older-generation podnaughts for system defense deployments.

THAT was the best choice it could have made, given its limited resources.

No one expected Haven to launch an 'all-or-nothing' attack, and that was why the RMN was caught off-side.

runsforcelery wrote:

cthia wrote:My definitive stance.

With the introduction of Apollo, slate wiping technology, I simply feel that the RMN should have pulled in their horns and deployed to defend the Home System. A preemptive strike could have destroyed production and ended their chances to ever use the weapon. The argument is that bottlenecks were unanticipated. Well lets go with that. We do not foresee any bottlenecks. So let's deploy to protect 'liege and lady' and our most important production facilities to date. I know that strategic initiative and certain systems would have fallen. That would have been a moot point if later, Eighth Fleet would have been sitting off the coast of Haven ready to pounce, completely unchallenged. Everything lost would have been recovered. I know it could have been bad, but as bad as what almost happened?

If you unveil insurmountable technology, it automatically hits the top of your opponents strategic considerations. The US makes preemptive strikes against Weapons of Mass Destruction all the time.

The RMN prayed that it would find Bolthole so it could seek out and destroy it.

Haven knew where the RMN's bolthole was.

No-brainer.

With all due respect, your definitive stance is wrong.

Have a nice day!

Hello David, do you ever get the feeling that the kids are gettig a bit uppity?

Don

Don, we're not kids. We're theologians, debating doctrine and dogma and the Holy Writ.

After all, Mr Weber DID create the universe, didn't he?

runsforcelery wrote:

cthia wrote:My definitive stance.

With the introduction of Apollo, slate wiping technology, I simply feel that the RMN should have pulled in their horns and deployed to defend the Home System. A preemptive strike could have destroyed production and ended their chances to ever use the weapon. The argument is that bottlenecks were unanticipated. Well lets go with that. We do not foresee any bottlenecks. So let's deploy to protect 'liege and lady' and our most important production facilities to date. I know that strategic initiative and certain systems would have fallen. That would have been a moot point if later, Eighth Fleet would have been sitting off the coast of Haven ready to pounce, completely unchallenged. Everything lost would have been recovered. I know it could have been bad, but as bad as what almost happened?

If you unveil insurmountable technology, it automatically hits the top of your opponents strategic considerations. The US makes preemptive strikes against Weapons of Mass Destruction all the time.

The RMN prayed that it would find Bolthole so it could seek out and destroy it.

Haven knew where the RMN's bolthole was.

No-brainer.

With all due respect, your definitive stance is wrong.

Have a nice day!

Truth is ... I can't handle the truth. I am a mirror image of Truman, too much of a hairless cat to make the big call and let the Manties do their job. I'm too afraid to take risks. There is defense in offense. I am simply remaining true to myself. I would not have been able to make that call.

SWM wrote:

BobfromSydney wrote:There are only 2 reasons to keep the pods near the planets in the first place. Otherwise doing so is entirely inexcusable.
Reason 1: The pods need a lot of mothering, maintenance and monthly check-ups: refuels and hand-holding. Keeping them near the planets makes servicing the pods more efficient.
Reason 2: You are using planetary (or orbital) fire control facilities to fire the pods.

If Reason 1 is true, then all those pods will be receiving regular visits anyway. No reason why they couldn't also get a helpful tractor assisted nudge when that happens.

Reason 2 doesn't seem relevant to this issue.

Except that we know Reason 2 is correct.

Assuming Reason 2 is correct then I think there are three possibilities:

1. Either the Admiralty should have found a way to work around the control link problem (some sort of Moriarty analogue) so that the pods could be deployed away from the planets.

OR

2. The pods should not have been deployed in the first place since weapons that you cannot risk using even during what seems to be the worst case scenario are no weapons at all, just expensive (resource and time wasting) orbital decorations.

OR

3. The Admirals in command D'Orville / Kuzak should have taken the risk of actually firing those pods.

hanuman wrote:

cthia wrote:My definitive stance.

With the introduction of Apollo, slate wiping technology, I simply feel that the RMN should have pulled in their horns and deployed to defend the Home System. A preemptive strike could have destroyed production and ended their chances to ever use the weapon.

Cthia, please remember that one reason why the RMN sent Eighth Fleet to raid Havenite systems, was to keep the RHN so occupied with scrambling to defend Haven's star systems that it could not get organised enough to raid the Manticoran Alliance's minor member systems, as happened at Zanzibar.

Manticore had a moral and legal responsibility to defend the Manticoran Alliance's minor members, but too few ships equipped with Apollo to deploy any of them to each member system. Without Apollo-equipped ships, the RMN had only older-generation podnaughts and smaller classes available to deploy thusly, and as Zanzibar demonstrated, too few of THEM to meet its treaty obligations, cover the Manticoran system AND deploy offensively.

The RMN had to make a strategic decision on what to do with its limited number of Apollo-equipped podnaughts, and since it made no sense to disperse them in pocket-sized deployments to all of the Alliance's minor member systems, it chose to concentrate them into a single offensive fleet and use its older-generation podnaughts for system defense deployments.

THAT was the best choice it could have made, given its limited resources.

No one expected Haven to launch an 'all-or-nothing' attack, and that was why the RMN was caught off-side.

Plus, until they took Apollo out for real for the first time they didn't realized quite how tactically game changing it was. Sims only tell you so much and it greatly exceeded their expectations - dangerously so.

So they really weren't expecting it to be a "slate wiping technology". A significant upgrade in long range fire-control? - Yes. Making MDMs stupidly more effective than any missile at any range every had been before? -- No.

As per BoM, I always wondered about the outcome if Honor's spider senses would have failed her and she'd jumped the gun and hypered in too quickly and gotten herself trapped?

cthia wrote:As per BoM, I always wondered about the outcome if Honor's spider senses would have failed her and she'd jumped the gun and hypered in too quickly and gotten herself trapped?

Interesting point. As I was rereading the battle I realized that her decision to send Oversteegen's BCs in first to clear Diamato away from the Junction probably saved her fleet and the home system. It was only after Diamato had to retreat and it appeared that nothing else major was coming through from Trevor's Star (I got the impression the Havenites believed that Oversteegen was part of Kuzak's screen coming through and indicated that no more SDs were in the pipeline and thus 8th Fleet wasn't present) that Tourville ordered Chin to spring the trap. I thought it was an odd decision at the time because the emphasis the whole time had been on getting the capital ships through as quickly as possible so they could participate in the battle. It turned out to be the right one. Amazing how the fate of that battle hinged upon only a few minutes.

Amaroq wrote:

cthia wrote:As per BoM, I always wondered about the outcome if Honor's spider senses would have failed her and she'd jumped the gun and hypered in too quickly and gotten herself trapped?

Interesting point. As I was rereading the battle I realized that her decision to send Oversteegen's BCs in first to clear Diamato away from the Junction probably saved her fleet and the home system. It was only after Diamato had to retreat and it appeared that nothing else major was coming through from Trevor's Star (I got the impression the Havenites believed that Oversteegen was part of Kuzak's screen coming through and indicated that no more SDs were in the pipeline and thus 8th Fleet wasn't present) that Tourville ordered Chin to spring the trap. I thought it was an odd decision at the time because the emphasis the whole time had been on getting the capital ships through as quickly as possible so they could participate in the battle. It turned out to be the right one. Amazing how the fate of that battle hinged upon only a few minutes.

Indeed. Honor's decisions were golden. In this one rare instance, I cannot help but entertain 'alternate endings.' She just has the touch. But 'whatif?'