OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Did she have enough of an acceleration advantage to close that quickly?

I never said that she could close quickly. Basically, if he tries to attack the Manticore defenses (the only planet which it could be advantageous to attack), then he has to slow down as he approaches and that allows Honor's ships to close to a range where Apollo can be used with full effect. If not attacking a planet, then he has to run for the hyper limit with a good chance to get away; but he will still lose more ships since there are Hermes buoys seeded through out the system allowing Apollo to snipe at his fleet. However escaping back to Haven is a net loss for the RHN, since the new construction and missile production by Manticore will be weighted to Apollo and a fleet equipped with Apollo will inevitably come calling.

Jonathan_S wrote:Problem is that while he needs to control the orbitals to force the Queen to surrender, he doesn't need to in order to destroy Hephaestus and all the partially complete SD(P)s and CLACs being built there and in dispersed yards near Manticore.

Unlike the case with the Yawata Strike, Hephaestus and the other space stations will have their spherical walls up and tugs can interpose their wedges; so a passing engagement will not be as effective as you indicate. Yes; they can still shoot at the dispersed yards, but will suffer attrition.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If he accepted a stern chase to the hyper limit, which is around 40 light-minutes away (G0 star's is 22 light-minutes in radius), he could reach it in 4.6 hours @ 529 gravities, 4.75 h at 500 G, and 5 h at 450 G. Either case he's at less than 0.3c, so he doesn't need to decelerate to translate out. Eight fleet can cover 49.6 light-minutes in 5 hours, 45 light-minutes at 4.75 hours, and 42.5 in 4.6 hours. But it starts 8 light-minutes behind. So if Tourville can pull his max accel, Honor is still at least 5.5 light-minutes (99 million km) away and I would say that's a good chance at escaping. But at 500 gravities, Honor is still 3 light-minutes (54 million km) away, which isn't very good chance of escaping.

Around this time, Eighth Fleet is travelling at 0.3 c, which makes powered range calculations different than what we're used to. Let's say the particle shielding limits missile speed to 0.9 c and let's (as usual) ignore relativity. A missile can accelerate from 0.3 to 0.9 c in just under 399 seconds. In that time, added the ship's base velocity, the missile will travel 71.7 million km or nearly 4 light-minutes, about 10% more range and in 27% less time.

399 seconds before translating, Honor is still 5 light-minutes (90 million km) behind in the 500 gravity case. That's more than the missile can cover before the particle shielding fails. She'd have to fire from further away. For example, firing 10 minutes before translation, when she's 6 light-minutes behind, the missiles would need to coast for 144 seconds to hit, for a total flight time of 399+144 = 543 s.

So I revise my conclusion that at 500 gravities it would be a gamble. Some of his ships would be hit and probably taken out, but just a few. The majority would escape.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:399 seconds before translating, Honor is still 5 light-minutes (90 million km) behind in the 500 gravity case. That's more than the missile can cover before the particle shielding fails. She'd have to fire from further away. For example, firing 10 minutes before translation, when she's 6 light-minutes behind, the missiles would need to coast for 144 seconds to hit, for a total flight time of 399+144 = 543 s.

So I revise my conclusion that at 500 gravities it would be a gamble. Some of his ships would be hit and probably taken out, but just a few. The majority would escape.

Jonathan_S wrote:Unfortunately an Apollo fire control link between Keyhole II and missile seems to have a maximum signal range of less than 108 million km (FTL signal taking 5.8 seconds) -

As you can see Jonathan_S puts the limit at about 108 million km and that is based on signal strength; not on failure of the particle shielding. From the quote from RFC presented by KZT:

The ranges at which Honor fired in the Battle of Manticore -- up to eight light-minutes against Tourville and 75,000,000 km against Chin -- were both outside the maximum reception range Haven's intelligence types had assumed the control birds would possess.

So using Hermes buoys Honor's fleet can snipe from 8 light-minutes away.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:399 seconds before translating, Honor is still 5 light-minutes (90 million km) behind in the 500 gravity case. That's more than the missile can cover before the particle shielding fails. She'd have to fire from further away. For example, firing 10 minutes before translation, when she's 6 light-minutes behind, the missiles would need to coast for 144 seconds to hit, for a total flight time of 399+144 = 543 s.

So I revise my conclusion that at 500 gravities it would be a gamble. Some of his ships would be hit and probably taken out, but just a few. The majority would escape.

Jonathan_S wrote:Unfortunately an Apollo fire control link between Keyhole II and missile seems to have a maximum signal range of less than 108 million km (FTL signal taking 5.8 seconds) -

As you can see Jonathan_S puts the limit at about 108 million km and that is based on signal strength; not on failure of the particle shielding. From the quote from RFC presented by KZT:

The ranges at which Honor fired in the Battle of Manticore -- up to eight light-minutes against Tourville and 75,000,000 km against Chin -- were both outside the maximum reception range Haven's intelligence types had assumed the control birds would possess.

So using Hermes buoys Honor's fleet can snipe from 8 light-minutes away.

To add - The top missile speed isn't an issue, a sufficient ballistic coast phase would be included between the 2nd and 3rd stages of the flight to allow the missiles to engage with significant time still on their drives for terminal maneuvers below the maximum speed of the rad shields.

tlb wrote:Unlike the case with the Yawata Strike, Hephaestus and the other space stations will have their spherical walls up and tugs can interpose their wedges; so a passing engagement will not be as effective as you indicate. Yes; they can still shoot at the dispersed yards, but will suffer attrition.

One of the characteristics of forts are huge amounts of armor. The platforms have no armor. So when a few dozen SD's cruise by at under a light second and spend 10-20 seconds blasting the platform I suspect they are going to turn the platforms into a large cloud of expanding gas whether they have their bubble up or not. And a few thousand MDMs will cause some existential issues for the tugs before that.

Going directly after the orbital infrastructure is pretty much a one-way trip. Nobody is going to expect to get out of the hyper limit after that. The objective is to destroy the ability of the RMN to continue to resist the Republic, not to conquer Manticore directly.

kzt wrote:Going directly after the orbital infrastructure is pretty much a one-way trip.

Going after the home system should be a one way trip period.
Manticore should have stationed millions of missile pods throughout the system and just buried every Havenite advance into the inner system in an avalanche of missiles.

tlb wrote:As you can see Jonathan_S puts the limit at about 108 million km and that is based on signal strength; not on failure of the particle shielding. From the quote from RFC presented by KZT:

The ranges at which Honor fired in the Battle of Manticore -- up to eight light-minutes against Tourville and 75,000,000 km against Chin -- were both outside the maximum reception range Haven's intelligence types had assumed the control birds would possess.

So using Hermes buoys Honor's fleet can snipe from 8 light-minutes away.

I don't see how the 108 million km (6 light-minutes) comes from or that Hermes had anything to do with it. This only shows that 75 million km was still in range and 150 million, according to Honor, complicated things.

Theemile wrote:To add - The top missile speed isn't an issue, a sufficient ballistic coast phase would be included between the 2nd and 3rd stages of the flight to allow the missiles to engage with significant time still on their drives for terminal maneuvers below the maximum speed of the rad shields.

It does if there's a range in which the mothership has to be in when the missile arrives. If Honor is only gaining on Tourville at 613 m/s² and starts at 150 million km away, she'll need 3.25 hours to reach 108 million km, at which point she's travelling at 0.22c. Given that the 3 stages in a missile impart a Δv of 0.81c (it accelerates at 0.090 c/min), that would put the missile above my putative max speed. So when fired with a 0.22c base speed, the missile can accelerate for no more than 455s instead of 540.

If Honor fires this pattern from 108 million km away and with the 0.22c base velocity, the missile has attained 0.76c when its second stage shuts down. It then must coast for 104 s and cover 23.6 million km, before lighting up the third stage to bring it to 0.9 just as it reaches Tourville. Total flight time: 9 minutes, 18.9 seconds.

If Honor can fire from 108 million km, she has over an hour between first shots and Tourville escaping. He's doomed.

If Honor must be at 5 light minutes (90 million km), she'll be there 36 minutes before Tourville translates, but given that the missiles require over 8 minutes to arrive, if she fires once per minute she can fire only 27 patterns. Half of Second Fleet escapes.

Finally, if she must be at the same distance as she was to Chin (75 million km), she'll fire only 507 s before Tourville translates. Given the missile travel time of 456 s, only one or two patterns can arrive.

tlb wrote:As you can see Jonathan_S puts the limit at about 108 million km and that is based on signal strength; not on failure of the particle shielding. From the quote from RFC presented by KZT:

The ranges at which Honor fired in the Battle of Manticore -- up to eight light-minutes against Tourville and 75,000,000 km against Chin -- were both outside the maximum reception range Haven's intelligence types had assumed the control birds would possess.

So using Hermes buoys Honor's fleet can snipe from 8 light-minutes away.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't see how the 108 million km (6 light-minutes) comes from or that Hermes had anything to do with it. This only shows that 75 million km was still in range and 150 million, according to Honor, complicated things.

According to Jonathan_S the 108 million KM limit comes from the receiver sensitivity; the missile can no longer detect the ship's transmission past that distance. However Honor was able to control missiles at eight light-minutes with the use of the Hermes buoy, but the loss of bandwidth reduced the number of missiles that could be controlled. I thought that was all obvious from the earlier discussion in this thread.

To recap: the full number of Apollo missiles can be controlled with complete functionality to over 100 million KM and a reduced number of missiles can be controlled to 8 light-minutes if a Hermes buoy is a available to relay the signal.

Unless some posters are correct that Tourville's force can completely destroy the Apollo production lines, then the lack of victory makes Haven's defeat inevitable; even if he does manage to escape with a good percentage of his remaining force. Given that Beowulf was able to recreate the Apollo production lines, it seems to me that the possible destruction is not fatal to Manticore's victory.

PS. Is the one salvo per minute correct, or is it too conservative?

PPS. What is the effect on your calculations if the missiles are dialed back from full power (which forced you to add a coasting mode to avoid going more than .9C )?

tlb wrote:Given that Beowulf was able to recreate the Apollo production lines, it seems to me that the possible destruction is not fatal to Manticore's victory.

PS. Is the one salvo per minute correct, or is it too conservative?

PPS. What is the effect on your calculations if the missiles are dialed back from full power (which forced you to add a coasting mode to avoid going more than .9C )?

In months.

And I really doubt that they will want to get involved with someone who can bring that kind of firepower to bear. Particularly given that the Beowulf military had a pretty good idea that that fleet could destroy the entire SLN.

Because if they do the the obvious counter, if having their ambassador discuss this violation of SL neutrality doesn't work, is for a piece of the RHN to drop in a make them an offer they can't refuse for that construction line.

Which now gives you three different critical sites hours apart that little 8th fleet is supposed to protect. Is the attack by 64 SD(P) On Beowulf, what started 2 hours before you got notified, what you should respond to? What might drop out of hyperspace to visit the Queen after you go sailing off through the WH?

tlb wrote:Given that Beowulf was able to recreate the Apollo production lines, it seems to me that the possible destruction is not fatal to Manticore's victory.

kzt wrote:In months.

And I really doubt that they will want to get involved with someone who can bring that kind of firepower to bear. Particularly given that the Beowulf military had a pretty good idea that that fleet could destroy the entire SLN.

Because if they do the the obvious counter, if having their ambassador discuss this violation of SL neutrality doesn't work, is for a piece of the RHN to drop in a make them an offer they can't refuse for that construction line.

Which now gives you three different critical sites hours apart that little 8th fleet is supposed to protect. Is the attack by 64 SD(P) On Beowulf, what started 2 hours before you got notified, what you should respond to? What might drop out of hyperspace to visit the Queen after you go sailing off through the WH?

Perhaps you are right, if Tourville escapes with enough ships after destroying the Apollo production lines.

But the SLN had not been exposed as a 98 pound weakling at the time of the Battle of Manticore, so that Haven might be more hesitant to provoke the League. Moreover if the new production is secret, then Haven might not know until Beowulf and Manticore have Apollo system defense pods.

There was also mention earlier that the Andermani were given a production line, so there would be much more urgency to get it going.

All in all, I do not know how this would work out. I do not think enough Haven warships can escape to make them confident.