Honorverse Top Ten Tacticians, Strategists

kzt wrote:Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

runsforcelery wrote:

kzt wrote:Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

Yes, it did. And they went on testing it instead of rushing it into combat, right? And when they did . . . .

Although, in fairness to Hemphill, it was less a new weapon than a new and radical application of an existing one.

kzt wrote:Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

Spacekiwi wrote:Actually, as an weapon, it works fine. the problem that it had was requiring the replacement of more versatile weapons, and the tactics for its use being fringe case scenarios.

kzt wrote:Hey, it worked PERFECTLY in the first test.

kzt wrote:It's a blatantly BS argument to say that 8th would have been destroyed if it was in the position of 3rd. 8th would have taken damage, but they would have obliterated both RHN fleets. It is what the characters think internally, but it is simply objectively wrong.

First, 8th would have started firing at 2nd from effective Apollo range. Which is a LOT farther then 3rd's effective range. So 2nd can't really effectively return fire and is still outside of effective range of Sphinx.

Second, the damage per missile of 8th is vastly higher. Remember when just 3 Apollo SDs were killing a 5th fleet SD every salvo? An entire fleet of Apollo SDs would have crushed 5th. Literally, 6 salvos, would have destroyed or mission killed pretty much every single ship in 5th. It would take a bit longer to kill 2nd, but by the time 5th drops in all the missiles needed would have already been fired, so all of 8th fires on 5th.

Amaroq wrote:Question: how many Apollo-capable SD(P)s did Honor have in 8th Fleet?

kzt wrote:

Amaroq wrote:Question: how many Apollo-capable SD(P)s did Honor have in 8th Fleet?

32. Which was enough to comfortable control a single salvo of 62,208 missiles, when 288 missiles appears to be able to kill a RHN SD(P).

Assuming that 8th fires at effective Apollo range 8th can start firing as soon as it emerges from hyper (which appears to be about 300,000 km OUTSIDE the RZ) instead of waiting. It takes about 8 minutes to reach the RZ, during which 8th can easily fire enough missiles to completely kill every ship in 2nd. So how do they even trap 8th anyhow? Does 5th hyper in while 8th is still outside the RZ, or does it wait until 2nd has been reduced to debris clouds?

Anyhow, back to firepower.

Assuming that, for some crazy reason, Harrington also decided to not stack pods and went to just double salvos 8th fleet kills 10+ RHN SD(P)s per 24 seconds. So in the time it took both 2nd and 5th to kill 9 of 3rds ships 8th would have killed 42 or so RHN SD(P)s. How long before 5th hypers out?

Worse, given a 24 second cycle time and a time of flight of over 6 minutes for the RHN that means 15 salvos are already launched before the first missile hits. And a single surviving KH-2 can control each salvo of that size. That's about 160 ships killed. At the rate of loss of 2 ships in 8th per salvo you run of RHN ships before you run out 8th fleet.

kzt wrote:[
32. Which was enough to comfortable control a single salvo of 62,208 missiles, when 288 missiles appears to be able to kill a RHN SD(P).

Assuming that 8th fires at effective Apollo range 8th can start firing as soon as it emerges from hyper (which appears to be about 300,000 km OUTSIDE the RZ) instead of waiting. It takes about 8 minutes to reach the RZ, during which 8th can easily fire enough missiles to completely kill every ship in 2nd. So how do they even trap 8th anyhow? Does 5th hyper in while 8th is still outside the RZ, or does it wait until 2nd has been reduced to debris clouds?

Anyhow, back to firepower.

Assuming that, for some crazy reason, Harrington also decided to not stack pods and went to just double salvos 8th fleet kills 10+ RHN SD(P)s per 24 seconds. So in the time it took both 2nd and 5th to kill 9 of 3rds ships 8th would have killed 42 or so RHN SD(P)s. How long before 5th hypers out?

Worse, given a 24 second cycle time and a time of flight of over 6 minutes for the RHN that means 15 salvos are already launched before the first missile hits. And a single surviving KH-2 can control each salvo of that size. That's about 160 ships killed. At the rate of loss of 2 ships in 8th per salvo you run of RHN ships before you run out 8th fleet.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:IfIRecallCorrectly,
The Haven Plan was:
If the Manties show many new-type MDMs,
Then .... Surrender!
(After warning Chin to go home, of course.)

My fave Honorverse Fantasy is during the conversation
between Tourville and Honor when he becomes her captive,
when he *blames* her for not keeping her new weapon home
to defend Manticore from the *entirely* predictable
attack! ("Well, what else did you expect us to do, when
you showed a New Superweapon in very small numbers? Our
choices were surrender at once, or else try to attack
while you still had too few to win.")

Which returns us to The Thread Topic, by showing that
Theisman was still a better Strategist than Honor was.

HTM

So , I guess it's safe to say that Theisman tried to design an ops plan to catch 8th Fleet if it came through the Junction but he underestimated how lethal Apollo could be?