Battle Of Manticore Questions

Hi!

Apologies for posting this....I know it's been discussed before and David Weber has even responded to the queries...


...but having recently reread AAC and DWs response to similar queries, I still find myself having questions about what happened.

For example....in the Pearls of Wisdom about Kuzaks decision not to deploy pods...

it seems her primary rational not to do so was not yo waste missiles. That she felt she didn't need to because her existing ships could knock out Second Fleet.

The Home System is under attack. Its primary infrastructure is under threat. If that isn't cause to wipe out Second Fleet ASAP regardless of waste, what is? The economic cost might be of consideration....but Home Fleet was gone and missiles appear to be dirt cheap in the Honorverse. If they were as expensive as David Weber seems to imply here then noone would be churning out podships. They'd never be able to afford the munitions.

In his pearls of wisdom, David Weber also says...

"(and the Edict has always recognized that accidental hits, not targeted on the planet but on legitimate military targets, do not constitute a genocidal attack and hence do not trigger the Edict)."

My problem is this seems to directly contradict other information from the books which states such accidents DO constitute a breach. That it is the attackers responsibility to avoid them. Several times in the books, captains are very worried about accidentally infringing upon the Edict when targetting near planetary targets.

In context, this aspect of Kuzaks decision wrt pods doesn't make sense. Second Fleet wasn't likely to fire on the planet regardless of Kuzaks decision to use pods or not because its CO wasn't likely to take the chance of breaking the Eridani Edict.

Then we have Chin.

Again referencing the Pearls of Weber...

"Accordingly, Chin expected an old-fashioned “accuracy sucks at this range” result from the missiles coming at her, and she had the numbers and the firepower to more than equalize the odds as long as Apollo couldn't give the Manties a killing advantage in accuracy."

Beatrice was initiated bevause the Manties had demonstrated an ability to accurately control missiles at very long range. One of the major risk factors involved in the Operation was that Manticore would have this system operational in the system. McKeown had already targetted Chins fleet. So why does Chin seem to think that the missiles fired at her were not part of the same system or at least even consider the possibility? Why does it take her so long to realise she was facing Eight Fleet given that was who she was sent to kill?

In short...Chin acted as a commander who had never even heard of Apollo despite her fleet coming under attack by it just a short time before, despite Beatrice being launched because of it, despite her taskforce being dedicated to wiping out the Fleet known to be equipped with it. Why? Whatever happened yo "They'd never have launched so many missiles if they didn't think they could control them"?

In short...it appears Chin does come across as holding the stupid baton. Her puzzlement seems to be akin to the stupidity shown by the Sollies who keep using the excuse that Manty missile range could never be that long because the missiles would be too big and the ships could never fire them...forgetting Manty ships are bigger, and their own missile technology also uses the same multistage technology MDMs do to give them an expanded range of their own.

So....can anyone provide a clear explanation of Kuzaks and Chins thinking?

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There's no real excuse for Kuzak. But IIRC, there was a scene accidentally trimmed from AAC where Chin was told the RHN's estimates of Apollo's effective range. That estimate was based on observed performance at Lovat.

The Havenites thought it was effective to around 60-65 million kilometres. Chin was at ~75 million km from Eighth Fleet. The problem for them was, Apollo's effective range is more like 85-90 million km.

As for the planetary defenses - I recently asked, if the RMN were so worried about Havenite counter-fire hitting Sphinx, why didn't they park Sphinx's pods around its two moons, Perseus and Bellerophon? They're still well inside drive range, but distant enough from the planet to be outside range of a poorly aimed laser-head shot.

TenakaFurey wrote:Hi!

Apologies for posting this....I know it's been discussed before and David Weber has even responded to the queries...


...but having recently reread AAC and DWs response to similar queries, I still find myself having questions about what happened.

For example....in the Pearls of Wisdom about Kuzaks decision not to deploy pods...

it seems her primary rational not to do so was not yo waste missiles. That she felt she didn't need to because her existing ships could knock out Second Fleet.

The Home System is under attack. Its primary infrastructure is under threat. If that isn't cause to wipe out Second Fleet ASAP regardless of waste, what is? The economic cost might be of consideration....but Home Fleet was gone and missiles appear to be dirt cheap in the Honorverse. If they were as expensive as David Weber seems to imply here then noone would be churning out podships. They'd never be able to afford the munitions.

In his pearls of wisdom, David Weber also says...

"(and the Edict has always recognized that accidental hits, not targeted on the planet but on legitimate military targets, do not constitute a genocidal attack and hence do not trigger the Edict)."

My problem is this seems to directly contradict other information from the books which states such accidents DO constitute a breach. That it is the attackers responsibility to avoid them. Several times in the books, captains are very worried about accidentally infringing upon the Edict when targetting near planetary targets.

In context, this aspect of Kuzaks decision wrt pods doesn't make sense. Second Fleet wasn't likely to fire on the planet regardless of Kuzaks decision to use pods or not because its CO wasn't likely to take the chance of breaking the Eridani Edict.

Then we have Chin.

Again referencing the Pearls of Weber...

"Accordingly, Chin expected an old-fashioned “accuracy sucks at this range” result from the missiles coming at her, and she had the numbers and the firepower to more than equalize the odds as long as Apollo couldn't give the Manties a killing advantage in accuracy."

Beatrice was initiated bevause the Manties had demonstrated an ability to accurately control missiles at very long range. One of the major risk factors involved in the Operation was that Manticore would have this system operational in the system. McKeown had already targetted Chins fleet. So why does Chin seem to think that the missiles fired at her were not part of the same system or at least even consider the possibility? Why does it take her so long to realise she was facing Eight Fleet given that was who she was sent to kill?

In short...Chin acted as a commander who had never even heard of Apollo despite her fleet coming under attack by it just a short time before, despite Beatrice being launched because of it, despite her taskforce being dedicated to wiping out the Fleet known to be equipped with it. Why? Whatever happened yo "They'd never have launched so many missiles if they didn't think they could control them"?

In short...it appears Chin does come across as holding the stupid baton. Her puzzlement seems to be akin to the stupidity shown by the Sollies who keep using the excuse that Manty missile range could never be that long because the missiles would be too big and the ships could never fire them...forgetting Manty ships are bigger, and their own missile technology also uses the same multistage technology MDMs do to give them an expanded range of their own.

So....can anyone provide a clear explanation of Kuzaks and Chins thinking?

I'm assuming you've read both Admiral Chin and the climax to the Battle of Manticore and Admirals Chin and Kusak and the climax to the Battle of Manticore, part II.
The key to Chin's actions is in the bolded part of this sentence, which David intended to make it into the final edit, but got overlooked:

“But apparently that isn't true for the Manties anymore. They don't have to preprogram evasion maneuvers into their missiles. Don't have to launch with a locked-in attack profile, or even prepackaged EW profiles. They can use their shipboard computational ability to analyze counter-missile patterns, electronic warfare emissions, and then they can make changes on the fly, adjust everything as they get steadily closer, get steadily better data on the defenses they have to penetrate. They can command their electronic warfare missiles to activate at precisely the most effective moment --- decided by the capabilities of a superdreadnought's tactical computers, not just what can be squeezed into a missile body. And on top of that, they can direct the flight of their attack missiles to take the greatest possible advantage of the holes their EW opens up, and according to Linda's best guesstimate, they may have an FTL 'reach' of as much as three and a half light-minutes. They can't have much more than that, given how hard it must've been to jam any sort of FTL transceiver into something so small and what working at that much range has to mean for bandwidth in a missile-sized platform, but if she's right, that means they can take advantage of their new systems almost all the way out to the very edge of even their MDM's powered envelope.”

Remember that 8th Fleet fired at Chin from a distance where the missiles had to coast ballistic after the second drive shut down, in order to extend their range and be able to make the final attack under power. If they had made the run under power without coasting between the 2nd and 3rd stages, the missiles would not be able to make the final attack run under power. And a missile that is attempting to make an attack without power can only hope* to successfully execute that attack--see White Haven's attack in Second Yeltsin for an example.

* In any military, hope is not a plan, or if it is, it is a plan of desperation when you don't have any other options.

munroburton wrote:There's no real excuse for Kuzak. But IIRC, there was a scene accidentally trimmed from AAC where Chin was told the RHN's estimates of Apollo's effective range. That estimate was based on observed performance at Lovat.

The Havenites thought it was effective to around 60-65 million kilometres. Chin was at ~75 million km from Eighth Fleet. The problem for them was, Apollo's effective range is more like 85-90 million km.

As for the planetary defenses - I recently asked, if the RMN were so worried about Havenite counter-fire hitting Sphinx, why didn't they park Sphinx's pods around its two moons, Perseus and Bellerophon? They're still well inside drive range, but distant enough from the planet to be outside range of a poorly aimed laser-head shot.

This is a complete aside, but we may see the following going forward - The numbers stated above are for the shipborne Apollo Command Missile. The shipborne system uses the normal 3 drive Mk 23D attack missile, along with the 3 Drive Mk 23E Apollo Command Missile.

There is a 2nd Apollo system, the System Defense missile - based on 4 drive missiles. These more massive attack missiles, and the even more massive Command Missile, have more drive range, and with the larger FTL array on the Command Missile, have an even longer controlled distance. What this is, we do not know, but estimates have it over 150 Million KM to as much as 250 Million KM.

These (or a Havenite variant) will probably be used in the Mycroft defense systems planned for Beowulf and other Grand Alliance systems.

AS for Kuzak [cupping face in hands], that's a horse that's been flogged repeatedly around here. In addition to not using her existing pods effectively, she didn't tractor extra pods on her hulls prior to the battle (each ship could carry 5-600 externally without effecting acceleration, adding effectively 50-60% to her loadout), and didn't use her Keyhole I's effectively (every SD(p) in her formation had a Keyhole system), which should have dropped losses greatly. In addition, her uses of the LAC screens have holes as big as the holes in the screens themselves.

Another contention is her complete infamiliarity with the Apollo system, which could have been used to better effect in a multitude of ways. Gold Peak, who also didn't have the system (and no SD(p)s in her command area) had been brought up to speed on the system and was running simulations on how best to use it PRIOR to the Battle of Manticore. There is no reason why Kuzak, who had SD(p)s in her formation and had it being used in her command area and was aware of plans to deploy the system defense version in Trevor's star after it was deployed in Manticore (so within 6 months), should have not done the same, or at least been knowledgeable of Honor's uses of the system.

Pretty much, it appeared that she (and her staff) hadn't read a tactical paper written since the podnaughts came out and didn't use any of the current tactics used by other commands. Many, find her decisions definitely sub-par, many call them criminal.

Kuzak was David wielding the plot hammer. David needed 3rd to get hammered badly. But couldn't be bothered to write an interesting way for 3rd to get blown up real good, so he instead had Kuzak commit suicide in a spectacular fashion for no obvious reason.

However the Chin bit isn't so much, the hyperdrive cycle time and the RHN confidence in their analysis of Apollo got her. However David managed to not insert this rather pertinent info into the book.

It's the most terrible book in the Honorverse. The awful romance plot in the first 387 chapters doesn't help. There is a good book in their screaming to get out, it badly needed an editor to attack it ruthlessly and make David justify a lot of it and to ask him "So why does she do this?" a lot.

Cauldron of Ghosts tries really hard for this dishonor, but fails mostly because it isn't a main line book and nothing actually happens in there that impacts the metaplot.

All done.

I hope I didn't disappoint anyone...

kzt wrote:It's the most terrible book in the Honorverse. The awful romance plot in the first 387 chapters doesn't help. There is a good book in their screaming to get out, it badly needed an editor to attack it ruthlessly and make David justify a lot of it and to ask him "So why does she do this?" a lot.

Cauldron of Ghosts tries really hard for this dishonor, but fails mostly because it isn't a main line book and nothing actually happens in there that impacts the metaplot.

Not touching the BoM with a 10-light year pole as that particular dead horse has been beaten into crude oil by now, but I'd say that Shadow of Victory is worse. At least At All Costs and Cauldron of Ghosts *had* actual books inside them trying to get out - they may have been disjointed/etc, but they had something to say. Shadow of Victory may not have their technical problems, but it doesn't actually have a *story* to tell, just a bunch of disconnected faceless impactless threads that go nowhere and grab nothing. And that's IMO a bigger sin.

SoV was fun to read. Good characters, interesting plot. I didn't spend the first 3 chapters trying to figure out how they had teleported all across the galaxy or wondering when the plasma cannons seen in act 1 would make an appearance in act 3 (spoiler - they never do. Nor does any Honorverse tech, it's just the first month of WWI for 200 pages ). Nor did I have to wade though pages and chapters of leaden romance, then wonder when Kuzak took up smoking crack.

I didn't actually go anywhere and didn't live up to the hype, but it didn't make me want bang my head against a wall. Ok, the space battle does, but anyhow...

Meh, different strokes I guess. Far as I was concerned SOV was the same plot thread that we'd already seen a bunch, repeated a half-dozen times in slightly different variations that I couldn't keep up with because I couldn't keep track of any of the names, where none of them were particularly interesting, one of them almost literally had no connection to the rest of the book whatsoever, and we already knew how half of them ended, and where the only thread of continuity was the unlikable boring mr bland james bland.

The writing was fine on a technical level, but I just kept turning pages wondering 'when is something going to happen?', and the answer more or less was 'never'. Sure, there were tidbits here and there, the very end did finally advance the plot a bit, and I suppose firebrand's disposition also technically falls under that heading, but overall, meh. I can forgive technical errors, awkwardness, or continuity/plot holes if the book actually has something interesting happening, but I really don't like putting down a book and realizing that for all its words it didn't actually say much of anything.