Battle of Manticore

However it's done, Bachfish was on half pay for forty years. He might be an admiral, but I would imagine that activating him could be a complicated issue since he would have no inservice experience since War Maiden.

Don

runsforcelery wrote:Of course, the fact that it does succeed often prevents people from realizing the flaws are there, doesn't it?

Oh yes... So called victory disease.

And thanx for the clarification.

BobfromSydney wrote:
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.

Seems to me like you're missing a fairly significant point: they were NOT facing a worst case scenario.
That would be a Masadan style attack, where the attackers fire without caring about possible stray hits on the planet, or indeed aim at the planet.
The Peeps are at least "decent" enemies and they don't start with that kind of attack profile, so nobody wants to push them into it.
But when you plan the defense of a planet, you HAVE to think even about the truly worst scenario.


Anyway, this thread has helped me address a few concerns I had about the battle. Especially DW's explanations of course.
I admit I was also puzzled about Chin's actions: now they make a lot more sense.
Still she could have guessed what was happening: after all she had been under Apollo fire herself, and once you know the Manties can effectively control their missiles in real time, the possibility to have them fly in ballistic courses and exceed previous range limitations is not unconceivable.
In this regard, I think we can say that Peep Intelligence is strongly to be blamed (which still works in the context of the story).

I haven't found it yet (not enough keywords), but it seems like there was a tiny bit of discussion before the Battle of Manticore about Haven's response, and during the first bit of the battle it mentions that Lady Harrington *might* have guessed about the RHN response. The "correct guess" for the Havenite commanders was that only Eighth Fleet had the missiles; if Third Fleet or Home Fleet had them, or even if the system defense pods had them, the battle would have essentially been "ka-boom", no more 2nd Fleet.

As has been noted elsewhere however, Even without Apollo, the system defense pods never fired, and so it is possible that the battle was unwinnable from Haven's side. Without mousetrapping Eighth Fleet, Haven may have achieved a strategic victory by destroying all of the RMN's ship and missile building space stations, Home Fleet, and Third Fleet, and their orbital infrastructure, sort of "Battle of Manticore" plus the damages of Oyster Bay all at once. That would have been decisive, even if they did not capture the planetary orbitals.

The timing of Eighth Fleet's arrival destroyed or drove off half of the attack force (Chin's fleet, less any ships which hyper'd out), and put Tourville in a completely unwinnable vise between the system defense pods and Honor's ships, and he knew it. In fact, he was pretty sure that part of what Honor told him via the Hermes buoy was a bluff, but that the end result would not be. She later told him as much.

SharkHunter wrote:I haven't found it yet (not enough keywords), but it seems like there was a tiny bit of discussion before the Battle of Manticore about Haven's response, and during the first bit of the battle it mentions that Lady Harrington *might* have guessed about the RHN response. The "correct guess" for the Havenite commanders was that only Eighth Fleet had the missiles; if Third Fleet or Home Fleet had them, or even if the system defense pods had them, the battle would have essentially been "ka-boom", no more 2nd Fleet.

As has been noted elsewhere however, Even without Apollo, the system defense pods never fired, and so it is possible that the battle was unwinnable from Haven's side. Without mousetrapping Eighth Fleet, Haven may have achieved a strategic victory by destroying all of the RMN's ship and missile building space stations, Home Fleet, and Third Fleet, and their orbital infrastructure, sort of "Battle of Manticore" plus the damages of Oyster Bay all at once. That would have been decisive, even if they did not capture the planetary orbitals.

The timing of Eighth Fleet's arrival destroyed or drove off half of the attack force (Chin's fleet, less any ships which hyper'd out), and put Tourville in a completely unwinnable vise between the system defense pods and Honor's ships, and he knew it. In fact, he was pretty sure that part of what Honor told him via the Hermes buoy was a bluff, but that the end result would not be. She later told him as much.

Just want to acknowledge that Harrington did surmise that the Peeps could roll that way. She didn't necessarily think that they would but that they could.

You are absolutely correct, SharkHunter.

Actually I have another little doubt here.

In MoH Honor admits to Tourville that she was indeed partially bluffing.
Why is that? What real difference makes the increased range, from Chin's fleet to Tourville's?
I mean after the ballistic course, with Apollo Honor's missiles could be controlled again and homed in on their targets.
She proves exactly that to Tourville with the warning salvo.

So, is it a matter of effective accuracy? Maybe the slight transmission delay present even with Apollo becomes significant enough at 150,000,000 km to decisively degrade final targeting solutions?
Still, it'd seem the threat would remain serious enough. Tourville's fleet was in no pristine shape, on top of it all.

Dr. Arroway wrote:Actually I have another little doubt here.

In MoH Honor admits to Tourville that she was indeed partially bluffing.
Why is that? What real difference makes the increased range, from Chin's fleet to Tourville's?
I mean after the ballistic course, with Apollo Honor's missiles could be controlled again and homed in on their targets.
She proves exactly that to Tourville with the warning salvo.

So, is it a matter of effective accuracy? Maybe the slight transmission delay present even with Apollo becomes significant enough at 150,000,000 km to decisively degrade final targeting solutions?
Still, it'd seem the threat would remain serious enough. Tourville's fleet was in no pristine shape, on top of it all.

I'd guess that Tourville's fleet was far enough away that the Apollo missiles couldn't reliably hold a 2-way FTL link anymore - no without some fire control relays that weren't in play yet.

The actual FTL comm lag would have been trivial; much less than light-speed lag SDM missiles had towards the ends of their runs. But the transmitter power, and receiver sensitivity, that you can cram into even an oversized missile is probably pretty limited. And wasn't she having to jury rig the transmission through a Hermes bouy at is was?

That's why I'm betting on "out of signal range"; rather than "too much latency" as the reason Honor was partly bluffing. After all the flyby and explode, for a limited number of demonstration missiles, doesn't necessarily take FTL control. A lot of it could have be pre-programmed into the control missile's AI.

Dr. Arroway wrote:Actually I have another little doubt here.

In MoH Honor admits to Tourville that she was indeed partially bluffing.
Why is that? What real difference makes the increased range, from Chin's fleet to Tourville's?
I mean after the ballistic course, with Apollo Honor's missiles could be controlled again and homed in on their targets.
She proves exactly that to Tourville with the warning salvo.

So, is it a matter of effective accuracy? Maybe the slight transmission delay present even with Apollo becomes significant enough at 150,000,000 km to decisively degrade final targeting solutions?
Still, it'd seem the threat would remain serious enough. Tourville's fleet was in no pristine shape, on top of it all.

With a given that Apollo accuracy and control would make his escape more doubtful, here's the textev:

At All Costs wrote:His point defense crews managed to nail two-thirds of them, despite the totality of the tactical surprise they'd achieved.

Granted, that was only a sixty missile salvo, but it was a surprise. It's not the FTL control issue quite as much as to get to that extended range, you have to turn on the final stages of the missile earlier, giving Foraker's defensive doctrines time to work on the incoming missile salvos, and Tourville already got out of her trap once using those defenses at the battle of Sidemore Station.

Honor knows that she has to close the range, Tourville knows that nothing he can do is going to get his ships out of her range basket, so the end of the battle is moot. During their later interview, he nails her motivation for both bluffs (the sixty missile salvo and her orders to surrender) perfectly, that she didn't really want to continue the killing.

Hmm, right, didn't think about that.
The longer the ballistic course, the higher the window for the defending fleet to deviate from its "starting" position.
Thus the third stage would have to be turned on sooner to offset that.

Makes a lot of sense.
And transmission power might be a factor too.
Thanks!

Dr. Arroway wrote:Hmm, right, didn't think about that.
The longer the ballistic course, the higher the window for the defending fleet to deviate from its "starting" position.
Thus the third stage would have to be turned on sooner to offset that.

Makes a lot of sense.
And transmission power might be a factor too.
Thanks!

Lets do a little arithmetic here. 150Mkm is 500 light seconds, and for the FTL is about 8 seconds one way or a command loop of 16 seconds. I'm not sure that the Apollo system was designed to handle that large a command loop delay - yes the light speed systems would, as that corresponds to a range of about 2.4 Mkm, but Apollo maybe/maybe not.