Honorverse Top Ten Tacticians, Strategists

Shannon_Foraker wrote:
Any ideas about my Battle of Manticore question? If you want more info on why I'm asking, PM me.

The problem is, we've never seen her with tactical command on her shoulders, only as an analyst. Personally, I see her as someone who gets lost running down a rabbit hole, instead of seeing the larger picture. I've met so many people who are genius at what they do, but can't do anything 1 step further than their fields. I've seen genius Electrical Engineers unable to use a cordless drill/driver to remove parts from an equipment rack, and theoretical scientists unable to run the simplest labs.

Shannon has always been said to have either no focus, or the ability to hyper focus, to the point where she forgets the chain of command, and social niceties. this doesn't bode well in a tactical situation, where there are thousands of disparate inputs that a commander must collate and navigate - he has specialists to do the deep dive analysis and give him a concise tactical picture.

Shannon is that analyst.

If she was at Manticore, unless something was pulled out of someone's nether-regions, the only obvious storyline change would be her seeing Honor's Alpha launch for what it was, and getting Chin to hyper out sooner.

The rest of the battle was on rails and following the contingencies designed into the pre-set warplan. The only oddballs were the quality of the Home fleet firecontrol (more losses in the massive initial launches). The squadron of Apollo with Kusak (it was thought all Apollo ship were with Honor, and Honor would either come with Kusak, or be a later, 3rd fleet, and not split her fleet), Honor's fleet being close enough to engage in Manticore (50/50 odds), and having 40ish Apollo SDs.)

All had been accounted for, except the # of Apollo ships and the range of Apollo (ie, no one in the RHN thought Manticore pushed the Apollo control range past the powered triple drive range.) Seeing the drive shutdown and glide portion of the flight profile, Shannon probably would have realized immediately that the range estimate was incorrect - because she probably helped make the estimate and knew it's parameters.

Everything else was within the plan parameters and pre-set contingencies (on the bloody side, yes, but still within plan parameters.) So I don't know how much assistance Shannon could have given that wasn't already provided.

Theemile wrote:

Shannon_Foraker wrote:
Any ideas about my Battle of Manticore question? If you want more info on why I'm asking, PM me.

The problem is, we've never seen her with tactical command on her shoulders, only as an analyst. Personally, I see her as someone who gets lost running down a rabbit hole, instead of seeing the larger picture. I've met so many people who are genius at what they do, but can't do anything 1 step further than their fields. I've seen genius Electrical Engineers unable to use a cordless drill/driver to remove parts from an equipment rack, and theoretical scientists unable to run the simplest labs.

Shannon has always been said to have either no focus, or the ability to hyper focus, to the point where she forgets the chain of command, and social niceties. this doesn't bode well in a tactical situation, where there are thousands of disparate inputs that a commander must collate and navigate - he has specialists to do the deep dive analysis and give him a concise tactical picture.

Shannon is that analyst.

If she was at Manticore, unless something was pulled out of someone's nether-regions, the only obvious storyline change would be her seeing Honor's Alpha launch for what it was, and getting Chin to hyper out sooner.

The rest of the battle was on rails and following the contingencies designed into the pre-set warplan. The only oddballs were the quality of the Home fleet firecontrol (more losses in the massive initial launches). The squadron of Apollo with Kusak (it was thought all Apollo ship were with Honor, and Honor would either come with Kusak, or be a later, 3rd fleet, and not split her fleet), Honor's fleet being close enough to engage in Manticore (50/50 odds), and having 40ish Apollo SDs.)

All had been accounted for, except the # of Apollo ships and the range of Apollo (ie, no one in the RHN thought Manticore pushed the Apollo control range past the powered triple drive range.) Seeing the drive shutdown and glide portion of the flight profile, Shannon probably would have realized immediately that the range estimate was incorrect - because she probably helped make the estimate and knew it's parameters.

Everything else was within the plan parameters and pre-set contingencies (on the bloody side, yes, but still within plan parameters.) So I don't know how much assistance Shannon could have given that wasn't already provided.

So you're saying Chin might have been able to hyper out fine, instead of catching it 2 minutes too late, because of Shannon's analyst skills? Does anyone else think differently?

Shannon_Foraker wrote:

Theemile wrote:<snip>

All had been accounted for, except the # of Apollo ships and the range of Apollo (ie, no one in the RHN thought Manticore pushed the Apollo control range past the powered triple drive range.) Seeing the drive shutdown and glide portion of the flight profile, Shannon probably would have realized immediately that the range estimate was incorrect - because she probably helped make the estimate and knew it's parameters.

Everything else was within the plan parameters and pre-set contingencies (on the bloody side, yes, but still within plan parameters.) So I don't know how much assistance Shannon could have given that wasn't already provided.

So you're saying Chin might have been able to hyper out fine, instead of catching it 2 minutes too late, because of Shannon's analyst skills? Does anyone else think differently?

This is also provided Shannon was with Chin - NOT Tourville or another command. Tourville was too far for the FTL grav traces to be seen by his force, identified, communicated and encoded, an FTL message sent, and Chin have time to receive and react to the message and get the Hyper process started for the fleet.

Theemile wrote:<snip>

All had been accounted for, except the # of Apollo ships and the range of Apollo (ie, no one in the RHN thought Manticore pushed the Apollo control range past the powered triple drive range.) Seeing the drive shutdown and glide portion of the flight profile, Shannon probably would have realized immediately that the range estimate was incorrect - because she probably helped make the estimate and knew it's parameters.

Everything else was within the plan parameters and pre-set contingencies (on the bloody side, yes, but still within plan parameters.) So I don't know how much assistance Shannon could have given that wasn't already provided.

So you're saying Chin might have been able to hyper out fine, instead of catching it 2 minutes too late, because of Shannon's analyst skills? Does anyone else think differently?

This is also provided Shannon was with Chin - NOT Tourville or another command. Tourville was too far for the FTL grav traces to be seen by his force, identified, communicated and encoded, an FTL message sent, and Chin have time to receive and react to the message and get the Hyper process started for the fleet.

Oh, I didn't know that. Could anything have gone better for Tourville, if she was with him? Could she have helped much in planning the operation (assuming she's pulled back from Bolthole to help and leaves someone smart in charge while she's gone to run it)?

Shannon_Foraker wrote:

Theemile wrote:<snip>

All had been accounted for, except the # of Apollo ships and the range of Apollo (ie, no one in the RHN thought Manticore pushed the Apollo control range past the powered triple drive range.) Seeing the drive shutdown and glide portion of the flight profile, Shannon probably would have realized immediately that the range estimate was incorrect - because she probably helped make the estimate and knew it's parameters.

Everything else was within the plan parameters and pre-set contingencies (on the bloody side, yes, but still within plan parameters.) So I don't know how much assistance Shannon could have given that wasn't already provided.

So you're saying Chin might have been able to hyper out fine, instead of catching it 2 minutes too late, because of Shannon's analyst skills? Does anyone else think differently?

This is also provided Shannon was with Chin - NOT Tourville or another command. Tourville was too far for the FTL grav traces to be seen by his force, identified, communicated and encoded, an FTL message sent, and Chin have time to receive and react to the message and get the Hyper process started for the fleet.

Oh, I didn't know that. Could anything have gone better for Tourville, if she was with him? Could she have helped much in planning the operation (assuming she's pulled back from Bolthole to help and leaves someone smart in charge while she's gone to run it)?

I'm sorry, I'm just realizing I did that math wrong - Tourville was >150 MKM from Honor's 8th fleet or more than 8 light minutes, meaning that FTL and Grav sensors have a roughly 8 second lag. Round trip would be ~16 seconds. As long as everyone is on the ball (Forraker is looking directly at the sensors, she immediately realizes what is happening and what Chin needs to do, she grabs a commo person and has him immediately send a code to do an emergency jump to Hyper, and Chin is immediately relayed the message and immediately acts on the command) Chin could survive. Due to the human element, this would probably take a minimum of 90 seconds to two minutes, and I doubt that it could happen that fast, especially since Havenite FTL at that time is at best measured in double digit baud.

So if Shannon was with Tourville, I give it a 50/50 whether she can inform them in time, especially since she would be distracted by being in the middle of pummeling (and in return getting pummeled by) Kusak's Fleet. Specifically, we know she hyper focuses on the problem at hand, which up until several seconds prior, was identifying McKeon's Apollo SDs. Her focused attention might keep her from noticing Honor's behavior immediately.

For the rest, as I said, everything else was within the ops plan's parameters, and accounted for. If she would have noticed something - it wasn't something mentioned in the text for us to speculate on.

The only certainty in the speculation is if Shannon would have been a part of Chin's fleet that Chin would have hypered out in time.

But Chin should have figured it out for herself straight away. They already knew about that damn godawful missile.

If kzt is right about Kuzak smoking crack. Then Chin was definitely drinking gin.

cthia wrote:The only certainty in the speculation is if Shannon would have been a part of Chin's fleet that Chin would have hypered out in time.

But Chin should have figured it out for herself straight away. They already knew about that damn godawful missile.

If kzt is right about Kuzak smoking crack. Then Chin was definitely drinking gin.

The problem was the estimate about the Missile's range - Chin was told it's range was 60 some mkm at at maximum, and Honor had jumped in well outside that (75 Million KM iirc). Chin didn't know WHY the estimate was that - the Estimate was roughly the same as powered 3-drive missile range because THAT was powered 3 drive missile range. No one thought Manticore would wait to push the capability further than 3 drive range due to war pressures ("perfect" being the enemy of "good enough" in design and engineering), and such range wasn't experienced at Solon. There, the Grayson force with Apollo jumped inside of triple drive missile range of each RHN force it attacked, risking counter attack, which "Proved" that Apollo didn't have range beyond powered 3-drive range - because why risk damage if you didn't too?

Shannon, probably (but not necessarily) knew the parameters of the Estimate, because she most likely took part in making it. So she would be in a position to see the analysis with fresh eyes, and realize there was only one reason for the Ballistic flight path - Apollo had significantly more range than expected. And that one pattern fired at Tourville - well, that screamed the error of the Estimate - IF you knew enough to look for it.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:The only certainty in the speculation is if Shannon would have been a part of Chin's fleet that Chin would have hypered out in time.

But Chin should have figured it out for herself straight away. They already knew about that damn godawful missile.

If kzt is right about Kuzak smoking crack. Then Chin was definitely drinking gin.

The problem was the estimate about the Missile's range - Chin was told it's range was 60 some mkm at at maximum, and Honor had jumped in well outside that (75 Million KM iirc). Chin didn't know WHY the estimate was that - the Estimate was roughly the same as powered 3-drive missile range because THAT was powered 3 drive missile range. No one thought Manticore would wait to push the capability further than 3 drive range due to war pressures ("perfect" being the enemy of "good enough" in design and engineering), and such range wasn't experienced at Solon. There, the Grayson force with Apollo jumped inside of triple drive missile range of each RHN force it attacked, risking counter attack, which "Proved" that Apollo didn't have range beyond powered 3-drive range - because why risk damage if you didn't too?

Shannon, probably (but not necessarily) knew the parameters of the Estimate, because she most likely took part in making it. So she would be in a position to see the analysis with fresh eyes, and realize there was only one reason for the Ballistic flight path - Apollo had significantly more range than expected. And that one pattern fired at Tourville - well, that screamed the error of the Estimate - IF you knew enough to look for it.

Admittedly, hindsight is 20/20 and it is easy to say what one would have done if one was in that situation.

Having said that, Haven knew about the godawful missile. They banked on the notion that it had not been in full production long enough to be available across the board. They bet that only 8th Fleet had the weapon, because if they were wrong it wouldn't matter anyway.

So, at the BoM, when Honor launched on Chin, the incredibly long range should have immediately rang alarms in Chin's head. And the first question was undoubtedly "Who was this new player who hypered in?" If Chin knew it was 8th Fleet, then Chin should have immediately hypered out regardless of her intel on the super weapon's range. It should have been a no-brainer that Honor was firing the new weapon, and caution is the better part of valor.

Now, Chin may not have known it was Honor. Maybe her range from Honor prevented her from getting an FTL read quickly enough to inform her that there were new players who had joined the battle. That doesn't seem plausible. But even so, knowledge of a new superweapon is known, and someone launching a missile at that range indicates the possibility of a superweapon. Hyper Out!

cthia wrote:Now, Chin may not have known it was Honor. Maybe her range from Honor prevented her from getting an FTL read quickly enough to inform her that there were new players who had joined the battle. That doesn't seem plausible. But even so, knowledge of a new superweapon is known, and someone launching a missile at that range indicates the possibility of a superweapon. Hyper Out!

She did because the Alliance had no such other formation of nearly comparable size. There was Home (First) Fleet, Third Fleet and Eighth Fleet. All the other numbered fleets were probably small formations patrolling some of the other termini or picketing some allies.

There was no way she could have mistaken the hypering in of a couple dozen SDs for anything but Eight Fleet.

What happened was that she and her analysts figured Honor arrived out of position due to the navigation difficulties with the Resonance Zone. They may have figured she did exactly what she did: a no-dogleg course, which is incredibly difficult. So, having arrived out of position, Honor couldn't afford to close to weapons range while Kuzak and Third Fleet were being decimated, and simply fired her Alpha launch, hoping to either distract Chin's Fifth Fleet, or make them blink and hyper out.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Now, Chin may not have known it was Honor. Maybe her range from Honor prevented her from getting an FTL read quickly enough to inform her that there were new players who had joined the battle. That doesn't seem plausible. But even so, knowledge of a new superweapon is known, and someone launching a missile at that range indicates the possibility of a superweapon. Hyper Out!

She did because the Alliance had no such other formation of nearly comparable size. There was Home (First) Fleet, Third Fleet and Eighth Fleet. All the other numbered fleets were probably small formations patrolling some of the other termini or picketing some allies.

There was no way she could have mistaken the hypering in of a couple dozen SDs for anything but Eight Fleet.

What happened was that she and her analysts figured Honor arrived out of position due to the navigation difficulties with the Resonance Zone. They may have figured she did exactly what she did: a no-dogleg course, which is incredibly difficult. So, having arrived out of position, Honor couldn't afford to close to weapons range while Kuzak and Third Fleet were being decimated, and simply fired her Alpha launch, hoping to either distract Chin's Fifth Fleet, or make them blink and hyper out.

I'm pretty sure Chin knew it was 8th Fleet as well. I was giving her the benefit of the doubt. I'm even in agreement about Chin's thinking... because Chin was drinking gin.

There is no way Honor would have wasted an entire Alpha launch - of the new, limited superweapon - on a faint. And the fact that it was an Alpha Launch also implies that it was the superweapon. Besides, if Chin truly felt like Honor was bluffing, she could have hypered out anyway - evaded the Alpha launch in the process, just to be safe than sorry - then hypered right back in, with the tactical situation unchanged. For heaven's sake, it is the Salamander, you really want to bet against her on the veracity of some intel that has always been wrong? If someone shoots a bullet at you, and you think it won't reach, are you going to duck anyway?

It's alright to say it. Chin was drinking gin.