Attacking Darius:

tlb wrote:A "significant constellation of Mk42 system-defence versions of Apollo" depends entirely on how much had been produced by Manticore before the Yawata Strike and how much had been produced by Beowulf and shipped to Manticore after it. RFC said somewhere in the forum (I believe) that Manticore was actually guarded by a large number of Haven's pods in addition to what Manticore had available.

So if Filareta could have attacked without warning before Zilwicki and Cachet had returned there might have been a significant difference in what the SLN fleet could have accomplished before being destroyed.

The way I remember it a lot of the ship laid pods that Honor revealed to Filareta as part of the show of force to convince him to stand down were from Haven, laid by their SD(P)s.

But they didn't need that many pods to kill the entire SLN fleet. However, because even though Filareta had a bit more of an inkling of how outclassed his ships were he still drastically underestimated the lethality of modern MDMs (much less the Apollo birds that 8th fleet's SD(P)s were carrying). Because he underestimated their lethality the defenders had to show him a truly stupendous number of pods to be sure of overawing him -- enough pods that even if their missiles had been no better than his Cataphracts that they'd be assured of handily wiping out his fleet.


If he'd managed to show up by surprise they wouldn't have had all those pods from Haven to help make him see reason before the fighting started. But 8th Fleet's SD(P)s, and Manticore's system defense Apollo pods + Mycroft FTL fire control relays, should have been more than enough to have quickly killed all his ships. IIRC even without Apollo FTL control you needed less than 150 missiles to kill a SLN SD. That's 15-20 pods per SD. Each RMN SD(P) could individually drop more than enough pods to kill an SD ever minute -- and even the Medusa's with their original (non flat-pack) pods carried enough to kill at least 20 SLN SD each, with the Invictus carry over twice that. (And that's ignoring what the system defense pods would do).

No, I don't see Filareta surviving making any hostile action even without the heads up. All he'd be able to do is force Manticore to simply crush him rather than deterring him. His ships were just that outclassed.

What it would have done is greatly depleted the missile stocks of the RMN.

kzt wrote:What it would have done is greatly depleted the missile stocks of the RMN.

Yes and no. Thanks to the Battle of Spindle, they should know exactly how many Apollo pods they need to kill each SLN battle squadron.

It's just a question of how many squadrons Filareta's prepared to lose before he strikes his wedges. As long as that Alignment bomb doesn't go off, I think there's a good chance that both sides end the battle with fewer casualties - in other words, an upsized reprise of Spindle.

We see that, by the time they get to Galton, missile manufacturing is back up and running overtime. It was an astute diplomatic gesture of Pritchart to offer Havenite missiles and of Elizabeth to accept, but ultimately that joint decision actually led to Second Manticore becoming the bloody slaughter it was.

munroburton wrote:

kzt wrote:What it would have done is greatly depleted the missile stocks of the RMN.

Yes and no. Thanks to the Battle of Spindle, they should know exactly how many Apollo pods they need to kill each SLN battle squadron.

It's just a question of how many squadrons Filareta's prepared to lose before he strikes his wedges. As long as that Alignment bomb doesn't go off, I think there's a good chance that both sides end the battle with fewer casualties - in other words, an upsized reprise of Spindle.

We see that, by the time they get to Galton, missile manufacturing is back up and running overtime. It was an astute diplomatic gesture of Pritchart to offer Havenite missiles and of Elizabeth to accept, but ultimately that joint decision actually led to Second Manticore becoming the bloody slaughter it was.

We know they were short on Apollo pods. That was part of the carrot attached to Eloise's stick.

"An alliance between us will allow you to save those godawful pods for the SLN," or something to that effect.

But I wonder whether the RHN and their missiles would have been integrated with the RMN by then. Or simply enroute, like "The ships are in the mail." Remember that Eloise and Beth both had to talk their governments into burying the hatchet in some other place other than in each other's backs. It was a hard sale. Had the SLN maintained security, they might have caught the RMN unaware and totally alone. With only the Apollo pods they had at that time.

I won't go into whether depleting those pods during that encounter might have affected whether Honor would be able to attack Sol later. That's another story.

Also, I am not so sure the RMN was expecting the MBS to be attacked. It was ludicrous. If Haven hadn't offered an alliance, I think Manticore was poised to pull in their horns in a defensive posture against a possible two-pronged attack from two enemies. Since Eloise did offer an alliance, I think the RMN would have eventually geared up to attack Sol, since they had someone to help watch the henhouse. Previously Eighth Fleet was grounded?

At any rate, the two navies could have passed each other in the night en route to attack the other. I don't think the Sol System could have fared any worse with fleet elements missing, but what about the MBS?

Here's that quote.

ART wrote:“I understand your missile production facilities have been taken off-line,” Pritchard said. “Tom here tells me you’ve undoubtedly got enough of those ungodly super missiles in your magazines to thoroughly kick the ass of this Filareta if he really insists on following his orders. But that’s going to cut into your reserves, and given that the Alignment managed to rip the hell out of your home system, I think it would be a good idea for you to conserve as much ammunition as you can in hopes we’ll find someone a bit better suited to playing the role of target.”

Almost exactly two years later, they took half a million Apollo pods to Galton. They didn't need to hold back against Filareta; that was a fog-of-war decision.

munroburton wrote:Here's that quote.

ART wrote:“I understand your missile production facilities have been taken off-line,” Pritchard said. “Tom here tells me you’ve undoubtedly got enough of those ungodly super missiles in your magazines to thoroughly kick the ass of this Filareta if he really insists on following his orders. But that’s going to cut into your reserves, and given that the Alignment managed to rip the hell out of your home system, I think it would be a good idea for you to conserve as much ammunition as you can in hopes we’ll find someone a bit better suited to playing the role of target.”

Almost exactly two years later, they took half a million Apollo pods to Galton. They didn't need to hold back against Filareta; that was a fog-of-war decision.

Thanks for the passage!

I don't think anyone denies that. But could it have been bloodier for the RMN? Remember when Honor hypered into the Sol system right on top of the enemy? That could have happened to the RMN. If Filareta had hypered in right on top of some RMN ships - inside the boxer's longer reach - they could have gotten some punches in. The RMN also would not have been grouped for mutual CM defense.

If Manticore had not been warned about Filareta there would have been a lot more losses on both sides though the majority proably still have been to the SLN.
Without the interruption of Filareta being confronted by the massed fleets and at least warned by and called to surrender by Harrington, the SLN fleet would have come in shooting and the Home Fleet would would have gone to Case Zulu and started killing everything it could reach with both missiles from magazines and the system defense pods.

The other thing that happens is a different result with the Task Force hanging around near the Beowulf end of the wormhole. Given that we have already seen that Beowulf told the SLN that it would not allow them to transit- and even if the RMN force was not staged forward to the Beowulf end of the wormhole, things would have gone much differently. Lets say that Beowulf backed down and didn't engage the SLN....but given the level of involvement between the BSDF and RMN (and their respective governments), unless the SLN somehow gabbed control of Astro Control, messages would have been set though to the Junction that the SLN force was moving on the terminus......and then the Junction fully switches on the auto response for it's minefields and gives the forts "weapons free" notices. Why? because the trigger for the SLN force to go though the terminus is a courier boat running through to the Beowulf end bringing the news to the SLN task force that Raging Justice has started by what would have been the appearance and engagement by Filareta.
So every SLN ship coming through from Beowulf is going to be at least heavily damaged if not turned to dust bunnies.....and it really would have been shooting fish in a barrel without any mitigation of damage by the shots having to go through the water first. Just how many SLN ships would have been destroyed within 10 seconds of appearance at the Junction end before the "close" mines would have all been expended and the time started to rise to 20 seconds, 30 seconds and the closest forts would have started pumping small packets of missiles into the throat of that emergence lane. Remember, these weapons are steerable so you fire from a fort and bring the missiles in so they are accelerating straight down center of the emergence lane- and the throat aspect of the emerging ships. Maximum chance of significant damage in the most vulnerable part of the target even if they had advanced to the point where they could bring up their wedge.
So lets say all of the task forces attempts to go through and 98% of the crew are killed. Then there is what is going to happen to Filarta. Ok, the RMN ships might be out of position but they and the pods are shooting MDMs and Filareta still don't have any real handle of what RMN ECM and other penetration aids are going to do to his fleet. So he's beaten back the Sphinx portion of the Home Fleet but taken massive casualties......and unit size groups of the unit of Home Fleet arriving from Manticore via hyper so they are outside the hyper limit and getting full sensor tactical data from the surviving members of the Sphinx contingent AND all those Ghost Rider drones....so they are able to start pumping waves of MDMs at Filarta from outside the hyperlmit and GUIDING them all the way into their targets but able to micorjump out against return fire- while the missiles targeting Filarta get handed off the the Apolo Birds and RMN manned ships.

Would Filarta even threaten an EE event if they didn't surrender.....he's fighting for his life, not in compleat control of Sphinx orbitals----and, at best, he is now having to absorb long range guided fire (massive bulk sniping) while he's down in that gravity well and watching his SDs being torn apart.
And exactly what

Elzabeth's response to this variation of the attack? She still has Harrington and the SLN has now launched a 2nd fleet level attack at the Star Kingdom, this one at the Home System. The Alignment might just get their wish.

Brigade XO wrote:The other thing that happens is a different result with the Task Force hanging around near the Beowulf end of the wormhole. Given that we have already seen that Beowulf told the SLN that it would not allow them to transit- and even if the RMN force was not staged forward to the Beowulf end of the wormhole, things would have gone much differently. Lets say that Beowulf backed down and didn't engage the SLN....but given the level of involvement between the BSDF and RMN (and their respective governments), unless the SLN somehow gabbed control of Astro Control, messages would have been set though to the Junction that the SLN force was moving on the terminus......and then the Junction fully switches on the auto response for it's minefields and gives the forts "weapons free" notices. Why? because the trigger for the SLN force to go though the terminus is a courier boat running through to the Beowulf end bringing the news to the SLN task force that Raging Justice has started by what would have been the appearance and engagement by Filareta.
So every SLN ship coming through from Beowulf is going to be at least heavily damaged if not turned to dust bunnies.....and it really would have been shooting fish in a barrel without any mitigation of damage by the shots having to go through the water first. Just how many SLN ships would have been destroyed within 10 seconds of appearance at the Junction end before the "close" mines would have all been expended and the time started to rise to 20 seconds, 30 seconds and the closest forts would have started pumping small packets of missiles into the throat of that emergence lane. Remember, these weapons are steerable so you fire from a fort and bring the missiles in so they are accelerating straight down center of the emergence lane- and the throat aspect of the emerging ships. Maximum chance of significant damage in the most vulnerable part of the target even if they had advanced to the point where they could bring up their wedge.

Though the ships have to survive for IIRC about 5 minutes to get to the point where they can raise their wedge. And until they've gotten most of the way there you're not going to be sending missiles down the throat at them because the same grav lane that forces the ships to stay under sail to survive would also destroy any missile attempting to fly into it.

However, without their wedge for those five minutes or so they've got no sidewall protection from flank shots -- and nothing is stopping forts from sending missiles to fly above or below the emergence lane to fire up or down into the less armored dorsal or ventral aspects of the transiting ships.

Even without a heads up from the Beowulf end an attempt to force transit through the Junction is going to result in a hell of a lot of dead SLN ships unless they're smart enough to surrender immediately once they see the defenses are intact.

cthia wrote:We know they were short on Apollo pods. That was part of the carrot attached to Eloise's stick.

"An alliance between us will allow you to save those godawful pods for the SLN," or something to that effect.

Short is a relative term. They believed they had enough Apollo and other missiles on hand to defeat Haven, the second or third most powerful navy in existence -- but, prior to Spindle, weren't sure that after defeating Haven they'd have enough missiles left over to go on to also defeat the largest navy in existence (the Solarian League's).

That's a crazy high bar to be measuring your military against.


Relieved of the need to defeat Haven, and knowing from Spindle how defensively deficient the League ships actually were, they should have had no doubt at all that their current missile stocks were more than adequate to allow them to destroy the entire current League Navy.

Brigade XO wrote:The other thing that happens is a different result with the Task Force hanging around near the Beowulf end of the wormhole. Given that we have already seen that Beowulf told the SLN that it would not allow them to transit- and even if the RMN force was not staged forward to the Beowulf end of the wormhole, things would have gone much differently. Lets say that Beowulf backed down and didn't engage the SLN....but given the level of involvement between the BSDF and RMN (and their respective governments), unless the SLN somehow gabbed control of Astro Control, messages would have been set though to the Junction that the SLN force was moving on the terminus......and then the Junction fully switches on the auto response for it's minefields and gives the forts "weapons free" notices. Why? because the trigger for the SLN force to go though the terminus is a courier boat running through to the Beowulf end bringing the news to the SLN task force that Raging Justice has started by what would have been the appearance and engagement by Filareta.

Which is why they wouldn't have crossed in the first place. The only reason the courier was allowed through was because the RMN, Astro Control and the BSDF knew what it was there for and they had a good way to stop Adm Tsang without adding to the butcher's bill and because they wanted an SLN officer on record threatening to kill Solarian citizens without a declared war.

By the way, Tsang announcing her intent to transit was another stupid thing. Even if Filareta's OpSec had held, the fact that there were 37 SLN SDs on the Beowulf side of the wormhole advising they were going to transit in a week was all the alert that the RMN needed.

The only condition under which the rest of your reply makes sense is if Tsang arrived from hyper at the terminus and had not warned the BSDF one week before. Then First Fleet and Adm. Holmon-Sanders wouldn't have been in position to attempt to block her. Tsang would have been allowed to transit... one SD at a time, to die in the teeth of the Junction forts.

Would Filarta even threaten an EE event if they didn't surrender.....he's fighting for his life, not in compleat control of Sphinx orbitals----and, at best, he is now having to absorb long range guided fire (massive bulk sniping) while he's down in that gravity well and watching his SDs being torn apart.
And exactly what

He seemed to be a good enough CO not to consider an EE-level attack. He was going to surrender without firing a shot once he realised just how badly he had been trapped. He'd surely have done that after having exchanged long-distance missile fire and obtained some results, but found his fleet being pounded to scrap a dozen SDs per missile wave (like Hajdu later was, five BCs at a time, at Hypatia).

His predicament is how to communicate he's going to surrender without exposing his ships even more. The missiles aren't to stop coming just because he's striking wedges.