cthia wrote:tlb wrote:Then please explain what happened to the Solarian Fleet at Beowulf in UH; where only about ten percent of their Battle-cruisers survived an Apollo attack, which had received initial instructions and then acted autonomously. Obviously they did not need "an additional signal immediately after launch"; so it seems that they can be deadly without that link.
I am in need of a reread of that passage. My immediate questions are regarding the range of the entire launch, and at what point in the launch was Mycroft destroyed?
Perhaps my basic knowledge is in error, but I am under the impression that a missile has to be guided to its target most of the way. Even Apollo missiles are not tracking straight out of the gate. I am sure there must be a certain range before missiles start tracking; the point where they become locked on.
In summary, any launch whose links are cut immediately after launch shouldn't be able to find their arse from a hole in the ground. Especially against a maneuvering fleet.
Nope - Beowolf lost Mycroft before the Apollo birds even launched. So given that those Apollo pods were 1 LM (nearly 18 million km) from Beowolf orbit those missiles likely would have been beyond effective fire control range not long after launch. And certainly long, long, before they covered the 205 million odd km to the SLN BCs.
So Apollo pulled off that attack nearly autonomously after the initial targeting queue got uploaded to them.
Uncompromising Honor wrote:Two more minutes until Mycroft launched, he thought, and felt a distant sort of sympathy for the thousands of Sollies who were about to die. Still, he hadn’t come looking to invade their star system and—
His head jerked up as an alarm shrilled. He’d never heard that particular alarm, even in a training exercise, and his eyes snapped towards the master status board.
“What the—?”
He froze, staring in disbelief at the readouts.
“Sir—” Dunstan-Meyers began, then stopped and drew a deep breath. “Sir, we just lost Mycroft.”
[snip]
“In the meantime, Cheryl,” McAvoy went on, “upload the targeting queue directly to the pods.”
“Sir, that’s going to take at least another thirteen or fourteen minutes. We’ll have to start from scratch,” Dunstan-Meyers pointed out. “And without Mycroft, accuracy’s going to be poor, even for Apollo.”
“It’ll be a hell of a lot better than no accuracy at all,” McAvoy grated.