OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

My theory is that they should have just all used BC(P)s with Mk23s and, of course, started firing as soon as they reached effective range for RMN missiles. Not decide that it would be unsporting to start blowing up enemy ships from outside their effective range - which is what Home and 3rd fleet did due to some guy with a plot hammer assaulting them...

The BC(P)s would have, of course, been obliterated. But they would have taken a lot more RHN ships with them.

cthia wrote:Thanks for ironing that out. So, Eighth Fleet was considered a backup reserve. Backup implies that 8th Fleet should always be reasonably available.

rtthompson wrote:no, "backup reserve" just meant that Third Fleet was the "primary reserve," especially since they had to make up the 8th Fleet as a new organization after the ceasefire; Third already existed at Trevor's Star. It's "reasonably available" when it isn't deployed.

cthia wrote:Sorry, but somehow I missed this post. Anyway, that makes sense in retrospect. So, Honor had to back up the crack smoking Kuzak, AND Home Fleet.

When I opened this present can of worms ...

BTW, are things worse than I thought? What ships from Home Fleet were sent to Monica? A significant amount of firepower? What missiles?

I was contemplating the questionable call to keep drawing down Home Fleet in the face of a lapse of Apollo coverage. Especially since Eighth Fleet was expected to go swashbuckling.

Ok, I know my two centicredits aren't going to be popular, what's new, but let me stop beating around the bush ...

Just to cover the MBS and an apparently understrength Home Fleet shouldn't the Admiralty have been recalling significant units from the front? Just how important was Monica in comparison to the MBS?

And Henke should have been recalled home. Didn't she have Keyhole II capable ships?

Since the Talbott Quadrant is in the process of joining what will become the Manticore Empire, defending it against Monica has a high priority; same as the ship requirements for Silesia that is happening at the same time. Which is in part why Sanskrit was paused; so Honor was not "swashbuckling".

Henke's command was moved out to replace the ships borrowed from Home Fleet, since she could not legally confront Haven's forces.

Why are you surprised that forces which are near to each other, can be called upon to support each other?

cthia wrote:Just to cover the MBS and an apparently understrength Home Fleet shouldn't the Admiralty have been recalling significant units from the front? Just how important was Monica in comparison to the MBS?

And Henke should have been recalled home. Didn't she have Keyhole II capable ships?

No. Henke had been briefed on Apollo, so she'd be ready in case the Admiralty needed to transfer Apollo capable ships to Talbott. And in preparation for that she ran at least on simulation where her BCs were notionally given full Apollo capabilities. But her ships, at that time, were BCs and thus are not Keyhole II capable.

Now later on, after the end of the war with Haven, Henke is given some SD(P)s which probably were Keyhole II equipped (I haven't bothered to check); but she didn't have any such at the time of the BoM. 8th fleet had every Keyhole II equipped ship in the grand fleet.


Also recalling her to face Haven would specifically be a violation of her prisoner parole - where she promised, on her honor, not to serve in the war against Haven. That was part of the condition of her release; when Pritchart and Theisman sent her to bring Beth their request for a peace summit at Torch.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Just to cover the MBS and an apparently understrength Home Fleet shouldn't the Admiralty have been recalling significant units from the front? Just how important was Monica in comparison to the MBS?

And Henke should have been recalled home. Didn't she have Keyhole II capable ships?

No. Henke had been briefed on Apollo, so she'd be ready in case the Admiralty needed to transfer Apollo capable ships to Talbott. And in preparation for that she ran at least on simulation where her BCs were notionally given full Apollo capabilities. But her ships, at that time, were BCs and thus are not Keyhole II capable.

Now later on, after the end of the war with Haven, Henke is given some SD(P)s which probably were Keyhole II equipped (I haven't bothered to check); but she didn't have any such at the time of the BoM. 8th fleet had every Keyhole II equipped ship in the grand fleet.


Also recalling her to face Haven would specifically be a violation of her prisoner parole - where she promised, on her honor, not to serve in the war against Haven. That was part of the condition of her release; when Pritchart and Theisman sent her to bring Beth their request for a peace summit at Torch.

All 20 SD(p)s Henke were provided for 10th fleet were the remaining 1st gen Medusas which were not updated to Keyhole, let alone KH II. 12 of those ships came from Blane's Lynx defense fleet (Released when the forts were complete enough). Os Henke never had full up Apollo capabilities - not that they were required.

cthia wrote:BTW, are things worse than I thought? What ships from Home Fleet were sent to Monica? A significant amount of firepower? What missiles?

I was contemplating the questionable call to keep drawing down Home Fleet in the face of a lapse of Apollo coverage. Especially since Eighth Fleet was expected to go swashbuckling.[/quote]

The textev says they were expecting Eighth Fleet to remain close by. I don't remember what the plans for Sanskrit II were and when it was supposed to launch, given that Honor had poked the hornet's nest with her Apollo-long poles. Given the earlier discussions, the Admiralty should have decided not to send Honor out until the system defence version of Apollo was ready. We never got to find out because Tourville paid a visit before the decision was made.

Just to cover the MBS and an apparently understrength Home Fleet shouldn't the Admiralty have been recalling significant units from the front? Just how important was Monica in comparison to the MBS?

And Henke should have been recalled home. Didn't she have Keyhole II capable ships?

As others have answered, yes it was important, and Henke's forces were not unreasonable. She was sent battlecruisers. I pointed out above that this cannot be what Honor was referring to when she talked about understrength Home Fleet. So the forces that went to Spindle and onwards to Monica were not a serious draw-down on Home Fleet and were more than a match for anything in the Talbott Sector.

However, Home Fleet was understrength for some reason. My guess above was that there was a squadron or two of SDs that were peeled off from it to go to Lynx. Because we don't know this for sure, we don't know where exactly they went and when (or if) they turned back at all. One theory is that they were the 12 Medusas that guarded the Lynx terminus. If such, then they were as close as Third and Eight Fleet in a time of need and thus could also be part of the ready reserve of Home Fleet.

A lot of questionable calls were made by the Admiralty. I know that risk is part of the game and it is a heavy burden the Admiralty has to bear. But stupidity isn't a burden the Admiralty has to bear.

Maybe the whole damn Admiralty was smoking crack. Wait a minute... did the bad decisions start after Basilisk Station and interacting with the Stilties and their very potent weed?

I don't think it's stupidity as much as the Law of Unforeseen Consequences. From the textev that tlb shared above, the Admiralty did not know well enough just how good Apollo was. See the portion where White Haven talks about needing the Keyhole II to make the weapons work... and yet we know from both Beowulf and Spindle that Apollo salvos without the FTL link were already deadly.

So my guess is that they grossly underestimated the effect of Apollo, which meant that Haven's level of reaction to it was not expected at all. The plan was "keep Haven off their toes," not "unveil war-ending technology." This is the same team that did Buttercup right and kept it hidden until they had enough to actually end the war once and for all.

This also means they put too much emphasis on the system defence version, and did not think to use pods of Apollo with older units for the home system defence. That Haven had already planned for Beatrice before Sanskrit and the Battle of Lovat didn't help either. In other words, they grossly misjudged Theisman's leadership.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:This also means they put too much emphasis on the system defence version, and did not think to use pods of Apollo with older units for the home system defence. That Haven had already planned for Beatrice before Sanskrit and the Battle of Lovat didn't help either. In other words, they grossly misjudged Theisman's leadership.

I'd agree. Based on what we now know via hindsight about the effectiveness of Apollo in non-FTL mode loading up non-Keyhole II units with Apollo pods would have given them a massive boost in long range firepower effectiveness.

Plus RFC has indicated that the Keyhole IIs have significant reserve bandwidth -- which is normally used to keep the enemy from localizing the platforms by randomly flipping between which Keyhole II's in a squadron are currently broadcasting. That implies that if you're in a situation where you don't care about that then you should be able to simultaneously control a couple times as many ACMs as normal. And one situation where you shouldn't need to worry about the enemy localizing and killing your Keyhole IIs is when engaging at the extremes of Apollo FTL range (4-5 light minutes; 72-90 million km), where you don't really need to worry about accurate return fire. Together those imply that if you think you might be able to engage in such long range fire that you'd be better off teaming a Keyhole II SD(P) with 1-3 older SD(P) all carrying Apollo pods. Worst case the older SD(P)s have to fire Apollo in non-FTL mode; best case the Keyhole IIs have sufficient available bandwidth to give FTL control to all the Apollo missiles in the salvo!!

But, in any case, it seems clear from hindsight that their priority should have been setting up lines to produce as many normal Mk23E Apollo control missiles and Apollo pods. The longer ranged system defense variant could wait -- those extra 'normal' Apollo pods would have made 3rd and home fleet more deadly -- and the new forts are pod laying and even loaded with "only" the normal Apollo they'd be a massive upgrade over carrying just Mk23s. (And as they get refit with whatever system defense Keyhole is and/or Mycroft their 'normal' Apollo pods just get more deadly).

Only once there were sufficient stockpiles of normal pods for all SD(P)s plus towed pods for all legacy SDs, plus adequate stockpiles should they have diverted effort into building the longer ranged (and larger) system defense variant.
But they let perfect be the enemy of good.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Just to cover the MBS and an apparently understrength Home Fleet shouldn't the Admiralty have been recalling significant units from the front? Just how important was Monica in comparison to the MBS?

And Henke should have been recalled home. Didn't she have Keyhole II capable ships?

No. Henke had been briefed on Apollo, so she'd be ready in case the Admiralty needed to transfer Apollo capable ships to Talbott. And in preparation for that she ran at least on simulation where her BCs were notionally given full Apollo capabilities. But her ships, at that time, were BCs and thus are not Keyhole II capable.

Now later on, after the end of the war with Haven, Henke is given some SD(P)s which probably were Keyhole II equipped (I haven't bothered to check); but she didn't have any such at the time of the BoM. 8th fleet had every Keyhole II equipped ship in the grand fleet.


Also recalling her to face Haven would specifically be a violation of her prisoner parole - where she promised, on her honor, not to serve in the war against Haven. That was part of the condition of her release; when Pritchart and Theisman sent her to bring Beth their request for a peace summit at Torch.

I recall some CO in some scene firing a demonstration launch of Apollo missiles against the SLN before they got the memo that the MBS had been attacked and the Admiralty was recalling all Apollo pods!

Also, I disagree about Henke's parole status disqualifying her for defending the MBS. Remember, the MBS was worried about an attack from the SL. And they had had an attack from an entity in the shadows.

The conditions of Henke's parole prevented her from participating in any active operations against the Havenites. Defending her home system squashes that agreement.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
As others have answered, yes it was important, and Henke's forces were not unreasonable. She was sent battlecruisers. I pointed out above that this cannot be what Honor was referring to when she talked about understrength Home Fleet. So the forces that went to Spindle and onwards to Monica were not a serious draw-down on Home Fleet and were more than a match for anything in the Talbott Sector.

However, Home Fleet was understrength for some reason. My guess above was that there was a squadron or two of SDs that were peeled off from it to go to Lynx. Because we don't know this for sure, we don't know where exactly they went and when (or if) they turned back at all. One theory is that they were the 12 Medusas that guarded the Lynx terminus. If such, then they were as close as Third and Eight Fleet in a time of need and thus could also be part of the ready reserve of Home Fleet.

<snip>

Another Deployment in the middle of the war was the replacement of the fleet at Zanzibar. 13 SDs got punched out and needed replaced - requiring a replacement force, and reinforments to that fleet and the other alliance fleets because those members suddenly felt vulnerable- it might only be 2 or so SDs and a CLAC to each deployment, but quickly you've lost 4-5 squadrons out of homefleet.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:This also means they put too much emphasis on the system defence version, and did not think to use pods of Apollo with older units for the home system defence. That Haven had already planned for Beatrice before Sanskrit and the Battle of Lovat didn't help either. In other words, they grossly misjudged Theisman's leadership.

I'd agree. Based on what we now know via hindsight about the effectiveness of Apollo in non-FTL mode loading up non-Keyhole II units with Apollo pods would have given them a massive boost in long range firepower effectiveness.

Plus RFC has indicated that the Keyhole IIs have significant reserve bandwidth -- which is normally used to keep the enemy from localizing the platforms by randomly flipping between which Keyhole II's in a squadron are currently broadcasting. That implies that if you're in a situation where you don't care about that then you should be able to simultaneously control a couple times as many ACMs as normal. And one situation where you shouldn't need to worry about the enemy localizing and killing your Keyhole IIs is when engaging at the extremes of Apollo FTL range (4-5 light minutes; 72-90 million km), where you don't really need to worry about accurate return fire. Together those imply that if you think you might be able to engage in such long range fire that you'd be better off teaming a Keyhole II SD(P) with 1-3 older SD(P) all carrying Apollo pods. Worst case the older SD(P)s have to fire Apollo in non-FTL mode; best case the Keyhole IIs have sufficient available bandwidth to give FTL control to all the Apollo missiles in the salvo!!

But, in any case, it seems clear from hindsight that their priority should have been setting up lines to produce as many normal Mk23E Apollo control missiles and Apollo pods. The longer ranged system defense variant could wait -- those extra 'normal' Apollo pods would have made 3rd and home fleet more deadly -- and the new forts are pod laying and even loaded with "only" the normal Apollo they'd be a massive upgrade over carrying just Mk23s. (And as they get refit with whatever system defense Keyhole is and/or Mycroft their 'normal' Apollo pods just get more deadly).

Only once there were sufficient stockpiles of normal pods for all SD(P)s plus towed pods for all legacy SDs, plus adequate stockpiles should they have diverted effort into building the longer ranged (and larger) system defense variant.
But they let perfect be the enemy of good.

David's demo had an 8 ship formation (Labeled A-H), coordinating multiple salvos from the entire squadron (iirc a minute's roll) out of single KHIIs. Essentially 480 PODS per Apollo SD - The entire internal Loadout of a Medusa, or ~1/2 of a Invictus/Harrington II.

cthia wrote:I recall some CO in some scene firing a demonstration launch of Apollo missiles against the SLN before they got the memo that the MBS had been attacked and the Admiralty was recalling all Apollo pods!

I don't think that happened just quite the way you remember it. I think you're mixing two different scenes.

There was the "Exclamation Mark" that Terekhov made in front of Crandall's surviving forces, with his second 12,000-missile Apollo launch during the Battle of Spindle. That was a show of force, showing that he had missiles to spare to destroy every single SD in the fleet. And he probably did, since the first salvo took 23 out of the 70. He only needed two more salvos of that size to obliterate Crandall's fleet. And he didn't even need them to be that big, since the first one would have proven they could allocate fewer missiles per target.

But this was before the MBS was attacked. The Battle of Spindle occurred in the beginning of February 1922, while the Yawata Strike happened late the same month.

There was another scene where a Manty CO fired missiles at a SLN targets during Case Lacoön II, then had those waste themselves on the wedges of the SLN ships. That was the Zunker Incident, but the missiles Capt./Commodore Ivanov fired were Mark 16 DDMs, not Apollos. His biggest ship was a Saganami-C heavy cruiser.

As far as I can remember, the RMN fired Apollos at the SLN two or three times only: for sure, during the Battle of Spindle (before Oyster Bay) and during the Battle of Beowulf; plus likely Honor did again during the Battle of Sol. But both Beowulf and Sol happened in January 1923, 11 months after Oyster Bay, so it's reasonable to assume Beowulf, New Berlin, and Bolthole had begun production of Apollo missiles.

Also, I disagree about Henke's parole status disqualifying her for defending the MBS. Remember, the MBS was worried about an attack from the SL. And they had had an attack from an entity in the shadows.

The conditions of Henke's parole prevented her from participating in any active operations against the Havenites. Defending her home system squashes that agreement.

Not sure it does. You can't say "I'll respect the terms of the parole until they become inconvenient." But regardless, it wouldn't be necessary to violate it. If the RMN needed her ships, she could send those home or take them home herself, but not participate in the engagement against the RHN. And if the RMN was worried about attacks from the SL, then Henke's best place was exactly where she was: in the Talbott Quadrant. That's where the known point of contact with the SLN existed. The strategy meeting related above makes it quite clear there was nothing the SLN could throw at the Manticore system itself in less than 6 months.

In any case, Tenth Fleet at this time was composed of 14 BCs, 12 CAs, and some even lighter elements. Those battlecruisers were all Nike-class, so while they sported Keyholes, those were Mark 1 and the Nike can only fire Mark 16 DDMs, not Mk23 MDMs. Those ships could contribute to missile defence, but not to offensive capabilities of Home Fleet against the RHN.