OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

Theemile wrote:Why "Abandon" the Junction? The Junction Fort force there is large enough that it can be split and a portion of forts could move in system to replace destroyed or damaged defense units there - but given the time to move, that should only be done as a response to destroyed/damaged defenses, otherwise, that is the purpose of mobile forces, when they are still available/existent.

Which hadn't yet happened. I agree with redistribution of assets once battle damage and losses are accounted for.

But preemptively moving them? That requires a reason. We have evidence for the Old Star Kingdom planets being properly protected by forts all along, even during High Ridge's administration. That they were MIA during the BoMa is worrying, but we've managed to justify their apparent absence, so it's possible that the Manticore forts were there and strong.

Any forts that had existed through December 1920 would still be there. There was no reason for the White Haven Admiralty and Grantville Government to decommission them. There was no personnel shortage at that point -- in fact, with further automation and the reactivation of people in half-pay, they were freeing people up. And the Python Lump hadn't gone out of the shipyards yet, so they didn't need to be manned.

The only thing that changed was the unveiling of Apollo. And textev shows that they didn't fully appreciate just how much of a game changer that was.

So you're proposing that they move the forts thus weakening the Junction on account of Apollo?

cthia wrote:I see. I wasn't clear. My badd. Oftentimes I give the benefit of the doubt that everyone can easily understand my notions and what I feel should be obvious, and oftentimes I get bit on the arse for it.

I implied that all of the forts should / would be redeployed. And I stand by it. But not redeployed to the inner system. I was thinking that only the outer shell would be redeployed, or only half of each of the shells that are closer to the planet.

But! The remaining forts would have to be redeployed about the junction to take up the slack. Thus, all forts would have to be redeployed in some fashion.

To make my posts brief (because some people dislike their length at times, and because oftentimes I am short on time) I leave out what I think should be obvious. It is difficult to strike a balance sometimes. So I usually err on the side of caution and length.

Later you said:

But how would the Havenites know that the junction is a barenaked lady? Besides, there are shoals of pods that would be left at the junction.

This reinforces the thought that the original post meant that the forts are gone, although in that post you do qualify to some extent that not all need be moved. It was only after the post by Theemile that you made it clear. That could have been done in reply to ThinksMarkedly.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Why "Abandon" the Junction? The Junction Fort force there is large enough that it can be split and a portion of forts could move in system to replace destroyed or damaged defense units there - but given the time to move, that should only be done as a response to destroyed/damaged defenses, otherwise, that is the purpose of mobile forces, when they are still available/existent.

Which hadn't yet happened. I agree with redistribution of assets once battle damage and losses are accounted for.

But preemptively moving them? That requires a reason. We have evidence for the Old Star Kingdom planets being properly protected by forts all along, even during High Ridge's administration. That they were MIA during the BoMa is worrying, but we've managed to justify their apparent absence, so it's possible that the Manticore forts were there and strong.

Any forts that had existed through December 1920 would still be there. There was no reason for the White Haven Admiralty and Grantville Government to decommission them. There was no personnel shortage at that point -- in fact, with further automation and the reactivation of people in half-pay, they were freeing people up. And the Python Lump hadn't gone out of the shipyards yet, so they didn't need to be manned.

The only thing that changed was the unveiling of Apollo. And textev shows that they didn't fully appreciate just how much of a game changer that was.

So you're proposing that they move the forts thus weakening the Junction on account of Apollo?

That is not what I am proposing. I am proposing moving the forts because the RMN unveiled the effectiveness of Apollo to the RHN, thus, inviting attack. Daring attack.

The notion that the RMN did not realize how effective Apollo was may be true. As a matter of fact, it was true according to textev. But it didn't apply as much to the jeune ecole.

If it worked as intended, I bet Sonja and Honor were not surprised one damn bit at how effective it turned out to be.

Regardless! The Havenites that were on the receiving end of its unveiling damn sure appreciated it! And the RMN should have appreciated what it did after it was unveiled. Did they really think someone as bright as Theisman would give them the time to properly fit that suit... of armor?

Why does a redeployment of assets by the Admiralty in the MBS itself rub people the wrong way. The Admiralty made a living out of juggling his forces all over the galaxy. Why not within the MBS?

Again, after letting Apollo out of the bag, the MBS was inviting and daring attack. And Home Fleet was weak in firepower and tactics.

Redeploy because Apollo literally created a Case Zulu!


And hindsight was not needed to see that.

cthia wrote:That is not what I am proposing. I am proposing moving the forts because the RMN unveiled the effectiveness of Apollo to the RHN, thus, inviting attack. Daring attack.

The notion that the RMN did not realize how effective Apollo was may be true. As a matter of fact, it was true according to textev. But it didn't apply as much to the jeune ecole.

If it worked as intended, I bet Sonja and Honor were not surprised one damn bit at how effective it turned out to be.

How effective they are and how the Havenites react to that are two very different things. I'd think that Honor and White Haven should have come to the correct conclusion that this was a game-changer event, akin to the unveiling of the MDMs during Buttercup (White Haven because he was there at the pointy end of Buttercup, so he should've realised the similarities). But only Honor might consider what the Havenites do after this, not Sonja and not White Haven.

Even then, we can temper with the fact that it shouldn't have been that much of a game changer. Apollo made the MDMs more effective at longer range and deadlier at shorter, but the Havenites could still fire back massive salvos. As previously discussed, any MDM can have effectively unlimited range if one accepts a ballistic phase. And the RHN had a bigger construction and bigger fleet, so those could negate the advantages of Apollo. Given time, Shannon would have thought of something. In fact, you've given one idea: FTL jamming.

That's very unlike the MDMs: against the PN and later against the SLN, the Alliance SDs outranged 6:1, outgunned at least 15:1, and would have zero trouble staying out of counter-fire range. As Tom Caparelli put to Queen Elizabeth, "the Peeps have just lost the war" and "we'll be dictating terms in orbit above Nouveau Paris in six months."

We have no evidence that even Honor thought this was possible. It doesn't look like she did, because she had Eighth Fleet away from the terminus when this arrived. And as I said above, if they had an inkling this was, the first thing they'd have done would be to move Third and Eighth Fleets to better supporting positions in the MBS, not leave them on the other side of the Junction and needing to transit one SD every 3 minutes. That alone means the ~90 SDs would need a minimum of 4.5 hours to arrive!

So if no one in the Alliance strategy thought it was possible, why would they move the forts?

Regardless! The Havenites that were on the receiving end of its unveiling damn sure appreciated it! And the RMN should have appreciated what it did after it was unveiled. Did they really think someone as bright as Theisman would give them the time to properly fit that suit... of armor?

Why does a redeployment of assets by the Admiralty in the MBS itself rub people the wrong way. The Admiralty made a living out of juggling his forces all over the galaxy. Why not within the MBS?

We can argue whether the Alliance should have thought of this. The fact is that it doesn't look like they did. That means the fault wasn't in the proper disposition of assets to counter the threat they expected; it was in the improper evaluation of the threat scenario in the first place. So I don't see the point in discussing castling or any other such manoeuvre.

Again, after letting Apollo out of the bag, the MBS was inviting and daring attack. And Home Fleet was weak in firepower and tactics.

Redeploy because Apollo literally created a Case Zulu!


And hindsight was not needed to see that.

I don't think you can make this statement, because they clearly didn't see it. As I've just written above, there are mitigating circumstances that probably did cloud their assessment of how the Havenites would respond.

Not to mention they may have been expecting a response like Operation Hassan and the Cromarty Assassination, which was fresh on their minds because of the attempted assassination of Queen Berry.

cthia wrote:If it worked as intended, I bet Sonja and Honor were not surprised one damn bit at how effective it turned out to be.

Regardless! The Havenites that were on the receiving end of its unveiling damn sure appreciated it! And the RMN should have appreciated what it did after it was unveiled. Did they really think someone as bright as Theisman would give them the time to properly fit that suit... of armor?

Why does a redeployment of assets by the Admiralty in the MBS itself rub people the wrong way. The Admiralty made a living out of juggling his forces all over the galaxy. Why not within the MBS?

Again, after letting Apollo out of the bag, the MBS was inviting and daring attack. And Home Fleet was weak in firepower and tactics.

Redeploy because Apollo literally created a Case Zulu!


And hindsight was not needed to see that.

You are correct that the Admiralty should have done things differently. Whether it was shuffling the forts or moving Third Fleet to the Manticore side of the junction (or both), while keeping Eighth close to Trevor's Star or exercising other options that we can only guess.

But unfortunately, hindsight WAS needed to see that. For one thing, they could not know that Home Fleet was weak in tactics; since it was taken by the surprise of a technological innovation by Haven: the "donkey".

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Why "Abandon" the Junction? The Junction Fort force there is large enough that it can be split and a portion of forts could move in system to replace destroyed or damaged defense units there - but given the time to move, that should only be done as a response to destroyed/damaged defenses, otherwise, that is the purpose of mobile forces, when they are still available/existent.

Which hadn't yet happened. I agree with redistribution of assets once battle damage and losses are accounted for.

But preemptively moving them? That requires a reason. We have evidence for the Old Star Kingdom planets being properly protected by forts all along, even during High Ridge's administration. That they were MIA during the BoMa is worrying, but we've managed to justify their apparent absence, so it's possible that the Manticore forts were there and strong.

Any forts that had existed through December 1920 would still be there. There was no reason for the White Haven Admiralty and Grantville Government to decommission them. There was no personnel shortage at that point -- in fact, with further automation and the reactivation of people in half-pay, they were freeing people up. And the Python Lump hadn't gone out of the shipyards yet, so they didn't need to be manned.

The only thing that changed was the unveiling of Apollo. And textev shows that they didn't fully appreciate just how much of a game changer that was.

So you're proposing that they move the forts thus weakening the Junction on account of Apollo?

As I said earlier, only a very bad planner would take down all the defenses simultaneously to upgrade. In the IT world, you update one (usually a backup or redundant node), test it, then update the rest of the backups and redundancies, then finally do the Primary (or at least that is how you are supposed to do it - I have tons of stories where items like DATA CENTERS have crashed because all the nodes were taken out of service and updated simultaneously into a failure mode - and the planners usually fired as a result - but that is what ITIL is for)

Under heightened tensions, it might have made sense for a fort or 2 to be moved to reinforce any specific defense getting upgraded (to replace the fort under upgrade), but again, this is what the mobile forces are intended for - besides, if such was the plan, those backup forts would currently be in Manticore B space reinforcing the Gryphon defenses while they were being upgraded.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:If it worked as intended, I bet Sonja and Honor were not surprised one damn bit at how effective it turned out to be.

Regardless! The Havenites that were on the receiving end of its unveiling damn sure appreciated it! And the RMN should have appreciated what it did after it was unveiled. Did they really think someone as bright as Theisman would give them the time to properly fit that suit... of armor?

Why does a redeployment of assets by the Admiralty in the MBS itself rub people the wrong way. The Admiralty made a living out of juggling his forces all over the galaxy. Why not within the MBS?

Again, after letting Apollo out of the bag, the MBS was inviting and daring attack. And Home Fleet was weak in firepower and tactics.

Redeploy because Apollo literally created a Case Zulu!


And hindsight was not needed to see that.

You are correct that the Admiralty should have done things differently. Whether it was shuffling the forts or moving Third Fleet to the Manticore side of the junction (or both), while keeping Eighth close to Trevor's Star or exercising other options that we can only guess.

But unfortunately, hindsight WAS needed to see that. For one thing, they could not know that Home Fleet was weak in tactics; since it was taken by the surprise of a technological innovation by Haven: the "donkey".

That, and no one thought that Havenite was going to send >80% of it's modern Wall against the Manticore system! The Havenite defenses were left so bare, If Honor had decided to attack Haven, she probably would have only faced 2-3 squadrons and the fixed defenses. she could have rampaged through the system!! In fact, if she wanted to, she could have used the Junction to get to Haven faster than Chin's 17 survivors, and attack the remaining defenders there.

Haven only attempted Beatrice for 2 reasons:
1) They had to attempt to knock out as many ships (built and unbuilt) before Apollo was installed throughout the fleet.
2) they had 900 SD(p)s either completing or working up inside the next 12ish months. Their losses would be rapidly replaced.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:I see. I wasn't clear. My badd. Oftentimes I give the benefit of the doubt that everyone can easily understand my notions and what I feel should be obvious, and oftentimes I get bit on the arse for it.

I implied that all of the forts should / would be redeployed. And I stand by it. But not redeployed to the inner system. I was thinking that only the outer shell would be redeployed, or only half of each of the shells that are closer to the planet.

But! The remaining forts would have to be redeployed about the junction to take up the slack. Thus, all forts would have to be redeployed in some fashion.

To make my posts brief (because some people dislike their length at times, and because oftentimes I am short on time) I leave out what I think should be obvious. It is difficult to strike a balance sometimes. So I usually err on the side of caution and length.

Later you said:

But how would the Havenites know that the junction is a barenaked lady? Besides, there are shoals of pods that would be left at the junction.

This reinforces the thought that the original post meant that the forts are gone, although in that post you do qualify to some extent that not all need be moved. It was only after the post by Theemile that you made it clear. That could have been done in reply to ThinksMarkedly.

You are absolutely right. I can see why that would be misleading. But I have a habit of using colorful dialogue as a literary license. Somewhere within my bones lurks a writer just fighting to get out. LOL

At any rate, I was thinking that leaving only a single shell of forts is barenaked. But I didn't mean literally. Obviously there are concentric rings for a reason. Overkill I presume, and an ability to readily replace damaged or destroyed forts, etc.

At any rate, I agree that I should have used a better word, even though "naked" applied to a system which has a Queen as a ruler sounds much more enticing. I should have used my second choice. Threadbare. Good catch.

Theemile wrote:
As I said earlier, only a very bad planner would take down all the defenses simultaneously to upgrade. In the IT world, you update one (usually a backup or redundant node), test it, then update the rest of the backups and redundancies, then finally do the Primary (or at least that is how you are supposed to do it - I have tons of stories where items like DATA CENTERS have crashed because all the nodes were taken out of service and updated simultaneously into a failure mode - and the planners usually fired as a result - but that is what ITIL is for)

You mean things like Qwest pushing out security ACL changes to all their POPs on Thanksgiving? Which dropped all their Internet customers and also prevented their NOC from accessing the POPs. Every POP tech got to drive out to all the POPs and fix it on the console. Did I mention this was on Thanksgiving? And there is a lot of driving in Qwest territory between POPs?

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:If it worked as intended, I bet Sonja and Honor were not surprised one damn bit at how effective it turned out to be.

Regardless! The Havenites that were on the receiving end of its unveiling damn sure appreciated it! And the RMN should have appreciated what it did after it was unveiled. Did they really think someone as bright as Theisman would give them the time to properly fit that suit... of armor?

Why does a redeployment of assets by the Admiralty in the MBS itself rub people the wrong way. The Admiralty made a living out of juggling his forces all over the galaxy. Why not within the MBS?

Again, after letting Apollo out of the bag, the MBS was inviting and daring attack. And Home Fleet was weak in firepower and tactics.

Redeploy because Apollo literally created a Case Zulu!


And hindsight was not needed to see that.

You are correct that the Admiralty should have done things differently. Whether it was shuffling the forts or moving Third Fleet to the Manticore side of the junction (or both), while keeping Eighth close to Trevor's Star or exercising other options that we can only guess.

But unfortunately, hindsight WAS needed to see that. For one thing, they could not know that Home Fleet was weak in tactics; since it was taken by the surprise of a technological innovation by Haven: the "donkey".

Theemile wrote:That, and no one thought that Havenite was going to send >80% of it's modern Wall against the Manticore system!

Well, with the possible exception of Honor as textev implied. And in the back of my head I always wondered why Honor didn't put a bug in someone's ear. But it wasn't her bailiwick.

At any rate, I can't think of a single reason that Eighth and Third were chained to Trevor's Star. Can anyone think of a reason? There must have been a strategic or tactical reason for that deployment. At least during normal times. Which, of course, should have been overruled or rethought in light of the reality which existed after unveiling Apollo.

Theemile wrote: The Havenite defenses were left so bare, If Honor had decided to attack Haven, she probably would have only faced 2-3 squadrons and the fixed defenses. she could have rampaged through the system!! In fact, if she wanted to, she could have used the Junction to get to Haven faster than Chin's 17 survivors, and attack the remaining defenders there.

Haven only attempted Beatrice for 2 reasons:
1) They had to attempt to knock out as many ships (built and unbuilt) before Apollo was installed throughout the fleet.
2) they had 900 SD(p)s either completing or working up inside the next 12ish months. Their losses would be rapidly replaced.

I thought about that too. What the heck did Theisman leave covering the system!?