OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

tlb wrote:Cthia is NOT praising Honor's astrogation skills; he is praising the skills of her astrogator, note the pronoun in "Did the difficult maneuver he performed make a difference" and the phrase "risky jumping Honor asked her astrogator to do".

Ah, thanks for the correction.

But the point stands. Honor did not lack for imagination. She may have been unable to readily tell if her crazy ideas could be made reality because her astrogation were subpar, but that's what the staff is for. So Theisman couldn't count on any handicap there.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:Cthia is NOT praising Honor's astrogation skills; he is praising the skills of her astrogator, note the pronoun in "Did the difficult maneuver he performed make a difference" and the phrase "risky jumping Honor asked her astrogator to do".

Ah, thanks for the correction.

But the point stands. Honor did not lack for imagination. She may have been unable to readily tell if her crazy ideas could be made reality because her astrogation were subpar, but that's what the staff is for. So Theisman couldn't count on any handicap there.

This is yet another example of a notion that I thought would be obvious.

You are still missing my point. Honor is the better tactician / strategist between her and Theisman. I was implying that Honor's request for such a daring maneuver may have been something beyond what even Theisman foresaw: even if he could conceive of it in the first place, and not just because Honor is a better tactician / strategist, but also because of the abilities of Apollo.

Honor didn't arbitrarily ask for her placement on the chess board; for one it was a placement that fully appreciated Apollo's capabilities. Theisman may not have seen that maneuver coming, even if he wasn't handicapped by the lack of a full appreciation of Apollo's capabilities.

And of course, Honor's astrogator made the tactic possible.

I will say this for my niece since she isn't here, "Hamish probably wouldn't have requested the same maneuver."


Thanks for the help, tlb. I almost forgot to include the extra ('s) on astrogator. But you keep me on my toes.

tlb wrote:But there is more than you all need to think about. In another thread, people are saying Theisman is a great strategist; well that cannot be true if the result of Honor jumping with Kuzak, before Chin appears, is the complete defeat of both Tourville and Chin. Instead Theisman, Tourville and Chin all expected Haven's fleets to be hurt and expected Honor's and Kuzak's fleets to be destroyed. Tourville specifically held off the call for Chin to jump, hoping that Honor would join in. So what are you all not considering that they did? Or was Theisman "smoking crack" and his name should be struck from the list of top strategists?

I concur. See this exchange on the first page ...

cthia wrote:

kzt wrote:She had her half her entire pod load on the outside of her fleet. She kills every RHN ship in the system in a single salvo.

That would be her best response.

Of course, as soon as she jumps in 2nd fleet dies in a huge series of fireballs. It's well inside the maximum range of Apollo (way outside RHN effective range) and it takes about 36 Apollo pods to kill a RHN ship.

The when the ambush force jumps in she kills them too, hypering out before their missiles arrive. They, however, cannot, because the cycle time is too short.

It's a very sad day on Haven.

I thought so too, but when I consider that Beatrice was formulated to kill Eighth Fleet, and that it was Theisman's plan, what gives? Theisman is one of the best strategists Haven's got. And he knew Eighth Fleet had, 'whatever those god-awful missiles are called.' But hopefully only Eighth Fleet. It was mostly true.

Anyways, why did RFC have me biting my nails hoping Honor wouldn't jump the gun, allowing the Havenites to spring the trap?

RFC had us, me anyways, thinking the Salamander's sixth sense saved her again.

tlb wrote:Why do you assume that because the the donkey's tractors are holding the pods, that they are not basically on the skin of the ship? There is no reason that the donkeys cannot hold them close , through the jump and then within the wedge; until it is time to deploy them. From chapter 17 of The Honor of the Queen

Because that is exactly what Home Fleet observed (and I quoted above) at the same time that 2nd fleet was deploying pods. The problem was that all the RMN COs seemed to have a checklist where they methodically discarded every possible advantage they held.

Except for Honor, because she's the HERO!

Which is why I think it's a terrible book. And the various non-combat stuff that slowly grinds along for the previous 600 pages doesn't help.

tlb wrote:Why do you assume that because the the donkey's tractors are holding the pods, that they are not basically on the skin of the ship? There is no reason that the donkeys cannot hold them close , through the jump and then within the wedge; until it is time to deploy them. From chapter 17 of The Honor of the Queen

kzt wrote:Because that is exactly what Home Fleet observed (and I quoted above) at the same time that 2nd fleet was deploying pods. The problem was that all the RMN COs seemed to have a checklist where they methodically discarded every possible advantage they held.

Except for Honor, because she's the HERO!

Which is why I think it's a terrible book. And the various non-combat stuff that slowly grinds along for the previous 600 pages doesn't help.

Yes, the text you gave was from Home Fleet's point of view and they had not yet understood about the donkey. If they had been right about what was happening, then they would not have been surprised about the volume of fire. But they did not know about the donkey and they were surprised. It is true that both Tourville and Chin use the phrase "roll" pods, but that could be just to deploy them outside the wedges. There no positive evidence that I am wrong about the donkeys allowing the ships to carry pods outside during a transition to normal space and your suggestions that only Manticore could do that are not convincing. There is no indication of the time between the command to "roll" pods and the first launch to be able to tell the difference between our positions. From chapter 67:

Unlike Oliver Diamato's battlecruisers, Third Fleet couldn't dodge the pulser dart. Admiral Kuzak's command was too deep, pinned inside the RZ. Kuzak had intended to catch Second Fleet between her command and the Sphinx planetary defenses; now she was caught between the oncoming hammer of Genevieve Chin's MDMs and the battered anvil of Lester Tourville's surviving SD(P)s.
At least Third Fleet's base velocity was almost fourteen thousand kilometers per second higher than Fifth Fleet's, and almost directly away from it. Given that geometry, Chin's powered missile envelope was only fifty-one million kilometers. But the range was only 41,700,000 kilometers, and that meant Chin could keep Kuzak's ships under fire for eleven minutes before Third Fleet could run out of range.
Eleven minutes. It didn't sound like such a long time, but it was longer than Home Fleet had survived against Lester Tourville. And Home Fleet hadn't been running directly into the fire of one foe while the fire of a second came ripping into it from behind.

That is where Theisman had wanted Eighth to be; that her ships were not, was not she was the hero, not even because she was smarter; but simply that she was not close to the wormhole when Tourville attacked.

Haven had supplied all the surprises, until Honor finally arrived. If D'Orville had been aware of the possible volume of fire or if Kuzak had been aware that there could be another hundred ships waiting to close the trap, then they should not have made the choices that they did. But given what they did know, they thought that they were doing exactly what needed to be done.

So did Theisman screw up by thinking his operation would succeed if Honor had come through the junction with Kuzak? As far as I can see, Manticore only won because Honor was not with Kuzak. I do not mean that Honor and Kuzak together would do anything different from what Kuzak did by herself; rather that Honor got to see the situation after Chin had arrived.

I guess 8th fleet was on the Trevor's Star side of the Junction because Trevor's Star was a "closed" system which had it's own defensive fleet assigned and 8th Fleet could work up and build up without anybody using the Junction seeing anything. Besides, where exactly do you think 8th fleet was going to go after it finished working up?

If you say Haven then why would you want to telegraph that by working up 8th fleet around Manticore and then sending it through the junction to Trevor's Star (anybody with a telescope could see what the approach vector they were taking would orient them for the terminus destination.....want to go beat the crap out of Haven, take the wormhole to Trevor's Star and have the most efficient use of time. Besides, you can have all sorts of single ship transits that might not be noticed or noticed but not yet reported but if you run 8th Fleet to Trevor's star right after work-up, you might trigger some agent sending a flash notice that Hell is on the way.

tlb wrote:Why do you assume that because the the donkey's tractors are holding the pods, that they are not basically on the skin of the ship? There is no reason that the donkeys cannot hold them close , through the jump and then within the wedge; until it is time to deploy them.

It's not that they're within the wedge, but whether they are actually against the hull itself.

From chapter 17 of The Honor of the Queen:

Valentine had pointed out that both Thunder and Principality had far more powerful hyper generators than any Masadan starship. In fact, their generators were powerful enough to extend their translation fields over six kilometers beyond their own hulls if he redlined them. That meant that if they translated from rest, they could take anything within six kilometers with them when they did. And that meant that if Masadan LACs clustered closely enough around them, they could boost the lighter vessels into hyper space.

Sure, they could take them--I'm saying they would be instantly destroyed if they did so. No sail in a grav wave or wormhole and you're a goner.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Sure, they could take them--I'm saying they would be instantly destroyed if they did so. No sail in a grav wave or wormhole and you're a goner.

In AAC, Honor went through a wormhole with one third of her pods outside the skin of the ship. In HotQ Haven ship transported LAC's from Masada to Grayson using tractors outside the skin. In TEiF a frigate was tractored outside the skin during a transition from the Alpha band to normal space. Yet you are trying to tell me that other ships from Haven cannot tractor donkeys and pods through a similar transition. Obviously the main ship has a sail, so saying something should be a goner is just total nonsense (I would use a stronger word if this was after the watershed).

The quote from HotQ said the effect spread out six kilometers, so whether something actually touches the skin or is a few meters away is a distinction without a difference.

Brigade XO wrote:I guess 8th fleet was on the Trevor's Star side of the Junction because Trevor's Star was a "closed" system which had it's own defensive fleet assigned and 8th Fleet could work up and build up without anybody using the Junction seeing anything. Besides, where exactly do you think 8th fleet was going to go after it finished working up?

If you say Haven then why would you want to telegraph that by working up 8th fleet around Manticore and then sending it through the junction to Trevor's Star (anybody with a telescope could see what the approach vector they were taking would orient them for the terminus destination.....want to go beat the crap out of Haven, take the wormhole to Trevor's Star and have the most efficient use of time. Besides, you can have all sorts of single ship transits that might not be noticed or noticed but not yet reported but if you run 8th Fleet to Trevor's star right after work-up, you might trigger some agent sending a flash notice that Hell is on the way.

I do not know what point you are trying to make. No one talked about working up Eighth and then transiting every time they made a foray into Haven's space. The suggested redeployment was only to cover the period while Apollo was being put into wide use. I specifically left Eighth on the Trevor's Star side of the wormhole.

Besides, since only military traffic was allowed at Trevor's Star; any flash announcement through hyperspace would be a month or more out of date by the time it arrived.

cthia wrote: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.

tlb wrote:I think that you are being unclear again. The wormhole connecting Manticore to Trevor's Star is the most important one for the war effort. It was hard won and absolutely must be protected. Any force at the Trevor's Star end can quickly return to Manticore. Any force At Trevor's Star can quickly strike at Haven, while having an untouchable supply line.

So please expound on this; what are you trying to say?

cthia wrote:You said it yourself ...

tlb wrote: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.

I thought this was another example of something that should be obvious in my post.

tlb wrote:No, because the plain meaning of what you said was that was no reason to have forces at Trevor's Star, even before revealing Apollo. You are asking why a force was kept there in normal times and saying that you cannot think of a reason for doing so.

My post on reshuffling, still had Eighth close to the Trevor's Star junction.

Let me expound on this as you asked and perhaps make it clearer by injecting that missing logic chain.

First, I apologize that my wording may have suggested that I think Trevor's Star should be abandoned. Heck no! After that whacking and branding Hamish took at the hands of McQueen??? Ok, strike that last rib at Hamish that isn't quite true.

At any rate, what I meant to ask is why did Trevor's Star need both 8th and 3rd when a Case Zulu should be expected?

Consider this ...

Theemile wrote:Let's not forget, Eighth Fleet is not a defensive formation - Home and 3rd are. Eighth Fleet is an offensive fleet using Trevor's Star (the closest operating base of the Star Kingdom relative to Haven) as a forward operating base. Eighth is only there to refit, repair and plan between ops - it's use as a backup defensive formation is at best Tertiary to it's other responsibilities.

Each op will probably take Eighth fleet away from Trevor's Star between 4 and 6 weeks. It's likely that in the year and a half between when Honor took command of Eighth, and BoMa, the Fleet was probably on station ~50% of the time, and a majority of that was refitting and repairing - and until the last several months, she didn't have the firepower to appreciably enhance the forces arrayed in Home and 3rd Fleet.

Eighth Fleet is not a defensive formation - Home and 3rd are.

Eighth is only there to refit, repair and plan between ops - it's use as a backup defensive formation is at best Tertiary to it's other responsibilities.

In light of Theemile's post -- in retrospect -- it is logical that 8th and 3rd are both positioned at Trevor's Star. Trevor's Star is too important not to protect. Someone has to do it. So I suppose 3rd Fleet inherited that responsibility, and 8th Fleet was only there to refit and repair Honor's torn undies. (And her "slip" was showing too.)

The fact that it was a necessity that Honor be at Trevor's Star for repairs is something that I missed. Honor at Trevor's Star wasn't actually a deployment.

But let's take a closer look at Kuzak. Kuzak was closer to the junction than Honor. I am perplexed by Kuzak's close proximity to the junction instead of being positioned closer to the planet. I am assuming I missed a memo? I know that the junction is important, but wouldn't San Martin lobby for protection; which should imply a position closer to the planet? Unless there was a contingent in orbit about the planet.

But my main point is that Honor's tertiary obligations should have been moved to the front burner in light of the current conditions.

But beyond even that. I am questioning what should be Honor's optimum positioning even if she had been moved to the MBS. Should she have remained close to the MWJ so she could quickly support Trevor's Star if she had been moved to the Home System and Kuzak had to respond from Trevor's Star?

Why wouldn't Honor have taken up a position in orbit right along with Home Fleet? Remember, anything else would invite defeat in detail.

And if Honor had been in orbit with Home Fleet, then would she be in command of the play to run? She would be subordinate to Home Fleet wouldn't she? Hence, at D'Orville's mercy. Yet, we know who is the better strategist / tactician. There was no way D'Orville was qualified to handle Apollo.

You think the above is all that irks me? There's more. Haven supposedly brought along two of its finest tacticians. Tourville and Chin. They had to go the long way around, but they still managed to support the operation with two separate fleets. No big deal, it is par for the course.

Yet the RMN only had one tactician more to await them. And two of them weren't even at HOME at the time to welcome them. The great big MBS only had one additional tactician at the party than the RHN. Let us investigate further.

• Flt. Adm. D'Orville
  - Home FLT
  
  
• Adm. Kuzak,
  Vice Adm. Truman
  - 3rd FLT
  
  
• Adm. Harrington - 8th FLT

Which means, the galaxy's most premiere navy only had two tacticians at Home during what should have been an expected all-out-attack by Haven. A Case Zulu.

The two tacticians in the hot seat were D'Orville, who at best should have been retired, and who obviously had a poor appreciation for strategy and tactics. Heck, he had had his bell rang by Honor during the war games; a reality which may have been the smoking gun ( smoking grav lance) that he had outlived his usefulness.

Then there was Alice Truman. Alice is a heavy hitter tactically, as far as I am concerned. And my placement of her on my list in a certain thread supports it. But! Personally, I have always thought Alice's talents were wasted. She should have had her own fleet, instead of a CLAC command. So, a poor use of her talents disqualifies her as a significant (for lack of a better word, like, say, competent) tactician in the hot seat.

So, the MBS was weak in the firepower available to the navy, weak on the number of tacticians standing guard at the gate, weak in the choice of tacticians and / or their command, thus weak in strategy and tactics.

Which places an exclamation point on why I stand by the notion that Henke should have been recalled. Or someone else during this delicate window of vulnerability.