OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

Theemile wrote:Well, he was firing ~1300 missiles (or fewer) into 110 ship's defenses. Normally 1300 missiles wouldn't make it past the Outer CM defenses.

And in this case Apollo was probably working against him. Knowing he was cracking 110 ship's defenses, he probably aimed Apollo at one ship, and all the missiles followed. If he were firing standard MDMs, most would follow fire control, but some would reacquire nearby ships, doing significant "splash damage" to other the ships surrounding the target, so subsequent salvos focused on the same squadron would be taking out 2 or 3 ships at a time.( assuming the same # of standard MDMs would survive the defenses, which we know they wouldn't)

110 is just counting her SD(P)s -- which already means the defending fleet has more CM launchers in play than there are attacking missiles; and each launcher can salvo at least 4 CMs against each incoming wave! But the wallers aren't going to be out there on their own - so you've also got the missile defenses of their screening cruisers and destroyers; and I'd assume Chin would also have some CLACs and thus also an anti-missile LAC screen. So that's even more CMs (and PDLCs) trying to smack down the relative handful of Apollo missiles.

And since IIRC even mission killing a Republic SD(P) takes 200-300 laserhead hits; and somewhere around a quarter to a third of each salvo will be decoys and jammers it's frankly still utterly astounding that from no more than about ~800 laserheads enough would survive to get those 200-300 hits in the face of a full unshaken fleet of that size!

Theemile wrote:[
Well, he was firing ~1300 missiles (or fewer) into 110 ship's defenses. Normally 1300 missiles wouldn't make it past the Outer CM defenses.

And in this case Apollo was probably working against him. Knowing he was cracking 110 ship's defenses, he probably aimed Apollo at one ship, and all the missiles followed. If he were firing standard MDMs, most would follow fire control, but some would reacquire nearby ships, doing significant "splash damage" to other the ships surrounding the target, so subsequent salvos focused on the same squadron would be taking out 2 or 3 ships at a time.( assuming the same # of standard MDMs would survive the defenses, which we know they wouldn't)

He was firing quads, so 192 missiles per Apollo armed ship. So under a thousand missiles and was getting a mission kill at least with each salvo. Vs the ~20,000 RHN missiles per RMN SD(P) kill. Apollo is absurdly deadly.

If I was facing that I'd be throwing a lot into R&D on how to disrupt the FTL links.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:[
Well, he was firing ~1300 missiles (or fewer) into 110 ship's defenses. Normally 1300 missiles wouldn't make it past the Outer CM defenses.

And in this case Apollo was probably working against him. Knowing he was cracking 110 ship's defenses, he probably aimed Apollo at one ship, and all the missiles followed. If he were firing standard MDMs, most would follow fire control, but some would reacquire nearby ships, doing significant "splash damage" to other the ships surrounding the target, so subsequent salvos focused on the same squadron would be taking out 2 or 3 ships at a time.( assuming the same # of standard MDMs would survive the defenses, which we know they wouldn't)

He was firing quads, so 192 missiles per Apollo armed ship. So under a thousand missiles and was getting a mission kill at least with each salvo. Vs the ~20,000 RHN missiles per RMN SD(P) kill. Apollo is absurdly deadly.

If I was facing that I'd be throwing a lot into R&D on how to disrupt the FTL links.

Indeed. That is why I championed the idea that the MAlign may be able to somewhat level the playing field if they cut Apollo's link.

It certainly could turn out to be some quite interesting poetic justice if Achilles finally got his revenge on Apollo by helping to expose Apollo's own Achilles' heel.

And of course, the platforms the Spiders will unleash that will sever Apollo's long distance phone lines will be aptly named... Achilles!

Apollo's FTL links are actually Apollo's tendons.

cthia wrote:Indeed. That is why I championed the idea that the MAlign may be able to somewhat level the playing field if they cut Apollo's link.

That assumes that it's the link that makes them deadly. On one hand, we have Honor saying she couldn't have taken Tourville out from a given distance, implying the distance was the issue and therefore the link lag was a factor. On the other, we have Terekhov's example of firing Apollos without the FTL link and still being very deadly. I posited above that it's the networked nature of the Apollo brood and dedicating one of every 9 birds to nothing but command and control.

It certainly could turn out to be some quite interesting poetic justice if Achilles finally got his revenge on Apollo by helping to expose Apollo's own Achilles' heel.

I suppose everyone trying to defeat Apollo will code-name their project Achilles

cthia wrote:Indeed. That is why I championed the idea that the MAlign may be able to somewhat level the playing field if they cut Apollo's link.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That assumes that it's the link that makes them deadly. On one hand, we have Honor saying she couldn't have taken Tourville out from a given distance, implying the distance was the issue and therefore the link lag was a factor. On the other, we have Terekhov's example of firing Apollos without the FTL link and still being very deadly. I posited above that it's the networked nature of the Apollo brood and dedicating one of every 9 birds to nothing but command and control.

cthia wrote:It certainly could turn out to be some quite interesting poetic justice if Achilles finally got his revenge on Apollo by helping to expose Apollo's own Achilles' heel.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I suppose everyone trying to defeat Apollo will code-name their project Achilles

Also note that at Beowulf, after all Mycroft control links were destroyed, that Apollo wiped out two thirds of the Solarian fleet. Admittedly the Solarian defense was not much, but that was still the result of the Apollo control missiles directing the entire attack by themselves.

Although Apollo was sometimes said to direct the arrow that killed Achilles; it would still seem to be unfortunate to name an attack system after the person that died. Something like naming a solar probe after Icarus, instead of Daedalus. It might be better to name it after something unrelated like Mjölnir (then hope there is no counter system named Hela)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Indeed. That is why I championed the idea that the MAlign may be able to somewhat level the playing field if they cut Apollo's link.

That assumes that it's the link that makes them deadly. On one hand, we have Honor saying she couldn't have taken Tourville out from a given distance, implying the distance was the issue and therefore the link lag was a factor.

I got the impression it wasn't the lag -- after all Tourville was at 150 million km (about 8 light-minutes). That would give an FTL lag of just 8 seconds; equivalent to engaging with conventional missions at the ludicrously close range of 2.4 million km. That's less than half of SDM range!!!

That's a short enough fire control loop that they should still be utterly deadly.

Instead I think the problem is that that's beyond their com range -- that the ACM transceivers aren't powerful enough to transmit and understandable signal that far nor sensitive enough to pick out what the Keyhole IIs are sending. That makes the lag irrelevant.


(Also, IIRC, one of the changes to the larger system defense variant of Apollo was more capable transceivers boosting their com range. There'd be no point to that, nor to the Mycroft FTL fire control relays if Apollo was already lag limited at a mere 8 LM)

The weapon that gets you 50% of the effectiveness for less than 10% of the R&D is enhanced missile computers and networking of your attack missiles.

This doesn’t require FTL and doesn’t require micro fusion reactors.

Jonathan_S wrote:And since IIRC even mission killing a Republic SD(P) takes 200-300 laserhead hits; and somewhere around a quarter to a third of each salvo will be decoys and jammers it's frankly still utterly astounding that from no more than about ~800 laserheads enough would survive to get those 200-300 hits in the face of a full unshaken fleet of that size!

Remember, there are several rods per laserhead. And from what we saw when Honor fired on the same fleet he shouldn't have been stacking them that deep. He didn't know how much overkill he was doing, though.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And since IIRC even mission killing a Republic SD(P) takes 200-300 laserhead hits; and somewhere around a quarter to a third of each salvo will be decoys and jammers it's frankly still utterly astounding that from no more than about ~800 laserheads enough would survive to get those 200-300 hits in the face of a full unshaken fleet of that size!

Remember, there are several rods per laserhead. And from what we saw when Honor fired on the same fleet he shouldn't have been stacking them that deep. He didn't know how much overkill he was doing, though.

Though even if Honor didn't devote as many missiles per target the fleet's defensive fire was still split up more because she had 32 SD(P)s vs McKeon's 6.

Let's assume, pessimistically, that she's got only the same ratio of SD(P)s carrying Apollo birds that McKeon did (whatever that was) - and further that she wasn't stacking salvos at all. Even in that worst case scenario she'd be throwing 1/3rd more missiles at Chin's fleet every launch -- oh, and they'd be coming 4 times more often; which is it's own stress on the defenses.

So just forcing the fleet's defensive fire to be diluted over additional missiles means a higher percentage of each salvo would be making it through -- allowing Honor to disperse her fire more while still getting as many hits.



And that's before any adjustment based on seeing how effective Apollo was in what was, let's all remember, only the 2nd battle its ever been used in.

Oh, and McKeon presumably wanted to make sure the ship he was hitting wouldn't be contributing to the fleet's missile defenses for his next salvo -- that it couldn't just roll to present it's undamaged side's defenses. By knocking them entirely out he'd likely be degrading the fleet's defenses more reliably, meaning he'd have been able to start spreading his fire wider as the defenses weakened. (Too bad the dice rolled the wrong and his squadron's number came up before he'd been able to get that far)
However, I'd think Honor would be perfectly happy inflicting just damage to one of Chin's ships to prevent it from retreating -- as she'd be able to destroy or capture it later; and she had enough firepower that it's continued missile defense didn't matter so much.

If you've ever analyzed how honorverse missile defense works it turns out that a steady flow of missiles is functionally equivalent to maximum salvos after about a minute.

Basically, the first missile launch gets obliterated. The CMs launch with plenty of burn time to engage at maximum range and hammer them as they close.

However the second missile launch arrives while the first salvo is still being engaged by the outer zone. And the attacking ships get out of synch, so you rapidly end up with continuous engagements throughout the depth of the defense.

CMs get busy dealing with the missiles approaching attack range, so they are not launching in time time to engage the missiles at max range. CMs only get out about 100K KM in 12 seconds if my numbers aren't wrong. So eventually the zone where the defending fleet starts conducting missile defense gets pushed closer and closer to the defending fleet. Or they go to zone based and you get a lot less shots at each incoming missile.

Your PDLCs are more effective, as they get less targets over more time targets. But with the stand-off of modern RMN missiles they have less effectiveness already.