tlb wrote:I am not sure exactly what would have happened if Honor's ships had been on the Manticore side. I see ThinksMarkedly speculates that perhaps that was how Honor was intended to die; by becoming the fleet that gets trapped between Tourville and Chin. If she had been the one forced to react immediately, would she have had time to think that this might be Sidemore written large? Even if she had; wouldn't her actions still have been forced, because Tourville had to be chased? She was better suited to survive the situation that eliminated Kuzak's fleet, because of her weapon's range; but against the volume of fire that the "donkey" allowed, her ships could still be hurt badly when Chin fired.
As it actually happened, Honor had the benefit of Kuzak springing the trap; that way Honor knew where everyone was, there was nothing more to add.
My initial choice to put Kuzak at the Manticore end of the wormhole and leave Honor at Trevor's Star, was because I expected Honor to continue to attack the enemy. That places me with the members of the Admiralty that would face recriminations after the Battle of Manticore.
8th fleet would have ripped 5th fleet apart.
Let's go through how it works.
8th Fleet jumps in with a huge percentage of it's pods tractored to the hull. Honor, not smoking crack, starts to engage with extreme long range Apollo fire immediately. This will get hits, but not kill many ships. But hey, it keeps them busy for 30 minutes, 8th has planety of ammo, and keeping the enemy busy keeps them from plotting.
Eventually, if 5th doesn't show up, they reach actual max range for Apollo. And then Honor will probably provide them one final opportunity to not die, and then 2nd fleet goes away. And 5th decides they are not going to play that game and goes home without ever leaving hyper.
If 5th fleet shows up before that moment, 8th fleet has many thousands of Apollo pods tractored to the hull. So when 5th fleet shows up, before they can deploy pods or cycle their hyperdrive, 8th fleet hits them with 30,000 Apollo missiles and they go away.
Then she will contact second fleet and suggest they surrender.
Of course, if Honor is smoking crack then 5th fleet hypers in right after 2nd fleet blows up in a glorious lightshow, and then the fight is on. But nobody will be deploying donkeys, 8th will immediately start firing and every 12 seconds or so a ship in 5th will blow up.