OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

tlb wrote:Case Zulu is NOT an imminent attack, it is an ACTUAL attack

Jonathan_S wrote:Actually...

On Basilisk Station wrote:Case Zulu had one meaning, and one only: "Invasion Imminent."

However nobody declared Case Zulu until Tourville's two hundred SD(P)s popped over the hyper wall.

This raises an interesting question: is there a instance of calling "CASE ZULU" without an enemy warship in friendly space? OBS seems to be such a case, but Honor had already verified that what seemed to be a freighter (and had been signed off as such by Pavel Young) was in fact a warship.

The distinction over the Battle of Manticore is exactly as you stated; Case Zulu was not called until warships appeared, there was no presumption of an imminent threat.

PS: Clearly I was technically wrong based on the OBS text (a single warship is not in itself an actual invasion), yet in practical terms I think that I was closer to the spirit prior to the Beatrice.

The thing is that I believe that "Case Zulu" is normally declared by someone in the field and it would be a major blot on their record if someone called for Case Zulu and was wrong.

We see in chapter 11 of The Short Victorious War that the Admiralty does something different: "In the meantime," White Haven said in his quiet voice, "I think it would be a good idea to send a formal war warning—and the reasoning behind it—to all our station commanders.".

tlb wrote:This raises an interesting question: is there a instance of calling "CASE ZULU" without an enemy warship in friendly space? OBS seems to be such a case, but Honor had already verified that what seemed to be a freighter (and had been signed off as such by Pavel Young) was in fact a warship.

The distinction over the Battle of Manticore is exactly as you stated; Case Zulu was not called until warships appeared, there was no presumption of an imminent threat.

PS: Clearly I was technically wrong based on the OBS text (a single warship is not in itself an actual invasion), yet in practical terms I think that I was closer to the spirit prior to the Beatrice.

I did a text search and only found RMN forces declare Case Zulu three times:
* Honor during OBS
* During EoH when the Peep's hit Basilisk again (and 8th fleet then came through the Junction from Trevor's Star in support).
* The Battle of Manticore during AAC

(There are a couple other occurrences of the phrase: back in Manticore Ascendant it was just generic shorthand for ‘everything’s going straight to hell and we’re all going to die.’; and in SoS the we see the Royal Manticoran Marines have their own "Case Zulu" which appears in context to be closer to the original 'things are going straight to hell' meaning; apparently calling it to let all the Marines and their air support know that capture in no longer the top priority and lethal weapons are now full authorized)

So outside of maybe OBS (as you already covered) we haven't seen it called when no enemy warship is in the system. And for that matter we've only seen it declared in 2 systems; Basilisk and Manticore.

Though it seems to me that one purpose of declaring Case Zulu is to (as Honor did during OBS) summon reinforcements. Given the transit times between systems if you somehow had compelling evidence of an imminent invasion I'd think you'd want to put out the call before waiting for the enemy to actually arrive. (OTOH you really wouldn't want to be wrong about it - especially in wartime. And we've seen systems fall without anybody sending a Case Zulu)

And frankly, given the transit time issue, Case Zulu might be reserved only for systems within hours of Manticore (so Manticore B plus the ones with a terminus of the Junction) -- ones where reinforcements could arrive in time to possibly prevent the fall of the system.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though it seems to me that one purpose of declaring Case Zulu is to (as Honor did during OBS) summon reinforcements. Given the transit times between systems if you somehow had compelling evidence of an imminent invasion I'd think you'd want to put out the call before waiting for the enemy to actually arrive. (OTOH you really wouldn't want to be wrong about it - especially in wartime. And we've seen systems fall without anybody sending a Case Zulu)

Honor had just uncovered a plot to invade. And she was right, because the PN task force did show up. It was only the fact that the Home Fleet detachment was in Basilisk that made that task force nicely ask for permission to come along and pretend that it was a courtesy visit. If they hadn't been there, Basilisk would have fallen and would have been in Peep hands.

So in my book, that counts as "invasion imminent."

If someone had stumbled upon Tourville and Chin's staging point on a red dwarf two days out from Manticore, or followed a suspicious RHN ship in hyper like Capt. Bachfisch did WoH, they'd have declared Case Zulu too. And then Tourville wouldn't just have gone against the toughest defences in the explored Galaxy, he'd have gone against those that were alert and waiting for him.

cthia wrote:Any way, on maneuvers is pretty damn vague. Working up can be done as close as possible to the junction.*
[cut]
*But then, maybe that is just what Honor did, since she got there just in time.

Indeed. I think she was as close as practical to the terminus for what her manoeuvres were supposed to be.

After Apollo was unveiled, Honor's manuevers should have ended.

She'd just been reinforced by more than 1000% in ships capable of Keyhole II, and those were almost all IAN hulls. She needed to drill those ships and everyone in the Alliance needed to know just how good those installations were on IAN ships. The techs in the shipyards must have done a lot of preliminary work, but until those IAN captains actually played a wargame against their GSN and RMN who had used Apollo, it was all theory. Eighth Fleet needed the manoeuvres.

That's also probably why they were far from the terminus. They needed to test Apollo's limits. In fact, that's probably where Honor got the idea that 75 million km was still sufficient range for Apollo: she was just testing that theory when Case Zulu was called. If her forces were shooting in the direction of the Junction from 75 million km, at 600 gravities of acceleration, that's a 2-hour trip. She might have been further out, testing testing just how far the command-and-control's effectiveness went. At 150 million km -- which is how far she shot at Tourville from -- the trip would have taken 2 hours and 48 minutes.

BTW, I'm assuming the IAN Adler-class SD(P)s can pull 600 gravities, like the Invictus and Harrington IIs at this point seem to be able to. We don't know if it was possible to refit compensators to them when they were laid up for the KH2 upgrade. But I also doubt that their acceleration wouldn't be at least close to the RHN and GSN units, because the Eighth Fleet could only move as fast as its slowest ships.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:BTW, I'm assuming the IAN Adler-class SD(P)s can pull 600 gravities, like the Invictus and Harrington IIs at this point seem to be able to. We don't know if it was possible to refit compensators to them when they were laid up for the KH2 upgrade. But I also doubt that their acceleration wouldn't be at least close to the RHN and GSN units, because the Eighth Fleet could only move as fast as its slowest ships.

RFC shared that the Adlers that got the Keyhole II refit were the ones that were still under construction when the Andermini joined the Grand Alliance and got the RMN's tech package. Their design was modified while still on the stocks to include the original Keyhole -- and I'd assume that they'd also have gotten the GA's latest compensator during that design alteration. It was only because they were completed with Keyhole that they were able to be quickly (6-8 weeks) refitted to Keyhole II when that became available shortly after their completion.

After all, those newest Adlers were completed with the knowledge that the IAN was going to be operating them with the RMN and GSN; it wouldn't make any sense to leave them unable to keep up with the acceleration of the fleets they'd be assigned to.


Now the older Adlers, built before the Andies joint the GA, never got any Keyhole prior to the BoM; and some of those were assigned to Home Fleet. Dunno if those got sent back to the yards for the latest compensator update -- probably depends on how behind the IAN was; since I'd think they'd need to be quick enough to keep up with the refit legacy SDs still serving with Home Fleet.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:BTW, I'm assuming the IAN Adler-class SD(P)s can pull 600 gravities, like the Invictus and Harrington IIs at this point seem to be able to. We don't know if it was possible to refit compensators to them when they were laid up for the KH2 upgrade. But I also doubt that their acceleration wouldn't be at least close to the RHN and GSN units, because the Eighth Fleet could only move as fast as its slowest ships.

RFC shared that the Adlers that got the Keyhole II refit were the ones that were still under construction when the Andermini joined the Grand Alliance and got the RMN's tech package. Their design was modified while still on the stocks to include the original Keyhole -- and I'd assume that they'd also have gotten the GA's latest compensator during that design alteration. It was only because they were completed with Keyhole that they were able to be quickly (6-8 weeks) refitted to Keyhole II when that became available shortly after their completion.

After all, those newest Adlers were completed with the knowledge that the IAN was going to be operating them with the RMN and GSN; it wouldn't make any sense to leave them unable to keep up with the acceleration of the fleets they'd be assigned to.


Now the older Adlers, built before the Andies joint the GA, never got any Keyhole prior to the BoM; and some of those were assigned to Home Fleet. Dunno if those got sent back to the yards for the latest compensator update -- probably depends on how behind the IAN was; since I'd think they'd need to be quick enough to keep up with the refit legacy SDs still serving with Home Fleet.

The older Adlers also could not fire Mk 23 pods- they could only fire the older, larger Mk 41s because they were not designed to spin up Fusion reactors in the pod bay, only Capacitor pods. Capacitor pods/missiles can be powered up and down prior to and after a battle in mass, Fusion pods/missiles need to be powered just prior to use so you don't have thousands of lightly shielded fusion reactors in your mags/podbay. The quick upgrade to field the original Adlers with RMN 3 drive missiles only allowed they to use the outdated Mk 41 missiles used in the 1st war.

So the Keyhole Adlers are for all intents and purposes a second class of ships - I doubt the original Adlers can easily be upgraded to their standard.

Theemile wrote:
So the Keyhole Adlers are for all intents and purposes a second class of ships - I doubt the original Adlers can easily be upgraded to their standard.

Agreed - might as well call them Adler IIs.

And I'd also agree it would not be easy to upgrade the original Adlers - that's probably at least 7-8 months in the yard (which is a good fraction of how long it'd take to just build a new one).

However, since peace has temporarily broken out and the GA is no longer quite so desperate for hulls, I guess we'll have to see what the IAN chooses to do with their surviving original spec Adlers.

Some options:
1. Dispose of them, along with all their pre-pod wallers and build enough Keyhole II ships to meet their desired fleet level.
2. Relegate them to second line duties.
3. Place them in reserve.
4. Cycle them through a major upgrade to bring them up to current specs.

However judging which they're most likely to do requires a lot of info we don't have, not least of which is costs to upgrade verses build new. Or, frankly IAN naval strength vs their desired fleet strength (they might have enough war built Keyhole II ships to meet their waller desires).

(But hopefully if they take option 4 they don't get in the situation the post-WWII Royal Navy did where, for various reasons, they ended up spending way too much on some refits and upgrades. They'd have been far better off, and might have actually saved money overall, if simply allowed to replace the ship instead of upgrading it)

Why did RHN attack the MBS in AAC?

Because the cycle of innovation and the evolution of tactics by Manticore had been getting faster and Apollo brought Haven to the realization that the level and cycle of Manticore's tech created what they conceived as a very short window of possibility to be able to do anything to "win" the war.

Apollo had to be tested in combat -against Haven- and that what was done. You go after an important target and prove you concept and designed and tactics with something that will both hurt the enemy and advance your goals. How can you suggest that Harrington take a smaller force with Apollo and go after the Haven home system without having any actual idea of how that is likely to perform?

Haven comes to the conclusion that even with Bolt Hole turning out it's latest designs SD with present missile tech and tactics, will be incapable of both /either defending Haven home system or being successfully able to attack the MBS in X months.
MDM and range and........accuracy. Accuracy at that great range when Haven's ships are not going to be able to get into engagement or effective range with it's own weapons against Apollo.
The term used with Roll the Dice. They strike hard now or they are going to be beaten -badly and from a great distance such that even with a many months of Bolt Hole pumping out (and working up) new SDs Manticore is going to be able to effectively stand off and spread any fleet Haven trys to put in it's way.

So......go after the Manticore Home System now with as big a force as can be safely put together and try to deploy such that you can cover the most logical reactions of RMN to defend and reenforce
Battle of Manticore........take the orbitals, compel surrender and then.........discuss terms because there is going to be a whole lot of the RMN -with Apollo- and Grayson (and they don't know about the IAE) who have the ability to come back in on the MBS and shoot the crap of your investing fleet. Does the present Haven government really want to resort to an EE event when Harrington and friends come home madder than hell?

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:The 576 number comes from the three 8th Apollo capable ships with 3rd that were killing a ship in 5th every 48 seconds using quad pods. These were the only ships firing on 5th and were slicing through the defenses of all 96 ships with no problems.

So 8th isn’t going to wait and allow a huge salvo to be built, they are all going to go to rapid fire because their tests show that those will work and putting the enemy under stress helps keep them for doing clever things.

And 5th melts like a snowman in the rain.

Except there were "four Apollo-capable ships of McKeon's squadron" [AAC]; not 3. So quad stack pods is actually 768 attack/ECM missiles + 96 ACMs = 864 total missiles.

And that's assuming that the 2 non-Keyhole SD(P)s in his squadron were also carrying Apollo pods -- which we can't rely on given that Keyhole II has extra control bandwidth and given how long it takes to refit a ship with Keyhole it'd make sense for non-Keyhole SD(P)s assigned to 8th fleet to carry extra Apollo pods to thicken the salvos from the few ships that did carry the full Apollo suite. He might just as likely be throwing quad stacked salvos of 1152 + 144 = 1296 missiles.



Side note - Kuzak's 3rd fleet got to pound on Tourville's fleet for as long before Chin's arrival because Tourville was waiting to see if 8th fleet would make a slightly belated appearance. If 8th had shown up instead then the moment they started flinging Apollo around he'd have sent orders to MacArthur; telling her to let Chin know to spring the trap. So 8th fleet wouldn't have gotten as long to pick apart Theisman's forces -- meaning there'd be more missiles coming from that direction for Honor to worry about. (Even if she was further out). Oh, and at a bit further out from the RZ and hyper limit Chin might not have had to err so far on the side of safety and might have emerged at the planned 40 million km from her target -- not the 50 million she actually managed again Truman's forces. That would make her weapons more effective and start slicing away at Honor's ship that much sooner.

Wait! ... ... What?!

There were four Apollo capable ships in McKeon's squadron?

But he was only taking out one enemy ship per volley? Right? What the heck was he doing?

Ah shucks, don't tell me he was under the influence of something too. ::facepalm::

cthia wrote:Wait! ... ... What?!

There were four Apollo capable ships in McKeon's squadron?

But he was only taking out one enemy ship per volley? Right? What the heck was he doing?

Ah shucks, don't tell me he was under the influence of something too. ::facepalm::

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)