OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

Jonathan_S wrote:

At All Costs wrote:He watched sickly as the missiles which had suddenly brought up their impellers, appearing literally out of nowhere, hurtled down on his battered and broken command. They drove straight in, swerving, dancing, and his sick feeling of helplessness frayed around the edges as he realized there were less than sixty of them. Whatever they were, they weren't a serious attack on his surviving ships, so what—?
His jaw tightened as the missiles made their final approach. But they didn't detonate. Instead, they hurtled directly through his formation, straight through the teeth of his blazing laser clusters.
His point defense crews managed to nail two-thirds of them. The other twenty pirouetted, swerved to one side, then detonated in a perfectly synchronized, deadly accurate attack . . . on absolutely nothing.

So while that does imply that they did pass within PDLC range it does not actually say that at any point the passed within the 50,000 km laserhead range of any of Tourville's battered ships.

He expected them to detonate but they didn't--thus they successfully closed to attack range. Ignore the 2/3, that doesn't mean much in this case--what she really showed is that his defenses can only pick off 40 of her missiles per volley.

Loren Pechtel wrote:He expected them to detonate but they didn't--thus they successfully closed to attack range. Ignore the 2/3, that doesn't mean much in this case--what she really showed is that his defenses can only pick off 40 of her missiles per volley.

His ships picked off 40 out of 60 missiles; but you say that the 2/3 is not significant, only the 40 is? So if there had been 300 missiles in the volley, you believe that only 40 would be picked off and not 200?

tlb wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:He expected them to detonate but they didn't--thus they successfully closed to attack range. Ignore the 2/3, that doesn't mean much in this case--what she really showed is that his defenses can only pick off 40 of her missiles per volley.

His ships picked off 40 out of 60 missiles; but you say that the 2/3 is not significant, only the 40 is? So if there had been 300 missiles in the volley, you believe that only 40 would be picked off and not 200?

"Didn't detonate" doesn't mean they passed through 50,000 km. It could just as easily mean that Tourville was expecting them to settle down on a final attack vector and cross that boundary; but they didn't. As in he expected them to detonate (because why else would someone launch missiles at your fleet) but they passed through without entering laserhead range and didn't detonate within the fleet.

As for a larger salvo, there are two opposite factors at play so you can't simply apply the ratio to the larger number of missiles. If the salvo is more missiles and spread across more targets then that'll give more ships' PDLCs shots as the missiles close -- ships that were never in laser cluster range of the 60 demonstration 'strike' missiles. So that'll push up the kills. OTOH more missiles means the defending CMs are spread more thinly and thus fewer can be devoted to each attack missile, which should tend to reduce the kill percentages. But on the gripping hand if it was a larger strike on the same profile where Tourville's fleet never noticed the missiles until their final drive came up for terminal maneuvering (and thus were firing late and with poor targeting solutions) having more missiles means more things for poorly aimed CMs to blunder into

And of course if the strike is large enough you saturate the defenses and there are so many attacking missiles than some never have any defensive fire aimed at them; which drastically decreases defensive kill percentages.

Still, against a reasonably larger strike I'd expect somewhat less than 2/3rds to be lost, while losing more than 40 of them.

Jonathan_S wrote:Still, against a reasonably larger strike I'd expect somewhat less than 2/3rds to be lost, while losing more than 40 of them.

Exactly, I cannot think of a situation where stopping 40 missiles was nearly constant for increasingly larger volleys; but I can see where stopping 2/3's would not be achievable.

Of course, repeated larger volleys causes increased attrition resulting in decreased defensive capability and then even more attrition: the whole "God is on the side of the big battalions" problem (from either Voltaire or George Bernard Shaw or someone else).

Jonathan_S 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)

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!

Hmm...

There was a shortage of Apollo pods, but did that include an overall shortage of the entire package? Were the dazzlers, dragons teeth and the control missile all in short supply as well? In other words, could McKeon have seeded each launch with an extra control missile controlling ONLY dazzlers and dragons teeth? Beaters!

tlb wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:He expected them to detonate but they didn't--thus they successfully closed to attack range. Ignore the 2/3, that doesn't mean much in this case--what she really showed is that his defenses can only pick off 40 of her missiles per volley.

His ships picked off 40 out of 60 missiles; but you say that the 2/3 is not significant, only the 40 is? So if there had been 300 missiles in the volley, you believe that only 40 would be picked off and not 200?

Jonathan_S wrote:"Didn't detonate" doesn't mean they passed through 50,000 km. It could just as easily mean that Tourville was expecting them to settle down on a final attack vector and cross that boundary; but they didn't. As in he expected them to detonate (because why else would someone launch missiles at your fleet) but they passed through without entering laserhead range and didn't detonate within the fleet.

As for a larger salvo, there are two opposite factors at play so you can't simply apply the ratio to the larger number of missiles. If the salvo is more missiles and spread across more targets then that'll give more ships' PDLCs shots as the missiles close -- ships that were never in laser cluster range of the 60 demonstration 'strike' missiles. So that'll push up the kills. OTOH more missiles means the defending CMs are spread more thinly and thus fewer can be devoted to each attack missile, which should tend to reduce the kill percentages. But on the gripping hand if it was a larger strike on the same profile where Tourville's fleet never noticed the missiles until their final drive came up for terminal maneuvering (and thus were firing late and with poor targeting solutions) having more missiles means more things for poorly aimed CMs to blunder into

And of course if the strike is large enough you saturate the defenses and there are so many attacking missiles than some never have any defensive fire aimed at them; which drastically decreases defensive kill percentages.

Still, against a reasonably larger strike I'd expect somewhat less than 2/3rds to be lost, while losing more than 40 of them.

I think you are missing the gist of it. Honor's demonstration had evaded the last line of counter-missile defense. There was nothing standing in the way that could stop the salvo from choosing targets; especially while they were still displaying such fine control over their dance maneuvers. They were phucking ballet dancers performing graceful pirouettes. They were taunts. The launch was simply intended to get the point across that "we can dance all over your ships the same way!"

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cthia wrote:There was a shortage of Apollo pods, but did that include an overall shortage of the entire package? Were the dazzlers, dragons teeth and the control missile all in short supply as well? In other words, could McKeon have seeded each launch with an extra control missile controlling ONLY dazzlers and dragons teeth? Beaters!

I expect that an Apollo shortage is only a shortage of the Apollo control missiles and the Apollo pods (which must hold one control missile, or else it is nor an "Apollo" pod). But none of the other MK-23 missiles should be in short supply, since I believe that they have been RMN standard for months (if not years) before Apollo was introduced.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:There was a shortage of Apollo pods, but did that include an overall shortage of the entire package? Were the dazzlers, dragons teeth and the control missile all in short supply as well? In other words, could McKeon have seeded each launch with an extra control missile controlling ONLY dazzlers and dragons teeth? Beaters!

I expect that an Apollo shortage is only a shortage of the Apollo control missiles and the Apollo pods (which must hold one control missile, or else it is nor an "Apollo" pod). But none of the other MK-23 missiles should be in short supply, since I believe that they have been RMN standard for months (if not years) before Apollo was introduced.

Yes, but this is almost certainly not a field modification. You'd need to get it to a depot if not the factory to do something like this. You certainly can't do it in the missile bay, as that is pretty much stacked solid with enormous missile pods full of huge Mk23 missiles.

cthia wrote:Hmm...

There was a shortage of Apollo pods, but did that include an overall shortage of the entire package? Were the dazzlers, dragons teeth and the control missile all in short supply as well? In other words, could McKeon have seeded each launch with an extra control missile controlling ONLY dazzlers and dragons teeth? Beaters!

AFAIK the Mk23 missiles in an Apollo pod don't require any modifications to be under the control of its Mk23E Apollo Control Missile. And the differences between the laserhead, dazzler, and dragons teeth Mk23s is just the payload attached to the missile -- simply swapping that converts a missile from one variant to the other. (Basically did they still a big boom on the nose, or a powerful jammer, or a tricksy decoy)

So there shouldn't be a shortage of those missiles -- as they're (again AFAIK) identical to the Mk23s that all the pre-Apollo SD(P)s are carrying.


However -- the issue with trying to seed a salvo with extra dazzlers and dragons teeth is that there's no quick way to alter the warheads of missiles stuck inside pods inside your pod bay; nor to select other missiles to fire instead. With broadside tubes you can alter the composition salvo by salvo by directing which type of missile goes from the magazine to each tube. (And over a slightly longer period of time, and to the extent you're carrying spare warheads, you can alter the ratio in your magazines by pulling warheads of one type (laserhead, decoy, jammer) and replacing it with a spare of another.

That's one reason the GSN kept 24 MDM tubes per broadside in their 2nd generation, Harrington II, SD(P)s despite Manticore deleted them aloo in favor of additional CM tubes and PDLC in their 2nd gen, Invictus, SD(P)s. The GSN wanted to keep an ability to tailor each strike to a certain extent, using missiles added from their flexible broadside launchers. Have an enemy that you need more jammers to overcome; launch a broadside of dazzlers to add to the missile mix from your pods. Instead need more decoys to lure away their CMs; select all dragons teeth instead. Have plenty of both in your default pod mix; then just add more attack birds from your tubes.


However Apollo complicates that kind of thing because now the pods are providing missiles in the necessary 9:1 ratio of 23s to 23Es (as I can't recall seeing anything hinting that a 23E was designed to be able to control more than just those 9). You can still change quickly select the missile type you want for your broadside tubes (assuming you have those); but it doesn't seem like those extra missiles could be under Apollo control - so they wouldn't be nearly as effective as the ones from your pods.

Now what you might be able to do, to a limited amount, is have a couple different loadouts in your pods (some pods with balanced loads, some jammer heavy, some decoy heavy, etc.) and use the cross rails within the pod bay to alter which mix of pods you were rolling. That'd let you somewhat alter the salvo ratios despite being stuck with the existing mix within each given pod.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:There was a shortage of Apollo pods, but did that include an overall shortage of the entire package? Were the dazzlers, dragons teeth and the control missile all in short supply as well? In other words, could McKeon have seeded each launch with an extra control missile controlling ONLY dazzlers and dragons teeth? Beaters!

I expect that an Apollo shortage is only a shortage of the Apollo control missiles and the Apollo pods (which must hold one control missile, or else it is nor an "Apollo" pod). But none of the other MK-23 missiles should be in short supply, since I believe that they have been RMN standard for months (if not years) before Apollo was introduced.

kzt wrote:Yes, but this is almost certainly not a field modification. You'd need to get it to a depot if not the factory to do something like this. You certainly can't do it in the missile bay, as that is pretty much stacked solid with enormous missile pods full of huge Mk23 missiles.

First, let me say that I am grateful not to have to imagine the HV employing a bunch of burly Anton Zilwicki or Harkness types just to maneuver huge missiles around to get them loaded. I hate seeing that aboard a modern ship in movies. When automation goes out, you are screwed.

At any rate, I thought that it could and has been fully field selectable, because textev has indicated that the number of dazzlers and dragons teeth vary with each launch. So I thought it was launch selectable.