Anybody interested in seeing Manticore lose?

On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:56:25 GMT, Doug Jones
<norbrookc.DeleteThis@spamlessfrontiernet.net> wrote:

>So what you're telling me is that DW is now saying that she couldn't
>control enough missiles, when he's already had her control a barrage
>of half her entire ammunition allotment. Either that, or he's
>postulating an attenuation of signal/control over very large
>distances.

That massive shot was at the very end of effective Apollo control
range. Tourville is more than twice as far away.

>Tourville's dilemma is that he's in the equivalent of a valley. Maybe,
>just maybe, he can start to move away from her. But, he doesn't know
>if she has a blocking force of the lighter elements out. While in a
>straight-up shooting match he could take out the lighter combatants,
>his fleet is already heavily damaged, and it would delay him to fight
>through them - giving Harrington time to move closer. He also doesn't
>know whether there were any other SD's that came through or not - he's
>been blinded. Equally problematic is that she controls the "high
>ground". She's out near or at the hyper limit. She can "jump" to
>meet him, and if he changes back towards Manticore, she can still
>jump to block. It's a tactic she has used before - at Lovat, where
>she used Yanakov's fleet to mousetrap the "relieving forces".

The thing is, Harrington can't wait out at the hyper limit, she has to
close as fast as possible to effective range. If she waits outside
she gets his fleet but loses the battle because the fleet punched out
Manticore's orbital works.

>Given that information, and taking what's in the book, Tourville has
>no reason to believe she's bluffing, and it doesn't matter. He made
>the correct decision based on the information he had.

I do agree, he made the right decision given what he knew.
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On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:01:38 -0400, Dahak
<Dahak_II.RemoveThis@theXOUTfifthimperium.com.invalid> wrote:

>On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:15:19 -0400, an orbiting mind-control laser
>made Don Sample <dsample.RemoveThis@synapse.net> write:
>
>>Sounds like he's retconning himself.
>>
>>And even if Honor couldn't wipe Tourville out in one huge salvo, she
>>demonstrated that she could pick off his ships one at a time. How long
>>would it have taken him to reach the hyper limit, and get away?
>
> She wasn't going to be killing SDs - even damaged ones - with
>60-round salvoes.

Actually, she would have assuming they were effective. Maybe not dead
but seriously damaged.
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On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:14:05 -0400, Don Sample <dsample.DeleteThis@synapse.net>
wrote:

>In article <lmqj04hglp03alji18e7sq9evpbd68ohdg.DeleteThis@4ax.com>,
> Dahak <Dahak_II.DeleteThis@theXOUTfifthimperium.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:15:19 -0400, an orbiting mind-control laser
>> made Don Sample <dsample.DeleteThis@synapse.net> write:
>>
>> >Sounds like he's retconning himself.
>> >
>> >And even if Honor couldn't wipe Tourville out in one huge salvo, she
>> >demonstrated that she could pick off his ships one at a time. How long
>> >would it have taken him to reach the hyper limit, and get away?
>>
>> She wasn't going to be killing SDs - even damaged ones - with
>> 60-round salvoes.
>
>A 60 round salvo would still do a lot of damage, and there'd be another
>salvo 10 seconds after the first, and then another, and another...

I doubt she could have spaced them that closely. She was using all
her comm capability to control those 60 missiles. Thus she can only
have one batch in the engagement range at once--the salvoes have to be
spaced far enough apart that one is done before the next approaches
counter-missile range.
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Loren Pechtel wrote:
> I doubt she could have spaced them that closely. She was using all
> her comm capability to control those 60 missiles.

I was startled that she had enough com capacity for two way video. That
ability had to set Tourville back on his heels a little, too.
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In article <480bdce6$0$12281$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>,
Loren Pechtel <lorenpechtel.RemoveThis@hotmail.invalid.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:14:05 -0400, Don Sample <dsample.RemoveThis@synapse.net>
> wrote:
>
> >In article <lmqj04hglp03alji18e7sq9evpbd68ohdg.RemoveThis@4ax.com>,
> > Dahak <Dahak_II.RemoveThis@theXOUTfifthimperium.com.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >> On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:15:19 -0400, an orbiting mind-control laser
> >> made Don Sample <dsample.RemoveThis@synapse.net> write:
> >>
> >> >Sounds like he's retconning himself.
> >> >
> >> >And even if Honor couldn't wipe Tourville out in one huge salvo, she
> >> >demonstrated that she could pick off his ships one at a time. How long
> >> >would it have taken him to reach the hyper limit, and get away?
> >>
> >> She wasn't going to be killing SDs - even damaged ones - with
> >> 60-round salvoes.
> >
> >A 60 round salvo would still do a lot of damage, and there'd be another
> >salvo 10 seconds after the first, and then another, and another...
>
> I doubt she could have spaced them that closely. She was using all
> her comm capability to control those 60 missiles. Thus she can only
> have one batch in the engagement range at once--the salvoes have to be
> spaced far enough apart that one is done before the next approaches
> counter-missile range.

Given that Honor's still got a 16 second delay between what's happening,
what her sensors are telling her, and when her orders can get back to
her missiles, the missiles have to running pretty much autonomously for
their counter-missile evasion. (This is true for pretty much any
missile engagement.)

The missiles are pretty much on their own until they're about 8 seconds
out, and that's when they start getting a detailed update on what their
target is. It's still up to the missiles to do most of the real work in
hitting their targets. Once that salvo has hit, you shift control to
the next salvo coming in.

--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
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On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:15, Don Sample <dsample RemoveThis @synapse.net> wrote:

>Sounds like he's retconning himself.
????
>
>And even if Honor couldn't wipe Tourville out in one huge salvo, she
>demonstrated that she could pick off his ships one at a time.

So it comes that she could only shoot "less than sixty" missiles at a
time until he reached her range, and if she *did* continue to shoot
those few score, he might have figured out some of the limitations
>How long would it have taken him to reach the hyper limit, and get away?

The first part doesn't matter, because the second part wouldn't
happen. Berore he reached the hyper limit she could have done to him
what she did to Chin. What he *could* have done is gone straight for
the shipyards regardless of losses and even if he lost his whole fleet
he would have crippled the Alliance.
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On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:18:26 -0400, Dahak
<Dahak_II RemoveThis @theXOUTfifthimperium.com.invalid> wrote:

> Harrington had the ability to control the entire wave of missiles
>that wiped out Chin's fleet at something like 75 million km.
>
> She could /not/ do the same at Tourville's range of 150 million km.
>
> http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Harrington/hh_ftl_comm_lag.htm

Hey Joe, cool, and thanks. It looks like the crucial sentences are.
"This is an extraordinarily small platform compared to, say, a Ghost
Rider recon drone, and Apollo's maximum reception range is much, much
shorter than that of the recon drone."
and
"...in Tourville's case, the range was outside Apollo's effective
reception range; Honor used a Hermes buoy, with its much greater
reception range, and the inner-system FTL recon platforms, to
coordinate the "demonstration attack" on Second Fleet."

Which *does* cover it.
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On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:14, Don Sample <dsample RemoveThis @synapse.net> wrote:

>A 60 round salvo would still do a lot of damage, and there'd be another
>salvo 10 seconds after the first, and then another, and another...

Not really, the entire bandwidth was occupied with the "less than
sixty" launch. Until the hand-off to the Apollo AI they couldn't start
with updates to the next launch so it needed to still be in range of
Honor's fleet. Figure the range from the untold max Apollo range until
the untold distance at which the Apollo AI could run in itself. The
following launches had to be inside Honor's range until the hand-off,
and shooting them that way would have tipped off that weakness.
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On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:34, Loren Pechtel wrote:
>On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:56, Don Sample <dsample RemoveThis @synapse.net>wrote:

>>It wasn't a bluff. She was in position to destroy Tourville's entire
>>fleet, and she had the missiles to do it with. If Tourville had decided
>>she was bluffing, and tried to run or fight, his remaining ships would
>>have been obliterated.

>DW has said it was a bluff. She didn't have the bandwidth to make the
>missiles effective at that range.
corrected before posting

How about the Apollo didn't have the com range to hit the Peep Second
Fleet, but the Hermes bouys did. What that system *didn't* have, was
the bandwidth to control very many missiles.
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On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:14:06 -0800, pyotr filipivich
<phamp RemoveThis @mindspring.com> wrote:
>Dwight E.Howel" <deowll RemoveThis @bellsouth.net> wrote on Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:30:54

>>The control system has a time lag! In other word FTL communication's
>>is not instant.
>
> Not "instant" but compared to radio, it's seems like it.
snip
> I don't recall how far apart the Havenite fleet is from 8th Fleet,
>but divide that by 60 to get the "effective" distance

My understanding was that it increased the effective control distance
by a factor of 60. So when they are trying to CM and PD laser your
missiles you are effectively equal to 1/60 of the real distance in
terms of control lag so you have a good chance of using your shipboard
capabilities to dodge their defenses to get your strike in.
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On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:33:51 -0500, "Dwight E. Howell"
<deowll RemoveThis @bellsouth.net> wrote:

>If I understood the claim the greater the distance the less information
>she can get and shove back through the system in a given amount of time.
>At some point anything you send will be out of date by the time it arrives.

No. read Joe's infodump. The whole launch against the Peep second
fleet was involving relatively low bandwidth home system resources.
Not Eigth Fleet's transmission capabilities.
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On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:34, Loren Pechtel wrote:
>
>If she stays outside to cut him off she leaves Manticore open, it's
>orbital works are punched out.

Not if the fixed defenses are actually used, which they weren't.
If they are going to get engaged anyway then they were stupid for not
using them while the Peeps were also distracted by an uncrippled 3rd
fleet.

>If she follows him in he simply keeps
>going and there's no way she can catch him.

It was not said what his accel was limited to, but that is possible,
although since any chase units can "cut the chord" it is not
necessarily so. But he does have to come out, and the fixed defenses
as well as the home system LACs and other light units that could not
get there in time to save Home Fleet are still in there.
Read the wording carefully, it was not stated what the system LAC
complement was,
just what could get to Home Fleet before the Peeps engaged.
" "We're scrambling every LAC we've got," Caparelli said. "We should
be able to get five or six thousand of them to you by the time you
engage.""
That seems to me like they have more of them in the system even
without 3rd or 8th fleet units. Enough more LACs to justify that
wording (not something like "we should be able to get most of the 6
thousand to you before ..")
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On 18 Apr 2008 22:32, "Dwight E. Howell" <deowll.TakeThisOut@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>You could be right but if you are I'm about ready to say that at least
>for me DW did the right thing when he stopped the series. He was going
>places I had no wish to follow.


The series is not done. A different direction is coming (I would guess
that the next book is once again political and skullduggery) before
fleets once again engage.

Joe, wasn't it 8 or so more in the main universe and some number of
Crown of Slaves and Saginami Island books?
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