What If? The Donnager had her parasite ships launched

[Rhyse]

During the fight with the Amun-Ra class, the Donnager held up pretty well all things considered. But the captains arrogance was a notable detriment to her performance, and ultimately led to her getting dunked on.

Instead of her being alone and relatively unprepared, the Donnager this time deploys both of her Morrigan class patrol boats, and the Corvette class Frigate. Would that have been enough to see off the Amun-Ra class ships attacking her?

 

[The Whispering Monk]

It would have vastly enhanced their point defense for sure. I don't know if it results in total victory, but you likely don't get boarders on the Donnager.

 

[Agent23]

The reason why the stealth ships managed to take out the Donnager in the book, IIRC, was because of their stealth, the attack was sudden and pretty devastating.
So probably not unless they can help nullify the stealth of the attackers.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

It would have vastly enhanced their point defense for sure. I don't know if it results in total victory, but you likely don't get boarders on the Donnager.

In the book, the Donnager explicitly killed two of the six stealth ships with railgun fire and implicitly killed two more, as there were only two left by the time she self-destructed, and moreover she arguably only lost the battle due to a lucky hit to her main reactor. The loss of power forced the Captain to use up a critical portion of her Marine complement to get Holden to the Taichi to escape with the critical evidence, and Holden doubled down on that by refusing to cooperate unless the Marines rescued his entire crew, which directly resulted in them being wiped out.

Given that the Donnager only took that one torpedo hit, odds are that with even a single parasite deployed it would have intercepted the entire stealth torpedo attack. That alone completely reverses the outcome of the battle -- Donnager not dropping offline means the last two stealth ships eat railgun death like the rest even if the parasites don't score any kills themselves, and even if they're able to get off their boarding pods before being blown to flinders, the Donnager's Marines can defend the ship without Holden critically undermining them.

The reason why the stealth ships managed to take out the Donnager in the book, IIRC, was because of their stealth, the attack was sudden and pretty devastating.
So probably not unless they can help nullify the stealth of the attackers.

In the book being stealthy allowed them to attack from a position of total surprise and no-sell the Donnager's torpedo return fire, but once they entered close-quarters range the battleship's railguns ate them until their last torpedo got a lucky hit that took out her main reactor.

 

[Agent23]

In the book being stealthy allowed them to attack from a position of total surprise and no-sell the Donnager's torpedo return fire, but once they entered close-quarters range the battleship's railguns ate them until their last torpedo got a lucky hit that took out her main reactor.

Oh, was it that way.Reading the book about 10 years ago leads to me forgetting stuff, but from what I recall it wasn't all that hard to take the ship down.

 

[Spartan303]

During the fight with the Amun-Ra class, the Donnager held up pretty well all things considered. But the captains arrogance was a notable detriment to her performance, and ultimately led to her getting dunked on.

Instead of her being alone and relatively unprepared, the Donnager this time deploys both of her Morrigan class patrol boats, and the Corvette class Frigate. Would that have been enough to see off the Amun-Ra class ships attacking her?

Yes. Donnager and her support ships would have absolutely curbstomped them into the ground. She damn near did it herself had Yao not gotten full of herself and actually put in effort into the fight.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

In the TV series, the Donnager is certainly guilty of considerable overconfidence. Granted, she's the biggest and baddest battleship there is, but she didn't even go to general quarters until the Q-ship launched the six stealth ships and they opened fire.

However, I don't think the Donnager's overconfidence is actually that big a factor. Not going to battle stations immediately is only a few seconds difference because the Q-ships popped their torpedo volley as soon as they undocked, and they only fired one volley anyway. What kills the Donnager in the TV series is a pretty blatant act of plot where her PDCs just. . . don't work. There are only six torpedoes incoming on her, but multiple of them penetrate the Donnager's PDC net simply because they have "better tracking and guidance" than expected, which doesn't make any sense when the smaller and less capable Taichi spends the rest of the TV series quite easily shooting down far heavier torpedo volleys even though she only has six PDCs versus Donnager having nearly sixty linked to a much more advanced fire control system and superior sensors.

Edit: Dialogue says six torpedoes, but if we go for visuals over that, there's six stealth ships and they're seen firing four torpedoes each from rapid-reloading twin tubes for a total of twenty-four incoming. That's a lot more sensible, but it's *still* inconsistent with their PDC performance, as the bridge crew *saw* all these torpedoes incoming and fully expected the PDC net to handle that with ease, until it just suddenly didn't.

Oh, was it that way.Reading the book about 10 years ago leads to me forgetting stuff, but from what I recall it wasn't all that hard to take the ship down.

It's kinda implicit -- the Amun-Ra class actually has pretty shitty point defense (we literally see only one PDC firing from one of them; symmetry would suggest they probably have two, or possibly four), but the Donnager's twenty torpedo volley only killed one of them and there is no dialogue in either the book or the TV show that any unusual number are being shot down; they simply...missed.

 

[Agent23]

It's kinda implicit -- the Amun-Ra class actually has pretty shitty point defense, but the Donnager's twenty torpedo volley only killed one of them and there is no dialogue in either the book or the TV show that any unusual number are being shot down; they simply...missed.

Yeah, well all that I remember about the battle was that it was very underwhelming and that the attack came in like a bolt out of the blue.
Something about the Earthlings not having stealth tech.
In any case I was surprised that there were no anti-sensor homing missiles and pre-deployed decoys IIRC.That was back when I still liked Weber, and much of that book felt like bad fanfiction.

 

[Rhyse]

Yeah, well all that I remember about the battle was that it was very underwhelming and that the attack came in like a bolt out of the blue.
Something about the Earthlings not having stealth tech.
In any case I was surprised that there were no anti-sensor homing missiles and pre-deployed decoys IIRC.That was back when I still liked Weber, and much of that book felt like bad fanfiction.

The Expanse is IIRC fanfiction, of a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying session the author was running.

 

[Agent23]

The Expanse is IIRC fanfiction, of a sci-fi tabletop roleplaying session the author was running.

Wasn't that something that Weber was actually designing once upon a time btw?
I think that is how Starfire got started.

 

[Spartan303]

Wasn't that something that Weber was actually designing once upon a time btw?
I think that is how Starfire got started.

Weber started on BOLO when he designed the Concordiat Naval fleet. He would later refine his ideas and go on to create Honor Harrington. We all know how that turned out.

 

[Agent23]

Weber started on BOLO when he designed the Concordiat Naval fleet. He would later refine his ideas and go on to create Honor Harrington. We all know how that turned out.

I thought he started on stuff Dahak or Path of the Fury or Starfire.PoF was iirc his debut novel, and he did some boardgame design, too.

EDIT: Yup, the first Starfire novel he co-wrote was written in 1990

Also looks like he was a co-creator of the game series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_(board_wargame)

 

[Spartan303]

I thought he started on stuff Dahak or Path of the Fury or Starfire.PoF was iirc his debut novel, and he did some boardgame design, too.

EDIT: Yup, the first Starfire novel he co-wrote was written in 1990

Also looks like he was a co-creator of the game series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_(board_wargame)

Probably did those too, yes. But if I recall, he was involved with BOLO then Honorverse.

 

[Agent23]

Probably did those too, yes. But if I recall, he was involved with BOLO then Honorverse.

Um, Keith Laumer created the Bolo series, then William H. Keith wrote the bulk of the post-Laumer Bolo stuff.
Weber only started writing Bolo short stories later in his career, and that was IIRC around the time when people like John Ringo and David Drake were doing it as well, in several Bolo short story collections.
That IIRC happened around the 00s, when all of them were pretty well established and had a lot of other work behind them.
His short stories weren't all that many and IMHO they broke quite strongly with the mood/atmosphere of the series.He can be a bit melodramatic and has an obsession with the name Nike, for instance.

 

[Spartan303]

Um, Keith Laumer created the Bolo series, then William H. Keith wrote the bulk of the post-Laumer Bolo stuff.
Weber only started writing Bolo short stories later in his career, and that was IIRC around the time when people like John Ringo and David Drake were doing it as well, in several Bolo short story collections.
That IIRC happened around the 00s, when all of them were pretty well established and had a lot of other work behind them.
His short stories weren't all that many and IMHO they broke quite strongly with the mood/atmosphere of the series.He can be a bit melodramatic and has an obsession with the name Nike, for instance.

Sorry, missed your post here for some reason. But Weber was the one who worked out the Concordiat fleet being not heavy on Hellbores, but that they had Lightspeed missiles ala Honorverse or Andromeda.

 

[Agent23]

Sorry, missed your post here for some reason. But Weber was the one who worked out the Concordiat fleet being not heavy on Hellbores, but that they had Lightspeed missiles ala Honorverse or Andromeda.

I am pretty sure that the RKKVs were something WHK added, also I think that hellbore tech was always something developed for the navy.

As I said, Weber's work in universes that are not his own kinda sticks out like a sore thumb.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

To a degree, but I would argue that it makes sense -- the earlier books made it absolutely canonical that Concordiat and peer naval warships did not significantly outgun Bolos, nor could they tank hits from Bolo-level guns, which makes the existence of naval warships at all a huge plot hole unless they have some kind of specialty space-to-space weapon that outperforms Bolos-in-space in some other way.

If you take only the earlier canon at face value, the Concordiat would have to be drooling lunatics to build any warships other than Bolo transports, since canonical act-of-plot firmly established that a Bolo transport with its Bolos "up" is pretty much superior in every way to a a purpose-designed battleship or battlecruiser, not just a desperation measure. A Bolo transport with externally racked Bolos effectively is a battleship, just one with a main battery that can land and run around on the ground by itself with no disadvantages whatsoever, because plot magic.

 

[Agent23]

To a degree, but I would argue that it makes sense -- the earlier books made it absolutely canonical that Concordiat and peer naval warships did not significantly outgun Bolos, nor could they tank hits from Bolo-level guns, which makes the existence of naval warships at all a huge plot hole unless they have some kind of specialty space-to-space weapon that outperforms Bolos-in-space in some other way.

If you take only the earlier canon at face value, the Concordiat would have to be drooling lunatics to build any warships other than Bolo transports, since canonical act-of-plot firmly established that a Bolo transport with its Bolos "up" is pretty much superior in every way to a a purpose-designed battleship or battlecruiser, not just a desperation measure. A Bolo transport with externally racked Bolos effectively is a battleship, just one with a main battery that can land and run around on the ground by itself with no disadvantages whatsoever, because plot magic.

Um, the later marks explicitly had weapons that were used on Concordiat battleships, but each battleship probably had far more of theim than your average Bolo did.
They had missiles, too, and they did not have to deal with the problems of an atmosphere.

TBH what i think Bolos do is that they basically make orbital strikes on planets too costly.
Sure, you can BDZ the place to get rid of the bolos, but you will risk damage to your ships because of things like hellrails, and probably you'd want to capture the planet at least moderately in tact.

 

[Agent23]

Hey, @Spartan303 can we shove this discussion into one or possibly more relevant threads.
I am thinking Bolo General discussion and MilSF/Space Opera general thread?

 

[Ash's Boomstick]

We have a bolo thread?

Regarding the actual thread though, what was the maximum parasite capacity of a ship of the Donnager's class?