I tend to agree that while Holden's motivation for disabling the warhead was mostly what it would do to Naomi to have to watch her son atomised, this may still have been the wiser strategic move in the long run. Marco's whole crew just saw their legendary leader ambush the equally legendary James Holden with superior numbers and firepower, only for Holden to pull their underwear up over their heads and tie them in a knot. Then when he had them at his mercy, instead of delivering the killing blow, Holden basically backhanded them instead, followed by Marco slinking away with his tail between his legs.
Marco's campaign is built on a foundation of bravado and bold moves. The bold moves tend to produce very dramatic short term results, but they'll also have long term repercussions he doesn't really have a solid plan for.
And the bravado only holds up so long as his plans actually work. Once the veneer starts to crack, the whole thing begins to fall apart.
That's a long way of saying that it's better to undermine his authority and tear down the image he projects of himself, than to just kill him and allow that image to out live him and take on a life of it's own.
Which given how fast they can flip the ship isn’t that big a draw back.
Depends on the scenario. IIRC the book version of this battle makes a little more out of it, but every time they flip, they have to cut thrust, which means the pursuers are able to close in that much faster as they're thrusting the whole time. One they get into CQB range, the Roci looses any advantage it might have over the much heavier ships.
The main difference in the TV version is that they're not framing it as a pursuit so much. In the books they were fleeing Tycho with Fred Johnson on board, and I guess it's not a spoiler at this point to say that this is how Fred dies in the books too; he strokes out mid-battle from all the high-G manoeuvres.
