Spoilers - Toll of Honor

penny wrote:Anyway, a bit of a quick detour and an apology. Two questions.

1. Why was it possible for Grayson to refit Peep Superdreadnaughts? Isn't an SD the hardest to refit with so many extra layers and thickness of steel to work with?

2. Why wouldn't Honor's promotion to Admiral in the GSN mean an automatic promotion to Admiral in the RMN? Ordinarily, Grayson's Admirals are accepted as Admirals aren't they?

1. Because they weren't making substantial changes. At this point, right at the beginning of the war, there weren't massive differences between RMN and PRN wallers.

Most of what Grayson was doing was repairing the damage they took at [edit: 3rd Yeltsin], ripping out the Peep computer systems and ECM and replacing it with RMN spec stuff. Then refilling the magazines with RMN missiles/CMs. In some cases (possibly because of battle damage) they replaced PRN radars with RMN ones -- but that's largely a surface mount components, so again no armor work required.

Field of Dishonor wrote:We're upgrading their electronics to Manticoran standards and putting the new inertial compensators into each of them, but we're also retaining any weapons that survived. I imagine we'll refit all of them to the same standard once we have time; for right now, we're concentrating on simply getting them back into service as quickly as possible."

So they basically (except for repairs) weren't touching the armor or creating/enlarging openings through the internal core armor or (more lightly) armored bulkheads. (Now, by keeping the Peep weapons they've bought themselves a bit more of a maintenance headache; until they get around to ripping them out and replacing them with RMN stuff. But since that stuff is still mostly the same size it's still not major armor work.

And Manticore also refit their SDs and DNs throughout the 1st war. But mostly things like better compensators; better electronics. Not adding more weapons, or bigger weapons.

Now, during the ceasefire, they did experiment with refitting some Gryphons to fire the much larger Mk23 micro-fusion powered MDM. And that level of refit, even under High Ridge's weirdly skewed priorities, wasn't cost effective.


2. Because ranks don't work that way. Just because you're allowed to take leave to service in a neutral or allied navy doesn't mean your home navy has to pay any attention to what rank they give you.
Now, if the navies are allied and you rock up many ranks higher than your home navy rank your home navy has to honor that rank just like they would for any other office of that rank in that navy. But if you then come back to serve in your home navy again you don't get to keep that elevated "foreign" rank.

(And this going off the serve in other navies was actually pretty common for a while in the England/UK's Royal Navy. They'd hit a stretch of peacetime and officers would go off looking for action and or prize money in foreign navies. See for example Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald. His situation was a bit more complicated, but along the way he served in the RN against Napoleon, headed the Chilean navy during their war for independence, headed the Brazilian navy during their war for independence, served in the Greek navy during their war of independence, and then returned to the Royal Navy (as an Admiral, but not as high ranking an Admiral as he'd been in some of those other navies)

So, for example, if GSN's First Battle Squadron had ever been sent to work with an RMN Fleet then Honor, as it's Admiral, would be treated as an Admiral by everybody in that fleet and might well have RMN escorts assigned under her who have captains or a unit commodore who is senior to her premiant RMN rank. That would be irrelevant, she'd be serving as an allied GSN Admiral and they'd have been assigned to serve under her. (Though it might be amusing if she'd returned to directly serving in the RMN and ended up assigned to serve under them in their command. Though the same thing can happen even without involving a second navy if you just get sufficiently accelerated promotion; you could potentially not only overtake the rank of people you'd previously served under but actually end up with them under your command)

Jonathan_S wrote:Most of what Grayson was doing was repairing the damage they took at Hancock, ripping out the Peep computer systems and ECM and replacing it with RMN spec stuff.

Slight correction, those wallers were captured at Third Yeltsin. Honor/Sarnow did capture some DNs at Hancock from Admiral Chin, but those aren't the ones the passage was talking about. And the RMN was refitting the PN SDs that they captured the same way that the GSN was, so the work was the same at this point. The GSN didn't have to invent anything... though I'm sure they did.

So, for example, if GSN's First Battle Squadron had ever been sent to work with an RMN Fleet then Honor, as it's Admiral, would be treated as an Admiral by everybody in that fleet and might well have RMN escorts assigned under her who have captains or a unit commodore who is senior to her premiant RMN rank. That would be irrelevant, she'd be serving as an allied GSN Admiral and they'd have been assigned to serve under her. (Though it might be amusing if she'd returned to directly serving in the RMN and ended up assigned to serve under them in their command. Though the same thing can happen even without involving a second navy if you just get sufficiently accelerated promotion; you could potentially not only overtake the rank of people you'd previously served under but actually end up with them under your command)

When she was captured by Tourville, she was an RMN Commodore, at the CO of a CruRon. One might wonder why she went back at all, given that it was a demotion in rank and in role. She of course had her reasons.

But when they captured Camp Charon on Hades, she decided to use her her GSN Admiral persona, which she was entitled to, in order to be recognised as the highest ranking officer.

Flag in Exile, ch. 7 wrote:"I said I was giving you Terrible," Matthews said, "but not as her CO. That will be up to your flag captain, Admiral Harrington. I'm giving you the entire First Battle Squadron."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:(This is one of my favourite passages, alongside "Hamish you're too easy! We gave her Nike last week.")

penny wrote:That is one of my favorite passages as well. Pound for pound and page for page that book is chock full of goodies.

BTW, one of my disappointments with Toll of Honor is that we didn't see her correspondence with Alistair about this very promotion or his reaction or response to it.

Or White Haven's, though he may be one of the people High Admiral Matthews talked to about giving her the Battle Squadron, so he'd have known it was coming.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:(This is one of my favourite passages, alongside "Hamish you're too easy! We gave her Nike last week.")

Oh, and the "if he'd been smirking even a tenth as broadly as she suspected he had" passage in Ashes of Victory, chapter 3, as she realised what the name of the ship she'd just boarded was.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Most of what Grayson was doing was repairing the damage they took at Hancock, ripping out the Peep computer systems and ECM and replacing it with RMN spec stuff.

Slight correction, those wallers were captured at Third Yeltsin. Honor/Sarnow did capture some DNs at Hancock from Admiral Chin, but those aren't the ones the passage was talking about. And the RMN was refitting the PN SDs that they captured the same way that the GSN was, so the work was the same at this point. The GSN didn't have to invent anything... though I'm sure they did.

Oops. Thanks for the correction.

Well Grayson may have innovated in the category of berthing; what with insisting on gender segregated berthing areas; something they could only achieve in wallers.

More seriously, while they didn't invent the improved compensator entirely on their own, it was their pre-alliance invention that was the basis that was evolved (in cooperation with Manticore) into those compensators which gave new RMN and GSN ships (as well as those who'd had a chance to cycle through a yard for refit) their early war acceleration advantage over the Peep counterparts. That was no small thing - and went into their refit ex-Peep SDs.

Where was the Alliance when Honor really needed it? Grayson could have bumped her up in rank just above Young, then the RMN could have sent Young to Grayson in Honor's chain of command.

I thought changing out compensators would be a big deal. Since RMN's compensators are bigger I thought that'd involve removing a lot of steel. I had images of trying to fit a V-12 into a Ford Pinto.

And I didn't think the RMN would trust Peep reactors. Certainly the US would hardly trust Russian reactors.

And why wasn't there a significant difference in the size of the missile since there was a difference in capability? Or am I out of phase with the timeline?

penny wrote:Where was the Alliance when Honor really needed it? Grayson could have bumped her up in rank just above Young, then the RMN could have sent Young to Grayson in Honor's chain of command.

That's too soon. Honor was junior to Young in OBS and achieved the same rank as him in HotQ (though still junior due to promotion date). I don't think she could have gone to the GSN at this point: first, there was effectively no Grayson Navy left. Any ship they could have given her would be smaller than HMS Fearless.

So we move on to SVW, when she would still technically be junior in rank, but she was now a skippering a larger ship (BC versus his CA), the most coveted BC of all in the entire RMN, and was flag captain to the full detachment's CO. This placed her heads and shoulders above him in responsibilities and prestige. After this, it didn't matter, because she arrested him.

A move during SVW still didn't make sense, because the GSN barely had any BCs at this point. They may have launched a few Reliant-class copies, but that's still at best a lateral move. The only thing they could have offered would be to promote her to Commodore or Rear Admiral to command the BatCruRon. But Grayson shouldn't have done at this time because she didn't yet have any squadron command experience. She got that during Hancock.

I thought changing out compensators would be a big deal. Since RMN's compensators are bigger I thought that'd involve removing a lot of steel. I had images of trying to fit a V-12 into a Ford Pinto.

At this time, the RMN and PN compensators weren't too different. In fact, a Haven-class SD massing 7.81 million tonnes is similar in mass to a Victory-class SD at 7.78 and pull nearly the same acceleration (409.1 and 409.6 gravities respectively). So there's no reason to refit nodes at this time.

And I didn't think the RMN would trust Peep reactors. Certainly the US would hardly trust Russian reactors.

At this stage, Peep hardware is basically Solarian hardware, just dumbed down so it could be fixed with plug-and-play in the field. And I don't think it's that bad either: the Peeps may have been losing their educational capabilities, but they still had a massively large population and could build their own ships. The most safety-critical systems are the ones they ought to put the most effort on.

And why wasn't there a significant difference in the size of the missile since there was a difference in capability? Or am I out of phase with the timeline?

Probably out of phase. This is still around the time everyone is following the SLN's lead. The RMN missiles are already better, and so are their ECM, computers, and most importantly the doctrine, but they're roughly the same size. The missile tubes can't be so inflexible that the PN couldn't upgrade them over the lifetime of an SD, so long as the parameters didn't change too much.

Remember that by 1908, the RMN had retired exactly zero of all of the SDs it had ever constructed. Discounting the three Manticore-class ones from the 18th century, the oldest one would have been 60 years old.

penny wrote:I thought changing out compensators would be a big deal. Since RMN's compensators are bigger I thought that'd involve removing a lot of steel. I had images of trying to fit a V-12 into a Ford Pinto.

I don't recall the books ever saying RMN compensator are bigger.
In fact the only time I remember compensator size being mentioned was in discussion the pre-alliance Grayson units

Honor of the Queen wrote:For example, the Grayson Navy had quite literally invented its own inertial compensator thirty T-years ago because it hadn’t been able to get anyone else to explain how it was done. It was a clumsy, bulky thing, thanks to the components they had to use, but from what he’d seen of its stats, it might just be marginally more efficient than Manticore’s.

and

Short Victorious War wrote:onor's ship had been chosen to test BuShips's newest generation compensator. It was an adaptation of the Grayson Navy's, which hadn't been calculated to inspire confidence in all hands, given that Grayson's general technology lagged a good century behind Manticore's, but Honor had seen the Graysons' system in action. It had been crudely built and mass-intensive, yet it had also been undeniably efficient, and BuShips claimed not only to have exterminated every possible bug but to have tweaked the specs even further, as well.

But when they collaborated with Manticore to bring that higher efficiency they'd have access to less bulky components and the size should have come down.


That said - it might well be a big deal. But it was over nine months* from when (what became known as) the Manticore's Gift class was captured at 4th Yeltsin and when the first unit came out of the yards repaired and refit. They certainly had the time even if replacing a compensator was, say, twice or thrice as intensive as pulling Nike's busted fusion plant was just before the war had been; and required a similar level of cutting temporary access (through even more compartments and even more armor).

Certainly it seems it was significant enough it had to be done in a yard; rather than something that the ship's crew or a roving mobile repair ship could do in the field. (Otherwise they shouldn't have ended up with such uneven upgrades in compensator ability in the run-up to capturing Trevor's Star)

But whether it's a couple of days, couple of weeks, or couple of months to install an upgraded compensator we just don't know.

--
* Maybe over a year. Fourth Yeltsin, where those ships were captured, happened roughly the same time as Hancock; right at the start of the war. Paul was killed some time after that, and the first units aren't out of Grayson's yards when Benjamin and High Admiral Matthews discussed whether, over nine months after Paul's death, it was too soon to offer active duty to Honor

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Remember that by 1908, the RMN had retired exactly zero of all of the SDs it had ever constructed. Discounting the three Manticore-class ones from the 18th century, the oldest one would have been 60 years old.

Oops, tiny mistake here. The RMN had retired two of its SDs: HMS Sphinx (SD-02) and HMS Gryphon (SD-03) to make room for the two new ships of the same names that were the leads of their classes.

The RMN had decommissioned zero of its regular dreadnoughts, including the 11 Ad Astra-class ones from the 17th century, those those were refit at some time.

Grayson's compensators were marginally more efficient. What exactly is meant by "more efficient" ?