How much Technology was Stolen

Byng did not have a single solitary clue about what he was facing when Tenth Fleet showed up to kick his butt. That alone is proof that he did not recover anything regarding Manticore's tech.

Furthermore, the other posters are dead on when they say that no ships had left New Tuscany, so there is no way that the information could have even left the system to make its way to the SLN. Tenth Fleet made sure to scrub all of Byng's surviving ships clean, so there is nothing for the SLN to build on. This is all quite clearly laid out in the text.

HB of CJ wrote:Assume is a dangerous word. Lots of us here are just ASSUMING because of many different reasons, but could some of it just be because assuming makes one feel good because it rubs your funny bone correctly?

Never assume. If a solution, opinion or decision makes you feel "good" or seems "logical", then it is probably wrong. There is always wreckage. There is always the potential for human survivors. To assume otherwise is very dangerous indeed.

Yeah, all of this is imaginary. A very very good book series that lets us relax and have fun. Not to be taken too seriously. All I am saying is that we may find out later in future books....

.... that the Sollies did in fact recover all sorts of neat things. Small bits, tiny bits, some large bits. How about some intact blasted off closed up compartments with human survivors? Something always survives.

My read only. I love this forum. HB of CJ (old coot) The Sollies may have gotten it all. It will take some time to figure it all out and then reverse engineer, but not that much time. Yikes!! The sleeping giant!

HB of CJ wrote:Never assume. If a solution, opinion or decision makes you feel "good" or seems "logical", then it is probably wrong. There is always wreckage. There is always the potential for human survivors. To assume otherwise is very dangerous indeed.

+1, +1 indeed.

Assumption is the mother of all **** ups. Or put another way, assumption (and logic) let's you be completely wrong with confidence!

Mike.

Potato wrote:Furthermore, the other posters are dead on when they say that no ships had left New Tuscany, so there is no way that the information could have even left the system to make its way to the SLN. Tenth Fleet made sure to scrub all of Byng's surviving ships clean, so there is nothing for the SLN to build on. This is all quite clearly laid out in the text.

Exactly, which is why I wrote up thread that what we're discussing is a moot point. No information had a chance to leave the system.

I don't think that, had there been any wreckage and the Sollies had recovered it, they would still be in possession of it. Henke would not have being doing her job if she hadn't confiscated anything and everything that could have led to a breach in Manticoran operational security. She would also have likely ordered a sweep of the area where Chatterjee's destroyers were destroyed to make sure that nothing was left behind for the New Tuscans, let alone the Sollies, to recover.

Mike.

One of the assumptions I would disagree with is that all the Solarian BCs fired all their grasers. All of the ships involved on both sides were effectively anchored in a neutral port. The weapons would not have been manned on either side. Everything would have been done under computer control. Allowing for different reaction times by various tactical watches, by the time some of the slower ships were ready to fire, there would have been little to fire at. Also, we have no idea of the serviceability of the weapons systems on any of the BCs. Some of them might have been off-line for maintainence.

Another factor is the explosion of the station. How many tactical officers were trying to track the pieces of that to avoid getting hit by them?

Crown Loyalist wrote:Third, it's only weeks later that Henke comes in and blows Byng away and takes the whole squadron into custody. If any Manticoran spacers or Manticoran tech had survived, the Manties would have found out about it when they took the squadron's computers.

Textev says nobody survived:

Storm From The Shadows
Chapter 52
wrote:Obviously, whether Elizabeth was surprised or not, the events at New Tuscany—and the fact that there truly had been no survivors from Commodore Chatterjee's murdered destroyers—had been enough to whip her fury to a white-hot heat even before the confirmation of outside manipulation had reached her.

Byng's task force apparently did conduct SAR, but not very comprehensive:

Storm From The Shadows
Chapter 43
wrote:"Basically, Ma'am," Tersteeg continued, "there's been no change. We have these three destroyers here"—a green sighting ring enclosed three of the icons—"that have shifted orbits. They're about eleven hundred klicks outside and well ahead of the rest of their formation. It looks like they were probably moved out towards where Commodore Chatterjee's ships were destroyed, maybe for search-and-rescue. Aside from that, they haven't moved as far as I can tell."

All of Adm Byng's task force are accounted for, and except for a dispatch boat leaving for Meyers, everything was captured intact. There's no mention of intel when that dispatch boat reports to Adm Crandall, although there is dismissal of what it's sensors reported about RMN missiles.

IMHO, no technology that the RMN would want kept secret was captured or stolen at New Tuscany. What intel the SLN garnered from Monica and/or New Tuscany was discounted as "defeatism" or credulous FF seeing bogeymen.

1) the ships were shredded...

2) Byng was an absolute idiot... He assumed "Neo-Barb" hardware would automatically be inferior to solarian tech.

3) Byng was an absolute idiot...(Sorry but it deserves being said again) But if he had gotten ANY tech from those ships even he would have realized how screwed he was and run away as fast as he could... He stayed and tried to play "Cover my ass". Ergo, he didn't get any info.

4) Military hardware has built in fail-safes... Haven repeatedly talks about how hard Manticorian fail-safes are to crack, and about they only thing they learned from captured hardware (Hardware that wasn't as shredded as 3 DD's would have been from point blank energy fire of a fleet that size) was gross engineering. Solly Engineering , for the most part, is supposedly on par with Manticore.

Solarian software/hardware security is actually weaker than haven's at this point. As we know from watching people talk about how easy it is to crack their systems as compared to haven's.

So the odds of them cracking any of the Manticorian fail-safes and getting "Everything" is effectively nil. What they might have managed to get is stuff they should already have.

5) Do i really need to keep going?

It is 1am so i am sure i have made some minor error that will allow you to keep your dreams alive. Feel free to believe what you will.

keylime314 wrote:Don't forget this was Byng as well. He probably wouldn't have wanted his people wasting time analyzing inferior neobarb toys.

Not to mention that given the fact that the neobarb wanna be navy didnt stand a chance against Bing's supperior tactics and ship/squadron handling, there was no need as well. /s

Jonathan_S wrote:I take and certainly agree with your overall point. And yet the technical little nitpicker in me raised a flag over "12 Grazers per broadside"; that sounded like a heck of a lot for a BC. That's what a Nike-class BC(L) carries, and twice what a Reliant or Sultan-class BC carry.

Was there a reference to Byng's BC broadsides that I can't find? Or was this just a bit of (possibly incorrectly lodged) memory?


Sorry for diverting us down this (irrelevant to your point) tangent

I've scanned the rest of the thread and I don't think anyone has given this citation...

The comparison of a Nike-class BC(L) and a Nevada-class BC in the back of SftS shows the Nevada with 12 grasers per broadside. The Nevada actually has three more missile tubes, though they'll be far less effective than the Nike's Mk16 launches. The area the Nevada really lags behind in is CM launchers and PDLCs.

For reference, according to HoS the early Reliants fourteen energy mounts per broadside, six graser and eight laser, plus two energy torpedoes. Flights III and IV scrapped four of the lasers and the ETs for two extra missile tubes, eight more CM tubes and eight more PDLCs. The remaining energy mounts were also more powerful than the originals.

All the energy weapons were manned. Bold is my emphasis.

SftS Chapter 41 wrote:It had not been an exchange—if the icy, one-way tirade could be called an “exchange”—designed to set Chatterjee’s mind at ease. Nor was his mind particularly comforted by the Solarian battlecruisers’ actions. None of them had their wedges or sidewalls up, but close visual observation—and at a range of under five thousand kilometers it was possible to make a very close visual inspection, even without resorting to deployable reconnaissance platforms—made it evident that their energy batteries were manned. Sensors detected active radar and lidar, as well, which CIC identified as missile-defense fire control systems. Technically, that meant they were defensive systems, not offensive ones, but that was a meaningless distinction at this piddling range. Those battlecruisers knew exactly where every one of Chatterjee’s ships were, and at this distance, it would have been extraordinarily difficult for them to miss.

And as the only defense the BCs had was passive side armor we can assume that they all were pointing at the RMN DDs.

So at around 5,000 kms I'm thinking most of the grasers fired and hit the target. What weapons crew would want to admit that they were too slow compared to their shipmates.

Have a good weekend,
T2M

Edit: Though now that I think about it How much damage could those DDs have done to Byng's BCs? 30 lasers that are good enough to kill LACs would have done what to BCs side armor. Never really thought about that before guess I am as bad as Byng.

KNick wrote:One of the assumptions I would disagree with is that all the Solarian BCs fired all their grasers. All of the ships involved on both sides were effectively anchored in a neutral port. The weapons would not have been manned on either side. Everything would have been done under computer control. Allowing for different reaction times by various tactical watches, by the time some of the slower ships were ready to fire, there would have been little to fire at. Also, we have no idea of the serviceability of the weapons systems on any of the BCs. Some of them might have been off-line for maintainence.

Another factor is the explosion of the station. How many tactical officers were trying to track the pieces of that to avoid getting hit by them?

*snip

thinkstoomuch wrote:
Edit: Though now that I think about it How much damage could those DDs have done to Byng's BCs? 30 lasers that are good enough to kill LACs would have done what to BCs side armor. Never really thought about that before guess I am as bad as Byng.

*/snip*

Firstly point of order - it would have been 15 lasers unless Byng's force had surrounded them (which they may have done, I can't get hold of my copy of SftS at the moment to check), otherwise Chatterjee's could only have brought one broadside to bear. That's assuming they were broadside-on at all, if not it would have been 6 grasers rather than 15 lasers. However, the weapons may well have been larger than most people (i.e. the SLN) would have expected on a destroyer or light cruiser; the absence of broadside missile tubes might have left space for bigger energy mounts on the larger hull, although the extra PDLCs and CM tubes will have taken up a fair bit of space too.

That said, in terms of damage I would suspect quite a lot, at that range. The lasers might not penetrate the BC's core hull, but they could certainly have done a number on sensors, weapon mounts and impeller nodes. If Chatterjee had fired, I doubt Byng would have lost a ship except to extreme bad luck (some kind of power surge overloading a reactor and shutdown system's failing - I would assume that a Nevada, like Honor's Nike, is too big for a reactor core to be ejected), but there could have been some cripples.