MATC

Hi fallsfromtrees,

You seem to presuming that the wheels are coming off for the MAlign. Anyone who plans for centuries in advance would be able to make needed adjustments in the plan if too many bumps in the road happened by. They also have the ability to recover from mistakes like what happened with their handling of the situation in the Talbot Quadrant.

These are people who are perfectly capable of arranging a detour without giving up their goals should they decide that is necessary.

Don

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

You seem to presuming that the wheels are coming off for the MAlign. Anyone who plans for centuries in advance would be able to make needed adjustments in the plan if too many bumps in the road happened by. They also have the ability to recover from mistakes like what happened with their handling of the situation in the Talbot Quadrant.

These are people who are perfectly capable of arranging a detour without giving up their goals should they decide that is necessary.

Don

--------------

Don --

The Talbot Wormhole and the Quadrant's affiliation with Manticore MAY have pushed the MA / RF into acting prematurely; in fact I believe the textev shows they have.
1) use of the prototype Shark class for OB in a scaled-down version as noted in discussions between Albrect and Benjamin D.
2) the apparent early and accelerated onion-core evacuation of Mesa
3) releasing the Technodyne missiles to Filareta
4) early / over-use of the Nano-tech assassination techniques when they probably shouldn't have been used.

It appears to me that despite 400+ years of planning, MA/RF is acting prematurely when their tools are not yet in place.

-- Stewart

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

You seem to presuming that the wheels are coming off for the MAlign. Anyone who plans for centuries in advance would be able to make needed adjustments in the plan if too many bumps in the road happened by. They also have the ability to recover from mistakes like what happened with their handling of the situation in the Talbot Quadrant.

These are people who are perfectly capable of arranging a detour without giving up their goals should they decide that is necessary.

Don

I think the wheels are going to come off because Albrecht is suffering from a severe case of hubris. He decided that because of Manticore's tech advantage it was necessary to stage OB early, instead of infiltrating his people into Manticore's tech structure and grabbing off those tech features. He okayed the use of the Nanotech assassination tools when it wasn't necessary, thereby causing the treecats to come into the picture as guardians against the technique. OB demonstrated that there was another technique for movement that was previously unknown, thereby warning Manticore that it existed and starting to look for counters, and the assassination attempt on Queen Berry, and the successful assassination of Webster caused Anton and Victor to go to Mesa to find out what was happening, which led to the defection of Simoes, and the attempted defection of McBryde. All of this lead to the advancement of Houdini, with the great danger that something will go wrong. In short he has made bad decision after bad decision, and I expect him to continue to make bad decisions, even with his sons attempting to restrain him.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

You seem to presuming that the wheels are coming off for the MAlign. Anyone who plans for centuries in advance would be able to make needed adjustments in the plan if too many bumps in the road happened by. They also have the ability to recover from mistakes like what happened with their handling of the situation in the Talbot Quadrant.

These are people who are perfectly capable of arranging a detour without giving up their goals should they decide that is necessary.

Don

I think the wheels are going to come off because Albrecht is suffering from a severe case of hubris. He decided that because of Manticore's tech advantage it was necessary to stage OB early, instead of infiltrating his people into Manticore's tech structure and grabbing off those tech features. He okayed the use of the Nanotech assassination tools when it wasn't necessary, thereby causing the treecats to come into the picture as guardians against the technique. OB demonstrated that there was another technique for movement that was previously unknown, thereby warning Manticore that it existed and starting to look for counters, and the assassination attempt on Queen Berry, and the successful assassination of Webster caused Anton and Victor to go to Mesa to find out what was happening, which led to the defection of Simoes, and the attempted defection of McBryde. All of this lead to the advancement of Houdini, with the great danger that something will go wrong. In short he has made bad decision after bad decision, and I expect him to continue to make bad decisions, even with his sons attempting to restrain him.

There is a lot of truth to what you are saying. I am merely saying that these are very smart, resourseful people. It ain't over until the fat lady sings....they can recover.

Don

n7axw wrote:snip for brevity

There is a lot of truth to what you are saying. I am merely saying that these are very smart, resourseful people. It ain't over until the fat lady sings....they can recover.

Don

Not as long as Albrecht is in charge, and ignoring the advice of people other than his sons. Bardarsarno recommended using the nanotech, and was ignored. The only example we have of him paying attention to anyone else is when his (united) sons talked him out of a second attack with the Sharks.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

You seem to presuming that the wheels are coming off for the MAlign. Anyone who plans for centuries in advance would be able to make needed adjustments in the plan if too many bumps in the road happened by. They also have the ability to recover from mistakes like what happened with their handling of the situation in the Talbot Quadrant.

These are people who are perfectly capable of arranging a detour without giving up their goals should they decide that is necessary.

Don

I think the wheels are going to come off because Albrecht is suffering from a severe case of hubris. He decided that because of Manticore's tech advantage it was necessary to stage OB early, instead of infiltrating his people into Manticore's tech structure and grabbing off those tech features. He okayed the use of the Nanotech assassination tools when it wasn't necessary, thereby causing the treecats to come into the picture as guardians against the technique. OB demonstrated that there was another technique for movement that was previously unknown, thereby warning Manticore that it existed and starting to look for counters, and the assassination attempt on Queen Berry, and the successful assassination of Webster caused Anton and Victor to go to Mesa to find out what was happening, which led to the defection of Simoes, and the attempted defection of McBryde. All of this lead to the advancement of Houdini, with the great danger that something will go wrong. In short he has made bad decision after bad decision, and I expect him to continue to make bad decisions, even with his sons attempting to restrain him.

Hubris? Quite possibly. But I would also add fear to what Albrecht felt, the idea that Manticore had so radically changed the balance of power that the Mesan Alignment could no longer control events to produce the outcome it wanted and so therefore moved prematurely.

One of the problems of being in the shadows is if you don't or can't use something, you might as well not have it. In other words, if using information threatens the source of information, or using a technology reveals too much about it, the question of whether or not the benefits of using information or a technology outweighs the disadvantages of losing the information or revealing the technology to your opponents.

There are plenty of examples in the history of warfare of this: Use of information gathered by spies or cryptanalysis may threaten access to the information. If using a technology allows that technology to fall into the hands of the enemy, he may develop his own version of it, or a method to counter it by reverse engineering it.

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

You seem to presuming that the wheels are coming off for the MAlign. Anyone who plans for centuries in advance would be able to make needed adjustments in the plan if too many bumps in the road happened by. They also have the ability to recover from mistakes like what happened with their handling of the situation in the Talbot Quadrant.

These are people who are perfectly capable of arranging a detour without giving up their goals should they decide that is necessary.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:I think the wheels are going to come off because Albrecht is suffering from a severe case of hubris. He decided that because of Manticore's tech advantage it was necessary to stage OB early, instead of infiltrating his people into Manticore's tech structure and grabbing off those tech features. He okayed the use of the Nanotech assassination tools when it wasn't necessary, thereby causing the treecats to come into the picture as guardians against the technique. OB demonstrated that there was another technique for movement that was previously unknown, thereby warning Manticore that it existed and starting to look for counters, and the assassination attempt on Queen Berry, and the successful assassination of Webster caused Anton and Victor to go to Mesa to find out what was happening, which led to the defection of Simoes, and the attempted defection of McBryde. All of this lead to the advancement of Houdini, with the great danger that something will go wrong. In short he has made bad decision after bad decision, and I expect him to continue to make bad decisions, even with his sons attempting to restrain him.

Vince wrote:Hubris? Quite possibly. But I would also add fear to what Albrecht felt, the idea that Manticore had so radically changed the balance of power that the Mesan Alignment could no longer control events to produce the outcome it wanted and so therefore moved prematurely.

One of the problems of being in the shadows is if you don't or can't use something, you might as well not have it. In other words, if using information threatens the source of information, or using a technology reveals too much about it, the question of whether or not the benefits of using information or a technology outweighs the disadvantages of losing the information or revealing the technology to your opponents.

There are plenty of examples in the history of warfare of this: Use of information gathered by spies or cryptanalysis may threaten access to the information. If using a technology allows that technology to fall into the hands of the enemy, he may develop his own version of it, or a method to counter it by reverse engineering it.

Dfiniton of hubris

excessive pride or self-confidence.
(in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.

This is in fact Albrecht's problem. He is so convinced of his innate superiority, that he is unwilling to consider that he might be wrong. In this case the "god" he is defying in the law of unintended consequences or to put it in more generic terms "Murphy's law". It was the gratuitous use of the nanotech to attempt to kill HH that led to treecats knowing how to detect when the nanotech kicks in. Yes, he had no way of knowing that she had a pulsar in here finger, and yes, she (HH) was being annoying, but she wasn't a danger to the MAlign at that time. It wasn't needed to keep the war against Haven alive, that was already going to happen. It was therefore unnecessary, and he (Albrecht) never even considered the possibility that she might survive, or that Nimitz might survive and pass along the information about the nanotech technique to Samantha. Even though OB was a tactical success, it had the effect of creating the GA, and because of the Yawata strike, has effectively created nemesis. Since the possibility that OB might cause significant damage to the surface was inherent in the attack plan, and he (Albrecht) never even considered the consequences of such a strike on Manticore. The open involvement of Mesa in triggering the war between the League and Manticore could be forseen as causing the imminent occupation of Mesa by Manticore. In fact it was that realization that led to the sudden moving up of Houdini, and it appears (although we do not have direct evidence yet) that that acceleration of Houdini is also going to have unintended consequences. The point is, that the possibility should have been considered before he allowed Aldona to openly operate on New Tuscany.
Albrecht may have suffered fear from what manticore was doing, but instead of a knee jerk reaction to that fear, it would seem to make more sense to step back, analyze what Manticore has, attempt to steal it for development by his own side, and stick to the original plan. Albrecht's reactions smack all too much of panic, and decisions made in panic are almost certainly not going to be optimal, and the panic was really uncalled for. Before the nanotech attempts on HH and Queen Berry and Webster, the MAlign was well hidden. Granted the attempts on Berry and Webster were required to derail the peace initiative, but much of that could have been done via traditional assassination attempts which would not leave pointers to the MAlign if analyzed later. Again granted that you would have to test the techniques, because as you point out, if you can never use them without giving away the secret, they are in fact useless. But you want to save them until they can be used effectively. The testing could in fact have been done on Mesa. You had any number of members of the MAlign who had to be culled, as well as non-members of the MAlign who were in positions of power and guarded. Use the technique on their body guards, and analyze the results. There is no danger that those assassination attempts/successes are going to get out into the galaxy at large, so the techniques stays unknown until you are prepared to use it widely - as in the near simultaneous assassination of Queen Elizabeth, Queen Berry, Eloise Pritchard, Thomas Theisman, HH, Hamish Alexander, Willie Alexander, etc. If the attacks are staged in a short period of time for a given star nation, it will be thrown into massive confusion, and at that time you can strike with your LDs, using an attack vector they had no reason to suspect.
There is actually an example of this in the Honorverse. The original advances that Manticore made, (MDMs, LACs, pod layers) they held back until they could be used with devastating effect. The other case was the advent of Apollo, which they used before they had in sufficient quantity to be used with devastating effect. The result was the BoM I.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

You seem to presuming that the wheels are coming off for the MAlign. Anyone who plans for centuries in advance would be able to make needed adjustments in the plan if too many bumps in the road happened by. They also have the ability to recover from mistakes like what happened with their handling of the situation in the Talbot Quadrant.

These are people who are perfectly capable of arranging a detour without giving up their goals should they decide that is necessary.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:I think the wheels are going to come off because Albrecht is suffering from a severe case of hubris. He decided that because of Manticore's tech advantage it was necessary to stage OB early, instead of infiltrating his people into Manticore's tech structure and grabbing off those tech features. He okayed the use of the Nanotech assassination tools when it wasn't necessary, thereby causing the treecats to come into the picture as guardians against the technique. OB demonstrated that there was another technique for movement that was previously unknown, thereby warning Manticore that it existed and starting to look for counters, and the assassination attempt on Queen Berry, and the successful assassination of Webster caused Anton and Victor to go to Mesa to find out what was happening, which led to the defection of Simoes, and the attempted defection of McBryde. All of this lead to the advancement of Houdini, with the great danger that something will go wrong. In short he has made bad decision after bad decision, and I expect him to continue to make bad decisions, even with his sons attempting to restrain him.

Vince wrote:Hubris? Quite possibly. But I would also add fear to what Albrecht felt, the idea that Manticore had so radically changed the balance of power that the Mesan Alignment could no longer control events to produce the outcome it wanted and so therefore moved prematurely.

One of the problems of being in the shadows is if you don't or can't use something, you might as well not have it. In other words, if using information threatens the source of information, or using a technology reveals too much about it, the question of whether or not the benefits of using information or a technology outweighs the disadvantages of losing the information or revealing the technology to your opponents.

There are plenty of examples in the history of warfare of this: Use of information gathered by spies or cryptanalysis may threaten access to the information. If using a technology allows that technology to fall into the hands of the enemy, he may develop his own version of it, or a method to counter it by reverse engineering it.

Dfiniton of hubris

excessive pride or self-confidence.
(in Greek tragedy) excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.

This is in fact Albrecht's problem. He is so convinced of his innate superiority, that he is unwilling to consider that he might be wrong. In this case the "god" he is defying in the law of unintended consequences or to put it in more generic terms "Murphy's law". It was the gratuitous use of the nanotech to attempt to kill HH that led to treecats knowing how to detect when the nanotech kicks in. Yes, he had no way of knowing that she had a pulsar in here finger, and yes, she (HH) was being annoying, but she wasn't a danger to the MAlign at that time. It wasn't needed to keep the war against Haven alive, that was already going to happen. It was therefore unnecessary, and he (Albrecht) never even considered the possibility that she might survive, or that Nimitz might survive and pass along the information about the nanotech technique to Samantha. Even though OB was a tactical success, it had the effect of creating the GA, and because of the Yawata strike, has effectively created nemesis. Since the possibility that OB might cause significant damage to the surface was inherent in the attack plan, and he (Albrecht) never even considered the consequences of such a strike on Manticore. The open involvement of Mesa in triggering the war between the League and Manticore could be forseen as causing the imminent occupation of Mesa by Manticore. In fact it was that realization that led to the sudden moving up of Houdini, and it appears (although we do not have direct evidence yet) that that acceleration of Houdini is also going to have unintended consequences. The point is, that the possibility should have been considered before he allowed Aldona to openly operate on New Tuscany.
Albrecht may have suffered fear from what manticore was doing, but instead of a knee jerk reaction to that fear, it would seem to make more sense to step back, analyze what Manticore has, attempt to steal it for development by his own side, and stick to the original plan. Albrecht's reactions smack all too much of panic, and decisions made in panic are almost certainly not going to be optimal, and the panic was really uncalled for. Before the nanotech attempts on HH and Queen Berry and Webster, the MAlign was well hidden. Granted the attempts on Berry and Webster were required to derail the peace initiative, but much of that could have been done via traditional assassination attempts which would not leave pointers to the MAlign if analyzed later. Again granted that you would have to test the techniques, because as you point out, if you can never use them without giving away the secret, they are in fact useless. But you want to save them until they can be used effectively. The testing could in fact have been done on Mesa. You had any number of members of the MAlign who had to be culled, as well as non-members of the MAlign who were in positions of power and guarded. Use the technique on their body guards, and analyze the results. There is no danger that those assassination attempts/successes are going to get out into the galaxy at large, so the techniques stays unknown until you are prepared to use it widely - as in the near simultaneous assassination of Queen Elizabeth, Queen Berry, Eloise Pritchard, Thomas Theisman, HH, Hamish Alexander, Willie Alexander, etc. If the attacks are staged in a short period of time for a given star nation, it will be thrown into massive confusion, and at that time you can strike with your LDs, using an attack vector they had no reason to suspect.
There is actually an example of this in the Honorverse. The original advances that Manticore made, (MDMs, LACs, pod layers) they held back until they could be used with devastating effect. The other case was the advent of Apollo, which they used before they had in sufficient quantity to be used with devastating effect. The result was the BoM I.

Quite a good analysis. But panic is fear that prevents logical thinking. Tends to lead to sub or non optimal decision making, when it doesn't produce the inability to make any decisions at all. Also once panic sets in, it is extremely difficult to halt. (A positive feedback loop of bad decisions leading to a worse situation leading to worse decisions.) I get the feeling that Albrecht is a closet control freak, even though he has people around him that do (or did) believe in Murphy's Law and the Law of Unintended Consequences (his sons, Bardasano).

I'm not sure it's hubris or panic that's driving Albrecht to make questionable decisions. Not panic, anyway, and hubris is less a driver here than an enabling condition.

They never needed to test the nanotech assassination technique against good security, and they've really needed to use it rarely. The Andermani crown prince was just a nuisance, and the HAH assassination attempt would have never served adequate purpose and exposed them far too much to having things found out or suspected. But he was making calls there based on having the Finger of God that he could use to snuff people at will, and did when they annoyed him and a rationalization could be worked out. The Torch conference needed to be derailed, and I can't think of another good way to do it, but I'm more inclined to attribute that to the limits of my own imagination than the limits of Mesan spycraft. The Grosclaude loose-end-tying is about the only instance in which I'm really confident they needed to do it, though tying up Filareta at least and maybe Crandall may have demanded it as well.

Oyster Bay as it was conducted was a mistake. The Sharks did the job just fine - I don't fault him for doing it with them instead of with the Leonard Detweilers. Frankly, I think the Sharks are a lot better for that job than mere proof-of-concept testbeds. But the real problems were that it left Haven alone, and it hit Manticore when it would not leave Manticore unable to resolve the war with Haven - they had ammo to wave at Haven to finish it and were willing and able to offer utterly livable terms to make it a fine peace agreement. The plan was always to use Manticore and/or Haven to topple the League and use them to beat up one another to keep them from being alternative nuclei of a new order, and Albrecht lost sight of that.

I can't blame him too badly because a lot of it is built into the plan. In the longer term, they counted too much on having more control than they would of Haven particularly and maybe Manticore as well. Two revolutions put paid to too much of their influence in Haven - and that kind of things growing unpredictable should have been the sort of thing they should have seen coming and never have relied upon. But they had to rely on that sort of thing when they committed to screwing everyone in such hostile ways before rebuilding their eugenic utopia - and it's been centuries since anyone in the onion was open to considering an alternative to that.

n7axw wrote:Hi fallsfromtrees,

You seem to presuming that the wheels are coming off for the MAlign. Anyone who plans for centuries in advance would be able to make needed adjustments in the plan if too many bumps in the road happened by. They also have the ability to recover from mistakes like what happened with their handling of the situation in the Talbot Quadrant.

These are people who are perfectly capable of arranging a detour without giving up their goals should they decide that is necessary.

Don

Actually in Albrecht Detweiler himself admits that the wheels HAVE come off rather disastrously, requiring a faster and less perfected Houdini:

Cauldron of Ghosts, Chapter 19 wrote:There was silence for several seconds as father and son contemplated the shattering upheaval in the Mesan Alignment's carefully laid plans"
....
"Sorry Ben, No point taking my pissed-offedness on you. And you're right of course. But it's not as if we never had a plan in place to deal with something like this". He paused and barked a harsh laugh. "Well, not something like this, so much, since we nsver saw this coming in our worst nightmares..."

About the only things not compromised are the "Darius bolthole" (which is already suspected) and the existence of the relationship to Mannerheim and the remaining systems of the Renaissance Factor (which are not).