Stopping the Sharonan advance

The issue with Hummer relay communications is that it is a distance of 20,000 miles to the nearest sliderway.

We are talking 167 hours for an average Hummer rate of 120 miles an hour. That is one week from the Ft Salby front to the nearest sliderway station.

Add another week for every 20K miles from there to Arcania Prime.

_ONE WAY_.


You have to double it for a round trip.

By way of contrast it takes two weeks to get a Voice message to Sharona from Ft Salby, which is fixing to get shorter when additional Sharonan voices are deployed to patch gaps.

It maybe down to a matter of a few days round trip for Sharona some time in this book.

NB: Sharonan communications are better than Arcanian and can get much, much, better. This has huge logistical implications for the on-going Sharonan offensive.

Yes, M-t b,
but what if Arcana sends some Council members,
or some Viceregal Councilors or a single Viceroy,
along with a senior general,
out to the front to take political and military command?

HTM

Mil-tech bard wrote:The issue with Hummer relay communications is that it is a distance of 20,000 miles to the nearest sliderway.

We are talking 167 hours for an average Hummer rate of 120 miles an hour. That is one week from the Ft Salby front to the nearest sliderway station.

Add another week for every 20K miles from there to Arcania Prime.

_ONE WAY_.


You have to double it for a round trip.

By way of contrast it takes two weeks to get a Voice message to Sharona from Ft Salby, which is fixing to get shorter when additional Sharonan voices are deployed to patch gaps.

It maybe down to a matter of a few days round trip for Sharona some time in this book.

NB: Sharonan communications are better than Arcanian and can get much, much, better. This has huge logistical implications for the on-going Sharonan offensive.

beat me to it, Howard.

On the flip side, what if Andryn or another member of the Imperial Family also moves forward. They can us their precognitive abilities to advise their forces with only seconds or minutes of delay.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Yes, M-t b,
but what if Arcana sends some Council members,
or some Viceregal Councilors or a single Viceroy,
along with a senior general,
out to the front to take political and military command?

HTM

Howard,

You first have to recognize the problem to deal with it.

And the way Mul-what's his name set this up, there will be weeks of political firestorm on Arcania Prime before anyone can begin to address the slow communications decision making disadvantage Arcania is facing.

Sharona's offensive will be breaking into Hells Gate about the time the political explosion from first Hummer messages about Arcanina's failed assault at Ft Salby, and killing of Sharona's Imperial Heir Secondary, is resolved on Arcania Prime.

This planned rupture by the 'Rycanthan Directorate' of the Ransanaran-Andaran alliance in the Arcanian Union means Ransanar has no-one it can trust to place as viceroy over the war with Sharona.

RFC has foreshadowed who that "Honorable Andaran Viceroy" might be, but getting there is going to take a lot of time that the Arcanian Military doesn't have short of Hells Gate.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:Yes, M-t b,
but what if Arcana sends some Council members,
or some Viceregal Councilors or a single Viceroy,
along with a senior general,
out to the front to take political and military command?

HTM

Mil-tech bard wrote:The issue with Hummer relay communications is that it is a distance of 20,000 miles to the nearest sliderway.

We are talking 167 hours for an average Hummer rate of 120 miles an hour. That is one week from the Ft Salby front to the nearest sliderway station.

Add another week for every 20K miles from there to Arcania Prime.

_ONE WAY_.


You have to double it for a round trip.

By way of contrast it takes two weeks to get a Voice message to Sharona from Ft Salby, which is fixing to get shorter when additional Sharonan voices are deployed to patch gaps.

It maybe down to a matter of a few days round trip for Sharona some time in this book.

NB: Sharonan communications are better than Arcanian and can get much, much, better. This has huge logistical implications for the on-going Sharonan offensive.

Regardless of what happens at the front Arcana will find it impossible to exert any effective control from Arcana itself. They will have to send forward a delegation to give the military its orders, and negotiate when necessary. That delegation will require real power over the conflict, and need to be supported by the government on Arcana. Makes room for all sorts of intrigue depending on the members of the delegation.

Either your timing or my memory is way off. The message about the failed assault on Fort Salby ought to be on its way to Arcana by now. It should arrive in about two months. About the time it arrives Chan Geraith will be setting out from the rail head towards Hell's Gate. He won't arrive till at least nine weeks after that. So he should be arriving about the time the first Arcanan reaction to Fort Salby arrives at the front.

You are right about the political problems on Arcana that could delay them from sending someone to the front. That will likely be exacerbated by the fact that no one on Arcana is going to believe that a none magical society can conduct an offensive over 100,000 miles so there will be no sense of urgency on Arcana. How much it delays them is impossible to guess though.

NIcholas

Mil-tech bard wrote:Howard,

You first have to recognize the problem to deal with it.

And the way Mul-what's his name set this up, there will be weeks of political firestorm on Arcania Prime before anyone can begin to address the slow communications decision making disadvantage Arcania is facing.

Sharona's offensive will be breaking into Hells Gate about the time the political explosion from first Hummer messages about Arcanina's failed assault at Ft Salby, and killing of Sharona's Imperial Heir Secondary, is resolved on Arcania Prime.

This planned rupture by the 'Rycanthan Directorate' of the Ransanaran-Andaran alliance in the Arcanian Union means Ransanar has no-one it can trust to place as viceroy over the war with Sharona.

RFC has foreshadowed who that "Honorable Andaran Viceroy" might be, but getting there is going to take a lot of time that the Arcanian Military doesn't have short of Hells Gate.

By my math, it's worse than that. In HHNF, it indicated that the distance from Hell's Hate to Arcana was over 87,000 miles (Shaylar: "It was hard to believe that in barely two months, they’d already traveled the better part of twenty-nine thousand miles since their capture… or that they were still just under a third of the way from the universe Arcana had named Mahritha to their destination in New Arcana.")

If hummers could go a consistent 120 mph all the way, it would be a 725 hour trip, or 30 days. But sometime after Shaylar thinking it had been two months, Jasak told Gadrial that the message had finally gotten to his father, meaning the one-way communication distance is more than two months (compared to the week and a half for Sharona).

So hummers definitely can't go that fast indefinitely. Part of it is probably the handlers receiving the hummer message and transferring it to a new hummer, but in HG, Jasak thinks that they can go more than a thousand miles in a stretch. That's like dragons, so any water gap that dragons can't cross, hummers can't either. I'm sure they can be released halfway across the gap, making them faster than dragons, but they only cut the trip about in half compared to people (since Jasak and co are expected to reach Andara about four months after leaving).

So more than two months for Arcana, and that probably can't be reduced, compared to a week and a half for Sharona that probably can be reduced. And judging from how fast Darcel got home, the Sharonian time from homeworld to conflict is half or less than half of the Arcanan one, though Arcana can probably cut that since they have far more unimproved (no sliderrail) distance than the Sharonians have distance to Hell's Gate with no railroads.

Mul Gurthak concluded that the Sharonians had better communication but that he could move people more quickly. I wonder if he was right, or if his lack of knowledge of the railroad threw him way off. I'm thinking it's the second. Has Harshu realized that yet?

Mil-tech bard wrote:The issue with Hummer relay communications is that it is a distance of 20,000 miles to the nearest sliderway.

We are talking 167 hours for an average Hummer rate of 120 miles an hour. That is one week from the Ft Salby front to the nearest sliderway station.

Add another week for every 20K miles from there to Arcania Prime.

_ONE WAY_.


You have to double it for a round trip.

By way of contrast it takes two weeks to get a Voice message to Sharona from Ft Salby, which is fixing to get shorter when additional Sharonan voices are deployed to patch gaps.

It maybe down to a matter of a few days round trip for Sharona some time in this book.

NB: Sharonan communications are better than Arcanian and can get much, much, better. This has huge logistical implications for the on-going Sharonan offensive.

Everything you said about hummer communication looks correct to me. Very nice analysis.

Regarding the question of movement speed. I think Mul Gurthak was correct that Arcana can move troops much faster over distances of less then 1000 miles and for any distance over unimproved terrain.

From what Shylar and Jathmar were thinking I believe over distances of 1000 or more when Sharonan's can use a railroad movements speeds should be about the same. The dragon will fly 1000 miles and then rest and during the rest period the train should catch up. In addition, the Sharonan's can move more by train then the Arcanans can move by dragon or slider.

The one caution I would put with that is that we have not yet seen what the Arcanan core worlds are like. A high speed slider line that averages 150 mph or more would not surprise me. It would be more expensive then the normal one which is why it is not on the frontier. Of course wars do strange things to economics.

Nicholas

bkwormlisa wrote:...snipped...

Mul Gurthak concluded that the Sharonians had better communication but that he could move people more quickly. I wonder if he was right, or if his lack of knowledge of the railroad threw him way off. I'm thinking it's the second. Has Harshu realized that yet?

brnicholas wrote:A high speed slider line that averages 150 mph or more would not surprise me.

You are proposing a mode of transport three times faster than exists in already developed Arcanan territory, and faster then dragons. Such a thing would greatly surprise me.

As for the rest I suspect that dragons will still move faster than trains, but (as stated) trains will move far more men and materials. As the front shifts closer to Arcana then the logistics will even out.

Astelon wrote:

brnicholas wrote:A high speed slider line that averages 150 mph or more would not surprise me.

You are proposing a mode of transport three times faster than exists in already developed Arcanan territory, and faster then dragons. Such a thing would greatly surprise me.

As for the rest I suspect that dragons will still move faster than trains, but (as stated) trains will move far more men and materials. As the front shifts closer to Arcana then the logistics will even out.

But we haven't seen truly developed Arcanan territory yet. Jasak and party are still in the frontier. At the end of HHNF they are in a universe with a population of three million, 40,000 miles from Arcana. That universe is more densely populated then most in the area. That isn't really very many. If we substituted today's technology for Arcanan would you expect to see a bullet train in that universe, I wouldn't. Yet it wouldn't surprise me to see one much closer to the home universe.

As for train speed, I expect it will be close and will depend on if dragon speed has been increased over 1000 miles a day and what the quality of the track in question is. After all, the train only needs to manage an average speed of 42 mph to do 1000 miles a day.

Nicholas