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(SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by SWM   » Mon Aug 31, 2015 4:38 pm

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hanuman wrote:
AnalystJohnny wrote:I'm not sure the whole radio thing would be a very good idea. Even without the OBS you still have the Gbaba lurking out there. Wouldn't want any stray transmissions no matter how weak bringing them in before humanity is ready to fight them again.


Didn't the colony coonvoy travel 10 000ly before they even began looking for a suitable planet to colonize? I remember something like that. If so, the Ghana really are not a concern wrt the use of radio, after this long. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so it'd take ten thousand years at least for Safeholdian radio broadcasts to reach Sol and beyond.l

You are basically correct that detection by the Gbaba is not a serious concern at this time, as David Weber himself has noted in past discussions of the topic. But you are overestimating the distance that they traveled to reach Safehold. Safehold is only hundreds of light-years from the Gbaba, not thousands of light-years. Here is what David said in viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2999&p=65114&hilit=+light+years+#p65114:
runsforcelery wrote:In the eyes of the people who planned this entire operation, "hiding" was to be important only during the period which, based on the analysis of all captured Gbaba equipment, data, observed operational patterns, etc., they calculated would be sufficient for Gbaba scouts to have swept the area in which the colony was located, come up empty, and departed. They were not concerned about interstellar detection of their civilization's energy signatures. Among other things, they are hundreds of light years away from Gbaba-dominated space, which means that once they put their tech base back into place, even if it were possible for signals to be detected across such an enormous distance (that pesky inverse square rule), it would take — literally — several centuries for the signals in question to reach the Gbaba, giving humanity several centuries (at least) to rebuild from their original knowledge point and develop still more advanced and lethal hardware.
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Re: Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by CRC   » Tue Sep 01, 2015 10:36 am

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My basis for asserting that Chihiro had significantly more resources than the Fallen, come from one of the HFQ snippets:

"Anyway, the references in the Writ — and in Kohdy’s diary — to ‘fastnesses in the Mountains of Desolation’ suggest the Fallen had been preparing for some time. Once the fighting began, however, any small industrial modules they’d managed to hide away in the mountains were enormously outclassed, because Hamilcar hadn’t yet been disposed of. According to the English portion of Kohdy’s diary, that was because Chihiro had been wise enough to be on the lookout for any of Shan-wei’s sympathizers who might’ve managed to hide among their unfallen fellows. According to the Spanish portion, however, Kohdy had started to suspect that Chihiro and his closest supporters had retained Hamilcar — although Kohdy didn’t know what Hamilcar truly was; he refers to it throughout as ‘the Dawn Star’ — out of his own ambition to replace and supplant Langhorne completely.”

So its clear from this that the Hamilcar's resources outclassed the Fallens and would completely dwarf Nimue's.

Its also clear that Chihiro played a much larger role than has been given credit for.

My speculation:

Chihiro was the power behind the Book of Schuler and supplanted Langhorne in the end.

The Hamilcar is still around and there is still Chihiro loyal command crew in stasis on her.

Chihiro himself comes back for the 1000 year visit with the Hamilcar and basically presents himself as a god and wants to be worshipped. Think of Clyntahn on steroids. He uses TFN tech against Charis.

Merlin uses the Stone of Schuler in a final act of desperation, is destroyed in the process, and the stone rewrites the Hamilcar operating system from under the temple and takes away their command codes - but since Nimue is the only remaining fleet officer, her codes remain.

But the Stone of Schuler also activates the temple and various holographic projections which repudiate the Writ and instruct the Safeholdians to embrace technology and Jihad against the Ghana.

Well, you did want speculation, didn't you?
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Re: (SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by Expert snuggler   » Wed Sep 02, 2015 12:43 am

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Here's something Merlin could do differently, still risky without an OBS, risks partially but only partially controllable.

In situations where he was willing to take no prisoners and leave no survivors, he'd be free to use energy weapons.

There could be some strategic value in making isolated ships on critical missions vanish without a trace.

Giving Clyntahn too many mysteries to think about is dangerous, but imagine diverting his attention by starting a rumor that the secret underground seijin army also has a navy.

How much current can an OWL remote control? Merlin wants everyone thinking scientifically ASAP, so he'd probably want to send out announcements that it's just a natural phenomenon that lightning keeps hitting CoG installations. The superstitious people could be educated later, and in the meantime they'd switch sides.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by Duckk   » Wed Sep 02, 2015 8:22 am

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I fail to see how Merlin, who has taken great pains to avoid involving himself directly, is suddenly going to find it acceptable to run around the planet sinking ships and blasting installations.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by McGuiness   » Wed Sep 02, 2015 12:53 pm

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Expert snuggler wrote:Here's something Merlin could do differently, still risky without an OBS, risks partially but only partially controllable.

In situations where he was willing to take no prisoners and leave no survivors, he'd be free to use energy weapons.

There could be some strategic value in making isolated ships on critical missions vanish without a trace.

Giving Clyntahn too many mysteries to think about is dangerous, but imagine diverting his attention by starting a rumor that the secret underground seijin army also has a navy.

How much current can an OWL remote control? Merlin wants everyone thinking scientifically ASAP, so he'd probably want to send out announcements that it's just a natural phenomenon that lightning keeps hitting CoG installations. The superstitious people could be educated later, and in the meantime they'd switch sides.
Duckk, I'd always bow to your far greater wisdom on this, but IIRC RFC just mentioned that Merlin is becoming a bit more hands-on with the TF tech lately, which is why he created a couple of new characters in LaMA, one a spy and one an assassin, and he also used the skimmer and the lorry extensively to reach DE and Gen. Symkyn, and had some fun doing skullduggery with Harless and the other clueless Desnairans and Dohlarans by convincing them that DE was starving and Shiloh was rebelling. (I wonder what the horse and donkeys thought of the lorry?) And he used OWL's remotes extensively in creating the campsite and the background setting for Mab. Since this is a "What if" thread, I don't have a problem with thinking out of the box, although Merlin using the remotes to miraculously blow up ships, assassinate enemies, etc. is something I disagree with because it makes for a boring story when the hero outclasses the bad guys so badly.

Still, there occasionally is a moment for the universe's biggest nerd to say "Oops!" ;)

All right, I'll tackle this as two separate items: 1) Use of TF tech to destroy isolated CoGA ships on "critical missions," and 2) Using TF tech to cause or direct lightning to strike where such strikes would be most advantageous to the allies - say right in the middle of Kaitswyrth or Wyrshym's powder magazines, or the magazine of any of Thirsk's ships.

The answer to #1 is easy - in the entire series, there's only been one enemy ship that absolutely had to succeed in a solo mission, and that one carried Daivyn and Irys to Delferahk. Think of what we'd have missed if RFC had decided that a teenage girl and her younger brother should die by TF weapons because of who their father was... Fortunately for us readers, neither RFC or Merlin believe in the sins of the fathers being the sins of the kids, and you've gotta admit that the use of TF weapons to sink their ship would have eliminated a twist in the plot that turned out to be just a wee bit useful and soooooo romantic! Plus Merlin got to do a bunch of derring-do when he rescued them, and we all know how much he enjoys that sort of thing! :lol:

I sat down and researched the opportunities to attack enemy ships that are on high priority missions with TF tech, and there aren't very many of them in the series. In OAR the the galley Sprite was on picket duty north of Black Water's combined fleet. Removing it would allow the Cayleb's fleet of galleons to slip past and attack the combined fleets led by Black Water the next morning.

Unfortunately Merlin couldn't attack the galley with the skimmer, since he was concerned that cannon fire would be too visible, so clearly TF weapons would have been as well. Cayleb solved the problem by "guiding" a schooner loaded with ICMs to surprise and capture the galley without firing a shot.

Had Merlin been able (and willing) to use TF weapons on the galley, the Charisians would have wondered what had sunk the galley if it exploded, so we have to keep in mind that there can't be any ICN ships in the vicinity of a TF attack either.

The only situation that truly matches your criteria in OAR for the use of TF to sink a solo enemy ship on a critical mission is the Corisandian spy who hired a smuggler to take him to Emerald so he could report that Cayleb and the entire Charisian galleon fleet had sailed in October, which caused Black Water to realize that Cayleb must have gone after the combined fleets of Dohlar and Tarot near Armageddon Reef.

Unfortunately, no other Corisandian spies knew that their fellow spy existed, which enabled him to escape Tellesberg and reach Emerald with the news that Cayleb and the galleons were gone, so Merlin had no chance to detect him. The man never associated with any known Corisandian spies, and acted as a Charisian chandler for 12 years to establish his cover. So the one chance to use TF weapons in OAR didn't work out because Merlin isn't omnipotent.

While Charis was sweeping the seas bare of enemy shipping except near Thirsk's fleet in Gorath Bay from BSRA until AMF, there were undoubtedly many opportunities where the recon skimmer could have been used at night to destroy enemy ships without leaving any surviving sailors who would see the skimmer's attack, which would have been blamed on the Charisians if anyone ever found the debris.

Unfortunately, those attacks would have been almost entirely made on merchant ships, since no enemy fleet commander, especially Thirsk, ever let any of his fleet's ships sail alone - including the schooners he used as scouts. The Harchongese were pretty inept sailors, and I don't recall them ever fighting Gwylym Manthyr and his fleet in the Gulf of Dohlar, although he certainly cleaned their clocks a time or two!

Merlin was ready to use the skimmer to destroy any ship(s) used to transport Gwylym Manthyr and his fellow POWs to Zion. Unfortunately, Manthyr and his men were taken by land, so there wasn't a chance to have them "disappear at sea." (Which is the only time that Merlin and Cayleb have ever strongly considered using the TF weapons in the skimmer for any reason.) The only active use of TF tech the inner circle uses is for information, communication, the sharp edges on Excalibur and Merlin's and Nimue's blades, and the lasers in Merlin's old pistols that ignited the powder so he never had a misfire. They use passive TF tech all the time in the form of their armor and anti-ballistic undies of course! ;)

Moving to the second point, which I'd guess would entail having one of OWL's remotes install a microscopically thin electrical wire on one or more of an enemy ship's masts that could "attract" and conduct lightning down the masts and lead it to lets say... the ship's powder magazine. (Whether the lightning is attracted by a wire or artificially generated, the point is for it to be seen just before the ship blows up.) Generating a few extra lightning bolts during a storm probably wouldn't wake up the OBS, especially if those bolts had very low amperage. (If the purpose were simply to blow up an enemy ship, then detonating a SNARC observational remote in the powder magazine would do the job just fine and the final battle in AMF would have been boooring...)

The object of using TF tech this way is to show the sailors that lightning, which the archangels created to remind mankind that its power is reserved to use only by the archangels, is suddenly blowing up NoG ships, or AoG supply depots, etc. The Allies goal in using TF tech would be to "Always plant the seed of doubt." Make the enemy soldiers and sailors ask questions like "If we fight for God, why are we losing all the time?" "If Merlin is a demon, where is the angel who the Writ says will appear to oppose him?" "Why is lightning blowing up all of us good guys?"

As for what TF tech could do to make a mast a more likely target for lightning without generating an electrical signal that the OBS would recognize as artificial, I'll leave that to the electrical engineers here on the forum. I'm sure OWL could come up with a purely passive way of attracting an ordinary lightning bolt so that it hits a mast which has a microscopic wire made of some TF handwavium attached to it that conducts the electricity directly to the ship's powder magazine, and the result will be either very bad or extremely entertaining, depending on which side you're on! :lol:

Thirsk's fleet would likely become extremely fearful of storms after seeing a few of their fellow ships hit by lightning and blown to splinters as a result. Should that sort of thing keep happening on a regular basis, they might start wondering why it is that even though they're fighting on the side of God and the Archangels, lightning, which is His reminder that the power of electricity is reserved for the use of the Archangels, keeps blowing up their ships on a regular basis... :twisted:

Pretty soon I doubt Thirsk could get his surviving crews to sail out of Gorath Bay on a clear day! At least not with a grain of gunpowder on board, which would slightly affect the fleet's ability to fight! :lol:

Since Merlin decided way back in OAR never to lie to anyone so they'd trust him, he simply won't have anything to say about the phenomenon. If God wants to blow up CoGA powder magazines on a regular basis, what business is it of a far off seijin?

I really like this idea, since it would cause even the most fanatic TLs among Thirsk's sailors to question why God was killing off the good guys who are fighting to defend Mother Church. As for the sailors who paid a bit less attention during Wednesday school in their youth, they'd think Shan-Wei had it in for the entire fleet. (Which of course she literally would, since she put OWL together from scavenged parts and his remotes would be wiring their ships to explode!) :lol:

Kudos for thinking outside of the box. Of course the arrival of the Haarahld VIIs in a few months are going to make this sort of skullduggery unnecessary, but it would have been highly entertaining if it had been used. Unfortunately, Merlin is the sort who would rather accept a ship's surrender than blow it up. He's such a spoilsport! :(

"Oh bother", said Pooh as he glanced through the airlock window at the helmet he'd forgotten to wear.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by Expert snuggler   » Wed Sep 02, 2015 1:43 pm

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Dang, this is a good forum. I'm using it as my reward for when I finish a chore.

Merlin has taken the field. There was the semaphore raid, and the series of reprisals that Rayno enumerated as reasons not to torture any more villagers. That last came awfully close to tipping his hand, since it involved things like slitting someone's throat in a guarded tent, and knowing exactly who to strike. Those reprisals were also humanitarian, not strategic.

If a ship carrying bullion to the Temple treasury disappears without a trace in good weather, the natural suspicion would be pirates. Clyntahn could then demoralize everyone involved by demanding to know who tipped off the pirates to the ship's route. Someone will confess. For extra credit, have a few identifiable gold bars "found" in Desnair. Then the Temple eliminates the Desnairian raiders.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by Duckk   » Wed Sep 02, 2015 2:04 pm

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It took the threat of a complete strategic reversal to get Merlin to intervene with the Canal Raid. The Church forces were certain to punch out Siddarmark, and nothing in Charis' conventional arsenal could hope to stop them long enough. At which point they lose not only Siddarmark, but most of the Empire's land forces as well. It was an all-costs objective, so Merlin had to intervene. And note that afterwards Merlin feels absolutely shitty about killing the semaphore crews, who had no chance at all. He's not interested in doing this on any sort of regular basis.

As for the retaliation for Sarkyn, that was simply a reminder that the Inquisition's excesses will be called into account. Merlin cannot hope to be everywhere to police the Inquisition. He's done nothing at all regarding the concentration camps, for example. This was a pointed message to Clyntahn to keep his worst impulses in check.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by McGuiness   » Wed Sep 02, 2015 2:11 pm

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Expert snuggler wrote:Dang, this is a good forum. I'm using it as my reward for when I finish a chore.

Merlin has taken the field. There was the semaphore raid, and the series of reprisals that Rayno enumerated as reasons not to torture any more villagers. That last came awfully close to tipping his hand, since it involved things like slitting someone's throat in a guarded tent, and knowing exactly who to strike. Those reprisals were also humanitarian, not strategic.

If a ship carrying bullion to the Temple treasury disappears without a trace in good weather, the natural suspicion would be pirates. Clyntahn could then demoralize everyone involved by demanding to know who tipped off the pirates to the ship's route. Someone will confess. For extra credit, have a few identifiable gold bars "found" in Desnair. Then the Temple eliminates the Desnairian raiders.
Your proposal certainly has lots of backstabbing and derring-do, along with the lovely side effect of having the Temple and Desnair at each other's throats.

Of course should the ICA cut the semaphore in North Watch the same way it's cut the road, the continent of Howard would be on its own except for documents delivered in person across the Gulf of Dohlar, and by September or October, the Haarahld VIIs will arrive in the Gulf, and that takes Desnair out of the war for good.

Not that the Desnairans and the local inquisitors won't enjoy killing each other off in job lots for fun and profit! :lol:

"Oh bother", said Pooh as he glanced through the airlock window at the helmet he'd forgotten to wear.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by McGuiness   » Wed Sep 02, 2015 2:36 pm

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Duckk wrote:It took the threat of a complete strategic reversal to get Merlin to intervene with the Canal Raid. The Church forces were certain to punch out Siddarmark, and nothing in Charis' conventional arsenal could hope to stop them long enough. At which point they lose not only Siddarmark, but most of the Empire's land forces as well. It was an all-costs objective, so Merlin had to intervene. And note that afterwards Merlin feels absolutely shitty about killing the semaphore crews, who had no chance at all. He's not interested in doing this on any sort of regular basis.

As for the retaliation for Sarkyn, that was simply a reminder that the Inquisition's excesses will be called into account. Merlin cannot hope to be everywhere to police the Inquisition. He's done nothing at all regarding the concentration camps, for example. This was a pointed message to Clyntahn to keep his worst impulses in check.
I actually believe everything you just said - although I'm not quite sure that the ICA couldn't have held at the Sylmahn Gap, and in Glacierheart. In fact, it might actually have been worse for the CoGA if the canal raid hadn't occurred, since they would have brought the MHoG forward, and they'd have kept the 30k pikemen at the Gap.

Church quartermasters or not, I don't see how they manage to feed the horde, which would have eaten its way through Wyrshym's entire food supply long before spring. DE still could have pulled off the pincer move in South March as well, so other than Wyrshym having more troops with more winter clothes but vastly insufficient food, and BGV guarding the Gap instead of clearing Midhold, we'd be pretty much at the same borders that currently hold.

So although it made for fun reading and caused Clyntahn to accidentally clear an aorta or two when he had a massive fit which sadly didn't end in a coronary, I'm not convinced that were it not for the Great Canal Raid, Wyrshym would have cracked through the Sylmahn Gap and even if he had, he might have simply trapped his army hundreds of miles further south from his supplies.

"Oh bother", said Pooh as he glanced through the airlock window at the helmet he'd forgotten to wear.
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Re: (SPOILERS) Rampant Speculation Based on "What If"
Post by n7axw   » Wed Sep 02, 2015 4:43 pm

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I think the ideas here are starting to drift off into never-never land...

How about this one... the Gbaba show up and help Clyntahn win the war because they've decided that enslaving humanity is more fitting than extirmination...

41 days and counting...

Don
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