Spoiler Alert!!! New book possibilities/probabilities

SYED wrote:They cant go after the alignement membership openly, but i bet they each happen to have a developed navy, with suitable logistical support and military infrastructure. They could target military shipyards of such systems, to ensure the leahue does not get any support.

Here's the thing. These systems won't be supporting the league so the GA has no reason to target them

Roguevictory wrote:

SYED wrote:They cant go after the alignement membership openly, but i bet they each happen to have a developed navy, with suitable logistical support and military infrastructure. They could target military shipyards of such systems, to ensure the leahue does not get any support.

Here's the thing. These systems won't be supporting the league so the GA has no reason to target them

This could be taken a step further.

If the RF members (or some of them) pick the right moment to declare independence from the league and include in that "Declaration of Independence" language that speaks towards the corruption of Sol, the behavior of the OFS, the power of Transtellers, and the manipulation of the Mesan's behind the scenes as among the many reasons they are going their own way, the GA would likely encourage and help them. Because after all, doesn't the GA want systems to break from the SL?

The GA is highly unlikely to help by the giving of military technologies and other similar support (although if requested they probably would be happy to sell any system an old Solly SD for a heavy discount!). More likely is the encouraging of trade and having convoy escorts periodically visit (if requested) to discourage pirates.

Thus, we may see the GA actually taking steps to help and encourage the formation of the RF due to the appearance of the RF and the secrecy of the true goal.

It seems reasonable to assume that the alliance will attempt to control or at least every known terminii. It gives a huge advantage, every one would want to be their friend.
Those RF worlds are likely to be somewhere in the core or even the shell. So surrounded by league members or independent systems. It is commonly believed there will be conflicts between these worlds, as old grudges and disagreement become open conflicts.

JohnRoth wrote:

JustCurious wrote:The GA believes that the MA has a Bolthole equivalent. They don't know whether it is in a system known to be inhabited but whose significance is not recognized or in a system not known to be inhabited.
I think they also know enough about the spider drive to make some informed guesses about what the LDs will be like. I think they know that for spider drive ships size does not affect acceleration And I think they know that they cannot have sidewalls or wedges. Put these together and you would not be surprised if the MA built huge very heavily armoured ships. Of course the MA could have gone in the opposite direction and accepted the fragility of individual units and gone for large numbers of smaller ships. This would have led to larger personnel requirements and the MA has a smaller manpower pool than its opponents. It also cannot afford heavy personnel losses. Thus I expect the LDs will not be a huge surprise.

You're running ahead of the data. At this point, all the GA knows about the Spider Drive is what they could deduce from the Oyster Bay attack and what Herlander Simoes could tell them, which was more than nothing, but he didn't actually work on the Spider Drive; his specialty was the Streak Drive.

They also got information from McBride, not detailed but enough to have a good idea of the general nature and limitations of the assassination nanotech. We don't know how much information the GA have about MA innovations but I get the impression that it is up to the level of generality in the book descriptions for the spider drive and the nanotech viruses and and considerably beyond that for the streak drive. They will probably be able to improve the streak drive by reducing its size. Manticore has more experience than the MA at miniaturizing equipment. They probably don't have enough knowledge to make effective detectors for spider drive ships or to detect and neutralize the nanothech.
We'll see in the next book just how much the GA knows.

Hello,

JustCurious wrote:We'll see in the next book just how much the GA knows.

hopefully soon.
Please Mr. Weber give us new stuff

George J. Smith wrote:RFC said that Beowulf would lose about 10,000,000 in the forthcoming book.

My thought is, does Beowulf have such a large number of people working in the orbital stations that 10,000,000 could be killed without and Erdani Edict violation?

IIRC Manticore lost around 5,000,000 from their orbital stations as a result of the Yawata strike.

A few points...

1) It's the Solarian League who created - and enforces - the Eridani Edict. If *they* violate it themselves, it's not like there's anyone who could realistically "punish" them for doing so. This could end up being one of those "do as I say, not as I do" situations.

2) Beowulf has been around much longer than Manticore. We don't really know much about the Beowulf system, so it's hard to say how much in the way of space-based infrastructure there actually is there. There could be habitats, space docks, and who knows what else. Plus asteroid mining and refining. Remember, the total population of a core world system tends to be high.

SYED wrote:The thing is major fleet movements in hyper are detectable.

Actually, based on earlier novels in the series, ships can only be detected by detection gear in their own dimension ie n-space or hyperspace. For example, the "hyper footprint" that system detectors pick up is only seen once the ships cross the hyper wall into normal space. If one looks back to ART, for example, Filareta notes that he *should* have left a few scouts behind in hyper to pick up the Havenite detachment; rather than having them surprise him by transiting behind him, where his sensors couldn't see them until they hit N-space. Similarly in HAE, while the Havenite cruiser could "see" Artemis and Wayfarer in hyper in front of it, it too was in hyper. And the plan for Artemis to escape was to translate down into n-space where the cruiser still in hyper wouldn't detect her.

I must admit it seems strange that if the grav stresses the impellor drive creates are FTL detectable, that they can't be detected in multiple dimensions, but so far there's no mention of that capability in any of the previous novels.

The only novels of David's that I've read where vessels going faster than light can be detected in normal space were the Dahak series and the Fury series, neither of which is set in the Honorverse.

The league military seems all aimed at the alliance excerpt, for a small group seriously considering Mesa as a threat. The thing is even if they believe in the threat, what can they honestly do? They are mentioned for a reason, they are sure to mess with the alignment somehow.

OrlandoNative wrote:Actually, based on earlier novels in the series, ships can only be detected by detection gear in their own dimension ie n-space or hyperspace. For example, the "hyper footprint" that system detectors pick up is only seen once the ships cross the hyper wall into normal space. If one looks back to ART, for example, Filareta notes that he *should* have left a few scouts behind in hyper to pick up the Havenite detachment; rather than having them surprise him by transiting behind him, where his sensors couldn't see them until they hit N-space. Similarly in HAE, while the Havenite cruiser could "see" Artemis and Wayfarer in hyper in front of it, it too was in hyper. And the plan for Artemis to escape was to translate down into n-space where the cruiser still in hyper wouldn't detect her.

I must admit it seems strange that if the grav stresses the impellor drive creates are FTL detectable, that they can't be detected in multiple dimensions, but so far there's no mention of that capability in any of the previous novels.

It does fit in fairly well with the expanded explanation for the FTL detection mechanism.

The wedge (or sail) couples to (and pulls power from) the 'underside' of the next higher hyperwall (so in n-space the alpha wall). That causes 'ripples' that propagate away from the ship along that side of the hyperwall; at the speed of light in that hyper band (so 62x c in n-space). But the ship doesn't couple to the other side of the wall; the side that can be see from within that next set of hyper bands.


But still, that's all just in-universe explanation for what you already said - that you have to be in the same hyperband as a ship to be able to detect it.

OrlandoNative wrote:1) It's the Solarian League who created - and enforces - the Eridani Edict. If *they* violate it themselves, it's not like there's anyone who could realistically "punish" them for doing so. This could end up being one of those "do as I say, not as I do" situations.

The League has no interest in violating the Eridani Edict. A universe where it's violated is not a good one for the human race, most of which currently are League citizens.