Honorverse ramblings and musings

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:Ah, yes. At any rate, it had just occurred to me out of the blue that Haven didn't ever develop any revolutionary or unprecedented tech of its own. It's odd because, well... Shannon Foraker. I suppose that that truth is a testament to the non-stop pressure placed on Shannon that constantly thrust her into defensive mode by the development frenzy of Sonja Hemphill from the outset of Shannon sitting in the hot seat. A testament to Hemphill for certain. It could be viewed that the RMN couldn't allow the Peeps the development initiative either.

The RMN had lines on the general R&D of all humanity; lots and lots of funding; an excellent general education system; and specific pressure for pushing the envelope of military technology, led by some very talented people.

Shannon Foraker shouldn't be compared to the RMN R&D base. It's not fair, and it's a way to completely miss her talents and role. Foraker's talent has been to take crappy technology, crappy high school graduates, and what funding the recovering Republic's economy could put in her hands - in the middle of a civil war, mind you - and make all of that work in clever ways, breaking no new frontiers, against every bell and whistle the Star Empire could push through BuWeaps with Hemphill playing usher and cheerleader.

It's not pressure - it's coming at the situation from a radically different position, making use of considerably different talents and skills.

Indeed.

Though I wasn't actually comparing the two. As you said, that wouldn't be fair... would be an understatement. The playing field was far from level.

I was simply making an observation -- that the RHN hadn't developed anything wholly revolutionary. That all of their tech was "side-effect" tech. It wasn't Shannon's fault. Heck, she had inherited the hot-seat late in the game anyways. I suppose what it is, to me at least, is ironic. Ironic because we all know the potential of Foraker. We all can imagine a universe of innovation Shannon could have unleashed on the Haven sector given the development initiative that Hemphill never let go, nor could her Star Kingdom afford her to. That is Manticore's lifeboat -- it's superior R&D and technological prowess. But what good is it if Manticore gave up its initiative and allowed Haven to out develop her. Peep LACs would have been devastating against the RMN if they were unveiled first!

At any rate, there's a part of me that wonders about the marvels that Shannon could have developed if she hadn't taken that job 'running to play keep up.'

Also, what you didn't mention is the lifetime of experience Sonja and her support structure had over Shannon -- who had literally started from scratch.

cthia wrote:Yeah, Honor made the statement that Apollo's surface is just being scratched. I'd like it cut open, so to speak.

I'm sure I cannot be the only one thinking that one, as of yet untapped, potential of Apollo is sharing control links. Why can't an Apollo ship that is too far out to personally engage, yet close enough to tactically assist, send Apollo missiles in ballistically, timed just right that another ship can assume control. Perhaps a ship that has shot itself -- or which is predicted will shoot itself -- dry. And perhaps the missiles coming in with an unusual ballistic component (though short of particle destruction) would even have a better angle of attack.

Or ships could micro jump in, send in missiles on one course with the preplanned intent of another Apollo capable ship assuming control along with their own launch -- literally allowing one ship to mousetrap a fleet with two launches, while the original ship micro jumps on another bearing firing yet a third launch at a fleet. A triple mousetrap. Whew!

It deviates from the kiss principle, but Harrington in conjunction with Tourville and others could pull it off. And it would be a sweet maneuver! It could come in handy against the MAlign.

My two tactical brainstorming Apollo centicreds anyways.

Rebuttals?

First, this would only work outside the hyper limit, probably only against a target inside the hyper limit (who can't dodge by translating into hyper).

Second, I don't think that this would work more than a few times, before anyone outside the hyper limit who sees missiles heading toward them immediately hypers out. It's like the way the RMN came up with counter-measures to the RHN tactic of using missiles with dirty warheads to clear away the RMN ECM advantage or blind an incoming missile attack.

And finally, accurate micro-jumping is a much harder navigational problem. Combine that with minimum hyper generator cycle times and it becomes much harder to pull off. As you pointed out, it violates the KISS principle.

If the League falls, there will be businesses bankrupt all over the galaxy. Businesses floundering all over the galaxy. Currencies devalued all over the galaxy. Unemployment rates will soar. A galaxy-wide depression.

cthia wrote:If the League falls, there will be businesses bankrupt all over the galaxy. Businesses floundering all over the galaxy. Currencies devalued all over the galaxy. Unemployment rates will soar. A galaxy-wide depression.

This is the Honorverse. There wasn't that in Manticore despite the complete collapse of their trade routes (which also means financial data isn't getting to Manticore and the Manticore shipping lines owe enormous penalties), the loss of their entire manufacturing sector and the destruction of a decades worth of of Gross System Product.

For the SL/SLN to do the kind of thing that Shannon did using the Peep levels of tech, education of the basic volunteer/elisted/officers of the Peep Navy, first someone had to recognize her abilities and then put her in a position to develope her ideas.

At this point, it is not clear if that is going to happen any time soon withing the SLN. There has been to much of the Not-Invented-Here syndrome and too much of internal politics blocking the way. Sure, some of the highest levels of the SLN have said they want this development to happen but have we actually seen any of it starting up/branching out from existing R&D?

That is not to say that there aren't a number of people in the private sector that might be doing useful R&D but, again, where are tehy in the actual development? Places like Technodyne MIGHT actually nearing the ability to roll out prototypes but is it from SL citizen or Technodyne labs? We are reminded of where the Cataphracts weapons came from. They "suddenly" appeared on the scene, nominally from Techondyne. They were supplied to the rogue SS ships in the attack on Torch. There were shiploads of them delivered to the fleet to attack the Manticore Home System but Filerta "noticed" that though they were reputed to be from Technodyne, the shipping came from the Mesa system and he knew that Technodyne didn't have any manufacturing in that system AND that they would have had to been sent to his location BEFORE he was sent to his present location. So, did the Cataphracts actually come from the Alignment and were they made at Darius?

Shannon, aside from being brilliant in her own fields, did her early development in conjunction with her military and combat experience with the Peep fleets agains Manticore. That would be evolving and and often "field expedient" things with existing equipment being repurposed to deal with Manticorian tactics and tech advantage. It also helpes that she survived the process before getting pulled back R&D. To this point, only a very tiny number of the SLN people involved in shooting engagements with the RMN have both survived and been returned to SLN control. Of that number, how many of them have the actual experience (they were in tactical positions) the background or the base knowledge/skill sets to work on the problems or deficiencies in thier equipment or tactics?

Haven isn't likely to be sharing that information with the SLN. Neither is anybody else who is in the GA or was involved in the earlier Manticore Alliance against the Peeps.

Depending on where the Cataprhacts (all the versions) came from, the SLN might not even be able to provide the Cataphract tech to civilian and military teams as one of the starting points for weapons and tactic development. Sure, the FF Admiral at Zunker probably has wonderfull tactical scans of what RMN shot at him- and targeted his wedges- since all his ships survived- but will it be enough to provide any real clue how it was done?

Heck, the SLN probably doesn't have any real grip on just what makes the RHN and RMN LACs such a wildly different sets of platforms and weapons sets than anything in the SLN.

My curious cat is acting up again.

An SD, for instance, give mind boggling numbers of people needed to crew it. I'm sure that those numbers account for the different shifts. What are the shifts of an SD, two twelve hour shifts, or three eight hour shifts? Staff seem to be on a twelve hour shift, with Honor seeing sixteen-plus at times -- no rest for the weary. Also, on Honor's ships, everyone was most of the time on a 24-hour red-eye ride, since missiles were always flying. You want your personnel rotated out and kept fresh. No?

Can an ex-navy hand chime in on shifts so that I might get an idea?

On the forts, I think I recall three shifts -- gold, silver and ???

At All Costs

"I agree, too," Honor said. "But two things. First, I want to start rolling pods now. Use their onboard tractors to limpet them to the hulls. I want a third of our total pod loadout out there, if we can manage it."

Why has this tactic never been utilized before? Even by Harrington? Would it have been available to the Peeps in the Battle of Manticore? Then they'd not had to tip their hand that something was amiss by decelerating to roll pods (not that D'Orville could figure out that they were deploying pods in massive numbers) but still. And in the Peeps case, a lower velocity would have been fine -- a cautious commit lest an abort is needed.

It seems to have other desirable effects as well. Yet this is the only incident, IINM, it was deployed. Which begs to surmise some inherent downsides. Yet I can't think of any. Rolled pods are as a cocked gun; why hyper in all half-cocked err uncocked?

cthia wrote:Why has this tactic never been utilized before? Even by Harrington? Would it have been available to the Peeps in the Battle of Manticore? Then they'd not had to tip their hand that something was amiss by decelerating to roll pods (not that D'Orville could figure out that they were deploying pods in massive numbers) but still. And in the Peeps case, a lower velocity would have been fine -- a cautious commit lest an abort is needed.

It seems to have other desirable effects as well. Yet this is the only incident, IINM, it was deployed. Which begs to surmise some inherent downsides. Yet I can't think of any. Rolled pods are as a cocked gun; why hyper in all half-cocked err uncocked?

Two things.
Apollo - this was the first large scale Apollo fleet.

Plot - 3rd fleet just had the crack smoking Admiral preventing the entire fleet from rolling pods as part of their pe-battle preparation.

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:Why has this tactic never been utilized before? Even by Harrington? Would it have been available to the Peeps in the Battle of Manticore? Then they'd not had to tip their hand that something was amiss by decelerating to roll pods (not that D'Orville could figure out that they were deploying pods in massive numbers) but still. And in the Peeps case, a lower velocity would have been fine -- a cautious commit lest an abort is needed.

It seems to have other desirable effects as well. Yet this is the only incident, IINM, it was deployed. Which begs to surmise some inherent downsides. Yet I can't think of any. Rolled pods are as a cocked gun; why hyper in all half-cocked err uncocked?

Two things.
Apollo - this was the first large scale Apollo fleet.

Plot - 3rd fleet just had the crack smoking Admiral preventing the entire fleet from rolling pods as part of their pe-battle preparation.

Another point: The RHN's pods didn't have the RMN's built-in tractor beam, so they were forced to use the donkey. That meant that pods could not be tractored to the ships hull, because the donkey had all the extra tractor beams, not the ships. Keep in mind that the PRN's battleships only could tractor 11 pods against the ship's hull--and they had more tractors on a tonnage basis than any other ship in PRN service.

Echoes of Honor, Chapter 33 wrote:In keeping with that recommendation, she'd also argued that the retention of their own ships' full acceleration capability was more important than putting the maximum possible number of pods in space. That liveliness in maneuver, after all, was the one advantage battleships held over ships of the wall, and she refused to throw it away. So rather than tow the pods astern, she'd suggested, they should take a page from the Manties' book in the Fourth Battle of Yeltsin and tractor the pods inside the wedges of their battleships, where they would have no effect on their acceleration curves. Their battlecruisers could tractor only two pods inside their wedges, and the heavy cruisers and destroyers lacked the tractors and wedge depth to tractor any inside at all, but that was fine with her.
Some of the squadron ops officers had hit the deckhead at the very suggestion, but she had simply waited them out with a cold, almost mechanical patience. And when the hubbub had settled, she'd pointed out that battleships had been designed as general purpose workhorses, which meant, among other things, that they had more tractors on a ton-for-ton basis than any other ship type in the Republican order of battle. Each of them could tractor eleven pods— more than most superdreadnoughts, actually—tight in against their hulls. That meant that when they actually deployed them, they could still put over forty-two hundred missiles into space at once, with another three hundred eighty from the battlecruisers. In the meantime, their entire task force's ability to maneuver at full acceleration would not only make them fleeter of foot but might actually convince the defenders that they hadn't brought along any pods until it was too late.

Boldface is my emphasis.

Snipped kzt's whole post out to meet the nesting limit.

Vince wrote:

cthia wrote:Why has this tactic never been utilized before? Even by Harrington? Would it have been available to the Peeps in the Battle of Manticore? Then they'd not had to tip their hand that something was amiss by decelerating to roll pods (not that D'Orville could figure out that they were deploying pods in massive numbers) but still. And in the Peeps case, a lower velocity would have been fine -- a cautious commit lest an abort is needed.

It seems to have other desirable effects as well. Yet this is the only incident, IINM, it was deployed. Which begs to surmise some inherent downsides. Yet I can't think of any. Rolled pods are as a cocked gun; why hyper in all half-cocked err uncocked?

Another point: The RHN's pods didn't have the RMN's built-in tractor beam, so they were forced to use the donkey. That meant that pods could not be tractored to the ships hull, because the donkey had all the extra tractor beams, not the ships. Keep in mind that the PRN's battleships only could tractor 11 pods against the ship's hull--and they had more tractors on a tonnage basis than any other ship in PRN service.

Yes, the tactic wasn't available to the Peeps because the technology that enabled it wasn't available to them.

The Donkey was an inspired bit of lateral thinking to largely offset the advantage of self-tractoring pods. And without the cost and complexity of mounting a major power source (micro-fusion reactor) into each pod. But it's not quite as flexible; plus the donkey pods are a bigger impact on pods carried than integral tractors.
But as you said they don't enable limpeting pods directly to the hull; so you do suffer acceleration reduction when Donkeying non-trivial numbers of pods.