The road to Five Forks & Semaphores [HFQ spoiler]

>In peace time, if there're no messages coming in, the natural conclusion is that nobody has anything to say, not that the system is broken.

Or that the crew are hung over, or have food poisoning, or that the gears are stuck or stripped or snapped. I won't argue those are likely, just that the semaphore network is so critical to peacetime commerce and Church operations that it should be run with reliability and care like Ma Bell.

"Nobody has anything to say" is not a natural conclusion for a long distance relatively high speed network with no competition.

Most cases we have seen are so far are taking out towers to prevent SPECIFIC information being passed. Knowing that somthing is happening is good but if they deny you specifics you are reacting blind.

Yes the AoG will know "Somthing" is happening but what it is is unknown. Go read a history of the civil war for how little use knowing "They cut my telegraph line" is for determining what the hell is actually going on.

If you do pre-programme a reaction that says "Contact nearest army headquarters who marches to your aid" when you see the next station in the chain on fire is just asking for chaos from raiders constantly pulling your forces out of position by burning a couple of stations.

From the description of the system that Himself has provided, there's no single point of mechanical failure. Failures that limit the signal set are in fact probably so common that working around them is routine - and the next station up the line can _see_ you doing it. Illnesses that can incapacitate the entire crew to the point that not one of them can crawl out to the controls and set a help signal, simultaneously and instantaneously, are the stuff of fiction. Admittedly, this is fiction, but Himself has more self-respect than that. And remember, the system is staffed, at least on main lines, 26/5, because it does have night signalling capability for when it's needed - and nobody will know ahead of time that a message that urgent is on the way. "They all died in their sleep" ain't gonna happen under normal conditions. And as I said, the balance of the evidence is that they do, in fact, realise that these aren't normal conditions, and are paying more attention to whether the guys down the line appear to be sleeping in.

Expert snuggler wrote:>In peace time, if there're no messages coming in, the natural conclusion is that nobody has anything to say, not that the system is broken.

Or that the crew are hung over, or have food poisoning, or that the gears are stuck or stripped or snapped. I won't argue those are likely, just that the semaphore network is so critical to peacetime commerce and Church operations that it should be run with reliability and care like Ma Bell.

"Nobody has anything to say" is not a natural conclusion for a long distance relatively high speed network with no competition.

Silverwall wrote:Most cases we have seen are so far are taking out towers to prevent SPECIFIC information being passed. Knowing that somthing is happening is good but if they deny you specifics you are reacting blind.

Yes the AoG will know "Somthing" is happening but what it is is unknown. Go read a history of the civil war for how little use knowing "They cut my telegraph line" is for determining what the hell is actually going on.

If you do pre-programme a reaction that says "Contact nearest army headquarters who marches to your aid" when you see the next station in the chain on fire is just asking for chaos from raiders constantly pulling your forces out of position by burning a couple of stations.

As you say, 'they cut my line' is not very informative. But with the semaphore system and a reasonable protocol you can say 'they cut my line at XX at midday'. If you then get 'they cut my line at YY' and then 'they cut my line at ZZ' and each of those is getting rapidly nearer at marching speed, you can be pretty sure that something hostile this way comes!

I can understand Semaphore watches not being manned all day every day (especially in a northern mainland winter) because they're crewed by human beings. But even with limited watch times, the personnel on duty should be able to spot things like destroyed semaphore towers (especially if the destruction is still going on like if they're burning down) even if said destruction took place while they weren't watching. And if they spot destroyed/captured neighboring towers, they should damn well report it.

But all the evidence suggests they DON'T report it, which is how things like the Great Canal Raid and Green Valley's advance goes undetected.

Edit: Because things like field commanders wondering why they didn't hear about ironclads coming up their canals with so little warning wouldn't happen if they knew the semaphore towers that could have warned him were out of commission.

evilauthor wrote:I can understand Semaphore watches not being manned all day every day (especially in a northern mainland winter) because they're crewed by human beings. But even with limited watch times, the personnel on duty should be able to spot things like destroyed semaphore towers (especially if the destruction is still going on like if they're burning down) even if said destruction took place while they weren't watching. And if they spot destroyed/captured neighboring towers, they should damn well report it.

But all the evidence suggests they DON'T report it, which is how things like the Great Canal Raid and Green Valley's advance goes undetected.

Edit: Because things like field commanders wondering why they didn't hear about ironclads coming up their canals with so little warning wouldn't happen if they knew the semaphore towers that could have warned him were out of commission.

Surely they would have to have been manned all the time whenever the sight lines are clear, just in case an emergency signal come in.

Who would want to explain to the inquisition 'Ah well, that vital signal was held up/lost by us because we were keeping warm in the basement!?

The great canal raid was successful because of a combination of:
1)unprecendented speed, Delthak at al moving far faster than marching troops - it was what - 3,4 days from their first contact with COGA to arriving at Guarnak after all.
2)suprise - no one had ever done this before, so no one was expecting or had even contemplated such a thing
3)Merlin breaking the line at several key points along the line before Guarnak, so that identification of something coming nearer was not a possibility.

The semaphore network only functions in the daytime during good weather. All Charis has to do is infiltrate the semaphore base at night and take out the workers. By the time morning rolls around, The scout snipers have left leaving behind a small squad of soldiers to protect the semaphore station from being retaken.

Thanks to the seijin network, they even have the code books to read all the messages and they simply hold on to any messages reporting the position of Charisian troops.

The one thing Charis does not want to do is destroy the semaphore stations since they will soon need them themselves.

It's not as if Charis has to take every semaphore station between Five forks and Guarnak, just the ones that are close to their line of advance.

isaac_newton wrote:3)Merlin breaking the line at several key points along the line before Guarnak, so that identification of something coming nearer was not a possibility.

Merlin left behind BURNING BUILDINGS that somehow went unreported. Even if Wyrshym (or was it Barnabas?) didn't get the warning about the Ironclad coming up the canal, he should have at least heard about the destruction of the nearest semaphore tower.

Yet textev says he wondered how the Ironclad could get so close with him hearing about it until it was less than a day out. But if he knew about the semaphore line being down, he wouldn't need to wonder; he'd KNOW why he didn't get the warning about the ironclad earlier.

The ironclad might be fast, but semaphore messages are still far faster. If they weren't, Merlin wouldn't have needed to take out the towers to begin with.

[quote="evilauthor"]SNIP

Yet textev says he wondered how the Ironclad could get so close with him hearing about it until it was less than a day out. But if he knew about the semaphore line being down, he wouldn't need to wonder; he'd KNOW why he didn't get the warning about the ironclad earlier.

SNIP [quote]

Ah - I see what you mean.

When I read that bit originally, my understanding was that he was wondering why people had not used other methods, e.g. wyverns, to pass on the warning

Easternmystic wrote:The semaphore network only functions in the daytime during good weather. All Charis has to do is infiltrate the semaphore base at night and take out the workers. By the time morning rolls around, The scout snipers have left leaving behind a small squad of soldiers to protect the semaphore station from being retaken.

Thanks to the seijin network, they even have the code books to read all the messages and they simply hold on to any messages reporting the position of Charisian troops.

The one thing Charis does not want to do is destroy the semaphore stations since they will soon need them themselves.

It's not as if Charis has to take every semaphore station between Five forks and Guarnak, just the ones that are close to their line of advance.

Why would the network only work at daytime? A light signal at night is even better visible than a mere flag in daytime.

And a general reply to all the "the church never needed a semaphor-cut warning", thats nonsense. Or at the very least the poster overlooked that the church isnt merely a church, its a nation and big business as well, and in both of these functions they need to know which message was recieved and which wasnt.
They need such a warning every year, and probably several times each year at that. The semaphor line is cut every damn winter even if not a single tower itself fails, and they need to know about it.
At the very least there's a lot of money on the line ( ), not only for the church itself, but for the civilians paying the church to use the semaphors as well.

Not to mention the already discussed failures that actually need someone to go and repair stuff.

So even if the church communication officer is a military moron, standard procedures for civilian use would already include a "next tower out of communication, please use alternate route or wait till spring" protocoll. And if 'winter' suddenly arives in the form of an army, the officers that arnt complete morons should be able to add 2 + 2. Especially if no other chains report said 'winter'.