Malign contingency Strats and Tacts

Samman wrote:Who needs a star system? They could build habitats between two stars right in the middle of GA territory as long as they are out of the range of the system based scanners.

That's been discussed before. I happen to think it's a viable solution (at least if it's in the alpha band of hyperspace rather than normal space) but most of the other fans seem to think it's a real dog of an idea.

The big issue, for me at least, is how much of the MAlign does RFC want to leave behind for the second series that he's mentioned might happen; and how is he going to wrap up the current series so that it's not obvious that the core of the MAlign managed to avoid the axe.

The problem with leaving the RF alone is that Felix is only 10 ly from Mannerheim, and that's the junction that leads to Darius. If they find and neutralize Darius, and I don't see how they can avoid doing that to wrap up this series, then that implicates Mannerheim, which in turn implicates the rest of the RF.

Of course, he could simply create another Big Bad for the second series.

JohnRoth wrote:

Samman wrote:Who needs a star system? They could build habitats between two stars right in the middle of GA territory as long as they are out of the range of the system based scanners.

That's been discussed before. I happen to think it's a viable solution (at least if it's in the alpha band of hyperspace rather than normal space) but most of the other fans seem to think it's a real dog of an idea.

I'm not going to argue either way, But if you want to throw Rogue planets and habitats in the middle of nowhere into the search calculation, unless every searching ship is captained by clones of Hercules, it is an impossible task.

Theemile wrote:Just in the 50 light year radius around Sol, there are roughly 2000 stars in ~1400 systems. If you assume that it takes 1 ship, 1 week to do a plausible, basic survey of a system, and there are 2 days travel time between systems, it would take that ship 34 years.

I would assume that a basic survey of the system takes basically zero time. Are there electromagnetic emissions in an unoccupied system? No--not here. Yes, drop a recon drone to go have a look, pick it up later. Occupied system? Drop a more sophisticated data-sniffer and come back for it later. Most systems won't need revisiting.

Ignoring time to coordinate, this would take 201,000 ship years to search using the above numbers. If we're correct, that number is probably close to the sum of every hyper capable ship in the honorverse - or more.

More like 50k. If the Malign is going to lie doggo for generations they certainly have those ship-years to find them.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Theemile wrote:Just in the 50 light year radius around Sol, there are roughly 2000 stars in ~1400 systems. If you assume that it takes 1 ship, 1 week to do a plausible, basic survey of a system, and there are 2 days travel time between systems, it would take that ship 34 years.

I would assume that a basic survey of the system takes basically zero time. Are there electromagnetic emissions in an unoccupied system? No--not here. Yes, drop a recon drone to go have a look, pick it up later. Occupied system? Drop a more sophisticated data-sniffer and come back for it later. Most systems won't need revisiting.

Ignoring time to coordinate, this would take 201,000 ship years to search using the above numbers. If we're correct, that number is probably close to the sum of every hyper capable ship in the honorverse - or more.

More like 50k. If the Malign is going to lie doggo for generations they certainly have those ship-years to find them.

Where are you getting zero time? In every book, It takes hours to get data on planets they know the positions of. If there is any kind of emcom going on, or habitats in the outsystem, you need to take a serious look, then you need to sift the wheat from the chaff. Is it an "lost" colony? A mining outpost? Anoither survey ship? A derilict? a failed colony? Just some minor slavers or pirates?

Check out the short story Service of the, Sword it is plausible for a Heavy Cruiser to spend days or weeks surveying a system.

David once said that for every dot on his map, there are at least 50 other systems with human habitations, past or present.

This isn't an easy task.

Theemile wrote:Where are you getting zero time? In every book, It takes hours to get data on planets they know the positions of. If there is any kind of emcom going on, or habitats in the outsystem, you need to take a serious look, then you need to sift the wheat from the chaff. Is it an "lost" colony? A mining outpost? Anoither survey ship? A derilict? a failed colony? Just some minor slavers or pirates?

Which brings up a point that's been neglected here - The Alignment in hiding isn't going to be relying on simply no one ever reaching their star system(s) to take a look. (Well, not unless they can keep people practically away from the system anyway, like Darius.) They will be perfectly available to be seen - but not recognized as the Mesan Alignment. It worked for centuries on Mesa, after all, and for the RF sleeper families.

The Alignment, apart from Darius, represents a rather small number of people. They've hidden inside planetary populations they could manipulate well enough to serve their goals. It's a form of concealment they are likely to re-adopt as needed, making searching for them not a naval activity at all but an investigative one. The haystack remains astronomically large, of course, but it's going to be sifting through humans much less than blips in star systems.

Why visiting every System with a ship? Don´t Forget: at the beginning of the space colonisation they use "Freezer" ships! And they send These ships only to star System, where they expect habitable planets! And this habitable are found by telescopes and sensors!

So, if you guess, that the Alignement will have an habitable planet you have to use all avilable telescopes to search all planet System were no humans living. If you delete all settled Systems from your list, all Systems where life is imposssible (to powerfull sun, a blackhole or a Quasar in the neighborhood...) you will get much better chances to find your target.

Dissapearing is no Option for the Alingnement. It would be only a matter of time til the Alliance will find them.

Surely the MAlign will make another mistake. Like the one already made by tipping their hand as they did to the GA. Haven suspected them long before Manticore. Zilwicki and Cachat compounded their problem.

The way I see it, Oyster Bay was somewhat of a mistake! It awakened the eyes and formed a sleeping giant, the GA. I think that Oyster Bay should have been aimed at the League and made to look like Manticore was the culprit. The League was plenty shortsighted and gullible enough and were already anti-Manticoran enough for that kind of subterfuge to have worked. As a result, their tech would not have been exposed to Manticore. And it would have achieved the same results of a SLN/RMN war.

Point being, they'll make another mistake. Superiority complexes drive mistakes. The Japanese's own Oyster Bay on a few Pearls in the Harbor was the exact same mistake. They could have destroyed the entire fleet had it been out to sea.

All in lil' ol' me's opinion, of course.

Maldorian wrote:Why visiting every System with a ship? Don´t Forget: at the beginning of the space colonisation they use "Freezer" ships! And they send These ships only to star System, where they expect habitable planets! And this habitable are found by telescopes and sensors!

So, if you guess, that the Alignement will have an habitable planet you have to use all avilable telescopes to search all planet System were no humans living. If you delete all settled Systems from your list, all Systems where life is imposssible (to powerfull sun, a blackhole or a Quasar in the neighborhood...) you will get much better chances to find your target.

Dissapearing is no Option for the Alingnement. It would be only a matter of time til the Alliance will find them.

There is no requirement for people to live on a habitable world. There are entire populations living in artificial habitats. Technodyne of Yildun's headquarters are in such a system. Heck, Grayson could also technically qualify as uninhabitable.

Furthermore, while the beginning of the Post Diaspora era started colonization with what little could be gleaned from a telescope, that hasn't been the case ever since hyper travel was invented. You're looking at centuries of planetary surveys performed by crews actually visiting the planet. This is also further compounded by the fact that the invention of the Warshawski sail as well as reliable grav wave detectors travel has immensely sped up travel times, so you don't even need cryo sleeper ships.

The Renaissance Factor is the ideal blind to advance the Alignment's plans, that is why they did it. It's future rational for existence is as a series of nodes around which fragments of the SL can reform in a quest for preservation from the chaos that the fall and fragment of the League is expected to bring.

The RF does NOT have to become actual allies of the GA. It's components only need to establish trade relations with both Haven and Manticore plus other powerful polities outside of the Core and the fringes of the SL. Mannerheim is working quietly to gain ownership of the system with the secret wormhole and probably will not expose the existence of that wormhole. They don't need to. If they actualy hold the ownership of the system they can both use it as a working-up area and begin to expand whatever type of industrial development they need to enhance their military and various commercial ventures. Don't recall that there is a habitable planet in the system but they don't need one.

One option (and the design) for the Renaissance Factor is "just" to grow into a strong alliance of systems and that is "eventually". The underlying rational is that the various systems in the RF will start implementing a lot of the Alignment's plans of shifting of various ethical parameters in medical and other areas. None of that should be obvious to people like Beowulf and Manticore or even Torch should they be looking for them. It starts quietly and just grows. It will be introduced into the education and training systems and institutions in those systems (which join the various RB proto-members) which don't adopt the Alignment changes will just not get supported by the governments or various "charitable" organizations that would normally support schools and research. Don't have to do a lot of "wet work", just academic dirty tricks and impediments to hold them back and divert talent to the "proper" institutions.
Subversion, quiet subversion is the key. The Alignment could sink back into the shadows and wait. Truly, they never need to come out into the open once the RF gets running. Why bother, they will be the puppet-masters.