Honorverse ramblings and musings

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:I'm curious as to the future state of the Cherwell Convention. It was one of the most stringent of the League's anti-piracy treaties. How will it hold up in the face of a fallen League? How will it be amended in the light of an absent signatory and amended to deal with piracy on steroids? I see the Silesian Confederacy morphing into an even worse hell-hole.

I wouldn't worry about Cherwell too much. The League was never as hell-bent on enforcing it as Manticore and Haven were - and with Mesa's conquest, the slave trade has taken a serious blow. Indeed, there's a relatively new player even more vigorous about enforcing the Convention: Torch. The GA and its associated powers are all better(and more consistent) than the League - which arguably helped to faciliate slave trade at times, especially by tolerating Mesa's existence for so long.

IIRC, Cherwell appeared to merely extend some previously existing interstellar agreement concerning pirates to include slavers. That older agreement has pretty much been static and probably ingrained in "interstellar law" for literally centuries, possibly even millennia, to the point that Admiral Gold Peak had the legal right to execute every Solarian crewer in Crandall's task force.

The other named agreement I can think of are the Deneb Accords - more or less an overhauled Geneva Convention. This does not rely on the League's continued existence any more than the Geneva Conventions rely on Switzerland's existence.

The only thing disturbed by a League collapse is the Eridani Edict, which was an unilateral declaration specifically authorising the SLN to take action against people who bombed planets without first controlling the orbits and calling for its surrender.

Jonathan_S has got it right about Silesia; it can't possibly backslide, not with Admiral Sarnow and the forces at his disposal - he has a substantial portion of the RMN's legacy subwallers leavened with modern cruisers and system-defense LACs. And he's only covering half - his Andermani counterpart has the other half, probably covered by an even heavier Andermani force. Unless the SEM and AE goes to war, Silesia would be a good place to ride out the League war.

I was only worried about it in a legal manner. Could the legality of it be challenged once its main signatory is now defunct?

And is it time for Torch to legally sign on a newly revised version?

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:Freighters don't have tractors do they?

Every ship has tractors - it's how they dock.

Doh!

Please don't tell anyone that I thought they used big mechanical clamps. I'll deny it in court.

JeffEngel wrote:Well - if the convoy members had even minute individual firepower, they'd represent a deterrent to piracy without an escort. Otherwise, without an escort, they're an anti-piracy measure in the sense that they give the pirates far fewer places where they can find a freighter per unit time.

The greatest threat from an un-escorted and unarmed convoy is witnesses. A pirate's best protection is remaining unidentified/unidentifiable; a convoy with just one more ships than the pirate(s) can capture can provide sensor data and other information to those who would search out and destroy pirates.

That's not a perfect deterrent, but it is a consideration for a pirate that prefers picking off solo merchants, and one can never be positive that a convoy is unarmed -- whether the potential armed merchant ships are official "Q-ships" or just privately owned armed merchants like Pirate's Bane. In fact, the "safe bet" for a pirate is that any convoy is protected in some way.

cthia wrote:I'm conceiving of a new age of booty-lootin' whereby piracy has become so lucrative, without the fear of the League and a GA that has destroyed most of each other's military that even pirates have stepped up their game because it has become so lucrative. Steal from the rich and sell to the poor. If the average pirate manages to expand the number of ships at its disposal to that of privateers, and privateers have become small navies by early era standards... ? All from misappropriated ships and crazy-mad revenue. And a target-rich environment

There's really no way to foretell what sort of trade environment is going to shake out after the fall of the league.

There will be a large number of former SLN ships -- especially below the wall -- and some will form into mercenary fleets contracting to protect commerce. Some will turn pirate or conquistador and make commerce protection necessary in some sectors. Some will be absorbed into various system defense forces.

In large part, piracy is going to be a local problem and only of concern to the story-line where it impacts Manticoran, and GA commerce or a mutual defense treaty partner. Some regions are going to have regular convoy routes covering the main population centers, and others merchant ships will travel solo into the hinterlands without excessive worry.

I get the impression that Piracy has not been the sole province of Silesia, being a hazard in many parts of the verge and even some protectorate sectors of OFS. I suspect that the same crazy-quilt pattern of safe sectors and pirate infestations is going to extend through former League space.

i suspect piracy is quite widespread but silesa was something of a locus, due to its ineffective government/navy and becuase RFC needed it to be

cthia wrote:Personally, I worry that the GA may be nibbling on more than it can chew. There are going to be hiccups. First, I think that quintet of Mandarins are going to bail out faster than our troubled banking systems. They'll take with them as much money as they can. And they'll champion illegal trades and deals to make even more fast money. They will be the source of misappropriated SLN hardware. Why shouldn't they?.

The GA and particulary Manticore is well aware of what they are biting off. There is Honor's persentation of the Harrington Doctrine as a minimum. Haven has bought into this.

The GA (and friends) NEED the League to shatter. They will have to deal with the results and the results will be messy in the extreme. The thrust of the Harrington Doctrine is to assist in the breakup of the League and then deal with the resulting pieces on whatever basis nessisary to promote (Secure) peace with the fragments. Manticore would HOPE to not have to deal with several pieces ganging up on Manticoe at the same time. That is a possibility, particulary with the RF as an Alignment tool to both gather in SL fragments and implant it's social and ethical programs into Human Space.

One of the pirate problems, post League, is pirate squadrons or fleets such as the one Saganami lost his life engaging to save his convoy. Then there will be othe government sponsored pirates not to metion those which spriing up with converted/modifeid merchant hulls

It may be that the GA evolves a patrol & convoy policy for external areas (beyond Manticore, Haven, Beowulf, Alderman and Erwhon controlled space) seperate and more military heavy than the stuff within the GA (and friends) area. That might be with taking the view of the former SL area as a sea of Silesia type states and dealing with it accordingly. It would mean running GA (etc) warships either/and on patrol and direct convoy protection outside the GA. A diplomatic challange to say the least if you want to avoid stamping on touchy System governmenets who either are ashamed/offended that they can't do the job themselves or who have "alternative agendas".

Fun times:)

Weird Harold wrote:I get the impression that Piracy has not been the sole province of Silesia, being a hazard in many parts of the verge and even some protectorate sectors of OFS. I suspect that the same crazy-quilt pattern of safe sectors and pirate infestations is going to extend through former League space.

I got the impression that although piracy does exist outside of Silesia, outside of Silesia and Alignment-backed operations (and historically, PRH-backed operations), it's not more than a minor nuisance. Pirates without extraordinary resources can be effectively discouraged by a small number of old-style LACs, which almost every system of consequence has at minimum.

cthia wrote:My apologies for not clarifying, but in this case, I was referring to convoys of freighters only "carpooling" without an escort with the "safety in numbers" adage in mind. I suspect there's going to be a lot of that in the new age of the "buck and a quarter soaking wet" gutted League because there just won't be enough ships to go around.

Hmm, I'm not sure how much benefit there will be to unescorted convoys in the Honorverse; given that they're essentially immune to interception in hyper.

In anti-submarine warfare there was an advantage to even unescorted convoys because an entire 100 ship convoy was only marginally easier for the subs to detect, than a single ship. So putting every ship in even 20 ship convoys results in a 20x reduction in possible interceptions. That combined with the fact that even slow merchant ships could relatively quickly outpace a submerged sub, while they could attempt to ram a surfaced one, meant that even if a sub did detect a convoy it wasn't likely to sink more than 2 or 3 ships (if that). So the reduction in detections way more than offset the slight increase in lethality once a convoy was detected.

But in the honorverse the pirates are faster than any merchant ship; but they pretty much have to lurk out by the hyperlimit of a destination system - there's no deep ocean detection. They're capable of running down any ship they detect, and unarmed ships have no mechanism to force them to slow down or reduce endurance.
Then the 'signal' of a hyper emergence appears to scale much closer to linearly than the detection range of a ocean convoy. So 100 ships emerging together make a much, much, bigger signal than a single ship emerging. That largely offsets the possible advantages of grouping ships together to reduce overall detection rates.
There's some risk that any survivors will be able to report information about the pirate, but they'll likely be off to fresh hunting grounds before any out-system navy shows up to investigate.

I can still see why you'd run convoys to allow you to provide escorts; nobody's got enough ships or money to send a DD with every freighter. But 3-5 DDs can provide quite good anti-piracy protection for 40+ ships. (Though unless you've got a big tech advantage they're far less effective against state backed commerce raiders who simply want to destroy the merchants - you usually need much heavier escorts for that scenario)

How about the MAC concept. Tractor a couple of LAC's to the hull of a merchant. E.g. the Hali Sowle tractored two Nat Turner FG to its hull for its raid on the Balcescu system. If you can tractor a couple of frigates to the hull of a small merchant you can certainly carry a couple of LAC's. Anything short of a BC is in a boatload of trouble.

Jonathan_S wrote:Hmm, I'm not sure how much benefit there will be to unescorted convoys in the Honorverse; given that they're essentially immune to interception in hyper.

In anti-submarine warfare there was an advantage to even unescorted convoys because an entire 100 ship convoy was only marginally easier for the subs to detect, than a single ship. So putting every ship in even 20 ship convoys results in a 20x reduction in possible interceptions. That combined with the fact that even slow merchant ships could relatively quickly outpace a submerged sub, while they could attempt to ram a surfaced one, meant that even if a sub did detect a convoy it wasn't likely to sink more than 2 or 3 ships (if that). So the reduction in detections way more than offset the slight increase in lethality once a convoy was detected.

But in the honorverse the pirates are faster than any merchant ship; but they pretty much have to lurk out by the hyperlimit of a destination system - there's no deep ocean detection. They're capable of running down any ship they detect, and unarmed ships have no mechanism to force them to slow down or reduce endurance.
Then the 'signal' of a hyper emergence appears to scale much closer to linearly than the detection range of a ocean convoy. So 100 ships emerging together make a much, much, bigger signal than a single ship emerging. That largely offsets the possible advantages of grouping ships together to reduce overall detection rates.
There's some risk that any survivors will be able to report information about the pirate, but they'll likely be off to fresh hunting grounds before any out-system navy shows up to investigate.

I can still see why you'd run convoys to allow you to provide escorts; nobody's got enough ships or money to send a DD with every freighter. But 3-5 DDs can provide quite good anti-piracy protection for 40+ ships. (Though unless you've got a big tech advantage they're far less effective against state backed commerce raiders who simply want to destroy the merchants - you usually need much heavier escorts for that scenario)

Another point we are missing in the discussion is the duration of exposure - how long will the "heightened" pirate threat really last?

The collapse of the SL won't be quite overnight. It'll start to fray around the edges, then slowly start to tear, then major rips, .... It may take anywhere from 1 -5 years for this all to play out. As mentioned above, the SLN fleet will go different direction - a fair portion will be destroyed outright in the skism, some will be absorbed into existing SDFs, some will turn warlord and become the navy for the polity some admiral carved for himself, others will get grabbed ay an intact sector or the RF, who obstensibly is trying to restore order in the chaos, some will go merc, and lastly, some will go pirating.

And of this pirating group, how long will they last? unless they are state sponsored or ended up well equipped, they can't repair any damage, recruit any reliable, trained crew or replace any expended munitions easily.

As has been repeated often, the tempo of piracy in Silesia was only possible because of the active participation of the local governing bodies with pirates, the lack of political will and policies by the failed government of the Confederacy, the backing of rogue corporate entities like Manpower, and the "cold war" political climate between the 3 major sector powers. Without financial backing, naval blind eyes, political protection, and a safe place to rest and sell their ill-gotten gains, the life of a pirate is not easy.

Unless one or more of the polities is actively backing or allowing piracy and no one is able to intervene, as the Haven sector cold war allowed, Pirates will slowly die out - either they will die and the supply of available ships will be destroyed or they find it unprofitable, sell the expensive warship for cash, and retire.

saber964 wrote:How about the MAC concept. Tractor a couple of LAC's to the hull of a merchant. E.g. the Hali Sowle tractored two Nat Turner FG to its hull for its raid on the Balcescu system. If you can tractor a couple of frigates to the hull of a small merchant you can certainly carry a couple of LAC's. Anything short of a BC is in a boatload of trouble.

Let's not forget, LACs are not cheap. The average Verge polity with 100s of millions of taxpayers only owns a handful of them - as the bulk of, or their entire navy.

Freighters are a usually a margin run business - most of them won't even run military components which will double their speed (which doubles the amount of cargo 1 ship can haul per year) because it will make them too expensive to operate. Who pays for the LACS - the navy or the Freighter. If they offset cargo, does the navy pay for that too?

And you have to ask yourself, what happens when the LACs are out of place and their carrier gets destroyed because it has zero defenses.

What about the polities that don't allow private warships? Do you leave the LACS at the door and cross the system without them - what is their point if you can't use them when you are most vulnerable?