Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

I'm going to Disneyland!!

This is when Honor will have plenty of time to have more babies. Let's see. There'll be little Honor, Honoree, Honorary and the Honorettes - the rambunctious triplets who story has it, stole three old-fashioned jet engine fighter planes to reproduce Honor's flights at Kreskin field.

Then there's the Honorolls - the seven boys who left their mark on the White Haven Estate. One who has made a name for himself on Grayson, worthy of an offspring of Harrington's. And another - forever grieving from a reproduction of an old treecat prank gone very badly, played on a very old and fragile Emily, who suffered a massive heart attack right on the spot, thinking she'd killed an offspring of Nimitz' while they all visited on Grayson.

Let us not forget the precocious little child prodigy - a galaxy-wide news hog, whose image is plastered all over 78 % of the news faxes - a 12-yr-old Honor Honor Harrington, a name so nice they had to use it twice, who somehow found herself, as a civilian, in command of a starship when she became stranded on the bridge in the middle of a mudscrap, when no one else left alive knew what to do. The story of how she single handedly maneuvered to kill 5 other starships without subsequent damage or loss, drew a tear from Honor's eye - her favorite most precious child who never leaves her side and who refuses to talk about anything else except war - strategy and tactics, and whose resolve is relentless.

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MaxxQ wrote:

Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

I'm going to Disneyland!!

I sorta titled this thread with that response in mind.

But then I got to really thinking about the question I was asking and things turned serious.

MaxxQ wrote:

Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

I'm going to Disneyland!!

But what does something like a Disneyland have to offer the denizens of an advanced society like the Honorverse? What, with silver bullet trains, aircars, transport elevators, miscreant kids' unauthorized rides down mail chutes, an officer's many experiences of the azure bleed of sails, zero-g, etc., Disneyland seems a tad bit lackluster. Which probably has much to do with the reason that one amusement park failed.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:I think most of the core worlds have the ability to build shipyards, for those who see the writing on the wall they can create a crash program and have Destroyers, Cruisers and BC's within 3-5 years of starting. Throw in SD's 1-3 years after and you have the beginnings of a decent Fleet.

As for trained manpower? A crash training program can get you at least a small core of semi-trained military personnel. After all if almost everyone else is in the same boat semi-trained should suffice for at least the immediate need, plus unless the MA and GA manage to kill every single SLN member the survivors would gravitate back home, with or without their ships. Some core worlds with a tradition in the military might fair better than others when the SLN starts coming apart and the once who do not will either have to look into making alliances with those who faired better, quickly building up their military or decent into chaos.

There is also the reserve, and that should be good enough for most unless they are going to try and launch an attack against the GA, the MA or one of their better armed neighbours.

Freighters plus missiles and electronics gets you minimally survivable warships carrying big honking missiles. Everyone agreed in the text that bolting together 3 capital ship missiles would give you a 3 stage missile, it would just be outrageously long and big. If you have lots of space on you ships and no other option to fight people with longer ranged missiles then I think you'll be bolting missiles together.

Different systems would find different ways to deal with the fallout or they will be conquered by some empire builder.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:The advent of the missile pod could go a long way towards stopping piracy of Manticoran shipping.

Consider: Manticore will have a lot of officers who aren't really needed in the peacetime navy. Lets find a new job for them: They go on Manticoran shipping that might encounter pirates. They also have a missile pod clamped to the hull. The officer's job is to fire the pod at any pirate that challenges them.

One missile pod (doesn't even need to be MDMs) with nothing but onboard guidance should be enough to take out just about any pirate out there. The word would quickly spread that going after Manticoran shipping was a suicide mission.

Missiles without firecontrol are myopic and virtually useless; even at SDM ranges. You need sensor and firecontrol links to coach the missiles close enough that they can achieve an autonomous terminal attack. Just bolting a pod to the side of a freighter; with a "fire" button wired to the bridge seems almost totally ineffective; at least given how RFC has explained his missile combat.

Note that even after towed pod (SDM) combat became the norm during the 1st war nobody tried using bolt-on pods to deter piracy in Silesia - even when they were risking major economic losses due to the trade becoming unprofitably (due to insurance costs). They wouldn't have bothered to send Honor's Q-ships if a bolt-on pod was an effective solution.


And that ignores how many systems are going to be unhappy allowing armed civilian ships into their territory.

They'll know roughly where the pirate is. And it certainly wouldn't be effective in a military sense but pirates have awfully poor defenses.

And in wartime would they have diverted that kind of resource to pods? Honor's Q-ship is a lot more bang for the buck but it's only in one location.

Also, her Q-ship was total overkill for actual pirates.

Freighters plus missiles and electronics gets you minimally survivable warships carrying big honking missiles. Everyone agreed in the text that bolting together 3 capital ship missiles would give you a 3 stage missile, it would just be outrageously long and big. If you have lots of space on you ships and no other option to fight people with longer ranged missiles then I think you'll be bolting missiles together.

Different systems would find different ways to deal with the fallout or they will be conquered by some empire builder.

Like the Andermani?

[quote=
Like the Andermani?[/quote]


I suspect that there will be plenty of higher and medium tier star nations that will expand their boarders considerably. The Andermani will be one of those who do it well, with a minimum a excessive force, and will live up to their standards of making their new subject worlds better. They have a good reputation in this regard, and their will be plenty of verge systems that will want some kind of outside protection and alliances, and Manticore cannot be everywhere. Other Shell systems will probably become warlords and I believe many people will be happy to let the Andermani deal with them (which will likely cause another host of problems at some point years ahead when people fear the Andermani are becoming too big and see them as the People Republic reborn).

Valen123456 wrote:I suspect that there will be plenty of higher and medium tier star nations that will expand their boarders considerably. The Andermani will be one of those who do it well, with a minimum a excessive force, and will live up to their standards of making their new subject worlds better. They have a good reputation in this regard, and their will be plenty of verge systems that will want some kind of outside protection and alliances, and Manticore cannot be everywhere. Other Shell systems will probably become warlords and I believe many people will be happy to let the Andermani deal with them (which will likely cause another host of problems at some point years ahead when people fear the Andermani are becoming too big and see them as the People Republic reborn).

I'd actually guess that the Andermani will probably largely wait and digest their half of Silesia before looking for many more systems to add.
Especially because, unless Asgard wants to join them (given them ownership of the Asgard wormhole junction) they've largely incorporated all the troubled systems in they have easy physical access to.

I can't imagine they'd be willing to be long term dependent on access through Manticore's Junction to tie their empire together; but they would be if they tried to incorporate troubled worlds in the Shell or distant parts of the Verge.

Plus half of Silesia is a larger chunk of systems than they've ever tried to digest and integrate. That will probably have them stretched, societally and economically, for a generation or two.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Valen123456 wrote:I suspect that there will be plenty of higher and medium tier star nations that will expand their boarders considerably. The Andermani will be one of those who do it well, with a minimum a excessive force, and will live up to their standards of making their new subject worlds better. They have a good reputation in this regard, and their will be plenty of verge systems that will want some kind of outside protection and alliances, and Manticore cannot be everywhere. Other Shell systems will probably become warlords and I believe many people will be happy to let the Andermani deal with them (which will likely cause another host of problems at some point years ahead when people fear the Andermani are becoming too big and see them as the People Republic reborn).

I'd actually guess that the Andermani will probably largely wait and digest their half of Silesia before looking for many more systems to add.
Especially because, unless Asgard wants to join them (given them ownership of the Asgard wormhole junction) they've largely incorporated all the troubled systems in they have easy physical access to.

I can't imagine they'd be willing to be long term dependent on access through Manticore's Junction to tie their empire together; but they would be if they tried to incorporate troubled worlds in the Shell or distant parts of the Verge.

Plus half of Silesia is a larger chunk of systems than they've ever tried to digest and integrate. That will probably have them stretched, societally and economically, for a generation or two.

Asgard would probably succumb to the inevitable if the Andermani Empire annexed just about everything nearby and follow the pattern of most Andermani 'conquests' and just ask to be taken over.

It's that or they ask to join the SEM simply because the SEM has more wormholes and the larger merchant fleet which translates to better toll income.