The Misalignment of MA plans?

JohnRoth wrote:
The other nit is whether Manticore and Haven between themselves could squash the chaos after the SL breaks up. I seriously doubt it. They're sitting on the periphery of the settled part of the spiral arm, and they're not really in position, let alone interested, in becoming the next Galactic Empire.

As far as that goes ... they're not interested in becoming a megastate, but with the wormhole network, and especially Manticore's place in it, I expect that they could do a reasonably good job at peacekeeping and supporting/maintaining order over a fairly large chunk of space. The wormholes make their realspace location a lot less relevant, what matters more is the locations of the wormhole termini.

kzt wrote:Darrell, weren't you part of the thread where David posted this?

David Weber wrote: Page 13 of finding the torch wormhole's destination

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And any ship making transit must maintain profile within that transit lane until it clears its far end (i.e., an average of 26,000 km from the arrival threshhold). That means an SD trainsiting the Junction will arrive at a speed of 20 KPS and require 278 seconds (just over 4.5 minutes) to clear the lane, at which point it will be traveling at 175 KPS. Until it clears the lane, it cannot reconfigure to impeller wedge, but there is no limit (aside from simple physical volume constraints and the “reset” time) as to how many ships can be “in the lane” simultaneously.

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And for single termini, where the wave is both shorter and less intense, the numbers would be much lower (hence the minimum 20 second number I believe I mentioned earlier, although that is an absolute minimum — for a despatch boat — under ideal conditions on a very “weak” terminus).

This, by the way, is a very siginificant point in the RMN’s decision to use Saganami-Cs and Rolands as its point units in seizing termini under Lacoön Two; they can get in a heck of a lot faster than even a Manty SD, they can put more of them through in the same time interval, and they have the range and the punch to take out even much heavier units once they’re into n-space on the other side. If they were going up against fortified termini which they are not in Lacoön, those CAs would be dead meat before they ever cleared the lanes . . .

That was 4 years ago, so I don't remember it, and why is it not in pearls? remember that I have not been a part of this forum for the last 3 1/2 years and my memory is not perfect.

The prior paragraphs of ART lead me to believe that there was just a few seconds between emergence and configuring to impeller.

The maneuvering plot blinked again, and—for an instant no one had ever succeeded in measuring—Otter ceased to exist in Agueda and then, equally suddenly, began to exist somewhere else. She reappeared in a dazzling burst of azure brilliance as transit energy radiated from her sails, and Powell nodded in satisfaction.
“Transit complete,” she announced.
“Thank you, Helm. Well done!” Talmadge said, but most of his attention was back on the sail interface readout, watching the numbers twinkle downward even more rapidly than they’d risen. “Engineering, reconfigure to impeller.”
“Aye, aye, Sir. Reconfiguring to impeller now.”
Otter folded her sails back into her impeller wedge and moved forward more rapidly, ac-celerating steadily out of the Stine Terminus, five and a half light-hours from the G5 primary of the Stine System.
“Five hundred gravities, Senior Chief,” Talmadge said.
“Five hundred gravities, aye, aye, Sir,” Powell acknowledged crisply, and Talmadge’s lips twitched as he waited for Stine Astro Control to react to his ship’s abrupt appearance.

Remember that RFC said that although a SD would be in the transit lane 4-5 minutes at manticore the time/distance is shorter at the remote termini.

Best case for monica, they arrive in missile range, say 5 million KM from the talbot termanus, and with a perfect velocity of 5,000 KM/second. That is well within missile range, (140 seconds) but it will still take 23 minutes for a zero zero intercept.

Even on a best case for monica, An SD arriving 15 minutes later (remember that the home fleet was parked at the junction at the time) only has to worry about missiles coming from one direction, and will have at least a full minute to roll to present it's broadside armor, and solly BC missiles will have trouble doing more than scratching a Manty SD's armor, even without sidewalls. And once the SD does clear the Terminus, say by by to monica's BC's.

And that dosen't even count the fact that an SD in the termani could fire and control missile pods that are outside of the termani, even without it's wedge up.

In short, even if everything goes perfect for monica, the chances of monica being able seize the terminus is slim to none. And, if monica overshoots the terminus, or comes in a light minute away, the first SD will have arrived from maticore, cleared the junction, and blown away monica's BC's before they even get into range.

darrell wrote:
... and why is it not in pearls?

As far as I can tell, nothing from this forum is in Pearls. It's essentially things from Baen's Bar. As to why, you'll have to ask Himself or the Duckk.

Joe Buckley hasn't updated the infodump in a long time.

Something that isn't quite clear to me. The RF has sleepers, yes. Do they also have sleeping star nations of the League ready to separate and join them because of well placed powerful mouthpieces and sleeping officials?

IOW, do they already have a core of secret League member states as seemed to be inferred by the wiki? Supporting textev?

wiki wrote:The Renaissance Factor was the name given to a structure expected to arise in and around the Solarian League as it collapsed as a result of the the long-term political and military strategies of the Mesan Alignment.

The planned strategy included a series of shocks to the military and political confidence of the Solarian League and its corrupt and bureaucratic governing structure. As a result, several star nations would then reluctantly conclude that they must withdraw from the collapsing League and form a workable polity from their part of the wreckage. Each of these would eventually realize that united, they could be more effective, producing a large political entity in the region of the former Solarian League. The project would be secretly furthered since each of these reluctantly withdrawing remnants of the Solarian League would be, in fact, cooperating members of the Mesan Alignment.

As of the early 1920s PD, each was led by a senior Alpha line member of the Alignment, from families long ago (in some cases, several centuries ago) placed on their planets as multi-generational Mesan agents. Each was directed by the highest leadership of the Mesan Alignment, on Mesa, led by Albrecht Detweiler. None of this was planned to be publicly known until well after a new polity had been established in what had been the Solarian League's territory, not one part of which had any connection (publicly) with Mesa or any of its criminal organizations, or the long abandoned plans to improve human genetics of the founders of Mesa, Leonard Detweiler and his associates. (HH12)

...Did you not read Mission of Honor?

cthia wrote:Something that isn't quite clear to me. The RF has sleepers, yes. Do they also have sleeping star nations of the League ready to separate and join them because of well placed powerful mouthpieces and sleeping officials?

IOW, do they already have a core of secret League member states as seemed to be inferred by the wiki? Supporting textev?

Yes, they absolutely do, and I think Potato's right and its covered in Mission of Honor.

There's a scene where Detwiller meets with the heads of (IIRC) 12 star systems that are all Star Line. The whole point of the RF is that those 12 (?) MAlign infiltrated systems will be the nucleus of stability for the remnants of the shattered League to coalesce around; then they'll publicly band their disparate groups together into the (public) Renascence Faction.
That's how the MAlign plans to end up in control of the majority of the League's current worlds. The MAlign spent probably a couple centuries working behind the scenes to get their chosen families deep into the political power structure of those worlds, so that people fairly far inside the onion would be in effective control when the crisis was engineered to shatter the League.

cthia wrote:Something that isn't quite clear to me. The RF has sleepers, yes. Do they also have sleeping star nations of the League ready to separate and join them because of well placed powerful mouthpieces and sleeping officials?

IOW, do they already have a core of secret League member states as seemed to be inferred by the wiki? Supporting textev?

The RF is the core of "secret league members."

They have certain other league members they're planning to bring into the RF once the League fragments, but the planned additions are not part of the MAlign.

Potato wrote:...Did you not read Mission of Honor?

I think I read it. Yet, in my head I'm smiling at the memory of one of my "child prodigy of a niece's" favorite sayings when she was around 10 or so...

"Why are you so smart?," everyone would frequently ask her.

"I read a lot. Alot alot."

"So, we read a lot too."

"Reading is fundamental. Understanding is not."



Thanks Potato, or Potauto.

Thanks Jonathan.

Thanks Harold.

I'm expecting that the idea is to make it known that these systems are the realms of Alpha lines at some point in the process. If gradualism was a word in the Alignment lexicon, they could, as others [including, IIRC, Himself] have pointed out, accomplished far more with far less effort through education and practical application of their principles.

The members of the GA are indeed out on the periphery, but so was Qin. OTOH, you're quite right to point out that even Gustav Anderman is no Qin Shi Huang-di. They do, however, want to see a stable, peaceful network of successor states appear, since that's the most reliable means of being allowed to go back to minding their own knitting. They will have to provide support, not just cheerleading, to the most suitable [from their point of view, of course] candidates, not all of whom will be RF, and one direct effect of that is to curb the pillaging and burning even in areas they don't control directly. They don't need to do it as long as they can help others who would be affected do it. That said, I have a feeling that in the aftermath of Laocoon II Manticore is going to find itself rather more in the role of imperial power than it either wants or intended.

JohnRoth wrote:
I think that's a pretty good summary, although there are a couple of nits. The biggest one is that the Renaissance Factor isn't advertising that they're run by genetic supermen, so there's no resistance on that end. As far as anyone else is concerned, they're simply a successful successor state that's a safe haven from the chaos. The "uplift" program is to be introduced slowly and over a long time.

The other nit is whether Manticore and Haven between themselves could squash the chaos after the SL breaks up. I seriously doubt it. They're sitting on the periphery of the settled part of the spiral arm, and they're not really in position, let alone interested, in becoming the next Galactic Empire.