Possible way to take out the OBS

Duckk wrote:If there were any sort of evidence that Langhorne was a Good Guy, I could accept the potential existence of such a plot twist. The problem is that there is literally zero basis for it in both the text and David's posts here on the board. One could just as easily suggest that Pei and Langhorne decided to team up and solve crimes as the unlikeliest pair of detectives, every Thursday night at 10/9 central. That's the problem I have with every Langhorne Was a Good Guy theory - the overwhelming preponderance of evidence points otherwise.

I find it far more likely that someone else inside the command staff was less than fully committed with the plan. We know a lot less about that period of time, and the people involved, than we do about Langhorne. For instance, the War of the Fallen sounds like it had help from the inside, in order to gain access to Hamilcar to produce and distribute the industrial modules which fueled the war.

I think the only Langhorne-related plot twist I could buy is the one where it wasn't actually Langhorne behind the Alexandria Strike, and instead it was someone else, presumably Chihiro, who was trying to coopt Langhorne's plan and position for himself and eliminate any potential rival powerbase(s) for personal gain, not necessarily because they believed in Langhorne's anti-tech position. In this scenario, Alexandria had to go for two reasons - the same reason Langhorne is thought to have pushed the button on them, and because there's no way Alexandria and Shan-wei would have gone along with someone launching a coup to coopt Langhorne's position.
And that's basically what Cody's Journal suggests. In this scenario Langhorne was certainly misguided and wrong, and did terrible things, but was acting out of good intentions.




As far as running sims go ... I can't believe that there's any way that the planners back on Earth wouldn't have (a) run sims, and (b) had a massively better basis and capability to run larger, more accurate sims than anything that Operation Ark could have done. VR and AIs can massively compress time, so there's no reason to think that sims would have needed to be carried out in transit.

As far as the tech-enclaves devolving, remember, the entire world was supposed to be late steam-age/just pre-electricity in pretty much every way, and that there'd still be a largish chunk of original crew left when the time came to restart high technology. For that matter, I suspect that if she hadn't transferred, Nimue would still have been alive when the time to restart high technology came around. The knowledge of what was out there wasn't supposed to be lost.

Werewolves could suddenly appear out of nowhere and eat the OBS.

Oh wait. Been there.

jgnfld wrote:Werewolves could suddenly appear out of nowhere and eat the OBS.

Oh wait. Been there.

Wasn't werewolves. It was vampires.

Kytheros wrote:As far as running sims go ... I can't believe that there's any way that the planners back on Earth wouldn't have (a) run sims, and (b) had a massively better basis and capability to run larger, more accurate sims than anything that Operation Ark could have done. VR and AIs can massively compress time, so there's no reason to think that sims would have needed to be carried out in transit.

... That's BRILLIANT!

The entire Safehold series is going to end with the reveal that EVERYTHING that happened in it except for the pre-Safehold parts in OAR was one big sim to test Langhorne's Plan. The last thing the readers will see is Shan-Wei turning to Langhorne and say, "See, THAT is why your plan won't work!"

evilauthor wrote:

Kytheros wrote:As far as running sims go ... I can't believe that there's any way that the planners back on Earth wouldn't have (a) run sims, and (b) had a massively better basis and capability to run larger, more accurate sims than anything that Operation Ark could have done. VR and AIs can massively compress time, so there's no reason to think that sims would have needed to be carried out in transit.

... That's BRILLIANT!

The entire Safehold series is going to end with the reveal that EVERYTHING that happened in it except for the pre-Safehold parts in OAR was one big sim to test Langhorne's Plan. The last thing the readers will see is Shan-Wei turning to Langhorne and say, "See, THAT is why your plan won't work!"

That is a truly evil thought. Take yourself off and give yourself 50 lashes for having it.

Another point that might need a liberal dose of handwavium is related to elapsed time. We were told in OAR that the Terran Federation's science was perceptibly better than that of the Gbaba, but not sufficiently better to outweigh the latter's numerical advantage.

We also know that Safehold's science has been knocked back to the steam age, far inferior to Merlin's tech base, on which there have been no advances for roughly 1000 years. Even if Merlin could have improved the science (which I doubt) he/she has only been revived for about two years, and certainly Owl couldn't have done anything significant.

It would be logical to assume that (1) the Gbaba would have noted that the TF had better ships and weapons, and would have made efforts to understand what they could of the remnants of TF science, and (2) no matter how successful (1) was, they would also have continued to develop their own sciences – just in case they met anybody else like the TF.

Therefore, the probabilities are that not only is humanity's best tech base by now centuries behind the Gbaba's, but they are outnumbered by probably billions to one, and to quote Napoleon, "God is on the side of the big battalions". (I know that Voltaire said that it depended on who shoots best, but if enough people are shooting, accuracy doesn't matter too much either.)

In other words Safehold has got some catching up to do. First of all, they have to bring their existing tech base up to their best tech base, i.e. Merlin's. Then they have to develop that tech base to a level vastly higher than the Gbaba's to compensate for their numerical disadvantage.

Deus ex machina, anybody?
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Peter2 wrote:Another point that might need a liberal dose of handwavium is related to elapsed time. We were told in OAR that the Terran Federation's science was perceptibly better than that of the Gbaba, but not sufficiently better to outweigh the latter's numerical advantage.

We also know that Safehold's science has been knocked back to the steam age, far inferior to Merlin's tech base, on which there have been no advances for roughly 1000 years. Even if Merlin could have improved the science (which I doubt) he/she has only been revived for about two years, and certainly Owl couldn't have done anything significant.

It would be logical to assume that (1) the Gbaba would have noted that the TF had better ships and weapons, and would have made efforts to understand what they could of the remnants of TF science, and (2) no matter how successful (1) was, they would also have continued to develop their own sciences – just in case they met anybody else like the TF.

Therefore, the probabilities are that not only is humanity's best tech base by now centuries behind the Gbaba's, but they are outnumbered by probably billions to one, and to quote Napoleon, "God is on the side of the big battalions". (I know that Voltaire said that it depended on who shoots best, but if enough people are shooting, accuracy doesn't matter too much either.)

In other words Safehold has got some catching up to do. First of all, they have to bring their existing tech base up to their best tech base, i.e. Merlin's. Then they have to develop that tech base to a level vastly higher than the Gbaba's to compensate for their numerical disadvantage.

Deus ex machina, anybody?
.

It was clearly noted in the first book that the Gbaba had not innovated in thousands of years. Ships of differing construction eras were identical. Since no matter who they met since starting their galactic genocide campaign had not caused them to change significantly, I doubt encountering the Terran Federation would, either. As for assimilating Terran technology, all accounts of battles and planetary attacks indicate that the methods used wouldn't have left much, if any, technology intact to be studied. C-fractional strikes convert matter into energy and extremely hot gas or lava; not any kind of usable debris.

Safehold is in a unique position. They don't actually have to *invent* the technology between their current level and that of the Federation. They have all the information necessary to upgrade without the discovery or experimentation originally needed to go from where they are to there. If the shackles that the Writ imposed on technology are done away with, it probably wouldn't take even a century to "reclaim" the previous level; assuming teaching the current crop of children about it. Adults would have it harder, but with the current level of medical technology most of them would probably be gone in 20 years or so.

With the information preserved by OWL and a new way of looking at things, I wouldn't be surprised if while "re-tech'ing" the planet they didn't make additional scientific discoveries along the way. Even so, assuming they weren't rediscovered by the Gbaba for say, 50 or 100 years after regaining technology, they could probably win, if they put developing orbital infrastructure and shipyards as a priority once they regain access to space flight.

I saw some discussion about artillery earlier. It would seem to me, that with the current level of weaponry, the next major "innovation" is likely to be the "Gatling Gun" - the first version of machine gun. Realistically, I don't see why someone in Charis hasn't already thought of it. They have rifles and artillery; it would seem that rotating barrels and linked cartridges shouldn't be that much of a jump.

The machine gun pretty much solved the problem of massed infantry attacks. It should certainly work just as well against the Church's advantage in numbers of foot soldiers.

OrlandoNative wrote:I saw some discussion about artillery earlier. It would seem to me, that with the current level of weaponry, the next major "innovation" is likely to be the "Gatling Gun" - the first version of machine gun. Realistically, I don't see why someone in Charis hasn't already thought of it. They have rifles and artillery; it would seem that rotating barrels and linked cartridges shouldn't be that much of a jump.

The machine gun pretty much solved the problem of massed infantry attacks. It should certainly work just as well against the Church's advantage in numbers of foot soldiers.

Right now, the best they could do would probably be a crank-operated gun. IIRC, early Gatlings had pretty terrible reliability.

Besides, once they get smokeless powder up and running, they're going to go straight to relatively conventional (by our standards) auto-loaders. Both personal and crew served, most likely.

Peter2 wrote:Another point that might need a liberal dose of handwavium is related to elapsed time. We were told in OAR that the Terran Federation's science was perceptibly better than that of the Gbaba, but not sufficiently better to outweigh the latter's numerical advantage.

We also know that Safehold's science has been knocked back to the steam age, far inferior to Merlin's tech base, on which there have been no advances for roughly 1000 years. Even if Merlin could have improved the science (which I doubt) he/she has only been revived for about two years, and certainly Owl couldn't have done anything significant.

It would be logical to assume that (1) the Gbaba would have noted that the TF had better ships and weapons, and would have made efforts to understand what they could of the remnants of TF science, and (2) no matter how successful (1) was, they would also have continued to develop their own sciences – just in case they met anybody else like the TF.

Therefore, the probabilities are that not only is humanity's best tech base by now centuries behind the Gbaba's, but they are outnumbered by probably billions to one, and to quote Napoleon, "God is on the side of the big battalions". (I know that Voltaire said that it depended on who shoots best, but if enough people are shooting, accuracy doesn't matter too much either.)

In other words Safehold has got some catching up to do. First of all, they have to bring their existing tech base up to their best tech base, i.e. Merlin's. Then they have to develop that tech base to a level vastly higher than the Gbaba's to compensate for their numerical disadvantage.

Deus ex machina, anybody?
.

No, we were told that if the TF had had 50 more years, they'd (or so the Commodore Pei of the combat group thought) have a tech advantage sufficient to counter the Gbaba numbers. As it was, the TF had almost completely caught up to the Gbaba in most areas and was ahead in others (especially in the computer/AI/VR/neural interface area).
And that some of the Gbaba ships that were thousands of years old were identical to brand new construction.

While the TF may have put up more of a fight than the Gbaba originally anticipated, standard Gbaba doctrine did, after all, bring them victory. There's no real reason that the Gbaba would have needed to start building better stuff, and some indications/theories that they could not have.

The plan for Safehold was to stay hidden until they had pushed their technology to where they had a significant advantage. That's still going to be the plan post-reveal. They may well spend more time than originally planned in the R&D phase, but there's no reason to change the plan.

Duckk wrote:If there were any sort of evidence that Langhorne was a Good Guy, I could accept the potential existence of such a plot twist. The problem is that there is literally zero basis for it in both the text and David's posts here on the board. One could just as easily suggest that Pei and Langhorne decided to team up and solve crimes as the unlikeliest pair of detectives, every Thursday night at 10/9 central. That's the problem I have with every Langhorne Was a Good Guy theory - the overwhelming preponderance of evidence points otherwise.

No, Langhorne was not a "Good Guy"; he liked the religious solution way too much for that. But Pei did not know the details of what was going on; the OBS move was a surprise to her and all the other tech people. It's just that the tech enclave wipe-out was necessary if the colony was to stay secret long enough; it was not wiped-out on Langhorne's whim; they had to go to save the plan for safety of the colony.

Instead, this explains why he remained in charge. The decision to go with the religious solution came late. Langhore took it and pushed it into the damnable thing that it is, but the milder version was arrived at through a rational process. That makes a wake up call "real soon now" a distinct possibility.

As for the continued evolution of the sims during the flight, that would depend on the level and kind of detail the sims used. For that matter, there could still be sims running on the systems under the Temple. (And they are an element that has been under-developed plot wise. OWL simply can not be the only computer intelligence in the series. There has to be something distracting them...)