Call to Vengeance Ramblings SPOILERS

Brigade XO wrote:So, two spoiler questions.
One, compoud: Did the Casey get to either replenish her missiles expended and or get to strip out any unused ordinance from the pirate fleet ships? Did they also get to grab any sort of spairs or at least samples of all sorts of new-to-them tech from the defeated pirates. And since it appears that the pirates surrendered a bunch of ships, why didn't our could't they get one as a prize for their participation?
I mean, really, the Aldermani took or destroyed everything with the excepton of the pirate controled freighers (nominaly prizes they took) which they used to take the "civllian" population of the planet and system back to it's home system? Not one measly frigate? Or stuff Casey full of ordence, manuals, specs, more modern (to them) environmental gear, propulsion stuff, sensors, computers etc, etc, etc? ????? Particularly if the Aldermani were going to destroy it. The IAN could- perhaps - put prize crews on some of the warships and took them away...but why not pass a small one to Manticore, presuming the Casey could have put a skeleton crew aboard and kept company with the prize on the way back to Manticore. Gee, another warship, hypercapable, with even old weapons?

Two, At Danak, of the options for the pirates while they had to cool their heels given they were going to have to cycle ships through upgrades rather than all at once....see THE TWINS? Would that be a place that shows up much later when Honor is around?

So many questions.....

Theemile wrote:I asked that frigate question when the book came out in EARC. It would have been easy to get a couple of the frigates or DDs operational and move them to a distant orbit, then come back for them later, and at least try to bring 1 back.

The shipyards were "portable" as well - why not try to collapse them back into freightable units and tow them out to a hidden spot to return to later?

Or maybe just taking enough missiles to top off your inventory and replace those used? (and fill every empty storage space on the Casey?)

Or if nothing else, steal every box of friggin hexes in the Volstrung's storage facility!!!

Who says they didn't walk out with a case of hexes, a couple of bags of coffee, the entire galley? You have a captain on her first independent mission having a Petty officer and an LT threatening to pull article 7 on her, a political/diplomatic box of monkeys with the Andermani. A mission she doesn't want. Half of the House of Lords wanting to exterminate her entire navy. Her ship is under manned, underarmed, with the heaviest of the Volsung ships -not here- and with no ETA.

She has a single ship; the Andermani have several. They are determined to destroy the entire base, all the ships, they are under orders to "git 'er done." Are the Andermani going to allow her to put a few ships in obit for however long she takes to get home, convince the Secretary of the exchequer to authorise another flight to Silesia to rescue several more ships for the NAvy and a "Portable" repair dock? I don't think so.

pappilon wrote:

Who says they didn't walk out with a case of hexes, a couple of bags of coffee, the entire galley? You have a captain on her first independent mission having a Petty officer and an LT threatening to pull article 7 on her, a political/diplomatic box of monkeys with the Andermani. A mission she doesn't want. Half of the House of Lords wanting to exterminate her entire navy. Her ship is under manned, underarmed, with the heaviest of the Volsung ships -not here- and with no ETA.

She has a single ship; the Andermani have several. They are determined to destroy the entire base, all the ships, they are under orders to "git 'er done." Are the Andermani going to allow her to put a few ships in obit for however long she takes to get home, convince the Secretary of the exchequer to authorise another flight to Silesia to rescue several more ships for the NAvy and a "Portable" repair dock? I don't think so.

Good points, but the oddest point is no thought was given to it. No one said maybe we should replenish our missiles - nor did Travis ask Hauptman "hey, did you see any hexes?" after he investigated the warehouse.

Yes, it's a small thing, but given the limited state of the navy at that point, you would think scrounging would be higher on everyone's consciousness. And the Andermani would accept grabbing a FG or DD as reparations to replace a destroyed ship - especially since Travis's bluff, in neutralizing the station, probably kept them from losing one of their fleet.

And you be more likely to get the exchequer to fund a 2nd expedition if you came back with more stuff (and better stuff) than you left with.

Theemile wrote:

pappilon wrote:

Who says they didn't walk out with a case of hexes, a couple of bags of coffee, the entire galley? You have a captain on her first independent mission having a Petty officer and an LT threatening to pull article 7 on her, a political/diplomatic box of monkeys with the Andermani. A mission she doesn't want. Half of the House of Lords wanting to exterminate her entire navy. Her ship is under manned, underarmed, with the heaviest of the Volsung ships -not here- and with no ETA.

She has a single ship; the Andermani have several. They are determined to destroy the entire base, all the ships, they are under orders to "git 'er done." Are the Andermani going to allow her to put a few ships in obit for however long she takes to get home, convince the Secretary of the exchequer to authorise another flight to Silesia to rescue several more ships for the NAvy and a "Portable" repair dock? I don't think so.

Good points, but the oddest point is no thought was given to it. No one said maybe we should replenish our missiles - nor did Travis ask Hauptman "hey, did you see any hexes?" after he investigated the warehouse.

Yes, it's a small thing, but given the limited state of the navy at that point, you would think scrounging would be higher on everyone's consciousness. And the Andermani would accept grabbing a FG or DD as reparations to replace a destroyed ship - especially since Travis's bluff, in neutralizing the station, probably kept them from losing one of their fleet.

And you be more likely to get the exchequer to fund a 2nd expedition if you came back with more stuff (and better stuff) than you left with.

Travis is very mission orientated. His mission was to get the vital information, not go scrounging for hexes. Likewise, Clegg would be far more likely to detail a handy offscreen Chief Petty Officer to send out a good scrounger than ask her intelligence agent CPO Townsend to check out hexes.

Between Hauptmann, Townsend and Long, they could be just about to make this entire mind-bendingly annoying and frustrating mission worthwhile. Clegg's motto would be 'don't distract them' - not when any stumble-fingered Spacer 1/C or PO can find hexes.

And for all we know, the entire trip through Silesia might have been spent blagging 'free samples' off every manufacturer they met. We don't see most of the Show The Flag stuff, after all.

Brigade XO wrote:Ah, well, auto-correct. That all depends. I use Word as a wordprocessing base (silly as I use a Mac) but I had to write all my business realted stuff for employers,both when working full time for others and then consulting. Word, even Word for Mac has this really odd and annoying habit of not carrying forward/over what amounts to any version of custom dictionary I built up. All sorts of banking/financial/legal terms along with proper names and things that "somehow" never make it into the usual dictionaries. You want to deal with some annoying crap, try having your dictionary "forget" not only customer names and related words for business but all sorts of Surnames and first (and middle) names from years and years of genealogy research. Oh, they are in all sorts of documents and softward but the auto-correct and spellchecke things they are wrong.
Yeah, I have discussed the challenge with various CS people at Micro*****. Oh, it transfers automatically when you upgrade (no, it didn't), all you have to do is.... (no, it doesn't), you can just go and get a copy and import it (humm, so when the new version OVERWROTE the old version -like it said it was going to- and manage not to latch onto the custom dictonary and doesn't want to import the custom from my regular backup stuff) it's operating per spec? Why, yes, it is, apparentely because that is what it does.
You can see where all this went, right in the toilet.
Anybody here got a solution....because I would LOVE to go and retrieve several sequential sets of custom dictionaries over a lot of years and stuff them down Word's throat- in a manner of speaking. Sorry, old bad memories, the rant awakens.

Oddly, my genealogy program has NO PROBLEM with hanging onto spellings even though it co-ops whatever wordprocessor I tell it to use in it's various internal notes sections.
Or that's just a Micro***** problem.

You have my sympathy. I had exactly the same types of experience, that's why I've used WordPerfect in its multitude of incarnations for the past 20+ years. It has its faults – it's slow to load, it creates very large files, and it's less instinctively user-friendly – but it's MUCH more powerful (try doing a paragraph sort in Word!), the backwards file compatibility is superb, and the ability to open a secondary window and see and search/replace the formatting codes is beyond price.

Using Word (and its propensity to second-guess me) as my default word processor really does raise my blood pressure. Grrrr . . .
.

Peter2 wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Ah, well, auto-correct. That all depends. I use Word as a wordprocessing base (silly as I use a Mac) but I had to write all my business realted stuff for employers,both when working full time for others and then consulting. Word, even Word for Mac has this really odd and annoying habit of not carrying forward/over what amounts to any version of custom dictionary I built up. All sorts of banking/financial/legal terms along with proper names and things that "somehow" never make it into the usual dictionaries. You want to deal with some annoying crap, try having your dictionary "forget" not only customer names and related words for business but all sorts of Surnames and first (and middle) names from years and years of genealogy research. Oh, they are in all sorts of documents and softward but the auto-correct and spellchecke things they are wrong.
Yeah, I have discussed the challenge with various CS people at Micro*****. Oh, it transfers automatically when you upgrade (no, it didn't), all you have to do is.... (no, it doesn't), you can just go and get a copy and import it (humm, so when the new version OVERWROTE the old version -like it said it was going to- and manage not to latch onto the custom dictonary and doesn't want to import the custom from my regular backup stuff) it's operating per spec? Why, yes, it is, apparentely because that is what it does.
You can see where all this went, right in the toilet.
Anybody here got a solution....because I would LOVE to go and retrieve several sequential sets of custom dictionaries over a lot of years and stuff them down Word's throat- in a manner of speaking. Sorry, old bad memories, the rant awakens.

Oddly, my genealogy program has NO PROBLEM with hanging onto spellings even though it co-ops whatever wordprocessor I tell it to use in it's various internal notes sections.
Or that's just a Micro***** problem.

You have my sympathy. I had exactly the same types of experience, that's why I've used WordPerfect in its multitude of incarnations for the past 20+ years. It has its faults – it's slow to load, it creates very large files, and it's less instinctively user-friendly – but it's MUCH more powerful (try doing a paragraph sort in Word!), the backwards file compatibility is superb, and the ability to open a secondary window and see and search/replace the formatting codes is beyond price.

Using Word (and its propensity to second-guess me) as my default word processor really does raise my blood pressure. Grrrr . . .
.

I like Microsoft Word, but its tendency to revert stuff back to default during a copy and paste can drive me batty. If I wanted it changed, I'd do it myself.

Don

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Bluesqueak wrote:Travis is very mission orientated. His mission was to get the vital information, not go scrounging for hexes. Likewise, Clegg would be far more likely to detail a handy offscreen Chief Petty Officer to send out a good scrounger than ask her intelligence agent CPO Townsend to check out hexes.

Between Hauptmann, Townsend and Long, they could be just about to make this entire mind-bendingly annoying and frustrating mission worthwhile. Clegg's motto would be 'don't distract them' - not when any stumble-fingered Spacer 1/C or PO can find hexes.

And for all we know, the entire trip through Silesia might have been spent blagging 'free samples' off every manufacturer they met. We don't see most of the Show The Flag stuff, after all.

Not to mention the little Surprise Llyn sent for the Volsungs in a black ops squadron. Which squadron, IIRC, arrived moments before Casey exited the system. If they'd a stsayed to scrounge spare hexes and load missiles, They would have been caught by a far superior force with orders to "Blow everything and everyone into 'orbital space debris'."

The Andermani had left the system before Casey got to the hyperlimit, nobody tried to follow them (Casey) out.
I just thought that it might have been mentioned that Haupman and at least a Chief and perhaps an engineering officer would have been scrounging like hell. Not only is RMN short of spairs for their own equipment, there should have been at least some stuff on that station (even if they didn't get to do more than get replacement missiles) that the ship could use or were newer version of stuff they had and could also be used as both laters spares and samples to copy. Of course that would require a slightly longer book. I was pointed out here on the list that they did get at least a full dump from the station computer.

And about glomming every free sample they could get on the goodwill mission is right on target. While I'm sure Manticore is going to abide by various patent rights (sure they are:) ) they have such a base need to both replenish their own stock and get examples of stuff that the Captain is probably going to let her Chief's go scrounging.

I was specificaly mentioned in the book that local manufactures at Manticore hadn't been intersted in Haupman's design suggestions (the Captain was quite annoyed that he had given (or sold for royalties- we don't know) to the 1st supplyer they visited. Why did he do that instead of working with Manticorian manufactures? Apparently (per Haupman) nobody was interested and didn't think they had any usefull application. Given the surname, we see that he probably started his own shop and grew from there.
Also, given the politics and lack of adequte funding for both Navy and MPARS, it is odd that Breakwater wouldn't think that manufacturing what was needed (at leasts spares etc) would be benificual to his allies and contributors. But that's also deep politics and manuvering so someobody could have already been raking in a nice profit doing the importing.

Of course, so much of what they encountered and did can't become public so, at best, only news stories (such as the destruction of the mercenary/pirate group "just before" the DD arrived at the system would be an example of how Haven was cleaning up...and so perhaps the Navy wasn't (publicly for some politicians like Breakwater) didn't need anything more. He his his powerbase to feed. But it's still a dangerous place out there.

Brigade XO wrote:The Andermani had left the system before Casey got to the hyperlimit, nobody tried to follow them (Casey) out.
I just thought that it might have been mentioned that Haupman and at least a Chief and perhaps an engineering officer would have been scrounging like hell. Not only is RMN short of spairs for their own equipment, there should have been at least some stuff on that station (even if they didn't get to do more than get replacement missiles) that the ship could use or were newer version of stuff they had and could also be used as both laters spares and samples to copy. Of course that would require a slightly longer book. I was pointed out here on the list that they did get at least a full dump from the station computer.

And about glomming every free sample they could get on the goodwill mission is right on target. While I'm sure Manticore is going to abide by various patent rights (sure they are:) ) they have such a base need to both replenish their own stock and get examples of stuff that the Captain is probably going to let her Chief's go scrounging.

I was specificaly mentioned in the book that local manufactures at Manticore hadn't been intersted in Haupman's design suggestions (the Captain was quite annoyed that he had given (or sold for royalties- we don't know) to the 1st supplyer they visited. Why did he do that instead of working with Manticorian manufactures? Apparently (per Haupman) nobody was interested and didn't think they had any usefull application. Given the surname, we see that he probably started his own shop and grew from there.
Also, given the politics and lack of adequte funding for both Navy and MPARS, it is odd that Breakwater wouldn't think that manufacturing what was needed (at leasts spares etc) would be benificual to his allies and contributors. But that's also deep politics and manuvering so someobody could have already been raking in a nice profit doing the importing.

Of course, so much of what they encountered and did can't become public so, at best, only news stories (such as the destruction of the mercenary/pirate group "just before" the DD arrived at the system would be an example of how Haven was cleaning up...and so perhaps the Navy wasn't (publicly for some politicians like Breakwater) didn't need anything more. He his his powerbase to feed. But it's still a dangerous place out there.

1) Yes the Andermani left and Casey was headed out as the Black ops force was arriving and the XO noted that one ship escaped.

2) Breakwater has NO -0- nada interest in the navy obtaining spare parts be they imported, home grown, churned out in Locatelli's basement. The sooner the navy dies the better.

3) Yes, this would be the golden opportunity for Herr Hauptmann to go off on his own with a fat little advance from Lady Clavingdell.

pappilon wrote:
3) Yes, this would be the golden opportunity for Herr Hauptmann to go off on his own with a fat little advance from Lady Clavingdell.

I want to point out that while Hauptmann is Klaus's ancestor; he is NOT the founder of the Hauptmann fortune (IIRC, there is an infodump on Hauptmann family history in _Honor Among Enemies_). It was his grandson who was the founder (and I suspect that the founding took place sometime around the first transit of the wormhole to Beowulf).

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

pappilon wrote:
3) Yes, this would be the golden opportunity for Herr Hauptmann to go off on his own with a fat little advance from Lady Clavingdell.

I want to point out that while Hauptmann is Klaus's ancestor; he is NOT the founder of the Hauptmann fortune (IIRC, there is an infodump on Hauptmann family history in _Honor Among Enemies_). It was his grandson who was the founder (and I suspect that the founding took place sometime around the first transit of the wormhole to Beowulf).

And yet another splendid opportunity gets squandered. Such a pity.

Sorry, I'm not going in search of infodumps.