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Honorverse ramblings and musings

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Thu Jul 19, 2018 5:26 pm

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Dauntless wrote:as the snippets of UH make clear (look up the one of honor and the kids at dinner)

Roul is already very gifted, enough to have his treecat nannies very interested/curious as to how he will develop.


Indeed, and good point. But was he born being all that he could/would be, if the genetic soup was just a bit more. . . concentrated? Curiosity only in the interest of science, of course.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by ldwechsler   » Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:20 pm

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cthia wrote:
Dauntless wrote:as the snippets of UH make clear (look up the one of honor and the kids at dinner)

Roul is already very gifted, enough to have his treecat nannies very interested/curious as to how he will develop.


Indeed, and good point. But was he born being all that he could/would be, if the genetic soup was just a bit more. . . concentrated? Curiosity only in the interest of science, of course.


Note however that his sister has certain gifts and she is NOT Meyerdahl genetically at all.

We will have to wait for the next book to find out more...and quite possibly the one after THAT since I think the next will be another Zilwicki an Cachat book.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Sun Jul 22, 2018 5:14 pm

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The RMN has a limited number of ships. The entirety of Home Fleet- and it's supporting infrastructure of forts, etc., - maintains what I presume is the equivalent of DEFCON 3 at all times, no? Doesn't that eat up total available operating hours (uptime) like pacman eats dots? Resulting in many of Home Fleet's ships needing downtime for maintenance all at once? Or at least many of them entering the window for repair at once? Which could result in failures during actual battle as a result of the technical problems of keeping a force at readiness while simultaneously keeping it running. It's akin to midair refueling, but instead of adding fuel you are adding repairs. What?! Akin to parasitic fish attaching itself to whales to keep it running cleanly on-the-fly.

Which, could result in critical units of Eighth Fleet which is armed with Apollo, down at an inopportune time. Similar to Pavel Young's unit being down for the count. Honor's flag could be indisposed during an MA encore. Now, she can transfer her flag during maintenance issues, but it has to be on a similarly equipped ship. But Honor's ammo load-out will be different than anyone else's, which introduces a chance for the RMN to be caught with its pants down like Japan's Yamamoto while changing out ammo.

The difference in how things work on paper and in real life is as a result of the many administrators and their secretaries who are pencil pushers and not warship pushers.

"Sir, here's the revised book on regulations."

"Thanks maggot. Hmmm ... hmm ... throw this damn thing in the fire!"

Does everyone agree on DEFCON 3?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Dauntless   » Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:52 am

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that really is one for RFC

i'm not sure exactly what readiness defcon 3 would be, given that anyone who comes over the hyper limit will take quite some time before closing far enough to be a threat to sphinx let alone manticore. (anyone coming through the junction is toast, especially possible minor spoiler for UH if they have followed Shannon's suggestion re the grasers from the captured solly SDs


in general, i would expect nodes to be kept hot so you can have impellers etc within an hour or so, and yes that will be hard on maintenance. so it could well be that only half is ready to go that quickly and the other half will be more like 3 hours. should still be plenty of time to get ready for uninvited quests.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Mon Jul 23, 2018 10:59 am

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Dauntless wrote:that really is one for RFC

i'm not sure exactly what readiness defcon 3 would be, given that anyone who comes over the hyper limit will take quite some time before closing far enough to be a threat to sphinx let alone manticore. (anyone coming through the junction is toast, especially possible minor spoiler for UH if they have followed Shannon's suggestion re the grasers from the captured solly SDs


in general, i would expect nodes to be kept hot so you can have impellers etc within an hour or so, and yes that will be hard on maintenance. so it could well be that only half is ready to go that quickly and the other half will be more like 3 hours. should still be plenty of time to get ready for uninvited quests.


Thanks Dauntless. Isn't the reason they're in such a heightened state of readiness because of the Yawata Strike, which gave no warning or 3 hr luxury to get ready?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Dauntless   » Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:09 am

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but they had warning. they had "odd" reading on the super sensitive arrays several months before the missile arrived. which were investigated but given that no knew of any way to travel that wasn't impeller it was thought a waste of time and forgotten about.

they simply cannot keep wedges at full readiness ALL the time. warships impeller nodes are complicated, expensive and like a lot of high end things likely to be somewhat fussy if left permanently on. there is a reason most ships, military and civ shut down a wedge if they are not actively using it for propulsion.

they probably have a similar system as to beowulf which I cannot go into further details without big spoilers.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:43 am

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But are they confident that they can rely on their detection? If so, then why the need for the state of readiness? The MA could launch from further out, and ships in orbit would be sitting ducks.

I simply imagine the logistics of micromanaging Home Fleet in this hectic state of readiness requires a virtual virtuoso conducting an orchestra of exhausted yard dogs, officers, ships, crew, tugs, colliers. . . conductors who're likely to burn themselves out as well, right along with nodes.

I also imagine DEFCON 3 to be exhausting on the personnel hold up in Forts. The logistics of this has bugged me for a while and I couldn't figure anything out but I'm not a geek, so I thought I'd send up a flare for help.

I know that all ships wouldn't come under the repair window all at once initially, but as the yard dogs begin to fall behind, eventually all of them will come due for repair/maintenance, it seems. And those poor yard dogs, whose numbers probably aren't exactly at a premium either, due to the Yawata Strike as well.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by kzt   » Mon Jul 23, 2018 12:05 pm

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Dauntless wrote:but they had warning. they had "odd" reading on the super sensitive arrays several months before the missile arrived. which were investigated but given that no knew of any way to travel that wasn't impeller it was thought a waste of time and forgotten about.

they simply cannot keep wedges at full readiness ALL the time. warships impeller nodes are complicated, expensive and like a lot of high end things likely to be somewhat fussy if left permanently on. there is a reason most ships, military and civ shut down a wedge if they are not actively using it for propulsion.

they probably have a similar system as to beowulf which I cannot go into further details without big spoilers.

The fact that this wasn’t done is one of the odd factors. Basically when you have the threat of essentially undetectable weapons that can likely destroy pretty much every vessel that is essentially stationary that doesn’t have a 360 sidewall up. The RMN solution to this threat appears to be to ignore it.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Mon Jul 23, 2018 12:08 pm

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I guess this would correspond to the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) of each ship. Is it the same for all ships?

Whenever I think of the whole thing, I can't seem to shake the Waka Waka Waka sound of PACMAN gobbling up widgets, sprockets, cogs and nodes.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Dauntless   » Mon Jul 23, 2018 3:06 pm

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the problem you raise is a real concern and the new stations will have sidewalls active at almost all times to try and prevent a recurrence but as you said the cost on people let alone hardware to keep them instantly ready to go is not one manticore or probably any nation can afford long term.

all they can do is follow up on any detections much more throughly and move the fleet to high alert while the signal is being investigated.

it is what it is, it is not perfect but there is no perfect answer to the problem.
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