How many books in this new arc?

I see a great big "We're Back..." coming.

I'm in the camp that the story has already been written, except that they were called the Achuultani(sp?).

If Himself were going to write another Big Fleet Space Opera, I'd far rather see a sequel to Excalibur Alternative. Those were some interesting, varied Bad Guys that were a lot easier to get invested in hating. The Achuulbaba aren't that interesting to hate, as they're more like a force of nature that have to be overcome rather than anything personal.

NervousEnergy wrote:I'm in the camp that the story has already been written, except that they were called the Achuultani(sp?).

If Himself were going to write another Big Fleet Space Opera, I'd far rather see a sequel to Excalibur Alternative. Those were some interesting, varied Bad Guys that were a lot easier to get invested in hating. The Achuulbaba aren't that interesting to hate, as they're more like a force of nature that have to be overcome rather than anything personal.

He is doing just that now. Into the Light will take up the story of a devastated Earth barely saved from destruction and its fight against an established galactic civilization.

Just remember we are talking about David “My Three Book Arc Is Somehow Nine Books Long” Weber here.

I’d guess that if he intends another three books to finish off the Revelation Arc, we will be looking at twice that number or more.

This has been written very respectfully, you understand...

Just how long would it take (and how to get there) before Safehold were ready to go looking for the Gbaba?

You have a planet that just went through a civil war with people being slaughtered in the millions or dying of famine where the winning side is using up to Steam Age technology and a lot of more modern stuff adapted to what essentially is Steam Punk variation on late 19th/early 20th century equipment.

Does Merlin and Owl have a compleat database of what the Federation knew about Gbaba tech, tactics etc up to the time the Safehold Fleet made it's exit?
Does Merlin and Owl have a compleat database of Federation tech- civilian and military including history, tactics, processes and manufacturing, medical, starships and all the systems the Federation had explored before the Safehold Fleet made its exit.
How long- given that Safehold could stop the warfare still going on and more or less come to some consensus about the CoGA not being the actual word of God- could you build up a population that might just be possible of supporting the creation of a new star fairing culture. That presuming you don't get blown back to the literal stone age by the OBS and whatever is lurking in the Temple?
How long would it take Safehold, after it is able to bring a massive number of the population up to at least the level of Fed knowlge and manufactring ability (not total output just the same industries) just prior to the Federation being wiped out?
IF the Gbaba haven't decided that they need to upgrade their own tech over the time Safehold has been in existence, how long do you think it would take Safehold to 1st produce most recent Federation civilian and military manufacturing plus Navy warships with trained crews and start trying to solve the problems of countering Gbaba tech last known?
How many Star Systems with habitable planets will it take to grow the entire culture of Safehold to where it can field a fleet at least as big as what they last knew of for the Gbaba? How much bigger a fleet (which still can be continuing to grow incrementaly plus with new military tech being added to newest builds?
How long could an expanding Safehold that has returned to at least the Federation most recent level of starfaring technolgy avoid running into the Gbaba so it could expand its capasity enough to create such a fleet?

Might as well just ask Dahak to show up with an Imperial Armada (say 5,000 battle planetroides) and just go looking in groups of 200 to pound every Gbaba occupied system back to not much more living there than bacteria.

shayvaan wrote:I would love to see the Human - Gbaba rematch. Never know what else the Gbaba may have up their sleeves, after all the first war started off with a couple of colonies getting nuked then a string of human victories and then the REAL Gbaba fleet shows up.


Why did they do that? If they had mobilized those killer fleets for the first blitz mankind would have had less time to build their defenses - and possibly wouldn't have had the time to redress the tech imbalance or mount Operation Ark.

If, for whatever reason, they don't escalate a conflict beyond what is necessary to win it, what else may they have in reserve?

Of course, the story might be "Colonies got smashed by revenue cutters. Humans counterattacked. Gbaba governor called out the coast guard, ships manned by not-entirely sentient crew, starting by taking the oldest available arships out of inventory. Grand Admiral Nimue Alban shows up, beats on Gbaba, the Gbaba next rank up send out the navy frigates, and orders the Gbaba R&D folks to be brought out of suspended animation."

We haven't yet seen extreme space opera yet, you know, the one in which each side deploys not dirigible planets but dirigible galaxies.

shayvaan wrote:I would love to see the Human - Gbaba rematch. Never know what else the Gbaba may have up their sleeves, after all the first war started off with a couple of colonies getting nuked then a string of human victories and then the REAL Gbaba fleet shows up.

The question is whether the Gbaba have anything else up their sleeve. It's made clear in OAR that some of the Gbaba ships were thousands of years old, and even some that were newer construction were built using the same plans.

Why did they do that? If they had mobilized those killer fleets for the first blitz mankind would have had less time to build their defenses - and possibly wouldn't have had the time to redress the tech imbalance or mount Operation Ark.

Interstellar distances? We don't know how big the Gbaba polity is, or where their HQ is. What humans encountered first were frontier forces. It would take significant time for the Gbaba to get the idea that this was going to be a tougher opponent and they needed to fully mobilize. Once they did, the TF was screwed.

If, for whatever reason, they don't escalate a conflict beyond what is necessary to win it, what else may they have in reserve?

Why would anyone escalate beyond what they thought was needed to win?

What they had in reserve was simply sheer numbers.

At the start of the conflict, the TF was outclassed. My impression was the TF was in teh same position relative to the Gbaba in terms of tech that the galley fleet of Dohlar and Tarot were in facing the Charisian galleons.

There's nothing like a war to stimulate R&D, and by the end, TF ships were equal or better than the Gbaba's. Merlin comments at one point that had the TF had only 50 more years, they would have won, but they didn't have 50 years. Sheer numbers on the Gbaba side did them in. It doesn't matter if you have better ships, when for every enemy ship you kill, five more appear. It was a war of attrition, and the Gbaba had the ships to lose.

Whether they have anything newer now is a good question. Nimue asks her CO before the battle in which she dies whether they gave the Gbaba a hard enough time to force them to start innovating again. If they did, the Gbaba might have more advanced stuff in inventory.
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Dennis

PeterZ wrote:Actual war comes down to having the tech to clean their clocks or not. Both tell a one sided tale. If the Gbaba only fight when confronted by a stronger foe, the story is over once the Gbaba recognize their inferiority. If humans don't wish to engage in genocide, that can be told in less than a book as their forces go through the Gbaba armada like a hit knife through butter.

The interesting part for me is that I think humanity won't want to actually exterminate the Gbaba if they can avoid it. The issue is what they will have to do to convince the Gbaba they have two choices: learn to co-exist with other races, or cease to exist.

And the question is whether the Gbaba can learn, or whether they have simply become totally fossilized.
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Dennis

In speculating about how RFC might conclude the series, no one had mentioned another of his novels that also involves a hidden colony where mankind can rebuild in safety until they can return for revenge. I am talking about his book set in the Bolo universe, Old Soldiers.

Most of the novel involves a human colony and it's Bolo fighting to survive against a Melconian assault force that runs across it during their escape. The novel ends with an epilogue where the human tech base is now even more advanced, and new colonies are being established to support even larger numbers.

Before any fleet is sent back to eliminate the Gbaba threat (via genocide or some lesser defeat), not only will Safehold need overwhelming tech, they will probably want to have a substantial resource base to prevent facing the same threat of a larger resource base making up for an inferior tech base. (A theme that seems to appear in many of RFC's stories.) So in addition to unifying Safehold and unleashing it's forgotten tech potential, there will also need to be a period of expansion into space.

With so much story left to get humanity's tech advancement underway while not letting them become distracted by intramural conflicts, I see an ending either similar to the end of Excalibur Alternative (OWL and Nahrman extrapolating the coming struggle), or a time-jumping novel similar to TFT where the major steps toward the end of the Gbaba are told in short vignettes.

BillT52 wrote:Before any fleet is sent back to eliminate the Gbaba threat (via genocide or some lesser defeat), not only will Safehold need overwhelming tech, they will probably want to have a substantial resource base to prevent facing the same threat of a larger resource base making up for an inferior tech base. (A theme that seems to appear in many of RFC's stories.) So in addition to unifying Safehold and unleashing it's forgotten tech potential, there will also need to be a period of expansion into space.

I just don't see Safehold by itself being able to build and support a force that could take the Gbaba. Once the Proscriptions are out of the way and Merlin can safely have Owl start replicating what's in Nimue's cave to provide advanced technical capabilities, the first step, once it's possible, is getting off Safehold and establishing colonies elsewhere. They'd want to expand in the direction away from the Gbaba sector and build a strong interstellar polity, while peeking very stealthily back at Gbaba space.
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Dennis