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tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Yes, that can of worms is best left sealed tightly. My point is to show how human nature has reacted in time of war under the same circumstances. It's war. Plain and simple. When an adversary feels wronged, you must take them seriously whether you think their anger is merited or not. Decades of smoldering hasn't cooled Malign embers one bit. Not even a little. Obviously they don't think it's "Just to make a point." But if so, they've certainly made that point with OB. They are not going quietly into the night. They haven't gotten over it. Whatever IT is.

And again, under the circumstances, I do not think "controlling the orbitals" and issuing demands to surrender before bombarding the planet is an EE violation. Not after there are no more sands in the hourglass. IT IS WAR. In the end, war is always waged by humans (as opined by Honor), but it ISN'T always waged by "sane" humans. Because sanity...can be...just so...arbitrary.

I posited the MA has designed weapons to complement their unbridled technology.

War might be started and fought by the insane, they do not perform as well as those that keep most of their sanity. There were regrettable things done in WW2, but poison gas on the battlefield was not one of them; so some rules still held.

Unless I am very mistaken, RFC plans for Manticore and her allies to win, so I will never expect him to write a scene where an invincible fleet of Malign warships is orbit around Manticore demanding surrender. Therefore I do not understand your point. Yes; if such a fleet surrounded Manticore, then the government would have to surrender.

I expect Manticore to win as well. The RMN is like the Kansas City Chiefs to me. I've been with that team for decades. I didn't abandon them thru tough times, altho I digress.

But yes, I DO expect and WANT the Manties to win. But I boarded the bandwagon carrying all the fans screaming "The SL was too easy."

Although, I WAS NOT a part of the ragtag band of Wernickes who insisted "The Manties were given too many passes against Haven."

But in the spirit of them both, I rather hope the Manties win, but not absent quite a few scrapes and bruises.

Another point, is something in UH that I keep bringing up that came out of Honor's mouth even before UH I think. Paraphrasing . . .

"These people are running up quite a bill with me, and I am looking forward to presenting it."

That doesn't seem likely if she is retired. And Honor has never made a promise she hasn't kept. So, writing a final scene where the MA has come loaded for bear with batteries included and are taking star systems to task amuses me.

But, what amuses me more is Honor coming out of retirement to wrap up a few loose ends.

Many great fighters come out of retirement to show they still got the touch, and that their accomplishments weren't simply a fluke. Or, simply to silence the arrogant, blustering idiots with shiny new warships who've just translated into your Home System.


BTW, if anyone think that I think the task of designing a piece of tech or conceiving a tactic suitable for the MAlign isn't earmarked for the dust bin is fooling themselves. I would expect most of my conceptions to be received by the author to be as much cannon fodder as Sonja's GL. But she pressed on thank God.

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cthia wrote:Yes, that can of worms is best left sealed tightly. My point is to show how human nature has reacted in time of war under the same circumstances. It's war. Plain and simple. When an adversary feels wronged, you must take them seriously whether you think their anger is merited or not. Decades of smoldering hasn't cooled Malign embers one bit. Not even a little. Obviously they don't think it's "Just to make a point." But if so, they've certainly made that point with OB. They are not going quietly into the night. They haven't gotten over it. Whatever IT is.

The Rules of War exist because of two main reasons: first, unless this is a War for Extermination, the victors will need to live with the vanquished. The atrocities on this war will lead to atrocities on the next war and the victors today may be the losers on the next one, and the victims of the atrocities. If you don't want that on your people, you shouldn't do to another. And as we see on Safehold and on Starfire, wars for extermination can be turned around too.

Second, there are usually neutral parties to a war. An atrocity by one of the belligerents could cause the neutral parties to align with the other belligerent and tip the balance of power.

And again, under the circumstances, I do not think "controlling the orbitals" and issuing demands to surrender before bombarding the planet is an EE violation. Not after there are no more sands in the hourglass. IT IS WAR. In the end, war is always waged by humans (as opined by Honor), but it ISN'T always waged by "sane" humans. Because sanity...can be...just so...arbitrary.

Issuing demands is not a violation. Precision strikes after a demand for surrender is ignored is not a violation. Flattening cities is.

But again, we'll need to see what the GA+SL stance on Total War is.

"Little" reason to hate the Manties is just so arbitrary, and objective, and disrespectful to those diehards who are still boiling, stark raving, rabid mad. Heck, nobody in the SL had a reason to hate the Manties in the first place. But we know how that went. The Andermani didn't have a reason to hate the Manties either, but we know how that went. At any rate, you actually believe a SL which has put on a couple thousand pounds of pure muscle and irresistible tech will hesitate to squash the bug which beat them, along with the bug which betrayed them? IMO, the Manties better not even fart near the refurbished gorilla.

No doubt there are raving, star mad sollies who want revenge on Manticore and some did that even before the war. Just think of Kolokainos and his buddies in the shipping combines, for an example.

My argument isn't that no one wants revenge. It's that the majority of the population doesn't and, moreover, now that the GA has won, it has a chance to deliver its side of the story. Manticore and her allies have the inner lines of communication. The merchant fleet alongside the financial and banking system can generate a lot of good will in the SL members.

Plus I imagine something like the Marshall Plan for the SL. The GA members can fuel their own growth by helping SL members in the Shell and even in the Core with their own economies. Some of those may seek independence, which diminishes the SL's size and influence. Either way, that scores points in favour of Manticore. In fact, this was the basis of the Harrington Plan.

The new government will also likely be favourable to Manticore, since it is a new government in the first place. People who didn't have power before will.

As far as the number of ships tasked to complete an objective, is certainly rough. It counts on Home Fleet sitting pretty and completely oblivious to byngs little stealthed spirits poking along after them. But there are contingency plans if not.

Should "never" sit still is just so arbitrary. And never is such a long long time in the midst of complacency and human nature.

Indeed. If the MAlign doesn't resurface for 50 years, complacency will have set in. But all likelihood is that they can't wait to get back at Manticore, Honor in particular, and get their agenda moving. I don't think tThey will wait 10 years (which means Katherine and Raoul won't be part of the fighting).

That also limits how quickly they can build up their LD fleet. If they have 10 slips building a ship every 3 years, that's only 30 ships they'll field, against 1200 SD(P)s the GA can. On that account, the MAlign should wait (but I don't think they will).

In 10-15 years, Home Fleet won't have forgotten the lessons yet. Making a random course change every hour or so is pretty effective against a long-range high-speed attack and a stealthed approach. Think "Crazy Ivan" manoeuvres from The Hunt for the Red October.

I know the forts "should" protect the inbound lanes. And I imagine they do. Just not so sure they can do so against such a completely stealthed adversary with batteries included.

Stealth is gone at the first shot. Either you take everyone out on the first shot and you ensure you succeed, or you've failed completely. If the LDs can't take out all forts in one go, including the ones with bubblewalls up, those will return fire. And if they are protecting the inbound lanes, relief ships will come through. Moreover, the LDs don't know when those ships will come through and in which order: as I argued up-thread about the MAlign attacking Lynx, either they reveal themselves targetting the escort units that come first, or they wait until the wallers come through, meaning those very same escorts will have brought up their wedges and cleared for battle.

Dunno if the LDs will launch themselves or a battery of stealthy pods of GTs emplaced, or, or, or...

Deploying shoals of GTs would allow the LDs to keep their positions secret for longer. But as I argued, deploying the GTs carries an increased danger of discovery of its own.

The MA has some notion of fire and brimstone. I'm certain the tactic won't work totally, but whether it won't suffice to prevent a sufficiently undamaged and battle worthy force from assisting the planet? Probably not as well. After all, this is the mighty Manties, but the MA are not too afraid to try.

Again, the objective isn't to take the junction. Whether the MA and their new tech - made possible by stolen Manty secrets - agrees with you is another matter.

They can delay indeed. The relief force will need to spend an hour sweeping around the Junction for pods and stealthed ships. But that's also about how long it takes the full fleet to transit anyway.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But if there were forts around Manticore I would expect a mention that the MAlign didn't expend any of their limited weapons on such relatively tough targets -- and then that they watched helplessly as the debris rained down.

Yup. It's a perfect PoV to see the attack. David is pretty good with avoiding having the universe mutate per the needs of the plot, but I'm not sure about this. There just should be some mention of them. Instead it seems like the only military defense stuff in orbit is all on the platform.

This exchange got me thinking about an era where forts really got a workout, or, at least, saw quite a bit more action. Perhaps in King Roger's day, if there were forts then.

An era where their limited tactical mobility in the threat environment at the time, was damn plenty.

I hope they weren't the first banishment stations. Where they sent the Youngs to sit and rot.

I know RFC isn't a spring chicken so it isn't likely to happen, but the story of "The Little Fort That Could" really tickles my fancy. What kind of existence, EXISTS, on one of those things near the MWJ? You wouldn't want to be "caught on the deck peeing" at the wrong time.

Question, does a fort have tubes or simply pods? Or both? When it is maneuvering, can it carry pods and if so, is it also at the cost of acceleration?

And, can it fire in all directions?

What limits it's acceleration?

What is the shape of a fort?

cthia wrote:Question, does a fort have tubes or simply pods? Or both? When it is maneuvering, can it carry pods and if so, is it also at the cost of acceleration?

And, can it fire in all directions?

What limits it's acceleration?

What is the shape of a fort?

I expect the early forts as of OBS would file all their missiles from tubes. By the time of Echoes of Honor they used pods like an SD(P); from chapter 38:

He jerked his mind back from useless speculation and inhaled deeply. The active forts had strictly limited numbers of pods—another point to take up with Logistics Command, he thought grimly; when a fort is declared operational, then it should damned well receive its full ammunition allocation immediately, not "as soon as practical!"— but, fortunately, the Harrington and her two sisters were another story. Built to the radical new design proposed by the Weapons Development Board, they'd been constructed around huge, hollow cores packed full of missile pods and ejection racks to deploy them. Between the three of them, they carried no less than fifteen hundred pods, and they'd been busy launching them into space ever since their arrival. Unlike older ships of the wall, they also had the fire control to handle a couple of hundred pods each, and they'd been handing the other eleven hundred off to the two forts and to their fellow SDs.

The acceleration is limited by its mass, either it uses a compensator that has a sharp max acceleration drop off above SD size or else it uses artificial gravity to counter acceleration which has an effective upper limit. I always pictured them as looking like the death star, for no good reason (except that they are protected by a spherical sidewall).

Yes, it can fire in all directions when it has it's bubble up.

Acceleration is limited by the fact that it's too massive to use a compensator effectively, so you are limited to grav plates.

tlb wrote:The acceleration is limited by its mass, either it uses a compensator that has a sharp max acceleration drop off above SD size or else it uses artificial gravity to counter acceleration which has an effective upper limit. I always pictured them as looking like the death star, for no good reason (except that they are protected by a spherical sidewall).

A sphere also maximises internal volume for the same surface area, which equates to armour.

However, because they do have wedges for some limited mobility, impeller ring requirements may dictate a different shape. They may look like a pear with two stems.

kzt wrote:Yes, it can fire in all directions when it has it's bubble up.

Acceleration is limited by the fact that it's too massive to use a compensator effectively, so you are limited to grav plates.

Certainly a particular design which allows the use of several compensators working in tandem has been discussed?

Is it one of those dead horses that keep getting out of the pasture?

cthia wrote:Certainly a particular design which allows the use of several compensators working in tandem has been discussed?

Is it one of those dead horses that keep getting out of the pasture?

I don't think it's been discussed, but if it were possible, we'd have seen ships bigger than a 9-million ton SD.

kzt wrote:Yes, it can fire in all directions when it has it's bubble up.

Acceleration is limited by the fact that it's too massive to use a compensator effectively, so you are limited to grav plates.

cthia wrote:Certainly a particular design which allows the use of several compensators working in tandem has been discussed?

Is it one of those dead horses that keep getting out of the pasture?

I don't think that is a dead horse, but I don't think that you could ride it very far. I assume there is just one compensator and it scales with the ship; just as there is one hyper generator.

One thing that bothers me about the forts constructed as Manticore took control of various wormhole junctions. Clearly they cannot be built from scratch, so they must be built in sections that are the largest that can fit into the largest cargo ships and then snapped together on site. Does that sound right? How long should it take to put together (and take apart when no longer needed). I wondered at the time if it would be simpler and more economical to build forts with a hyper generator and then fly them into place as needed; with the ability to fly home as well.

PS. I agree with ThinksMarkedly: if it could be done, then it would have been done. But this the first the question has come up, so far as I know.

cthia wrote:Just a few loose ends . . .

Loren Pechtel wrote:That's how I understand it, also--the battle for space must be resolved before you start on the battle for the planet, and any time the battle is for something civilian you are expected to offer surrender first.

The battle for space IS resolved, the CRITICAL space that is; the space about the planet. Orbit.

"We presently control the orbitals. LOW. MEDIUM. HIGH. POLAR NORTH. POLAR SOUTH."

The battle for the planet began with the demand to surrender.

Being in orbit doesn't mean the battle for space has been resolved. So long as weapons bear there still is a battle in space. He has specifically said that a hit-and-run raid doesn't give you the right to demand surrender even if you're closer to the planet than it's defenders.