Planning for the Gbaba

Mark Time wrote:In the course of doing a Google search I found that my idea of using off-planet resources to destroy the Rakurai has been raised before. There are at least two such threads from 2014 and 2015. If anyone is interested one is titled "Can Merlin build a base off planet" and the other is "Taking out the Rakurai".

I still think it's a good idea.

it's not that it's a bad idea, it just seems that it's not the direction that himself wants to go.

Nathan C. wrote:Just thinking as an engineer there is always a bottleneck. Sometimes it is in production, sometimes, in raw material, and sometimes it is in the available information. My guess was that the bottleneck for building a fleet that could take the war to the Gbaba was technology and data. Is that right?

And numbers.

100 ships of high quality vs. 100,000+ ships of roughly equal quality is not a battle any general can win.

A sufficiently high tech edge could change that. But it would have to be a HUGE tech edge. Until then, it's numbers.

FriarBob wrote:

Nathan C. wrote:Just thinking as an engineer there is always a bottleneck. Sometimes it is in production, sometimes, in raw material, and sometimes it is in the available information. My guess was that the bottleneck for building a fleet that could take the war to the Gbaba was technology and data. Is that right?

And numbers.

100 ships of high quality vs. 100,000+ ships of roughly equal quality is not a battle any general can win.

A sufficiently high tech edge could change that. But it would have to be a HUGE tech edge. Until then, it's numbers.

As has been misattributed to Stalin and many others:
"Quantity has a quality all its own"

Here are a collection of thoughts in random order that seem to me to apply here. Sinse it has been a while sinse I have been over this stuff, some of this might need to be corrected.

With the Gbaba, I think that at the time of the Federation War, they were not expansionist. What their policy was is that if anyone trespasses on what they regarded as their area of space, they hunted down and destroyed the interlopers. Then they went home. Sinse their culture is static, there is no reason to believe that would have changed.

Had Langhorne and his cronies followed the mission orders they had when they left earth, Safehold would have "gone bush" for 300 years to give time for any Gbaba pursuit to pass by without finding any signal to detect and then go home again. After that time they could have turned back on the lights and cautiously made their way back into space where the warships and transport vessels that brought them there with the technology to build on would still be powered down and waiting for them. But as we know, Langhorne didn't follow orders; hence the situation Merlin found when he woke up in the cave.

What we know about the Rakurai is that it is a multinode system that can monitor the entire surface of Safehold. Since it was able to defend itself against Owl, at least part of it is autonomous. What we don't know is if the system requires instructions from the temple to strike the surface. We also don't know if there are sensors facing outward away from Safehold. Sinse the purpose of the system was to prevent violations of the proscriptions, best guess is that the sensors are facing inward. If so, there would be no reason not to establish an industrial module in the asteroid belt if you could figure out how to get the necessary stuff for doing so past the orbital system to start with.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Here are a collection of thoughts in random order that seem to me to apply here. Sinse it has been a while sinse I have been over this stuff, some of this might need to be corrected.

With the Gbaba, I think that at the time of the Federation War, they were not expansionist. What their policy was is that if anyone trespasses on what they regarded as their area of space, they hunted down and destroyed the interlopers. Then they went home. Sinse their culture is static, there is no reason to believe that would have changed.

Had Langhorne and his cronies followed the mission orders they had when they left earth, Safehold would have "gone bush" for 300 years to give time for any Gbaba pursuit to pass by without finding any signal to detect and then go home again. After that time they could have turned back on the lights and cautiously made their way back into space where the warships and transport vessels that brought them there with the technology to build on would still be powered down and waiting for them. But as we know, Langhorne didn't follow orders; hence the situation Merlin found when he woke up in the cave.

What we know about the Rakurai is that it is a multinode system that can monitor the entire surface of Safehold. Since it was able to defend itself against Owl, at least part of it is autonomous. What we don't know is if the system requires instructions from the temple to strike the surface. We also don't know if there are sensors facing outward away from Safehold. Sinse the purpose of the system was to prevent violations of the proscriptions, best guess is that the sensors are facing inward. If so, there would be no reason not to establish an industrial module in the asteroid belt if you could figure out how to get the necessary stuff for doing so past the orbital system to start with.

Don

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We don't know that it is a multi-node system. There is literally no need for it. If it is set up to detect electricity, then it should be able to do so whenever it passes over any part of Safehold that is using electricity, unless it is in geosynchronous orbit. Secondly, if Merlin can fly a skimmer to orbit and view the rakuri system, he should be able to take a combat shuttle there too. Combat shuttles need to be stealthy as well, so that getting past the orbital system shouldn't be a problem. Indeed, if he wanted he and Owl could design an asteroidal laser system which could be used to destroy the orbital system, however, this would not suit the author's purpose, or, as my wife puts it when I point out a plot hole in a movie, "it's a movie!' Implying that I should recognize that there's plot reasons for these big holes!

Keith_w wrote:

n7axw wrote:Here are a collection of thoughts in random order that seem to me to apply here. Sinse it has been a while sinse I have been over this stuff, some of this might need to be corrected.

With the Gbaba, I think that at the time of the Federation War, they were not expansionist. What their policy was is that if anyone trespasses on what they regarded as their area of space, they hunted down and destroyed the interlopers. Then they went home. Sinse their culture is static, there is no reason to believe that would have changed.

Had Langhorne and his cronies followed the mission orders they had when they left earth, Safehold would have "gone bush" for 300 years to give time for any Gbaba pursuit to pass by without finding any signal to detect and then go home again. After that time they could have turned back on the lights and cautiously made their way back into space where the warships and transport vessels that brought them there with the technology to build on would still be powered down and waiting for them. But as we know, Langhorne didn't follow orders; hence the situation Merlin found when he woke up in the cave.

What we know about the Rakurai is that it is a multinode system that can monitor the entire surface of Safehold. Since it was able to defend itself against Owl, at least part of it is autonomous. What we don't know is if the system requires instructions from the temple to strike the surface. We also don't know if there are sensors facing outward away from Safehold. Sinse the purpose of the system was to prevent violations of the proscriptions, best guess is that the sensors are facing inward. If so, there would be no reason not to establish an industrial module in the asteroid belt if you could figure out how to get the necessary stuff for doing so past the orbital system to start with.

Don

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We don't know that it is a multi-node system. There is literally no need for it. If it is set up to detect electricity, then it should be able to do so whenever it passes over any part of Safehold that is using electricity, unless it is in geosynchronous orbit. Secondly, if Merlin can fly a skimmer to orbit and view the rakuri system, he should be able to take a combat shuttle there too. Combat shuttles need to be stealthy as well, so that getting past the orbital system shouldn't be a problem. Indeed, if he wanted he and Owl could design an asteroidal laser system which could be used to destroy the orbital system, however, this would not suit the author's purpose, or, as my wife puts it when I point out a plot hole in a movie, "it's a movie!' Implying that I should recognize that there's plot reasons for these big holes!

Hi Keith. Good to see your post. According to my admittedly dim memory (getting to be an old fart, you know ) the multimode bit is canon, ruled on by the author himself.

Don

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n7axw wrote:
Hi Keith. Good to see your post. According to my admittedly dim memory (getting to be an old fart, you know ) the multimode bit is canon, ruled on by the author himself.

Don

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Hi Don, I don't remember reading that, but I don't read everything so it's possible. But in any case it doesn't make any difference. If Merlin really wanted to, he could destroy the orbital bombardment system anytime he wanted to put the effort into it, but for DWWs own reasons it hasn't happened yet and probably won't.

Keith_w wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Hi Keith. Good to see your post. According to my admittedly dim memory (getting to be an old fart, you know ) the multimode bit is canon, ruled on by the author himself.

Don

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Hi Don, I don't remember reading that, but I don't read everything so it's possible. But in any case it doesn't make any difference. If Merlin really wanted to, he could destroy the orbital bombardment system anytime he wanted to put the effort into it, but for DWWs own reasons it hasn't happened yet and probably won't.

It does have to happen sometime for the plot to advance.We could be waiting a while, though. David's plots advance by millimeters, not miles...

Don

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Keith_w wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Hi Keith. Good to see your post. According to my admittedly dim memory (getting to be an old fart, you know ) the multimode bit is canon, ruled on by the author himself.

Don

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Hi Don, I don't remember reading that, but I don't read everything so it's possible. But in any case it doesn't make any difference. If Merlin really wanted to, he could destroy the orbital bombardment system anytime he wanted to put the effort into it, but for DWWs own reasons it hasn't happened yet and probably won't.

Merlin has already investigated the situation and he has nothing that can touch the OBS (BTW, I suspect that there is full sphere coverage and it might be impossible for even a highly stealthed SNARC to escape to the asteroid belt). Of course, it is possible in the next book for our favorite virtual personality to come up with a ground based design that Charis's existing industry could actually build (with high tech components supplied by OWL) to attack the OBS.

Just finished a re-read of the whole series again (Sorry I didnt respond much earlier, forgot to check this forum)

I recall TextEv of a multinodal rakuri system in orbit. Multiple stations.

I also recall there being mention of not being able to get 'beyond' them... eg; All things currently that Merlin does in orbit is 'lower orbit' than the rakuri... which unfortunately renders this thread moot if it is 'canon' that Merlin cannot get out 'past' the Rakuri without destroying them first, and Merlin is also unable to destroy them without deploying the industrial base on the planet..... which Merlin can't do without it being detected.

How to solve that conundrum was briefly mentioned as 'something to do after the Church war was handled' (paraphrase).. and has been left as a dormant issue in the series for now.

Most of this info I believe was in OAR.. but I've found a new series I'm reading atm and don't want to go re-read that again just yet.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

Keith_w wrote:
Hi Don, I don't remember reading that, but I don't read everything so it's possible. But in any case it doesn't make any difference. If Merlin really wanted to, he could destroy the orbital bombardment system anytime he wanted to put the effort into it, but for DWWs own reasons it hasn't happened yet and probably won't.

Merlin has already investigated the situation and he has nothing that can touch the OBS (BTW, I suspect that there is full sphere coverage and it might be impossible for even a highly stealthed SNARC to escape to the asteroid belt). Of course, it is possible in the next book for our favorite virtual personality to come up with a ground based design that Charis's existing industry could actually build (with high tech components supplied by OWL) to attack the OBS.