The Torch Wormhole

jtg452 wrote:I get that the action of Oyster Bay was intended to weaken the Manties enough that the Sollies had a shot of ultimately taking them out (but only after the Solarian Union is weakened enough that it falls apart).

did they really believe that the rest of the galaxy going to forget that there's this mysterious party loose out there that pulled the attack off? What did they expect, people to blame it on the space gerbils?

It could be that they expected Haven to take advantage of the situation; putting their preferred opponent for the League back into play.

jtg452 wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Arguably they gave up a major strategic advantage (the fact nobody knew they existed) in exchange for very damaging, but ultimately not decisive, tactical victory.

Basically they sucker punched their opponent when what they needed to do was assassinate them. Yeah, they might be able to to sucker punch them again - but they made it far harder to do so, or to do what they really need to do, than if they'd restrained themselves until they could make a single decisive move that guaranteed them victory.

Sounds shortsighted and not evidence of truly highly intelligent strategic thinking.

(But something I'm guilty in in a number of board games; I'll see such a great tactical move I get carried away without making sure it actually best serves my strategic goal. But then I make no claims of being a super-human mastermind )

Exactly.

For a bunch of genetically enhanced super people, they apparently don't know the difference between tactics and strategy.

The tactic was amazing- too bad it screwed up a centuries long strategy of staying covert AND it wasn't devastating enough to eliminate either the Manties or the Graysons.

It was remarkably short sighted.

I get that the action of Oyster Bay was intended to weaken the Manties enough that the Sollies had a shot of ultimately taking them out (but only after the Solarian Union is weakened enough that it falls apart).

did they really believe that the rest of the galaxy going to forget that there's this mysterious party loose out there that pulled the attack off? What did they expect, people to blame it on the space gerbils?

At the very least, they only needed Sol to blame it on Space Gerbils. And apparently they did. Which is another one for the "Why were they so foolish" thread.

cthia wrote:Plus, it is unquantifiable what the RMN could have produced if they weren't thrown off balance. They were on a roll in their R&D. Gram was too fucking efficient. It had to go.

That might have been the goal, but it failed.

Sure, they destroyed the station where the majority of the research was being done (Weyland), but they failed to stop the research. The researchers almost all survived and the data was never compromised (was never going to be).

The attack also had the unintended consequence of bringing Haven and Manticore together. The MAlign was never having nightmares of Shannon and Sonja collaborating because it had never occurred to them. Now they are. And Haven brought back 42000 workers from Grendelsbane.

Law of Unintended Consequences.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Plus, it is unquantifiable what the RMN could have produced if they weren't thrown off balance. They were on a roll in their R&D. Gram was too fucking efficient. It had to go.

That might have been the goal, but it failed.

Sure, they destroyed the station where the majority of the research was being done (Weyland), but they failed to stop the research. The researchers almost all survived and the data was never compromised (was never going to be).

The attack also had the unintended consequence of bringing Haven and Manticore together. The MAlign was never having nightmares of Shannon and Sonja collaborating because it had never occurred to them. Now they are. And Haven brought back 42000 workers from Grendelsbane.

Law of Unintended Consequences.

That is because they expected Eloise Pritchard to act like all the short sighted weasels they had been manipulating for generations. Her peace initiative during the Monica affair should had warned them that she had higher goals. The Greeks had a word for their attitude - hubris.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Plus, it is unquantifiable what the RMN could have produced if they weren't thrown off balance. They were on a roll in their R&D. Gram was too fucking efficient. It had to go.

That might have been the goal, but it failed.

Sure, they destroyed the station where the majority of the research was being done (Weyland), but they failed to stop the research. The researchers almost all survived and the data was never compromised (was never going to be).

The attack also had the unintended consequence of bringing Haven and Manticore together. The MAlign was never having nightmares of Shannon and Sonja collaborating because it had never occurred to them. Now they are. And Haven brought back 42000 workers from Grendelsbane.

Law of Unintended Consequences.

I'm not so sure it failed. YMMV, but I still think Gram was more efficient when it had Home Field advantage than the shadow of its former glory it is now. There isn't anything I'm trying to take away from Bolthole, but nothing in Haven Space will ever be as efficient as Project Gram. And working in someone else's laboratory can never replace the Home Sweet Home of working in your own.

They were never worried about collaboration of the two, no. What I'm saying is they would be worried even more, in hindsight, than they are now. I certainly would be. It is bad enough for the MAlign that they've come together. It would be considerably worse if they were putting their heads together in the MBS.

Has Bolthole ever been as efficient as the MBS once was?

cthia wrote:I'm not so sure it failed. YMMV, but I still think Gram was more efficient when it had Home Field advantage than the shadow of its former glory it is now. There isn't anything I'm trying to take away from Bolthole, but nothing in Haven Space will ever be as efficient as Project Gram. And working in someone else's laboratory can never replace the Home Sweet Home of working in your own.

Bolthole certainly did not have the cutting edge technology that Weyland had, I agree. But that's a temporary problem: once the terms of alliance were signed and the researchers put aboard a liner to go to Bolthole, they brought all the software and blueprints for all that technology. Even if they had to build the tools at Bolthole using current Havenite technology to build the actual tools they wanted, it could probably be done inside of 6 months. After that, Bolthole would be the single most advanced build centre in the entire Settled Galaxy.

The only drawback that Bolthole has and will forever have is lag time on information. Project Gram was highly successful because it benefited of information from all over the Galaxy, brought in by Manticoran spies, merchants, and via regular news. Manticore was effectively the centre of Galactic information (and economy). Now, for that information to get to the teams making use of them, you have to add some 20 days.

Its remoteness also means that people taking vacations, sabbaticals and other types of leave will probably take longer to get back.

I don't think that matters.

They were never worried about collaboration of the two, no. What I'm saying is they would be worried even more, in hindsight, than they are now. I certainly would be. It is bad enough for the MAlign that they've come together. It would be considerably worse if they were putting their heads together in the MBS.

Has Bolthole ever been as efficient as the MBS once was?

In terms of raw output, it was definitely above the MBS even before the Alliance. The Bolthole yards can probably build anywhere between 300 and 400 SDs at a time, while the MBS ones probably top out at 100 or 150. The only other system I could even think of having a similar output would be Yildun and even then most of it was probably civilian, since the SLN probably doesn't buy more than 50 SDs a year and I doubt that Technodyne can sell 50 SDs to other powers, every year.

And that was before they had access to Manticoran technology. Now they do.