When you're a hammer: MAlign blind spots

cthia wrote:They were completely blindsided when the two fiercest, longest standing enemies buried the hatchet and became allies. There is no way they could have foreseen or anticipated such an act of human kindness, and human nature's will to survive. The reality of Torch completely blindsided them as well.

I don't think this is a failure to understand human kindness. Rather, it's a failure to realize their chess pieces are actually capable of intelligent thinking. The formation of the GA is not at all surprising once both sides recognized how totally they had been played--it's not that the MA failed to recognize that, but that the MA failed to recognize that they would realize they were being played.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I don't think this is a failure to understand human kindness. Rather, it's a failure to realize their chess pieces are actually capable of intelligent thinking. The formation of the GA is not at all surprising once both sides recognized how totally they had been played--it's not that the MA failed to recognize that, but that the MA failed to recognize that they would realize they were being played.

Well, they were kind of expecting then to do what they would do. Which is take advantage of their weakness, rolling in after the SLN has pulled down their missile reserves etc.

Mirror imaging is a huge problem in international affairs. LBJ thought "Old Ho can't turn that down". Jimmahs DoS 'not only hadn’t read any of Khomeini’s writings but didn’t even have copies of them.” As one State Department official put it, “Whoever took religion seriously?”'

As is the assumption that your limited understanding of the situation, as fed to you by boot-licking sycophants, is accurate.
“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said.

kzt wrote:Well, they were kind of expecting then to do what they would do. Which is take advantage of their weakness, rolling in after the SLN has pulled down their missile reserves etc.

I think that is an important point, which I had not fully appreciated: Haven would know that a strike on industry would stop missile production, but not deplete the missile stores in ships nor depots; therefore the attack by the Solarian Navy (complete with nanite initiated missile launch) was included in the Oyster Bay plan to shoot those missile reserves dry.

The flaw, which the Malign had no way of anticipating, was the return of Cachet and Zilwicki with Herlander Simões. It was this testimony that was the deciding factor in pushing Haven to suggest the Grand Alliance. RFC has stated that the contribution of missiles from Haven was important in facing Admiral Filareta's fleet.

kzt wrote:
Mirror imaging is a huge problem in international affairs. LBJ thought "Old Ho can't turn that down". Jimmahs DoS 'not only hadn’t read any of Khomeini’s writings but didn’t even have copies of them.” As one State Department official put it, “Whoever took religion seriously?”'

“Whoever took religion seriously?”

Islamic expansionism
The Crusades, in defense of the Holy Land from Islamic expansionism
The Reconquista
Reformation/Counter-Reformation
Albigensian Crusade(s)
The European Wars of Religion
European Expansion into the rest of the world often had a religious component, whether Catholic or Protestant.
The US purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire resulted in a struggle between Western (mostly Protestant) and Eastern (Russian Orthodox) branches of Christianity
Wahabbism

etc.

kzt wrote:Mirror imaging is a huge problem in international affairs. LBJ thought "Old Ho can't turn that down". Jimmahs DoS 'not only hadn’t read any of Khomeini’s writings but didn’t even have copies of them.” As one State Department official put it, “Whoever took religion seriously?”

Fox2! wrote:“Whoever took religion seriously?”

Islamic expansionism
The Crusades, in defense of the Holy Land from Islamic expansionism
The Reconquista
Reformation/Counter-Reformation
Albigensian Crusade(s)
The European Wars of Religion
European Expansion into the rest of the world often had a religious component, whether Catholic or Protestant.
The US purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire resulted in a struggle between Western (mostly Protestant) and Eastern (Russian Orthodox) branches of Christianity
Wahabbism

etc.

Wasn't it during Reagan's term that a prominent academic wrote a book touting the end of history?

Ah, the good old days.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But remember that single-ring wedges are susceptible to harmonic stresses (the case of sloop HMS Phobos in Travis' era) and single-band wedges are vulnerable to the Crippler.

Could it be that Charles will make a come back to save some system's bacon with the Crippler against an LD?

kzt wrote:You know missiles are single ring too?

Hence why David never references anything in those stories.

Which would mean the crippler could be used for missile defense.

Except it's described as slow firing, and like the grav lance it takes the ship's entire drive to produce it so a ship can only target one thing at a time with it. I wouldn't be surprised if its firing cycle - the time it needs to be linked to the target wedge to induce the fluctuations that destabilize it - exceeds the time necessary for a modern missile to flash through it's entire range and detonate. But it's extremely unlikely to be able to cycle twice in that period.

So you're installing a pretty large, slow firing, engineering system that, at best, seems to be able to maybe kill 1 missile per salvo. Seems like a pretty poor return on investment...

(And that's assuming RFC decided to take notice of some of the odder bits of tech from the anthologies and let it into the mainline books in the first place)

tlb wrote:The flaw, which the Malign had no way of anticipating, was the return of Cachet and Zilwicki with Herlander Simões. It was this testimony that was the deciding factor in pushing Haven to suggest the Grand Alliance. RFC has stated that the contribution of missiles from Haven was important in facing Admiral Filareta's fleet.

I don't think it was crucial, but it was more than welcome. The RMN had enough ships and missiles (Apollo and not) left to stop the Eleventh Fleet cold.

But instead of facing them with no surplus and with only ~200 SD(P)s, they could face with basically unlimited supply and nearly 1:1 numerical odds in superdreadnoughts (and probably outmassing by over 20%). They almost won without firing a shot. I don't think Filareta would have been dissuaded if he had had 2:1 advantage. He might have thought it was a bad and costly idea, but I don't think he could have just walked away.

And of course, they could stop a second expedition if the Mandarins decided to send that too.

I would like to know what has happened to the 2nd Raging Justice fleet that was parked elsewhere to follow up after Filareta? Did they just slink off.....and of so, to where. That's a lot of 1st line SDs with complete weapons load-outs (but possibly not the brand new variation of Cataphract) plus complete fleet train.

Ok, Kingsford would know that he can't even think about using the with anything involving the GA but even one SL SD would be a massive show of force most places within the SL 2.0.

Heck I could even believe that one of the bits and pieces of discussion that Harrington was with Kingsford was to sent the entire RJ II fleet to Beowulf ---one at a time- to be reprocessed into new SEM and Beowulf equipment.

Brigade XO wrote:I would like to know what has happened to the 2nd Raging Justice fleet that was parked elsewhere to follow up after Filareta? Did they just slink off.....and of so, to where. That's a lot of 1st line SDs with complete weapons load-outs (but possibly not the brand new variation of Cataphract) plus complete fleet train.

Ok, Kingsford would know that he can't even think about using the with anything involving the GA but even one SL SD would be a massive show of force most places within the SL 2.0.

Heck I could even believe that one of the bits and pieces of discussion that Harrington was with Kingsford was to sent the entire RJ II fleet to Beowulf ---one at a time- to be reprocessed into new SEM and Beowulf equipment.

They were obviously useless against the GA. But the decision to not use the SDs in their other expeditions was odd. The SDs are slow but much better protected than the BCs they used, and speed only matters if you are dealing with anyone maneuvering.

tlb wrote:I think that is an important point, which I had not fully appreciated: Haven would know that a strike on industry would stop missile production, but not deplete the missile stores in ships nor depots; therefore the attack by the Solarian Navy (complete with nanite initiated missile launch) was included in the Oyster Bay plan to shoot those missile reserves dry.

The flaw, which the Malign had no way of anticipating, was the return of Cachet and Zilwicki with Herlander Simões. It was this testimony that was the deciding factor in pushing Haven to suggest the Grand Alliance. RFC has stated that the contribution of missiles from Haven was important in facing Admiral Filareta's fleet.

This doesn't make sense. The number of missile pods Honor showed Filareta (and remember, she later said everything she said was true, just some of it was understated) wouldn't have been seriously depleted disposing of Filareta's fleet. The ships weren't needed for anything more than controlling the missiles.