Why did everyone become dumb at the end of TEIF?

Loren Pechtel wrote:

jaydub69 wrote:Another possibility is maybe Eric Flint wrote a lot more of this book than we think and that's why the battle sequences/astrogation details seem a little off from DW's usual detail.

That's what seems to me the most likely. The whole battle doesn't feel like DWs writing to me. Not enough attention to detail, many things that don't fit with what we already know.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

jaydub69 wrote:Another possibility is maybe Eric Flint wrote a lot more of this book than we think and that's why the battle sequences/astrogation details seem a little off from DW's usual detail.

That's what seems to me the most likely. The whole battle doesn't feel like DWs writing to me. Not enough attention to detail, many things that don't fit with what we already know.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:As cthia said, this doesn't seem likely. Or, if Eric wrote it, DW certainly must have reviewed it thoroughly, so we can't pin the blame on Eric alone. Not that I was inclined to do so any way.

My problem is less about the specifics of the battle, though there are two big problems with it. It's more of the fact that it happened at all. It's the fact that Galton was introduced and removed from the board in a single book, without majorly advancing the plot for finding the Alignment. We could argue it makes finding more difficult now, but that's also the opposite of what we've been thinking the direction of the series should be.

munroburton wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:They did anticipate the stealth missiles and stop most of them.

That's the proof in the pudding isn't it? Grand Fleet lost about 20 capital ships in order to take the only star system fortified more heavily than Manticore's own Binary System. What's more, only one-third of those losses were actually to stealth weapons; the other two-thirds died because they advanced into close range of conventional missiles disguised as civilian cargo.

The GA's losses at Galton only seems "bad" because they've been walking all over the SLN with relative impunity for two years. If you go back to the wars between Haven and Manticore, it's barely a drop in the bucket. EG: White Haven lost about ten wallers in a minor engagement in 1906 which he retreated from. Amos Parnell lost over forty wallers in a major engagement which he also retreated from. Lester Tourville lost nineteen capital ships retreating from Sidemore. Between them, both sides lost around four hundred capital ships at First Manticore.

The static deployment beyond the hyper limit did exactly what it was meant to; it forced the Alignment to throw away its stealth advantages and come into a zone dominated by GA forces, utterly saturated by recon drones with FTL communications. Sun Tzu would be very proud.

We've already seen what happens when someone charges across the hyper limit into a fortified system. Tourville got his ass kicked and Filareta screwed himself so thoroughly he was going to surrender without firing a shot.

That leaves dancing outside the hyper limit and aggressive maneuvering would only create interception/ambush opportunities for the Alignment. As many recon drones as the GA can deploy, the numbers required start growing exponentially when they have to cover an expanding cone ahead of their fleet's base course. It's one of the reasons they moved so slowly into Galton orbit.

Or the final option is the one advocated by Captain Jaruwalski: a massive salvo launched as soon as they were out of hyper. This was ruled out because the GA refused to contemplate civilian casualties on the scale they had suffered. Would it have been better to do it that way?

Assuming they had done that and managed to not hit any civilian targets, what happens next? They eventually come in to Galton orbit, at which point those camouflaged Cataphracts potentially come into play anyway, unless Galton's command structure is so eviscerated that nobody is left to order it.

We know that final strike killed more ships than the first graserhead attack. It's hard to say how it would have worked out if it was the first and only attack Galton made. The GA crews might have reacted more slowly without having endured incoming fire, but they would also have a few more ships providing anti-missile defenses.

If there's a better way to crack a nut like Galton, I don't see it. The same technique should work on Darius if the GA ever finds it. They'll sit out there and force any spiders to sally forth or rot unused in their spider holes as Darius' orbital infrastructure dies to long-range bombardment.

cthia wrote:
And if all of the naysayers are right that the Spiders can't possibly have been hatched this soon, then DW is setting the stage for a heaping helping of arachnophobia. It does seem ironic that the very experienced GA seemed to ignore the possibility that they exist. Or, like my spidery naysayers in the forum, Simoes may have given a timeline for their possible completion.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:My problem is less about the specifics of the battle, though there are two big problems with it. It's more of the fact that it happened at all. It's the fact that Galton was introduced and removed from the board in a single book, without majorly advancing the plot for finding the Alignment. We could argue it makes finding more difficult now, but that's also the opposite of what we've been thinking the direction of the series should be.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:My problem is less about the specifics of the battle, though there are two big problems with it. It's more of the fact that it happened at all. It's the fact that Galton was introduced and removed from the board in a single book, without majorly advancing the plot for finding the Alignment. We could argue it makes finding more difficult now, but that's also the opposite of what we've been thinking the direction of the series should be.

kzt wrote:And the details of the attack are not exactly clear, especially at the stations. Having dozens of gigaton-range fusions reactors blowing up inside the station while dozens of megaton range weapons go off outside is hard on sensors and recording equipment.

cthia wrote:Galton in a single bound is what makes me think that the end is nigh. And if the end is nigh then the plot was majorly advanced. We are just not aware of it. I came away from TEiF with the feeling that the devil is in the details. The fly in the MAlign's ointment is somewhere in TEiF. Namely, all of the data that hasn't yet been scrutinized with a fine-toothed comb. Wasn't there mention of data that hadn't been accessed yet? As far as finding the Alignment, TEiF is like the catchphrase about the ingredients of PREGO - the popular spaghetti sauce - it's in there.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:And the details of the attack are not exactly clear, especially at the stations. Having dozens of gigaton-range fusions reactors blowing up inside the station while dozens of megaton range weapons go off outside is hard on sensors and recording equipment.

Except that those things aren't simultaneous. There were plenty of readings before the attack on the stations in both the MBS and Yeltsin's Star that occurred before the explosions. At the time they had ghosts in the sensors, but with lots of data analysis after the fact, and by combining the multiple readings, they probably came to the conclusion of what it's not: an impeller. That's why White Haven made the assertion he did.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Galton in a single bound is what makes me think that the end is nigh. And if the end is nigh then the plot was majorly advanced. We are just not aware of it. I came away from TEiF with the feeling that the devil is in the details. The fly in the MAlign's ointment is somewhere in TEiF. Namely, all of the data that hasn't yet been scrutinized with a fine-toothed comb. Wasn't there mention of data that hadn't been accessed yet? As far as finding the Alignment, TEiF is like the catchphrase about the ingredients of PREGO - the popular spaghetti sauce - it's in there.

That's what I meant when I said it's going in the opposite direction of what we've been thinking the direction of the series would be. If we expect that there's a very small number of books left, then making the Alignment more difficult to find is not helping. And we've got a book that didn't advance the finding of the Alignment or the Alignment's end goal either. It did make the Alignment weaker in many ways, by cutting off its lifeline through Galton, and by the existence of the Enlightenment.

I agree that there's something there in this book that will help in the long run. I think it'll revolve around Jessica Milliken breaking.