"Why are you still alive?"

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Oh, I agree that they didn't want to forfeit. But textev says that is essentially the plan they adopted. They had no choice as the textev stated.

However, being defeated in detail is counting chickens before they hatch, don't you think? Because the prize for mousetrapping Honor could have been the entire Eighth Fleet. The RMN's first string. The possible payoff was worth the risk. Plus, they had to make the Manties rethink their strategy. And there seemed to be no better option available.

The RMN would have been screwed if they lost Eighth Fleet and its commander.

Yes the RMN would have been screwed if they'd lost 8th fleet.
OTOH Haven was lucky that they caught as little of 8th fleet as they did.

Honor hit Solon with 2 Invictus-class SD(P)s, 5 BC(P)s, 6 CAs, 8 CLs, 3 DDs, plus detached LACs. And it cost her about half of that to shoot herself out of a trap involving 18 Republic SD(P)s with screen, plus the Moriarty platforms controlling all the system's missile defense pods.

But if she'd had the rest of her then current Eighth fleet along she likely could have simply reversed course and blasted her way back out through Giscard's squadron of SD(P)s (Bogey Four) all the while fending off the fire from the flanking Bogies 2 and 3; and never come into effective range of the system defense pods.


Alice Truman, for the Lorn attack, had 8th fleet's other 4 SD(P)s [at least one apparently being another Invictus; and 2 known to be Medusas; not sure about the 4th], another CLAC squadron, at least 8 BCs (though older, non-pod, ones), around 6 CAs (including all 4 of their known Sag-Cs; while Honor kept the Star Knights and older Saganamis). So if Alice's detachment of 8th fleet had been with Honor that would have likely tripled the firepower and defenses the RMN had at Solon. Adding four more Keyhole II equipped ships, plus doubling the number of LACs, and throwing in the Sag-Cs, probably could have stood up quite well against the deeply stacked salvos Haven had to resort to to crack Honor's existing defenses. And as it was Giscard's wallers nearly shot themselves dry against far weaker defenses.

Still -- 18 on 4 SD(P)s is still enough of a force imbalance that I believe it would have been a strategic defeat, in that Honor still would have been driven from the field, but she'd have taken far lighter losses, and inflicted more damage, on her way out.

Be that as it may, there was no other option. And they would have gotten really lucky if Honor had picked the prize behind door number 1 on the first strike and lost the entire fleet.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Nope. That won't foil an expert system. That is why it is called an expert. These computer programs are no different than any other. Upon completion, test data is entered into it that should resolve to a specific conclusion.

Joat42 wrote:If the data is randomly selected based on inputs from a chaotic system there is no pattern to analyze, regardless how much number crunching you do or what software you use.

cthia wrote:But it wasn't completely random. There was a method to Honor's madness. We need the textev of Honor's thinking. As I remember it, she gave some details on the reasoning behind her choice of targets.

But, if it had been completely random, then it really would have been left up to pure intuition.

Tarot cards or an actual tea leaf reading would have been even better in that case. Or the old-fashioned eenie meenie miney mo. The report actually mentioned the criteria that the intuition was based on. The pattern.

It is not going to help you, because it is basically what the "tea-leaf readers" thought it was; in fact the text about the tea-leaf guesses gives a better description of her plan. At All Costs, chapter 15:

"It's good to see all of you gathered in one place at last," she said, after a moment. "And, as Commodore Brigham commented as we docked with Imperator, it's about time. Eighth Fleet is officially activated as of twelve hundred hours, Zulu, today."
No one actually moved, but it was as if an invisible stir had run around the compartment.
"We can anticipate the arrival of the remaining units of our initial order of battle over the next three weeks," she continued levelly. "We're all aware of how tightly the Navy is stretched at the moment, so we won't dwell on that just now. I met with Admiral Caparelli immediately before my departure for Trevor's Star, however, and he emphasized to me once again the importance of beginning active operations as quickly as possible.
"Commodore Brigham, Captain Jaruwalski, and I have given considerable thought to the most appropriate initial targets for our attention. This isn't simply a military operation. Or, rather, it's a military operation with a political dimension of which we must be well aware. Specifically, we want the Havenites to divert forces to provide rear security against our raids. That means balancing vulnerability of target against economic and industrial value, but it also requires us to think about which target systems are most likely to generate political pressure to divert enemy strike forces to defensive employment.
"I'm confident we can find such targets, but accomplishing our objective is almost certainly going to require us to operate widely dispersed attack forces, at least in our initial operations. That means we're going to be relying very heavily on the judgment and ability of our junior flag officers—more heavily than we'd originally anticipated.

I don't get it, because Honor's criteria is exactly what the Havenites were looking for, a pattern. And that pattern should have been child's play for an expert system to identify.

Besides, I keep pointing out that the tea leaf readers couldn't have identified a pattern if a pattern didn't exist.

Again, the textev you supplied included the very pattern that the tea leaf readers intuited. I am really nonplussed here.

cthia wrote:I don't get it, because Honor's criteria is exactly what the Havenites were looking for, a pattern. And that pattern should have been child's play for an expert system to identify.

Besides, I keep pointing out that the tea leaf readers couldn't have identified a pattern if a pattern didn't exist.

Again, the textev you supplied included the very pattern that the tea leaf readers intuited. I am really nonplussed here.

Which is why a good prediction doesn't come down to generalities like "vulnerability", "economic power", "industrial power", "political pressure" -- but a pattern based on the specific specifics related to those; and then how each specific is to be weighted against the others.

How do you rate various defensive measures to come up with a "vulnerability" rating?

Which specific industrial powers are more interesting to you: do you want to disrupt their general supply chains, their missile production, their ship building, their ship maintenance, etc. etc.?

How accurate is the Mantie insights into the political pressures a given system could create; and how well does that align with Haven's understanding?

And beyond that, is Manticore aiming to generate widespread, but less individually powerful, political pressure (hit many more, but individually weaker systems), or create less scattered, but probably still well separated, individually stronger pressure by hitting fewer but more important systems?


Those uncertainties, within the correctly recognized generalities, are presumably how Haven's analysists seem to have produced a post Cutworm I target list that still included over 1/3rd of all Haven's other inhabited systems. (Far too many to have any reasonable likelihood of setting enough sufficiently powerful traps to bloody part of 8th fleet)

After the 2nd round of strikes they probably got a better idea of the evolving criteria and weightings; but we don't know how much that let them shrink their predicted target list. I also don't think we know how many systems where the RHN was able to set traps; beside Solon. Even their force of SD(P) couldn't spare too many 18 SD(P) detachments to lay in wait at potential targets -- not without uncovering still more important systems. All we know is there wasn't another trap set at Lorn; but still I'd bet that they set traps at at least 3 or 4 systems (and probably still had more than that on the potential target list); but only got a bite at Solon.

cthia wrote:I don't get it, because Honor's criteria is exactly what the Havenites were looking for, a pattern. And that pattern should have been child's play for an expert system to identify.

Besides, I keep pointing out that the tea leaf readers couldn't have identified a pattern if a pattern didn't exist.

Again, the textev you supplied included the very pattern that the tea leaf readers intuited. I am really nonplussed here.

Don't confuse pattern with a deduction of what types of systems that could be hit in the future. If they had identified a pattern the RHN would have ambushed more of the TF's, what we see in textev is that they had an idea of the operational parameters and then place ambushes in some of the systems that fell within those parameters.

Think of it this way, systems already hit gave Haven a pattern that in turn gave them an idea of the operational parameters. Those operational parameters in turn couldn't be translated into a pattern, it only gave them a list of systems that may be hit.

Attacked systems -> pattern -> parameters -> uncertain list of systems that may be attacked in any order.

This reasoning goes out the window though if the system selection is based on previous attacks instead of random targets taken from a larger list beforehand - then you will have a pattern although it may be hard to deduce until you have enough data points.

[quote="tlb"
So, what is it about knowing that Malign lives were lost (even though she knew the defense was doomed, no matter what weapons were used), that is worse than the knowledge she has of all the deaths that the Malign has caused?[/quote]

Gail knows several not really disperit, things.
1) She knows she was tasked to set out a tactical defense of System Alpha but was not allowed (over several passes at protests) to incorporate any Oyster Bay types of weapons and that, however she structured it, the systems was going to be beaten into submission if it didn't surrender first. The existing, and staggering, amount of weaponry and forts in the system promised a massive amount of destruction before it would even get close to a conventional "we have to surrender" situation.

2) She knows probably just about everything the Alignment knows about GA weapons and at least broad tactical uses so she understands how much of a disadvantage System Alpha has vs a GA combined fleet--and that is including the Galton deployed weapons systems that are as yet unseen by the GA.

3) She is a Houdini relocated military analyst. She had a harrowing experience and just survived the GAUL's attempt to kill her and Zack (to keep them from being captured) and can deduce why the other Houdini carrying ship was destroyed to also keep the people and any information out of the hands of Torch (or anybody else).

4) What is not clear is how much she or Zack know about the methods used to hide the Houdini departures. On the other hand, she and Zack seem to be more or less sequestered from other Houdini transports and there has been NO information about what has happened at Mesa.
She's not an idiot. Houdini was run to remove high value Alignment members from Mesa---because there was going to be something they needed to be protected from. What was that- specifically what were they told?

5) Back to the military analyst part. Oyster Bay- humm, calculated decision if rushed, because Manticore and Haven getting too powerful and good, and so were disrupting The Plan. All these new and powerful weapons systems but they can't be included in the defense of System Alpha. Massive (apparent because she has to be given all that info on military installations, ships, forts, system sensor array, orbital industrial capasity and ability to have built what System Alpha has) capacity to expand defenses and pile up weapons but a) no provision to evacuate critical people and b) no provision to park forces in hyper just outside the system as a tactic to trap the attacker. Think "Paul Revere". Actually, no provision at all of having any of the military ships anywhere outside the system.
Sure, individual agents are lost/killed on assignments and (depending on how plugged in to sources of information germaine to her job back on Mesa) the Alignment used various mercenaries or other catspaws to cover their involvement and tracks,...,....but......the normal state of operations also involved the elimination of said catspaws of they were not killed in the operations.

Why would the Alignment have what is effectively an arsenal system but not go to the limit of potential capasity to defend it? Why no Oyster Bay and more recent types of weapons, particularly if the idea is to make the cost of the attack as high as possible for the attacker?

From our perspective as readers, it's clear that System Alpha is yet another throw-away scapegoat. But, for a senior analyst like Gail, you have to wonder what the hell the Alignment is playing at. Note: she is also shown as thinking that these things are items she must NOT think about because then she might say something that is going to trip the security systems she knows are set up. Your not paranoid if someone is actualy out to kill you if you do/say/think the wrong thing. And she is afraid.

Jonathan_S wrote:How accurate is the Mantie insights into the political pressures a given system could create; and how well does that align with Haven's understanding?

This and more. The Alliance is operating on a different data set on the target systems than the Havenites are. Possibly a faulty data set. Obviously the Havenites know more about their own systems than the Manty intelligence does at this time (since it was under the Janacek Admiralty until a few months ago). Grayson could probably supply a lot of missing details and maybe the Andies had all the accurate answers because that's just what they do -- maybe they knew more about those mid-tier Havenite systems than the Havenites?

Anyway, the point is the source data set to apply the predictions is different. So the Havenites must not only guess what criteria Honor is using to select targets, they must guess what data set she has available to do that. As an example, imagine that the intel that Honor has is actually victim of misinformation: that her analysts believed an old Peep lie about the strengths and industrial capabilities of a target system. That would make that system a probable target for her selection. Meanwhile, knowing realities, the Havenite side would not consider it likely.

This may exactly be what happened, as we know from textev that the systems she previously attacked were on the secondary list that they had predicted.

Of course, if she wastes time, ammo, and incurs risk for minor gain, the Havenites won't complain (too much). "Don't interrupt an enemy when they're in the process of making a mistake" and all.

I still think the best bet for the GA to find Darius itself, not just Felix, is through Milliken. Assuming she's from Darius and moderately intelligent, her recollections of the starscape, as inaccurate as memories are, might be enough to feed into a search system and narrow down to a portion of the Galaxy where such stellar features are visible to naked eye and/or sensors.

So why are Cachat and Ruth taking this roundabout way?

Milliken is probably being treated as an actual Prisoner of War, even though no war had been officially declared and she was caught in the act of attempting to commit an Eridani Edict violation. Her captors did not have to treat her as a legal POW. If they had instead treated her as a terrorist, they could have subjected her to interrogation. As a POW, they can't, so they have to turn her to have her volunteer information.

Why don't they change her status? They now know she doesn't have nanites.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I still think the best bet for the GA to find Darius itself, not just Felix, is through Milliken. Assuming she's from Darius and moderately intelligent, her recollections of the starscape, as inaccurate as memories are, might be enough to feed into a search system and narrow down to a portion of the Galaxy where such stellar features are visible to naked eye and/or sensors.

So why are Cachat and Ruth taking this roundabout way?

Milliken is probably being treated as an actual Prisoner of War, even though no war had been officially declared and she was caught in the act of attempting to commit an Eridani Edict violation. Her captors did not have to treat her as a legal POW. If they had instead treated her as a terrorist, they could have subjected her to interrogation. As a POW, they can't, so they have to turn her to have her volunteer information.

Why don't they change her status? They now know she doesn't have nanites.

Enhanced interrogation (ie torture) does not work as well as actually turning the subject, when that is possible. If she could be gotten to the point of actually volunteering information; then she will be much more useful to the Grand Alliance, than a defiant enemy who might reveal a few bits under coercion.

Even though she does not have the nanites, she still will have been given the standard treatments that naval officers receive to resist drugs and rough usage. Mission of Honor, chapter 40:

"And assuming there's any way to verify that what he's telling us is the truth," Trenis observed. They all looked at her, and she shrugged. "All our critical naval personnel are supplied with anti-interrogation protection. It's effective against every drug therapy we know about, but we've always recognized there are likely to be therapies we don't know about. I think we have to assume the Mesans are at least as aware of that as we are—I mean, let's remember where all their traditional expertise is focused."

tlb wrote:You have said this before (and I have included those quotes), but I do not understand the point that you are trying to make. Gail is not an innocent, living a life that she does not know is staged; as in the "Truman Show". She is a member of the Onion and a weapons analyst; so she knows bad things about the Malign, among them is knowledge of the weapons and performance of the missiles used in Oyster Bay and at Beowulf. If she is disillusioned at all, it is because she wanted to use those same weapons at "System Alpha" and was denied.

So, what is it about knowing that Malign lives were lost (even though she knew the defense was doomed, no matter what weapons were used), that is worse than the knowledge she has of all the deaths that the Malign has caused?

It's not a matter of lives, but rather the sacrifice of Galton that they are going to worry about. She saw that the Alignment didn't try to save the planet. Is Darius yet another expendable pawn??

tlb wrote:You have said this before (and I have included those quotes), but I do not understand the point that you are trying to make. Gail is not an innocent, living a life that she does not know is staged; as in the "Truman Show". She is a member of the Onion and a weapons analyst; so she knows bad things about the Malign, among them is knowledge of the weapons and performance of the missiles used in Oyster Bay and at Beowulf. If she is disillusioned at all, it is because she wanted to use those same weapons at "System Alpha" and was denied.

So, what is it about knowing that Malign lives were lost (even though she knew the defense was doomed, no matter what weapons were used), that is worse than the knowledge she has of all the deaths that the Malign has caused?

Loren Pechtel wrote:It's not a matter of lives, but rather the sacrifice of Galton that they are going to worry about. She saw that the Alignment didn't try to save the planet. Is Darius yet another expendable pawn??

Well first; she saw that the planet could not be saved, no matter what was done. The weapons that she was denied would have cost the Grand Alliance more, but the planet's fate was certain.

Second; Darius would only be expendable, if there were some other place to which a Houdini II could be executed. If she is among those who know the Detweilers exist, then she would know that Darius was not expendable as long as they were present. But even if she thought Darius was expendable, the same as Mesa and System Alpha; why would that make her a security risk? Anyone who believes in the plan, should always expect that there is a contingency arrangement. The leadership would be remiss; if they were not thinking about how to construct a hideaway, to cover the possibility that Darius is found. She, as much as anyone, should know that if Darius is found, then it will be conquered; just as she knew that System Alpha would lose, even if given those extra weapons..