Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

cthia wrote:But that is not the disagreement Duckk and I had. Long before that incident, I suggested the SLN would not accept defeat; that they would simply proceed to bombarding planets. Not Kew mind you. But bombard. Duckk argued that "the SLN are not a bunch of murderous idiots." Or something to that effect. I stated that they might even attempt to disguise it as something legal. It appears I was right on BOTH accounts. As the kews were actually legal. Unscrupulous, perhaps, but definitely legal.

tlb wrote:I do not think that the quotations marks are needed, because almost no one will hit a planet with a missile when a much cheaper KEW is available. The only exceptions that come to mind are the Masadans, since they would not mind the radioactive contamination on their enemies soil.

Jonathan_S wrote:And the Masadan's missiles are primitive enough they probably do use fission core to initiate; so they'd be somewhat radioactive whether or not the warhead went off.

Modern navies use pure fusion grav pinch warheads which literally are not radioactive until/unless you trigger fusion by gravitationally compressing the fuel. (Now RMN/GSN microfusion power plant would release a bit of radioactivity if the missile impacted)

But the main thing you can get from a missile over a normal KEW is extinction event impact energies -- as the KEW would hit with probably at most a couple thousand (and probably more like a couple hundred) KPS while a modern missile could hit with north of 80,000 (200,000 for an MDM)
And since energy goes up with velocity squared!!

Of course most people don't want to rain down extinction level events

As Jonathan_S points out, there is a fundamental difference between hitting a planet with a KEW and hitting one with a missile. I do not believe that Duckk has ever called "KEWing into compliance" something that was beyond the pale in the Honorverse, but he has certainly said that about "bombarding into extinction".

So you cannot point to the various times that a KEW has been used in the books and say that you were right to predict that the Solarian Navy would bombard planets in the face of defeat. As I pointed out the only time we see the SLN use a KEW (or hit the planetary surface from space) was in the Verge to advance OFS policy (not because of any fear of defeat).

cthia wrote:If I were the SL, I certainly wouldn't allow Manticore's merchant marine to operate in my space again. And I would boycott Manticoran Space as much as possible.

I have a question, though, Somtaaw. Why would the splinters need to kick the SL out? Out of what? The SL is already out of anything formed by the splintered states. As I coined upstream, this would be a block of successor states. BOSS.

A "space race" could have been fueled by Honor, between the splintered states and the SL. My point is that this rivalry could fuel eclipsing technology.

Well many people here seem to be assuming none of the existing League members will leave, so even though they're signing a surrender thing, in 20+ years it'll be business as usual.

Except Beowulf and Hypatia, plus other systems around Beowulf are almost guaranteed to form their own successor state. Maya already broke off into a second BOSS, and the Mesan Alignments Renaissance Factor being a third. That's just the ones we happen to know of, and there is bound to be more that either already have or are in the process of seceding from the original Solarian League to form their own multi-nation groups as well.


Prior to UH, Manticore, or specifically Honor and Queen Elizabeth discussed how they WANTED Blocks Of Successor States. That's almost certainly an unmentioned part of the new Constitution on the League, especially since they're demanding the right to secede is an unarguable right.

So the League already is balkanizing, without any direct action by Manticore insisting on it officially, they're just standing back and letting it happen naturally. And after the upset nations secede from the League, Manticore will then take action to ensure that newly independent nation is more friendly towards Manticore and the Grand Alliance members than it is to the League. Just off the known groups Manticore is already VERY friendly with Maya & Beowulf, will find a high level of hostility from the Renaissance Factor (not knowing the Mesan connection), and other groups have to officially declare before anything can be done about their diplomatic leanings.


As more Successor States form, Manticore can start offering up deals and trade agreements to woo them into being at least a neutral in the event of any future disagreements, or even into being full trade partners. For example many systems remained very friendly to Manticore (even actively trading), and in UH were often used to 'remind' the Mandarins that Manticore WILL BE WANTING their assets back post-war so they better only be impounding it not seizing it to use or destroy. Many of those systems Manticore used as messengers may want to secede from the League and form their own political entities as well but we were never told which systems, or their rough geostellar locations, so we can't know wether they'll join an existing (known) block, or form their own new one.

Somtaaw wrote:Except Beowulf and Hypatia, plus other systems around Beowulf are almost guaranteed to form their own successor state. Maya already broke off into a second BOSS, and the Mesan Alignments Renaissance Factor being a third. That's just the ones we happen to know of, and there is bound to be more that either already have or are in the process of seceding from the original Solarian League to form their own multi-nation groups as well.

Nitpick: neither Maya nor the RF were members of the SL in the first place. Maya was a protectorate, with an OFS governor; the RF could be said to be in the sphere of influence, with some of its members inside the volume of the League. The only MAlign system that was a member was Visigoth, not the rest of the RF and particularly not Mannerheim.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Except Beowulf and Hypatia, plus other systems around Beowulf are almost guaranteed to form their own successor state. Maya already broke off into a second BOSS, and the Mesan Alignments Renaissance Factor being a third. That's just the ones we happen to know of, and there is bound to be more that either already have or are in the process of seceding from the original Solarian League to form their own multi-nation groups as well.

Nitpick: neither Maya nor the RF were members of the SL in the first place. Maya was a protectorate, with an OFS governor; the RF could be said to be in the sphere of influence, with some of its members inside the volume of the League. The only MAlign system that was a member was Visigoth, not the rest of the RF and particularly not Mannerheim.

Okay Maya was officially a 'protectorate' but it had been officially claimed by the League for almost 3 centuries (1772) so it must be damned close to officially moving to part of the Shell which is one step short of being among the Core Worlds.

That makes them pretty firmly enough a part of the League that the very suggestion of that many 'citizens' up and walking away from the League was infuriating to the Lead Mandarin Kolokoltsov himself.

Kolokoltsov also really didn't like hearing about the RF "acting like an independent nation" either, but more than Visigoth had to be League members. Only Mesa itself couldn't really join the League (the genetic slavery thing), the rest of the RF had to have joined the League for cover while their Alpha lines were still worming into position.

Somtaaw wrote:Kolokoltsov also really didn't like hearing about the RF "acting like an independent nation" either, but more than Visigoth had to be League members. Only Mesa itself couldn't really join the League (the genetic slavery thing), the rest of the RF had to have joined the League for cover while their Alpha lines were still worming into position.

I'm not disputing any of the Mandarins reactions or the fact that the galaxy until a certain point certainly seemed to bend to their knees anyways, regardless of whether they were members or not.

We know Visigoth was a League member, because it is one of the termini of the Mesa-Visigoth Warp Bridge, and was only 60 light-years from Beowulf. We don't know the exact distance, but it's also close to Sarduchi (whose wormhole leads to the Madras sector) and to Warner.

But that doesn't mean they were all members. The Wiki also say that the Maxwell Association and the Second Chance Republic were members. But it doesn't say that for any of the other RF members, and some of them were even kingdoms, like New Madagascar, so they couldn't have been members.

TEiF gives us more information on Mannerheim.

To End in Fire, page 187 wrote:Gannon's finger swooped over five hundred light-years "down" from Maya to the Mannerheim System, the center of the ten-star "Rennaissance Factor." The Factor's systems had never belonged to the League and they formed a two hundred-light-year bubble of surprisingly affluent sovereign systems in the Fringe.

(emphasis mine)

Note also it says "ten systems," where the list we have from the Wiki, which comes from the Albrecht Detweiler meeting with the heads of such systems, actually has 11.

Now, it is possible that the RF started with the systems near Mannerheim and some or most of those 10 weren't MAlign-controlled, but simply in the Mannerheim sphere of influence, with the other systems we know of by name poised to join later. That would actually be politically a good idea, as it would give an impression of a strong polity, that is able to attract new systems that weren't going to do anything that Mannerheim told them to do anyway. And that's required for Visigoth to join, because it can't be inside that 200 light-year bubble around Mannerheim anyway, if it is 60 from Beowulf.

But 200 light-years is actually awfully large. The League is about 400 light-years wide, but has about 2000 members in that volume and an unknown number of non-members. 200 light-years is also a trip of 3 months by freighter, so those 10 systems couldn't have been well interconnected by commerce in the first place. So I don't think they are just "Mannerheim and its buddies."

To reconcile the two pieces of information, assuming the Wiki is correct, I have to conclude that the RF started with 7 or 8 of the 8 that weren't League members, but has managed to acquire at least two more systems that weren't directly controlled by the MAlign Alpha lines. The alternate solution is that the wiki isn't right (it might be a retcon) and the two systems listed as members weren't in fact members, leaving only Visigoth out of the initial formation.

Somtaaw wrote:Kolokoltsov also really didn't like hearing about the RF "acting like an independent nation" either, but more than Visigoth had to be League members. Only Mesa itself couldn't really join the League (the genetic slavery thing), the rest of the RF had to have joined the League for cover while their Alpha lines were still worming into position.

Mesa cannot be a member of the Renaissance Factor, because being strongly anti-slavery (and therefore anti-Mesa) is part of their political cover.

From chapter 39 of Mission oh Honor

The very thing that made them so critical to the Alignment's ultimate success was the fact that there had never been a single trace of a connection between one of them and Mesa. All of them came from families which had been part of their native societies for so long their bona fides were beyond question. All had well-earned reputations as capable, farsighted, deeply involved heads of state. Each had expressed his or her own condemnation of genetic slavery, and most had been actively involved in stamping it out in their own societies.

tlb wrote:
So you cannot point to the various times that a KEW has been used in the books and say that you were right to predict that the Solarian Navy would bombard planets in the face of defeat. As I pointed out the only time we see the SLN use a KEW (or hit the planetary surface from space) was in the Verge to advance OFS policy (not because of any fear of defeat).

FF and OFS were being the enforcers for their client Politicians and puppets, not looking to obliterate the ecology of the planets which got to the uprising/rebellion state due to the oppression/greed or anything else inflicted on them by the local President for Life (etc) or Transtellar overloads. Smash the rebels in spectacular manner but leave most of the planet both habitable and productive. Even a small KEW devastates a given diameter but other than heat/fires, and a relatively local shockwave there are few secondary effect, unlike nuclear weapon bombardment which will create all sorts of problems with radiation and fallout.

FF using nuclear missiles in "subduing" terrorists wouldn't fit the narrative of FF and OFS as protector and defender and would cost their clients a lot of money --which might reduce the flow of cash to a lot of people.

Jonathan_S wrote:And the Masadan's missiles are primitive enough they probably do use fission core to initiate; so they'd be somewhat radioactive whether or not the warhead went off.

The amount of radioactivity from a fission trigger when spread over a planet isn't going to be important.

But the main thing you can get from a missile over a normal KEW is extinction event impact energies -- as the KEW would hit with probably at most a couple thousand (and probably more like a couple hundred) KPS while a modern missile could hit with north of 80,000 (200,000 for an MDM)
And since energy goes up with velocity squared!!

Of course most people don't want to rain down extinction level events

This. When we first saw the MDM I was figuring the impact energy of the missile at burnout being about 10% of the KT impactor. One Apollo pod would actually be more devastating as it would be as much energy as the KT impactor but spread out more--expect double the damage as less energy would be spent on crater-making.

If you replace "KEWing into compliance" with "violating the Eridani Edict to force compliance" or "killing indiscriminately to force compliance" then cthia was actually close. The Parthian Shot was an EEV, it just managed not to get activated. The Operation Buccaneer was practically that, if it destroyed habitats and food production, and forced relocation of population to a planet that wasn't ready to receive them.

I don't know if cthia meant that they would knowingly violate the Edict, but at least the admirals whose first person narrative we heard of were either not willing to cross that line, or at least did not think they were crossing it.

If the objective of kinetic strikes was to remove the military capability, then the SLN did not do any of that, because they didn't attack any of the combatants, nor anyone with significant military capability in the first place. If the objective of the attack was to decapitate a government, then that was also nowhere near the mark.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If you replace "KEWing into compliance" with "violating the Eridani Edict to force compliance" or "killing indiscriminately to force compliance" then cthia was actually close. The Parthian Shot was an EEV, it just managed not to get activated. The Operation Buccaneer was practically that, if it destroyed habitats and food production, and forced relocation of population to a planet that wasn't ready to receive them.

I don't know if cthia meant that they would knowingly violate the Edict, but at least the admirals whose first person narrative we heard of were either not willing to cross that line, or at least did not think they were crossing it.

If the objective of kinetic strikes was to remove the military capability, then the SLN did not do any of that, because they didn't attack any of the combatants, nor anyone with significant military capability in the first place. If the objective of the attack was to decapitate a government, then that was also nowhere near the mark.

Ex ... xactly! Except, I wasn't close. I hit the nail on the head.

The disagreement with Duckk was about the SLN's inherent willingness to commit an EEV. I maintained from the get-go the SLN would be willing to commit an Eridani violation in lieu of losing a war.

As far as I am concerned, Case Buccaneer is enough to prove my point. Parthian Shot is simply the icing on the cake; and Parthian Shot need NOT be carried out to support my claim; simply having it as a contingency plan nailed that coffin shut. (Which is why Honor scolded them for it when it was found in their data banks). The SLN IS murderous. The 'not idiots' part was Duck's own sentiment.

It is simply human nature. If a super power has the means to win a war, but it has to cross certain lines to do so, those lines WILL be crossed. The forum is fond of pointing out that the victor gets to write the history anyway.

Who among us is naive enough to think the US would NOT have continued to drop bomb after radioactive bomb on Japan if Japan's intransigence insisted on it, IF, it was the only way to win the war?

(Which would have had the potential to become an extinction level event, for Japan).

Good for you! If it helps you sleep any better.

Since then, I loosely and sarcastically lump it all under "kewing into compliance" because I also stated long ago that the SLN would find ways to "legally" justify it. Kewing is actually legal and justified under certain conditions, as it were, and as it actually was. Kewing is also legal when orbitals are controlled and compliance is refused. So, in the arrogant GORILLA'S mind, Parthian Shot is simply no more than a KEW when applied to "deserving belligerents - who have the nerve and audacity to BE belligerents - against the mighty Solarian League Navy."

To be honest, I understood Duckk's sentiment. He refused to think mankind could, or would, stoop so low.

Even the author uses a willingness to commit an EEV as an inherent limitation on the HV ... except that the author knows human nature well enough to include a disclaimer...

Except in cases of imminent defeat. NUFF SAID!