"What if" after HH09

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:]

Not for long-term storage needs. AWS S3 Deep Glacier has an SLA on retrieval of 12 hours. We're experiencing this right now, on the millisecond latency range. Some applications require this to be in the single to double-digit millisecond latency at most, which is something that can't be reliably offered on regular datacentres within one continent, let alone across oceans or to space. LEO is crowded not just because it's cheaper to put satellites there, but also because of light lag. A satellite orbiting at the ISS altitude of 420 km experiences a 2.8 ms round-trip delay because of light alone, and that's actually much closer than most DCs -- if you account for the speed of light inside an optical fibre, that distance drops to 300 km. That's further than metropolitan areas like NY and LA to their closest AWS DCs.

So once we become interplanetary, we'll need to cope with this. I don't think we'll duplicate every bit of data over every planet. Instead, I think we'll learn to accept some data and some tasks will take a significant amount of time to get results for. Not "cup of coffee" time, but "full pot of coffee." Only what's critical will get processed or stored locally, even if that is an orbital cloud (a cloud outside the atmosphere!). And this in spite of the cost of storage and processing going down, because there's a good chance the volume of which will outpace the rate at which it goes down. There's no need to keep copies of that video of the Numa Numa Guy over every planet (or on ground storage) if it's only accessed once a year or less, but cached copies of Rick Astley's famous video will likely exist.

Yes, I fully expect people will still be getting rickrolled in the 20th century PD. It's not the same experience if you have to wait 2 hours to see the video after clicking the unsuspecting link.

Note that a cheap and high-bandwidth FTL solution only makes the business case for off-world DCs even more compelling.

Interesting thought.

The problem is an ISS altitude satellite circles the Earth every 90 minutes, so it's ping will vary up to ~300ms. A more realistic idea is a geostationary orbital sat which could orbit over a specific location - that orbit is roughly 36,000KM from the Earth's surface, giving a consistent ping of ~120ms one way.

Yes, Honorverse has repulsar lift tech, but Gravity is free, and you need to worry about other orbital traffic, So I suspect that Honorverse orbital control would keep geostationary items at geostationary orbital heights and above.

Theemile wrote:The problem is an ISS altitude satellite circles the Earth every 90 minutes, so it's ping will vary up to ~300ms. A more realistic idea is a geostationary orbital sat which could orbit over a specific location - that orbit is roughly 36,000KM from the Earth's surface, giving a consistent ping of ~120ms one way.

Yes, Honorverse has repulsar lift tech, but Gravity is free, and you need to worry about other orbital traffic, So I suspect that Honorverse orbital control would keep geostationary items at geostationary orbital heights and above.

Good point. Even with a Starlink solution going around the planet, you add delay.

The only way is to have local caches close to the population centres that consume that data. That means a DC close to Landing, one close to Yawata, but also orbital ones close to the space stations (if not aboard them) because those same stations have the same need if not more so than Landing.

In the first three books of the main series, it is often written that it would be risky for state A to strike deep into the territory of state B without "protecting one's flanks". But I can't see why - is it because it would be possible for B to attack A's supply convoys? My answer: would it be so hard for A to send their convoys along a but unpredictable routes? How many % delay would it mean, if they don't choose the perfectly best path along the gravity waves, but one of the good ones? Sufficiently unpredictable for practical purposes...

Or maybe a sufficient unpredictability would mean an inacceptable delay because of much longer travel times? Is this the answer? And is this the reason why merchant convoys (and military convoys such as the one where Zilwicki's wife Helen was killed in HH03) cannot choose sufficiently unpredictable routes? The very fact that Peeps did intercept Zilwicki's convoy seems to indicate that this is the answer - am I wrong?

And is THIS the reason why White Haven did NOT intend to attack the Haven system in HH09 without conquering Lovat first? If it was not unacceptably delaying (i.e. increasing convoy transport times) to chose unpredictable routes, then I think that White Haven should have attacked the Haven system not only in this moment (when he was ready to attack Lovat), but much, much sooner. Why did he not? What could happen?
a) Was there a reasonable chance that Haven would be able to intercept and attack this fleet during the travel to Haven? No... Attack a fleet containing so many SD(P)s - particularly if they don't know that this fleet is arriving? I cannot imagine that.
b) Were they afraid that in case of defeat, it would be easy for Haven forces to pursue them, hunt them down and finish them? Even if it _would_ be easy, I don't belive this concern may have influenced the decision significantly - after an unsuccesful attack at the Haven homeworld, the losses would be very severe regardless of whether the fleeing attackers would have been harassed on their way back.
c) Or was this strategy (to attack without securing flanks) good and none of the powers realized it? I don't believe it.

Attacking the Convoys
If none of this is the reason, then I think it leaves me with only one possibility: The Manticorans were afraid that after a _succesful_ attack, the Peeps would be able to attack the convoys (supply lines).

Is that so? It doesn't make a good sense to me, for the following reason. Suppose for simplicify, that conquering the Haven homeworld would NOT result in surrender of Havenite forces, because the government would leave and keep commanding from elsewhere.

But: How urgently do the Manties, in this situation, need to send convoys there and back? Yes, it would be convenient to move the damaged ships (Manty ships damaged during the attack) back to Manty bases, because the Havenite might blow up their repair fascilities during their retreat, and Manty repair ships can handle only a light damage.

Yes, but I don't think this need (nor other reasons for sending convoys) is so urgent that it cannot be handled for example by accepting a huge, usually unpredictable delay in the travel time to choose an unpredictable path... Or by sending a convoy only once every few months, accompanined by a very strong Manticoran escort (tens of modern ships)?

So where am I wrong? What bad thing could happen if White Haven attacked the Haven homeworld as soon as the new technology was proven fantastically superior and effective against the Peeps?

Organized Counterattacks
Or will the answer be that the nearby Peep systems (those near the conquered Haven homeworld) would be close enough to one another that they can stage a massive counterattack (against what? The Haven homeworld?) efficiently with far and far less communication delay than the coordination between the Manty fleet in Haven and Manty central command?

This possibility seems very related to what you, Theemile, wrote here:

Theemile wrote:Haven could not punch out any node without the danger of other nodes punching back. Even if you took out Manticore, the Manticore fleet would still exist and be able to conduct warfare without the Manticore system, because of it's dispersed basing assets, and fleet assets.

Sorry, I don't understand that. This sounds to me as if... (I'll switch to Manticore being the defender, to reflect your example, but I think it does not matter, because the principle of strategic depth works the same way for both sides)

This sounds as if you say that if Manticore has 150 modern SD(P) and is not currently sending any of them to attack, then it is

• worse to keep them in Manticore to defend Manticore and have no bases
• than to keep 100 (or less) in Manticore and 50 (or more) in one or more other bases, so that they can fight even after Manticore is knocked out and all its Home fleet destroyed.

But I can't see why the later should be better.

Suppose that Haven sends an attack whose outcome would be bad if Manticore uses the former strategy - i.e. the whole Home fleet will be destroyed, although with heavy Havenite losses. In that case the later strategy would let Haven win with (imho) far and far smaller losses; how could those 50 Manticore ships (which have not been destroyed because they weren't in Manticore) fight with so many surviving Havenite ships?

It goes against the "concentration of units" principle which is often emphasised. If I simplify it (is this simplification improper here?), then letting the Haven's attack fleet fight with 100 SDs and then next 50 other SDs cannot have a better result than letting it fight with 150 SDs at the same time.

If someone says that the surviving 50 ships can then harass Haven in HH11-like raids, then I'll answer: if Haven's full attack force, prepared to erase 150 SD, faces only 100, then so many Haven forces will survive that it should then be easy to destroy all Manticoran bases one after one. Am I wrong?

Reflame wrote:In the first three books of the main series, it is often written that it would be risky for state A to strike deep into the territory of state B without "protecting one's flanks". But I can't see why - is it because it would be possible for B to attack A's supply convoys? My answer: would it be so hard for A to send their convoys along a but unpredictable routes? How many % delay would it mean, if they don't choose the perfectly best path along the gravity waves, but one of the good ones? Sufficiently unpredictable for practical purposes...

Some of that was strategic blindness -- hence the adoption of deep raids in the 2nd war.

Some of that was how much harder it would be to nurse any of your crippled ships back from a deep raid.

But there were also reasons, other than risk to the fleets or their resupply, for the grinding system by system fight of the first war. Prior to the deployment of towed pods (and later podlaying ships) combat was generally indecisive. If a fleet was getting the worse of a fight they're roll behind their wedges and flee -- and it was exceedingly difficult to inflict significant additional damage at that point. So war had turned into a very slow attritional fight - pick a target that the enemy fleet will be willing to stand and defend for at least a while, bring a somewhat larger and more capable force, and inflict more damage (not necessarily even destroyed ships; just more damaged ships) than you take until they break off and flee. Both sides pull back, send their damaged ships to the yards, and as soon as you have a large enough fleet together go pick another such system and do it again.
In that kind of grinding fight you want repair yards close by - if the enemy has his yards a month closer to the front than you do they can turn around their damaged ships much quicker which multiplies their combat power. So you seize a system, put in a repair yard for that quick turn around. But now you need to defend the yard, and prevent supply convoys to it from getting picked off. (And now that they've a know destination you don't just have to worry about them getting intercepted in hyper - where, as you note, evasive routing should be sufficient to keep them safe. You also need to worry about the enemy putting a raiding BC squadron or the like near your new base's hyper limit and trying to attack the convoy between the time it exits hyper and when it pulls under the guns of your base.

But if you already have to grind the enemy fleet down over hundreds of individually inconclusive fights - or at least are convinced that that's what you need to do to win - then there's little reason to look at deep raids (other than the raiding of commerce and infrastructure that is the job of BC squadrons -- not walls of battle -- we just didn't see much of that "on screen" in the books because Honor didn't get to spend much of the war in BCs) And if you're not examining that doctrine anyway; then it's easy to simply uncritically accept received wisdom that it's too dangerous to advance without securing your flanks.


Had things changed by the time Buttercup was launched? Yes. Though White Haven did have to worry a little about where a bypassed Havenite fleet might go - so there was still some sense in smashing up every fleet formation he could find. He did have basically a monopoly on the alliance's SD(P)s and MDMs. So the fleet drawn up to defend Barnett could, had their commanders decided to do whatever damage they could before being pulled down, have made a real mess of most of the alliance systems, short of Manticore itself, if 8th fleet had flown a month or so past them to attack Haven.

Reflame wrote:In the first three books of the main series, it is often written that it would be risky for state A to strike deep into the territory of state B without "protecting one's flanks". But I can't see why - is it because it would be possible for B to attack A's supply convoys? My answer: would it be so hard for A to send their convoys along a but unpredictable routes? How many % delay would it mean, if they don't choose the perfectly best path along the gravity waves, but one of the good ones? Sufficiently unpredictable for practical purposes...

Or maybe a sufficient unpredictability would mean an inacceptable delay because of much longer travel times? Is this the answer? And is this the reason why merchant convoys (and military convoys such as the one where Zilwicki's wife Helen was killed in HH03) cannot choose sufficiently unpredictable routes? The very fact that Peeps did intercept Zilwicki's convoy seems to indicate that this is the answer - am I wrong?

And is THIS the reason why White Haven did NOT intend to attack the Haven system in HH09 without conquering Lovat first? If it was not unacceptably delaying (i.e. increasing convoy transport times) to chose unpredictable routes, then I think that White Haven should have attacked the Haven system not only in this moment (when he was ready to attack Lovat), but much, much sooner. Why did he not? What could happen?
a) Was there a reasonable chance that Haven would be able to intercept and attack this fleet during the travel to Haven? No... Attack a fleet containing so many SD(P)s - particularly if they don't know that this fleet is arriving? I cannot imagine that.
b) Were they afraid that in case of defeat, it would be easy for Haven forces to pursue them, hunt them down and finish them? Even if it _would_ be easy, I don't belive this concern may have influenced the decision significantly - after an unsuccesful attack at the Haven homeworld, the losses would be very severe regardless of whether the fleeing attackers would have been harassed on their way back.
c) Or was this strategy (to attack without securing flanks) good and none of the powers realized it? I don't believe it.

Attacking the Convoys
If none of this is the reason, then I think it leaves me with only one possibility: The Manticorans were afraid that after a _succesful_ attack, the Peeps would be able to attack the convoys (supply lines).

Is that so? It doesn't make a good sense to me, for the following reason. Suppose for simplicify, that conquering the Haven homeworld would NOT result in surrender of Havenite forces, because the government would leave and keep commanding from elsewhere.

But: How urgently do the Manties, in this situation, need to send convoys there and back? Yes, it would be convenient to move the damaged ships (Manty ships damaged during the attack) back to Manty bases, because the Havenite might blow up their repair fascilities during their retreat, and Manty repair ships can handle only a light damage.

Yes, but I don't think this need (nor other reasons for sending convoys) is so urgent that it cannot be handled for example by accepting a huge, usually unpredictable delay in the travel time to choose an unpredictable path... Or by sending a convoy only once every few months, accompanined by a very strong Manticoran escort (tens of modern ships)?

So where am I wrong? What bad thing could happen if White Haven attacked the Haven homeworld as soon as the new technology was proven fantastically superior and effective against the Peeps?

Organized Counterattacks
Or will the answer be that the nearby Peep systems (those near the conquered Haven homeworld) would be close enough to one another that they can stage a massive counterattack (against what? The Haven homeworld?) efficiently with far and far less communication delay than the coordination between the Manty fleet in Haven and Manty central command?

This possibility seems very related to what you, Theemile, wrote here:

Theemile wrote:Haven could not punch out any node without the danger of other nodes punching back. Even if you took out Manticore, the Manticore fleet would still exist and be able to conduct warfare without the Manticore system, because of it's dispersed basing assets, and fleet assets.

Sorry, I don't understand that. This sounds to me as if... (I'll switch to Manticore being the defender, to reflect your example, but I think it does not matter, because the principle of strategic depth works the same way for both sides)

This sounds as if you say that if Manticore has 150 modern SD(P) and is not currently sending any of them to attack, then it is

• worse to keep them in Manticore to defend Manticore and have no bases
• than to keep 100 (or less) in Manticore and 50 (or more) in one or more other bases, so that they can fight even after Manticore is knocked out and all its Home fleet destroyed.

But I can't see why the later should be better.

Suppose that Haven sends an attack whose outcome would be bad if Manticore uses the former strategy - i.e. the whole Home fleet will be destroyed, although with heavy Havenite losses. In that case the later strategy would let Haven win with (imho) far and far smaller losses; how could those 50 Manticore ships (which have not been destroyed because they weren't in Manticore) fight with so many surviving Havenite ships?

It goes against the "concentration of units" principle which is often emphasised. If I simplify it (is this simplification improper here?), then letting the Haven's attack fleet fight with 100 SDs and then next 50 other SDs cannot have a better result than letting it fight with 150 SDs at the same time.

If someone says that the surviving 50 ships can then harass Haven in HH11-like raids, then I'll answer: if Haven's full attack force, prepared to erase 150 SD, faces only 100, then so many Haven forces will survive that it should then be easy to destroy all Manticoran bases one after one. Am I wrong?

Concentration of forces is very important - As Napoleon famously said when seeing a defensive plan which stretched all his forces into a line on the border - "What are you trying to do, stop smuggling?" But concentrating your forces too much is limiting - it allows your opponent to take your other un-protected assets and move his resources to your doorstep. The Alliance concept was to create a buffer that kept Haven at arms length. If he had to do a deep strike, his ships had to be in space, incommunicado for MONTHS at a time. I cannot over state the importance of the depth of this battlefield, and it importance in planning - the fog of war here is the the primary driver of so much.

Havenite fleets in 1900 were not deep strike fleets. Their had limited endurance and their lightly educated crews could do limited maintenance, and ships were thus designed for depot maintenance. The fleets were limited in their operational range and tempo by this limitation - they had onboard food, fuel, and spares for 8-12 weeks, limiting them to an operational radius of 4-6 weeks. Their tempo was limited to their maintenance capabilities, 8 weeks in field meant an additional 8 weeks (or so) being maintained. Maintenance could be put off (to a degree), but that just meant that the ships became less capable and would require more time in depot.

Manticorian fleet had better tech, better crew education, and longer designed endurance. Manticore's ships could more easily repair and resupply on the move, and put off routine maintenance (the majority of which could be done by a ship's internal resources or by a repair ship.)

So Haven HAD to have forward hard bases like Seaford 9 to keep up their fleets and keep a decent operational tempo. And because they needed those bases, they had to distribute their fleets. And because they had to have distributed bases, so far away from their core, they had to have strategies that reflected bases and forces being months away, and having intell that is months old.

And that's part of where the Manticore alliance came in, it kept Haven from sweeping up the lightly protected stars that surrounded Manticore and turning them into fleetbases near to Manticore. Keeping those fleetbases at arms length and limiting their actions and intel gathering capabilities was key to limiting the Havenite op capability and tempo. And thus, Manticore HAD to spread out it's fleet to cover it's allies and the opposition fleetbases.

Yes, Manticore had a smaller fleet than Haven, and it was distributed, but the distances worked against the opposition - Haven did not know what Manticore was doing with it's ships and where those ships were when a force would have been set out was not where they would be when the strike happened (once again, see 3rd Yeltsin.)

So yes, Haven could have sent a force big enough to punch out Manticore at anytime - but they could not know what Manticore's force was doing, and they did not have a large enough force to both protect Haven and punch out Manticore. And because they needed forward bases to enable a deep strike attack on Manticore, they had to diminish their fleet further to protect those forward bases. They also had 150-300 other planets in the Republic (Who all paid taxes and thought they were important), all of which Haven had to both quell internal dissent and protect against Manticorian deep raids (Which Manticore could do with their long legged BCs if there weren't bunches of BBs patrolling those systems).

Alternatively, because of this, Manticore could have sent a fleet at any time to punch out the Haven system, but they couldn't have built fleets that simultaneously protects Manticore from any fleet that Haven could reasonably put together, while building an assault fleet that could punch out the Havenite system defensive fleet.

In addition, Manticore needed to defend all those allied systems that were required to keep Haven's supply bases at arm's length, and build nodal forces facing those Havenite Fleet bases - and defend the 2 regional fleet bases required to maintain RMN forces forward deployed, without requiring the forward defensive ships to have to spend months in space for any maintenance they couldn't do themselves. Again, further drawing down the fleet size that manticore has available for a strike.

But this all leads to the "Fleet in Being". Because the intel both sides is acting on is so old (and will be older when a strike happens), you have no idea what the opposing fleet is really doing between gathering the intel and acting on it. (3rd Yeltsin and 1st Hancock are examples of this on both sides). Because Haven was trying to chew at Manticore's edges to weaken it (this was part of Haven's playbook at the time), Manticore was able to move fleets from the core out to the outer regions, creating traps that crushed Havenite forces that were supposed to be large enough to overwhelm the observed local forces.

So a "Fleet in Being" pretty much becomes the worst case senario for any planning session. you observed 20 ships there, but how many ships are within range to move to that location before you strike? You don't know where the ships are really at, until you attack. And because a version of the worst case scenario happened to both sides, and they became gun shy.

Thanks! I can see that you can see far deeper into David's intentions and vision than I could imagine (deem possible) based on the books that I read. Your answers are illuminating and will help me discover a new dimension in these books.

To sum it up, my (mad warhungry Grayson admiral) idea would fail because I would run out of ammo before destroying enough of the 200+ Haven SD and because the Blackbird is situated in a relatively small hyperlimit.

I will probably have more questions concerning what Grayson could have done, but I have to think about it for some time. Meanwhile, I opened another topic with another suggestion how to prevent the HH09 disaster.

This plot twist (fall of centrist government and the ceasefire) touches my heart very deeply. Maybe that is the reason why I try to find ways to prevent it.

Theemile wrote:The only good news is if Grayson does survive, it will again inherit any Havenite ships with damaged nodes - Since Grayson is in a Grav Wave, ships with damaged alpha nodes cannot leave as they cannot make sails. The bad news is without the fleet yards and access to Manticorian parts, it cannot fix them.

Where is it written, please, that Grayson is in a Grav wave? I have read HH01-HH13 (many many times ) , SI 1 to 4, first ca. five anthalogy books and very little other stuff. I would be very surprised if this information was there. So is it in one of the companions?

Btw. how can I get access to the companions? Is the content on the web, or would I have to buy that book physically...?

It is in a grav wave. That has to do with why some of DDs had to stay and fight.

Reflame wrote:

Theemile wrote:The only good news is if Grayson does survive, it will again inherit any Havenite ships with damaged nodes - Since Grayson is in a Grav Wave, ships with damaged alpha nodes cannot leave as they cannot make sails. The bad news is without the fleet yards and access to Manticorian parts, it cannot fix them.

Where is it written, please, that Grayson is in a Grav wave? I have read HH01-HH13 (many many times ) , SI 1 to 4, first ca. five anthalogy books and very little other stuff. I would be very surprised if this information was there. So is it in one of the companions?

Btw. how can I get access to the companions? Is the content on the web, or would I have to buy that book physically...?

I believe it is seen in HH02 several times, and I believe is mentioned in HH03 when the Freighter is chased over the hyperlimit into the Grayson system by Peep raiders prior to the war start.

edit: HH02> the Fearless traveling to Grayson in a grav wave is mentioned in Chapter 2, and shows the exit from the wave (including sails reconfiguring to impeller) in Chapter 5.

Reflame wrote:

Theemile wrote:The only good news is if Grayson does survive, it will again inherit any Havenite ships with damaged nodes - Since Grayson is in a Grav Wave, ships with damaged alpha nodes cannot leave as they cannot make sails. The bad news is without the fleet yards and access to Manticorian parts, it cannot fix them.

Where is it written, please, that Grayson is in a Grav wave? I have read HH01-HH13 (many many times ) , SI 1 to 4, first ca. five anthalogy books and very little other stuff. I would be very surprised if this information was there. So is it in one of the companions?

Btw. how can I get access to the companions? Is the content on the web, or would I have to buy that book physically...?

HH02 implies that it lies in a grav wave - since Fearless and her convoy are still under Warshawski sail when they start their descent into the Grayson (well, the Yeltsin system where Grayson is) from the Delta bands [HH2:Ch5] - and Fearless doesn't reconfigure back to impeller wedge until after they've entered normal space (just outside the F6's hyper limit)

HH02:Ch11 also mentioned two ships arriving "radiating the blue glory of hyper transit from their Warshawski sails"

Since you don't use sails outside of a grav wave (or wormhole terminus) the ships wouldn't have been under sail until the Yeltsin system sat in a grav wave.

OTOH HH02:Ch22 implies that even without a sail Troubadore could make it from Yeltsin back to Manticore - but she'd have to do so under impellers and wouldn't be able to rise above the Gamma bands. So maybe the 'wave Honor rode to Yeltsin just barely brushed the system, so Troubadour could have gone far enough in normal space to avoid it when entering hyper. Or maybe it doesn't extend below the Delta bands, so Alpha, Beta, and Gamma can be traversed near Yeltsin without working sails.
(That later wouldn't entirely explain why ships arrive at Yeltsin with their sails deployed -- but maybe continuous descent, starting from within the 'wave, explains that)

(And I just checked HH03 where the freighter makes it to Yeltsin before being killed, and I don't see anything about grav waves or sails. The point of view is entirely from the GNS Jason Alvarez, patrolling within the Yeltsin system -- and she just sees the impeller sources as the freighter and it's pursuers appear in normal space.

The companion, House of Steel, doesn't seem to mention Grav Waves at all; much less which system(s) exist within them. However if you want it electronically it is available - Amazon will sell you a Kindle copy, or you can buy it directly from Baen's website (https://www.baen.com/house-of-steel.html) and then download it in various formats (epub, mobi, pdf, rtf, etc.)