Attacking Darius:

penny wrote:Kudoses?

No, there is not an "ES" at the end. Just "KUDOS" means "praise and honor received for an achievement".

penny wrote:In my opening post ... Darius' defenses will make the MBS look like a Boy Scout Camp. Shoals of Hasta IIIs will be found all over the system.

The MA has now taken note of Honor's tactics at Sol and Galton. Those Hasta IIIs will force Honor off of the pitcher's mound. If Honor is forced off of the mound, what tactic will be left for her? She could keep hypering out and back in, launching after acquiring, then rinse and repeat.

But Honor has also taken note of Galton's defences and MAlign tactics. As you say, there are tactics available. They may be sub-optimal, but quantity has a quality of its own.

That would work in the other direction too: the Darius system could be seeded with an overkill of torpedoes and Hastas. The next problem is whether Darius has the industrial capacity to produce this much before the GA comes in. Given what Gail was thinking, neither Darius nor Galton had anywhere near enough capacity at that moment in time to make a difference. 25 years from now, who knows.

But it is a dangerous tactic that requires lots of maneuvering in the midst of spider webs. I don't think that tactic will be available to her at Darius anyway. The enemy and their emplacements have to be acquired before launch. What enemy? What emplacements? Where are they?

We've been over this: industries aren't stealthed. If that is wrecked, then there's no replacement for the weapons and it's only a matter of time before the defenders run out and their ships die on the vine.

As I said way upstream in this thread, like the Vietnamese did to the Americans, an entrenched Darius will force the GA to wade through the system taking heavy casualties. It will not be business as usual against an entrenched and heavily fortified Darius with their garage of toys open.

And as Galton has shown, the GF does not need to wade through anything. They can target stuff from 200 million km away and hit in 20 minutes. From a standstill, a g-torp can only move a paltry 1 million km.

Graser torpedoes and LDs aren't a defence weapon. They are offensive. The MAlign needs something different to defend its system and right now we don't know anything they may have that wasn't what Galton already had.

Late edit: If I were the MAN, as soon as the GA hypered in, I would commit several launches of the shoals of g-torps all over the system on preprogrammed paths. They are already in flight. I suppose this is close enough in utility to the RMN's tactic of tractoring pods.

And have them all out of position if the GF hypers out and comes back in at another point outside the hyperlimit. I mean, it's better to use them than to lose them, so yes, I would actually do this too. I just wouldn't expect to make a difference.

munroburton wrote:And there's pretty good proof that it wouldn't have helped. The MAlign's best tactician(at Darius) was sinking into depression whilst running sims on defending Galton from a GA attack. At one point she wishes she could use everything the Alignment had access to, but concedes that it would not make a difference to Galton's fate, merely increase the GA's butcher bill.

She watched the attacking Grand Alliance fleet drive into the teeth of Alpha’s defenses and wished yet again that she’d been allowed to use the graser torpedoes. The spider drive was slower than any impeller-drive missile, but it was also virtually undetectable. If she’d been allowed to deploy a few thousand torpedoes on the attacker’s probable approach vectors, they could have wreaked havoc on the capital ships and LAC carriers that never saw them coming. And they could strike their targets well before the attacker reached her own range of Alpha System’s vital organs.
[cut]

Forty thousand dead spacers, or the equivalent of 20 SD(P)s, is quite a bloody nose but small beer compared to First Manticore. Haven's donkey surprise was far more devastating.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Thank you, munro.

But I want to point out another assumption in Gail's tactical plans where she failed to account for reality: in the passage above, she's talking about possibly seeding thousands of torpedoes on the GF's probable approach vectors and inflict damage before the GF ranged on the Galton infrastructure.

But we know Honor did no such thing. Maybe this was Honor's touch, but all she did was not drive in the system. She fired from the hyperlimit and the battle was entirely conducted from some 10 light-minutes away. The "System Alpha" infrastructure was in range the moment that the GF translated from hyper. The Mk23E/F capabilities were actually worse than what Gail assumed would be the fallback option:

They would drop across the wall, acquire their targets, dump their shoals of missiles, and then promptly disappear back into hyper, counting on the Mark 23-E’s sophisticated AI to manage that torrent of destruction.

That's exactly what happened, except for the GF translating back into hyper to escape. So the thousands of g-torps wouldn't have helped because they would be nowhere near the GF.

They'd have had to accelerate into the fleet, like the Hastas III did. Whether they'd be picked up early enough is anyone's guess. But even if they weren't picked, I doubt they could have generated an attack on HMS Imperator itself to exclusion of everyone else.

Gail concluded Galton couldn't be defended with more hardware than Darius could have provided even if they sent everything and the kitchen sink. Like I said, once it was found, it was doomed to fall eventually.

Can Darius be defended? I can't if the GA infrastructure is intact, because the GA can come back. Darius can only survive, if found, if the GA home systems are cinders... and possibly quite a few Core Worlds too. If someone is going around and doing EE-level attacks on system infrastructures and I were the president of a wealthy Core World, I'd be wary of being next too so I'd want the threat eliminated.

The problem is that Honor's previous tactics had been studied and those were the tactics that Galton expected. We all know that Honor deviated from her norm.

What is interesting is that Darius is indeed on the ball studying its opponents. Personally, I just don't think any other officer can successfully prosecute the war. All brawn (technology) and no brains will not win a war.

A successful war of attrition against the GA's top Tacticians and Strategists would be devastating in loss of moral alone. Let alone the irreplaceable loss in experienced Tacticians. Consider that Darius of all places is going to require someone who can think on the fly. Literally.

But there is a huge investment in top Tacticians and Strategists in the MBS. An investment in time and the heat of battle. Losing top Tacticians and Strategists would be an immeasurable loss in MBS.


PS

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Kudoses?

No, there is not an "ES" at the end. Just "KUDOS" means "praise and honor received for an achievement".

Kudo is singular.
Kudos is plural.

But munroburton's textev deserves more kudos. Kudoses? Akin to, a lot a lot.

Language learns itself.

penny wrote:Kudoses?

tlb wrote:No, there is not an "ES" at the end. Just "KUDOS" means "praise and honor received for an achievement".

penny wrote:PS

Kudo is singular.
Kudos is plural.

But munroburton's textev deserves more kudos. Kudoses? Akin to, a lot a lot.

Language learns itself.

Language can also dumb itself down, look at what has ben done to that fine old word "decimate", for example. Using "More Kudos" instead would have been fine. From Dictionary.com:

You’ve probably heard these words floating around various celebrations, but do you know the difference? Kudos is a noun that means “praise, honor, or acclaim.” Kudo is the singular version of kudos, but kudos is also singular. Kudos comes from the Greek word kydos, which means praise or renown. Kudos are usually offered in response to an exceptional achievement.

A Brief History of Kudos
The word kudos first appeared in English-speaking contexts in the 1800s. By the 1920s, it began to appear as a plural noun. The -s ending in English gives the impression that kudos is plural, but in Greek, it’s singular.

The word kudo began to appear some time around the mid 1940s.. In 1950, comedian Fred Allen wrote a letter to Groucho Marx where Allen told a story about a lively discussion he overheard at a deli. He described how a patron “interjected a kudo” into the discussion.

Back Formation of Kudo
Kudo is a back formation from kudos. Back formation is the creation of a new word based on a misinterpretation of an existing word. A back formation can involve removing a supposed or an actual affix (an extra element added to the beginning or end of a word to modify its meaning). In English, -s is an affix that usually makes words plural. So the singular form of kudos mistakenly became kudo.

When to Use Kudo or Kudos
There aren’t a lot of hard and fast rules about when to use kudo versus kudos any more. Kudos is still the preferred choice for use in formal English. Kudo or kudos can both be used with singular verbs.

Not all grammar experts agree that kudo is a word. Nevertheless, the word appears often in entertainment journalism, which tends to favor a more colloquial, on-trend voice. Kudo was used in the title of an article from a 2014 edition of Variety: “D.P. John Bailey to be Honored With ASC’s Highest Career Kudo.” A 2006 article in Backstage magazine refers to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards as a “kudo-fest.”

Edited to mention misuse of "decimate".

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But Honor has also taken note of Galton's defences and MAlign tactics. As you say, there are tactics available. They may be sub-optimal, but quantity has a quality of its own.

That would work in the other direction too: the Darius system could be seeded with an overkill of torpedoes and Hastas. The next problem is whether Darius has the industrial capacity to produce this much before the GA comes in. Given what Gail was thinking, neither Darius nor Galton had anywhere near enough capacity at that moment in time to make a difference. 25 years from now, who knows.

Much as I hate how Barricade was described in Shadow of Victory (because it required the attacking missiles to bunch up in a wildly illogical way) - I wonder if we'll see some variant of it return of it as a counter to (unseen) torpedoes and Hastas at Darius?

If you can't see the weapons that might be out there; but know that they can't survive contact with a wedge, then maybe you deploy sweepers of wedge equipped drones, or missiles, or crazy devices cooked up by Hemphill and Foraker to simply run over many of the potentially approaching stealth weapons.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But Honor has also taken note of Galton's defences and MAlign tactics. As you say, there are tactics available. They may be sub-optimal, but quantity has a quality of its own.

That would work in the other direction too: the Darius system could be seeded with an overkill of torpedoes and Hastas. The next problem is whether Darius has the industrial capacity to produce this much before the GA comes in. Given what Gail was thinking, neither Darius nor Galton had anywhere near enough capacity at that moment in time to make a difference. 25 years from now, who knows.

Jonathan_S wrote:Much as I hate how Barricade was described in Shadow of Victory (because it required the attacking missiles to bunch up in a wildly illogical way) - I wonder if we'll see some variant of it return of it as a counter to (unseen) torpedoes and Hastas at Darius?

If you can't see the weapons that might be out there; but know that they can't survive contact with a wedge, then maybe you deploy sweepers of wedge equipped drones, or missiles, or crazy devices cooked up by Hemphill and Foraker to simply run over many of the potentially approaching stealth weapons.

The GA ships are already releasing a multitude of recon drones, just have them take a curved path instead of heading straight outwards. They are already much faster than a spider drive thing.

penny wrote:The problem is that Honor's previous tactics had been studied and those were the tactics that Galton expected. We all know that Honor deviated from her norm.

What is interesting is that Darius is indeed on the ball studying its opponents. Personally, I just don't think any other officer can successfully prosecute the war. All brawn (technology) and no brains will not win a war.

So they are and so they should. The fact that the SLN ignored any information that didn't match their view of reality was a huge problem for it, but it's not usually endemic elsewhere. Even the PN in the early phases of the war were studying the Alliance tactics (in spite of the Pierre regime's policy of killing the people who were learning). And Theisman's renewed republican Navy did definitely study the Alliance.

I agree there's no one equal to Honor. But there are plenty of people who could do a good enough job.

A successful war of attrition against the GA's top Tacticians and Strategists would be devastating in loss of moral alone. Let alone the irreplaceable loss in experienced Tacticians. Consider that Darius of all places is going to require someone who can think on the fly. Literally.

But there is a huge investment in top Tacticians and Strategists in the MBS. An investment in time and the heat of battle. Losing top Tacticians and Strategists would be an immeasurable loss in MBS.

I don't doubt that. And yet my statement stands: that's not the end world/Galaxy. Yes, the cost would be much higher if your most competent people are getting killed.

But do note that the MAlign is also expending their most skilled people, so there's also an equalisation there. Unless you think a barely-average MAN Captain is able to take out the GA's top tacticians?

Jonathan_S wrote:Much as I hate how Barricade was described in Shadow of Victory (because it required the attacking missiles to bunch up in a wildly illogical way) - I wonder if we'll see some variant of it return of it as a counter to (unseen) torpedoes and Hastas at Darius?

If you can't see the weapons that might be out there; but know that they can't survive contact with a wedge, then maybe you deploy sweepers of wedge equipped drones, or missiles, or crazy devices cooked up by Hemphill and Foraker to simply run over many of the potentially approaching stealth weapons.

That actually sounds like the kind of low-tech simple solution that Foraker would come up with: a wedge-based sweeper. It doesn't need to be fast, it just needs to have a large wedge that can endure far longer than a CM. It doesn't have to be stealthy either.

But given just how mind-boggling vast space is, the chance of an actual collision is way too low at any reasonable distance if you can't lock on it. Aside from accidents, I think the spider would have no trouble evading the sweeper.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:In my opening post ... Darius' defenses will make the MBS look like a Boy Scout Camp. Shoals of Hasta IIIs will be found all over the system.

The MA has now taken note of Honor's tactics at Sol and Galton. Those Hasta IIIs will force Honor off of the pitcher's mound. If Honor is forced off of the mound, what tactic will be left for her? She could keep hypering out and back in, launching after acquiring, then rinse and repeat.

But Honor has also taken note of Galton's defences and MAlign tactics. As you say, there are tactics available. They may be sub-optimal, but quantity has a quality of its own.

True, Honor has taken note of Galton's defenses. Which did not resemble Darius' defenses in any way. That is why Galton was refused certain tech. OpSec. Honor only got a look at the MANs resourcefulness with its ingenious counter missile. And that was in limited quantities. Honor got nary a peek at any of the MAs most classified and most dangerous weapons.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:That would work in the other direction too: the Darius system could be seeded with an overkill of torpedoes and Hastas.

There is no such thing of having too many weapons. That is ridiculous. Unless, of course, the weapons are nuclear. But that didn't stop the mad buildup of nuclear weapons during the cold war numbering enough to destroy the entire world many times over.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:The next problem is whether Darius has the industrial capacity to produce this much before the GA comes in. Given what Gail was thinking, neither Darius nor Galton had anywhere near enough capacity at that moment in time to make a difference. 25 years from now, who knows.

First off, I am not sure that Gail had the highest security clearance, thus she would not know the actual number of weapons. But it does not matter, I do not agree with the general consensus concerning the MAN's build rate. I never have. I never will.

Darius employs slaves to build their infrastructure. Slaves supplied a lot of the backbone that built America. At Darius the slaves will receive low to no wages as well. And their work environment will be just as dangerous as America's slaves. No unions. No OSHA. No limited work week. And Darius' slaves are happy. Brainwashed. They are literally working themselves to death.

There is simply no existing Manticoran equation that can simulate MAN build rates. Heck, the existing equation could not accurately simulate Grayson's build rates. The estimate was far off.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:But it is a dangerous tactic that requires lots of maneuvering in the midst of spider webs. I don't think that tactic will be available to her at Darius anyway. The enemy and their emplacements have to be acquired before launch. What enemy? What emplacements? Where are they?

We've been over this: industries aren't stealthed.

Yes, we have been over it and I continue to disavow your arrogant claims that are deep-seated and rooted in a traditional enemy. I keep preaching certain things but you people won't come to church.

MAN technology will allow a strategy and tactics across the board that has never before been seen or deployed.

Industries are not traditionally stealthed because of the prohibitive realities of logistics. A combatant would certainly hide his factories if he could. The factory is ground zero of his supply lines. Supply lines are hit because they are less protected. As the factories are behind enemy lines in the enemy 's cities. During WWII, Germany did try to hide its factories from allied bombers. If supply lines are hidden, you can expect the entire production machine to be as hidden as possible.

So, why would Darius' naval industry not be hidden behind spider-drive installations since they can be? Why, oh why? Do tell!

This is an entity who uses unprecedented strategy and tactics.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:If that is wrecked, then there's no replacement for the weapons and it's only a matter of time before the defenders run out and their ships die on the vine.

A fact that an Alpha certainly knows. Their technology will allow them to hide their space stations. So again, why wouldn't they? Indeed, why shouldn't they?

An Alpha knows that the enemy can not wreck what it cannot see. Hence, the spider-driven Lenny Detweiler.

The Lennys will collect on a lot of dets er debts.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:

As I said way upstream in this thread, like the Vietnamese did to the Americans, an entrenched Darius will force the GA to wade through the system taking heavy casualties. It will not be business as usual against an entrenched and heavily fortified Darius with their garage of toys open.

And as Galton has shown, the GF does not need to wade through anything. They can target stuff from 200 million km away and hit in 20 minutes. From a standstill, a g-torp can only move a paltry 1 million km.

That arrogant notion is prime evidence why the GA can ill afford to send just any armchair quarterbacking CO to Darius.

Again, the GA can not target what the GA can not see! You seem to think they can. So enlighten us all. How do you suppose the GA will be able to fire on an LD that it can not see? So how in the scheme of things will they be able to fire on a space station that is being hidden by a spider drive? And don't give me that same crap about observing the traffic going into it. There will not be a lot of traffic going to those installations, even if GR drones will be able to get close enough to see it. As paranoid as the MAlignment is? Please!

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Graser torpedoes and LDs aren't a defence weapon. They are offensive. The MAlign needs something different to defend its system and right now we don't know anything they may have that wasn't what Galton already had.

Lucky for you, you won't be tasked for duty at Darius.

Thinksmarkedly, Darius will have their CM 'phracts in enormous numbers. You can bet they will have more of them available in their own home system than the GA can bring with them in suit cases. And they have their Spiders creeping around and laying webs all over the system.

Darius' millions of g-torps and Silver Bullets are a defensive weapon. And. They. Are. Invisible.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Late edit: If I were the MAN, as soon as the GA hypered in, I would commit several launches of the shoals of g-torps all over the system on preprogrammed paths. They are already in flight. I suppose this is close enough in utility to the RMN's tactic of tractoring pods.

And have them all out of position if the GF hypers out and comes back in at another point outside the hyperlimit. I mean, it's better to use them than to lose them, so yes, I would actually do this too. I just wouldn't expect to make a difference.

I was not referring to the normal strategically placed system defense pods. I am talking about another huge shoal of system defense pods that can be set in motion on preplanned flight paths to play a game of musical chairs with cat and mouse. But the GA can not see the chairs or the cat and they can not hear the music.

I do not know if anyone here in the forum will be tasked for duty at Darius. But a word of caution if you do. Your traditional book of strategy and tactics? Burn it!

penny wrote:First off, I am not sure that Gail had the highest security clearance, thus she would not know the actual number of weapons. But it does not matter, I do not agree with the general consensus concerning the MAN's build rate. I never have. I never will.

Darius employs slaves to build their infrastructure. Slaves supplied a lot of the backbone that built America. At Darius the slaves will receive low to no wages as well. And their work environment will be just as dangerous as America's slaves. No unions. No OSHA. No limited work week. And Darius' slaves are happy. Brainwashed. They are literally working themselves to death.

There is simply no existing Manticoran equation that can simulate MAN build rates. Heck, the existing equation could not accurately simulate Grayson's build rates. The estimate was far off.
[cut]
Yes, we have been over it and I continue to disavow your arrogant claims that are deep-seated and rooted in a traditional enemy. I keep preaching certain things but you people won't come to church.

MAN technology will allow a strategy and tactics across the board that has never before been seen or deployed.

Industries are not traditionally stealthed because of the prohibitive realities of logistics. A combatant would certainly hide his factories if he could. The factory is ground zero of his supply lines. Supply lines are hit because they are less protected. As the factories are behind enemy lines in the enemy 's cities. During WWII, Germany did try to hide its factories from allied bombers. If supply lines are hidden, you can expect the entire production machine to be as hidden as possible.

This here means we can't continue discussing because we can't agree on basic assumptions. I don't think it's possible to stealth the industries at all because will be producing a huge amount of waste heat energy and are serviced by equally un-stealthed freighters. Even the best that could be done would be prohibitively expensive, even for the MAlign: the effort spent on hiding them could be used to build more of the things you need in the first place (corollary: someone who isn't spending on this effort can out-build someone who is). And if industries aren't stealthed, Gail can look up in the sky and see which ones there are: it would be difficult for the MAlign to hide everything from their own civilians, let alone a skilled enemy.

The workforce may be slaves, though we're told they don't think they are, so there are limits to what you can push them to do. And even the most overworked slaves can't produce miracles... in fact, slaves produce less than motivated free workers. And slaves still produce less than robots do, so the MAN shipyards based on slaves or brute workforce will produce less than the RMN can with their highly automated industry. Not to mention that the GA has far more of highly industrialised systems than the MAlign does. But if we can't agree on this either, then we won't agree on the build rates.

Finally, we know how long Darius has been working on spider stuff, even if Gail doesn't. So we also know Darius does not have a huge stockpile of weapons to start with. Gail is aware of them and of their performance characteristics, so she made an educated guess of how many could be made available. That's based on information she would have had or had guessed about the industries, which is of course something we're disagreeing on. She just happened to be right.

I will note that she never mentioned a large spider combatant in her musings for the defence of System Alpha. That is, she probably does not know about the Sharks, let alone the Leonard Detweilers.

Finally, I will repeat my prediction: there will be no large naval battle in the Darius system at all, and the battles of the next half dozen books will be conducted by people other than Honor. Moreover, the more time that you give the MAN to build up in Darius, the less likely it would be that Honor be the one to take it all down.