SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

Daryl wrote:I do wonder if the US military are readers? They are experimenting with pod laying transport planes, however in today's news.
The US Navy is experimenting with electromagnetic drives in their submarines. No propellor or moving parts, just a tube through which sea water moves under a field. Supposedly indetectable by the enemy.

Joat42 wrote:He knew some of the rudimentary basics of it according to textev.

tlb wrote:I don't remenber; where did this text occur, so I can examine it?

Joat42 wrote:It's mentioned during the ad-hoc negotiation between Eloise and Elizabeth, and Honor is talking about what Herlander Simões knows.

ART Chapter 11 wrote:And while I could wish he’d been involved in developing this 'spider drive' of theirs, instead of the 'streak drive,' the stuff he’s already given Admiral Hemphill makes it obvious he knows what he’s talking about. And what he does know about the 'spider drive' dovetails entirely too neatly with what happened to us for him to be some delusional nut.

tlb wrote:I would hope that there are loose threads, but I do not know what you mean when you say Galton is "far out of step ... in behavior when we compare it to the MAlign in general". Please explain, since it would have been very much in character for them to be the force behind Oyster Bay and the explosions at Beowulf's orbitals. Also they were the source of the Cataphracts.

Joat42 wrote:Galton is out of step because they presents themselves as fanatics ready to die at the drop of a pin which doesn't fit into MAlign's behavior at all. If MAlign were such die-hard fanatics willing to die they wouldn't have worked from the shadows for centuries as they have now insulating themselves in layers upon layers of cut-outs - those two behaviors are at odds. Even the bombing of Beowulf's orbitals is out of step, because it was an emotional response - not a well thought out strategy and this is touched upon in the books.

Will Manticore et al believe that an organization that have been around for centuries is going to roll over and die when push comes to shove? An organization that has been planning for centuries, that has gone undetected for centuries, that has pulled everyone's string for centuries?

We've been over why many of us think Galton is a retcon written in to put a pin in the current story-arc and that shows, it all comes down to "scouts think they found the MAlign" and then "we blasted those bad acting Nazi's into tiny bits" with some interludes and expositions thrown in to give a modicum of authenticity to Galton's existence, there's little else in TEIF.

tlb wrote:Thank you for the text, but there is not enough detail to know that a spider drive could be created at Bolthole; let's hope that they can do it nevertheless.

Galton only appears as a bunch of fanatics that are prepared to die "at the drop of a pin" because they have been discovered and attacked. Even the Detweilers were hopeful that they would not be discovered (hence the mission to make an apology).

Yes, it would have made more sense if Galton had been worked into the action in previous books. Galton had everything that Darius has, except for the spider-drive; Galton might even have more production facilities (although we might not know until Darius is found). However Oyster Bay could have been carried out without the spider-drive; despite what Honor said. We really need the book that follows TEiF, so we can know what direction the author is going.

The logic of the secret fortress is such, that Darius should have a place for escape using Second Houdini. And that place should have an escape plan and so on and so on.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:We do not know how many people are being run through Bolthole and in the case of a compensator failure there is no one alive to wipe the computer database. However they just need to get a spy onto one of the new ships to see if traces of Bolthole's location are still in the logs.

During the war, the Alliance had several ships captured from Haven whose dedication plaque said "built at Bolthole, 1920 PD" or something equivalent that told them it was from there. But none of them had navigational databases that pointed back. It isn't difficult to erase prior to transit back to the Haven sector, to ensure nothing gets captured from the main databases.

Over a longer period of time, someone will slip up, though. Some crew person who took photographs, or some untransmitted message to a loved one describing visiting something.

But note that exact stellar coordinates are NOT needed for Bolthole; as I said someone just has to know that this was the colony for Calvin's Hope that had to escape to a star in a nearby dust cloud. The coordinates for Calvin's Hope are a matter of public record.

Right, and I don't think this the kind of thing that could be kept secret. Even the lowest technician would know there's a native human population who doesn't speak Galactic English and must therefore have been cut off from the rest of the Human Diaspora until recently. That already narrows down to the list of sub-light colony ships that were never heard from again.

Though the fact that everyone knew about Calvin's Hope and couldn't find it probably puts it at the bottom of the list of sites to search if you don't know it's that one. Calvin Hope's fate has been studied for 1500 years and the most likely accepted conclusion is that the ship was destroyed en-route or lost its ability to decelerate. Just knowing the datum from the previous paragraph would set the MAlign intelligence looking for lesser known ships whose destinations are on the far side of Haven from the League, which is exactly where the Alliance was searching for it too. Searching towards the League is a difficult proposition because multiple colonisation waves have passed over the region and one would expect to have heard from any colony.

Which is also why we think the Darius system is on the far side from the League: it's been in existence for 180 T-years and, unlike Sanctuary, they have kept their technology base and don't have a dust cloud to obscure. Despite attempts at stealth, you wouldn't be able to block EM emissions completely, so a neighbour a dozen of light-years away or two would have heard from them. This tells us that there isn't a neighbour in that radius that has technology and is in contact with the Galaxy.

Unless those assumptions are wrong.

Daryl wrote:I do wonder if the US military are readers? They are experimenting with pod laying transport planes, however in today's news.
The US Navy is experimenting with electromagnetic drives in their submarines. No propellor or moving parts, just a tube through which sea water moves under a field. Supposedly indetectable by the enemy.

penny wrote:Thanks for the text, tlb. However, the passage I recall was not vague. It says something to the order of, "... but that will change as the MBS will soon overtake the Solarian League in that respect."

Theemile wrote:I saw the Navy blurb about the Electromagnetic drive - posted yesterday, April 1st. I think you mileage may vary with that article.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Thanks for the text, tlb. However, the passage I recall was not vague. It says something to the order of, "... but that will change as the MBS will soon overtake the Solarian League in that respect."

I trust text much more than anyone's memory (even my own) and I have searched the early books, while Jonathan_S has searched the last books; without either of us finding what you are confident that you remember. So it looks as though you need to do another reread, to prove you are not just "remembering" what you want to believe.

penny wrote:Thanks for the text, tlb. However, the passage I recall was not vague. It says something to the order of, "... but that will change as the MBS will soon overtake the Solarian League in that respect."

tlb wrote:I trust text much more than anyone's memory (even my own) and I have searched the early books, while Jonathan_S has searched the last books; without either of us finding what you are confident that you remember. So it looks as though you need to do another reread, to prove you are not just "remembering" what you want to believe.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though the issue with text search is it is completely dependent on having the right search term. Synonyms are the bane of it

So I've certainly struggled to find passages I know are there just because I didn't correctly recall the exact key words; despite correctly remembering the gist of it. (And a few of which once finally found, or later stubbled back over, I've saved off in various spots for hopefully easier future reference)

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Thanks for the text, tlb. However, the passage I recall was not vague. It says something to the order of, "... but that will change as the MBS will soon overtake the Solarian League in that respect."

tlb wrote:I trust text much more than anyone's memory (even my own) and I have searched the early books, while Jonathan_S has searched the last books; without either of us finding what you are confident that you remember. So it looks as though you need to do another reread, to prove you are not just "remembering" what you want to believe.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though the issue with text search is it is completely dependent on having the right search term. Synonyms are the bane of it

So I've certainly struggled to find passages I know are there just because I didn't correctly recall the exact key words; despite correctly remembering the gist of it. (And a few of which once finally found, or later stubbled back over, I've saved off in various spots for hopefully easier future reference)

While true, neither of us are the one who insists the passage exists; so the onus is not on us.

I am quite willing to believe that there are aspects where Manticore is superior to the League as a whole (we know it is true for weaponry); but I am not willing to believe one of them Gross Domestic Product without proof.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:Thanks for the text, tlb. However, the passage I recall was not vague. It says something to the order of, "... but that will change as the MBS will soon overtake the Solarian League in that respect."

tlb wrote:I trust text much more than anyone's memory (even my own) and I have searched the early books, while Jonathan_S has searched the last books; without either of us finding what you are confident that you remember. So it looks as though you need to do another reread, to prove you are not just "remembering" what you want to believe.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though the issue with text search is it is completely dependent on having the right search term. Synonyms are the bane of it

So I've certainly struggled to find passages I know are there just because I didn't correctly recall the exact key words; despite correctly remembering the gist of it. (And a few of which once finally found, or later stubbled back over, I've saved off in various spots for hopefully easier future reference)

While true, neither of us are the one who insists the passage exists; so the onus is not on us.

I am quite willing to believe that there are aspects where Manticore is superior to the League as a whole (we know it is true for weaponry); but I am not willing to believe one of them Gross Domestic Product without proof.

Theemile wrote:The last I saw, the MBS was about to overtake the economy of SOL, not the SL in total. Now, of course, it tanked the SOL economy, so that is now a meaningless litmus.