Talbott Cluster Joining SKM/SEM

Hi--I'm looking for a little help. I'm re-reading the Honorverse books, and seem to have missed one, but can't figure out which. I'm now reading "Shadow of Saganami," and the Talbott Cluster plebiscite to join Manticore has already happened. Can someone tell me: in what book do we find Bernardus van Dort scurrying around putting together the plebiscite? Or is my memory just shot? Thanks for any guidance anybody can offer. --Matt

mattelmhurst wrote:Hi--I'm looking for a little help. I'm re-reading the Honorverse books, and seem to have missed one, but can't figure out which. I'm now reading "Shadow of Saganami," and the Talbott Cluster plebiscite to join Manticore has already happened. Can someone tell me: in what book do we find Bernardus van Dort scurrying around putting together the plebiscite? Or is my memory just shot? Thanks for any guidance anybody can offer. --Matt

Welcome to the forum. I am pretty sure you are in the right book and will get there as you continue reading.

tlb wrote:

mattelmhurst wrote:Hi--I'm looking for a little help. I'm re-reading the Honorverse books, and seem to have missed one, but can't figure out which. I'm now reading "Shadow of Saganami," and the Talbott Cluster plebiscite to join Manticore has already happened. Can someone tell me: in what book do we find Bernardus van Dort scurrying around putting together the plebiscite? Or is my memory just shot? Thanks for any guidance anybody can offer. --Matt

Welcome to the forum. I am pretty sure you are in the right book and will get there as you continue reading.

van Dort's scurrying around on Hexapuma is definitely in Shadow of Saganami. But I think that scurrying is to nail down support for accepting Manticore's terms of annexation. The plebiscite just asked Manticore if they'd consider accepting the Cluster -- at the point it passed nobody knew whether Manticore would be amenable, the specific rights and benefits the worlds and their populations might expect from joining, nor the requirements placed upon them to join.
Now Manticore has laid some of that out and started negotiating the rest and Van Dort is trying to push that process through to annexation.

mattelmhurst wrote:Hi--I'm looking for a little help. I'm re-reading the Honorverse books, and seem to have missed one, but can't figure out which. I'm now reading "Shadow of Saganami," and the Talbott Cluster plebiscite to join Manticore has already happened. Can someone tell me: in what book do we find Bernardus van Dort scurrying around putting together the plebiscite? Or is my memory just shot? Thanks for any guidance anybody can offer. --Matt

It happened offstage. The wormhole to the Talbott cluster was first transited in chapter 34 of _War of Honor_. Chapter 54 of _War of Honor_ mentions that the Talbott Cluster had requested annexation by Manticore. Thus, van Dort organized the plebiscite in the time between chapters 34 and 54.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:It happened offstage. The wormhole to the Talbott cluster was first transited in chapter 34 of _War of Honor_. Chapter 54 of _War of Honor_ mentions that the Talbott Cluster had requested annexation by Manticore. Thus, van Dort organized the plebiscite in the time between chapters 34 and 54.

Same with Lynx. They requested annexation off-camera, for all intents and purposes before Harvest Joy returned through the wormhole. So the Cluster would have begun its procedure of doing the same as soon as news reached them, but at which point either Manticore or van Dort decided that it should be done as a group instead of multiple one-off annexations.

Probably van Dort: he would have realised that multiple systems joining as a unit would have a bigger value for Manticore, so they could get more interesting terms. And he was right: this allowed the Cluster to become a Quadrant, with its own local parliament, and they also got quite a lot of investment.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Same with Lynx. They requested annexation off-camera, for all intents and purposes before Harvest Joy returned through the wormhole. So the Cluster would have begun its procedure of doing the same as soon as news reached them, but at which point either Manticore or van Dort decided that it should be done as a group instead of multiple one-off annexations.

Probably van Dort: he would have realised that multiple systems joining as a unit would have a bigger value for Manticore, so they could get more interesting terms. And he was right: this allowed the Cluster to become a Quadrant, with its own local parliament, and they also got quite a lot of investment.

Though that request might have come from the Manticore side.

Up until Talbott Manticore was able to more or less slot its new acquisitions into the existing Star Kingdom of Manticore, as round trip transit/messaging times to Trevor's Star or Lynx aren't significantly different than to Gryphon. (Lynx being a bit longer as you have to go through the terminus and then several more LY through hyper -- but not crazy long).

Talbott, on the other hand, caused Manticore to restructure and create a Star Empire of Manticore of which the SKM and Talbott Quadrant were members. The concerns that led to that probably came up in discussions almost as soon as Manticore got the initial inquires about various Talbott systems potentially joining; and those concerns might have driven a request from Manticore's side for Talbott to organize and enter as a unit instead of as separate systems.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:It happened offstage. The wormhole to the Talbott cluster was first transited in chapter 34 of _War of Honor_. Chapter 54 of _War of Honor_ mentions that the Talbott Cluster had requested annexation by Manticore. Thus, van Dort organized the plebiscite in the time between chapters 34 and 54.

Same with Lynx. They requested annexation off-camera, for all intents and purposes before Harvest Joy returned through the wormhole. So the Cluster would have begun its procedure of doing the same as soon as news reached them, but at which point either Manticore or van Dort decided that it should be done as a group instead of multiple one-off annexations.

Probably van Dort: he would have realised that multiple systems joining as a unit would have a bigger value for Manticore, so they could get more interesting terms. And he was right: this allowed the Cluster to become a Quadrant, with its own local parliament, and they also got quite a lot of investment.

I know there is nothing really there, but a short story about the lynx annexation (or the events leading up to it) from the Lynx PoV would be interesting.

I'm assuming it was a typical hard scrabble verge world (with a defense force of "5 LACS and 2 old FG/DD, one of which is being used as parts to keep the other working," and a marginal economy.) Their leadership was probably trying to figure out another issue they couldn't fix with their own resources, when the Harvest Joy shows up.... and completely changes the equation.

Theemile wrote:I know there is nothing really there, but a short story about the lynx annexation (or the events leading up to it) from the Lynx PoV would be interesting.

I'm assuming it was a typical hard scrabble verge world (with a defense force of "5 LACS and 2 old FG/DD, one of which is being used as parts to keep the other working," and a marginal economy.) Their leadership was probably trying to figure out another issue they couldn't fix with their own resources, when the Harvest Joy shows up.... and completely changes the equation.

That'd be interesting. But having even a couple of small hyper capable ships seems like it'd be very much on the high end for a Talbott Cluster system. The Nuncio "'Space Force' consists of exactly eleven light attack craft" [SoS] (Though, to be fair, (Nuncio was described as "a poverty-stricken star system, even for the Verge")

I wouldn't be surprised if most systems in Talbott lacked any hyper capable combatants.
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Though given the Nuncian LAC's size (some of them 15 - 18 thousand tons) and high acceleration for LACs (500g observed; so likely can make around their tonnage's pre-Grayson compensator curve max of 544.2g) seem partway between an old corvette[1] and a classic LAC.

Because, for example, a Highlander-class LAC is just 11,250 tons but flat out can only make 409.3g due to her weak impellers - and that's in line with the other classic LAC classes we have info on, the SCN's Mazur-class, GSN's Faith-class, and RHN's Program 13-class).

Though they're vastly smaller than the only frigate we have details on, the SCN's old Gryf-class -- 53,500 tons, 529.9g.

But ditching the hyper generator, alpha nodes, and bunkerage for long independent deployments would shrink a corvette down a lot compared to a frigate while still being built as a small warship (with magazines, missile tubes, and a full power wedge[2]) instead of a big LAC (with its single-shot box launcher and underpowered wedge).

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[1] Corvette being an older design philosophy -- basically a non-hyper capable frigate. But still build like a small regular warship; rather than an even smaller special purpose LAC. Though thanks to Silesia's security issues and rules against privately owned hyper capable ships we did see a couple corvettes mentioned there during the first war.

[2] To get that full power does that mean they replace the fore and aft Alpha rings with additional Beta node rings?

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:I know there is nothing really there, but a short story about the lynx annexation (or the events leading up to it) from the Lynx PoV would be interesting.

I'm assuming it was a typical hard scrabble verge world (with a defense force of "5 LACS and 2 old FG/DD, one of which is being used as parts to keep the other working," and a marginal economy.) Their leadership was probably trying to figure out another issue they couldn't fix with their own resources, when the Harvest Joy shows up.... and completely changes the equation.

That'd be interesting. But having even a couple of small hyper capable ships seems like it'd be very much on the high end for a Talbott Cluster system. The Nuncio "'Space Force' consists of exactly eleven light attack craft" [SoS] (Though, to be fair, (Nuncio was described as "a poverty-stricken star system, even for the Verge")

I wouldn't be surprised if most systems in Talbott lacked any hyper capable combatants.
-------

Though given the Nuncian LAC's size (some of them 15 - 18 thousand tons) and high acceleration for LACs (500g observed; so likely can make around their tonnage's pre-Grayson compensator curve max of 544.2g) seem partway between an old corvette[1] and a classic LAC.

Because, for example, a Highlander-class LAC is just 11,250 tons but flat out can only make 409.3g due to her weak impellers - and that's in line with the other classic LAC classes we have info on, the SCN's Mazur-class, GSN's Faith-class, and RHN's Program 13-class).

Though they're vastly smaller than the only frigate we have details on, the SCN's old Gryf-class -- 53,500 tons, 529.9g.

But ditching the hyper generator, alpha nodes, and bunkerage for long independent deployments would shrink a corvette down a lot compared to a frigate while still being built as a small warship (with magazines, missile tubes, and a full power wedge[2]) instead of a big LAC (with its single-shot box launcher and underpowered wedge).

----

[1] Corvette being an older design philosophy -- basically a non-hyper capable frigate. But still build like a small regular warship; rather than an even smaller special purpose LAC. Though thanks to Silesia's security issues and rules against privately owned hyper capable ships we did see a couple corvettes mentioned there during the first war.

[2] To get that full power does that mean they replace the fore and aft Alpha rings with additional Beta node rings?

If I'm correct (but it's not my sandbox, so who knows) I think the Classic LACs lacked Alphas (but had extra Betas to balance the rings) which would explain the low accels, while those largish "Corvettes" still had the alpha nodes, and the full accel for their mass. Not having Alphas would lessen the mass of a LAC, and lower the complexity, maintenance and cost, while the addition of Alphas would partially explain the extra mass and the ability to get the whole speed. the extra accel could also be a comp issue, with smaller/cheaper/less capable comps used in the LACs, lowering procurement costs and ongoing maintenance costs (by using a commercial type comp and nodes.)

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:If I'm correct (but it's not my sandbox, so who knows) I think the Classic LACs lacked Alphas (but had extra Betas to balance the rings) which would explain the low accels, while those largish "Corvettes" still had the alpha nodes, and the full accel for their mass. Not having Alphas would lessen the mass of a LAC, and lower the complexity, maintenance and cost, while the addition of Alphas would partially explain the extra mass and the ability to get the whole speed. the extra accel could also be a comp issue, with smaller/cheaper/less capable comps used in the LACs, lowering procurement costs and ongoing maintenance costs (by using a commercial type comp and nodes.)

I believe you're right that they lacked Alpha nodes

Honor Among Enemies wrote:Traditional light attack craft were considerably inferior to hyper-capable warships for many reasons. Their small size left no room for hyper generators, so they couldn't translate into or out of h-space. Nor could they mount Warshawski sails, which meant they couldn't be employed inside the grav waves starships normally rode even if they could somehow be gotten into hyper in the first place.

What largely differentiates an Alpha node from a Beta node is the extra capability to produce a sail.

But the text isn't clear on why traditional LACs had "relatively weaker impeller wedges" [HAE]. Still, a Beta ring doesn't need any Alpha nodes to balance it -- it's its own self-balanced thing. So traditional LACs wouldn't have needed extra Beta nodes to balance things for lack of Alpha nodes.

Heck, a single ring of Beta nodes (not one at each end, just one total) is sufficient to make a wedge. That's how shuttles and pinnaces work; and of course missiles also use single drive rings -- though those are specialized impeller nodes. Traditional LACs, as far as I'm aware, have a single beta ring at each end. Certainly Shrikes have a single Beta-squared ring at each end.

But we don't know what gave Nuncio's LACs (or presumably classic corvettes) their more powerful wedge.

Maybe you're right and they stuck on alpha nodes; despite not having a hyper generator. Perhaps my speculation was right and they put on extra beta rings (so, two rings at each end). Maybe they had access to more powerful beta nodes (like Manticore put onto their Series 282-class; which Wayfarer took into Silesia)

But whatever it was must was likely expensive and/or mass/volume intensive -- otherwise there's no reason that everybody else would have accepted traditional LACs which accelerated slower than even SDs. (Because it seems unlikely that a poverty stricken backwater like Nuncio could have gotten their hands on some breakthrough LAC propulsion tech that postdated all the traditional, slow, LACs we know of. So I'm assuming whatever gave them that accel was brute force, rather than new tech)