Why don't they just give up?

tlb wrote:The only connection that I remember between the two was that Herlander Simões was working on improvements to the streak drive and had a little knowledge of the spider drive (maybe just enough to know it existed). So, between him and the capture of Galton, the Grand Alliance should soon have working models of their own. But unless he knew just a little bit more about the spider drive, the GA is still left with that puzzle.

Yeah, I don't remember a research link either.

Though it'd seem fairly believable if MWW comes back and says both were indirect products of some breakthrough in understanding of the hyperspace wall phenomena. (As one's a way of brute forcing your way through a rougher (more turbulent?) wall than anybody else has ever achieved; and the other's a way of grabbing onto a hyper wall). But, to date, I don't believe there's anything really linking them (other than the MAlign having invented both)

tlb wrote:

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:It is my impression that the reason that the Detweiler brothers were pushing the SLN to activate Operation Fabius was to frame the SLN for a major Eridani Edict violation when several Beowulf orbital habitats are destroyed.

If you reread the musing by Capriotti, you will see that the Malign knew that everyone would recognize their interference and so added some more. The only thing more was the bombs and when you look at how little the SLN attack accomplished, it is difficult to blame them. You are right in the sense that there might have been some confusion if the bombs had exploded together at the correct time, but they were late and not due to missiles. And the time delay sequence built into the three explosions, was clearly an act of extreme personal hatred.

Harold Simmons-Gilchrest was given 2 codes. The one he used, because he was late getting to where he could use them, was for after the missiles were flying. Thus, the 5 minute delay for the Beta bomb and an additional 10 minutes for the Alpha bomb (and which Benjamin admitted was a mistake in _To End in Fire_). I suspect that the other code (for when missiles were arriving) would had caused near simultaneous bombing of the habitats. For this to work properly, the bombs should go off right about when warheads were exploding, but I am not certain how that would work.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Harold Simmons-Gilchrest was given 2 codes. The one he used, because he was late getting to where he could use them, was for after the missiles were flying. Thus, the 5 minute delay for the Beta bomb and an additional 10 minutes for the Alpha bomb (and which Benjamin admitted was a mistake in _To End in Fire_). I suspect that the other code (for when missiles were arriving) would had caused near simultaneous bombing of the habitats. For this to work properly, the bombs should go off right about when warheads were exploding, but I am not certain how that would work.

I agree, but even if he had been on time and the bombs had exploded together with the missiles; there had been no missiles aimed at the habitats. There could (and should) be quite some distance between the missile factories and the bombed orbitals. It is not that Hasta was invisible, but that they were mixed in with legitimate recon drones and the attack stage was very visible.

Joat42 wrote:And brings us to Galton, which I spent some time thinking about. The reveal of Galton and it's subsequent defeat always felt like a retcon, but I have come to the realization that Galton was the boogeyman MAlign was going to use to crush their enemies while the RF was going to be the victors who ended the Galton threat cementing their position as the leaders of the civilized space.

Just think about that, Galton was going to be the bad guy the RF rescued everyone from. Any military research the MAlign did was entirely geared towards a couple of goals, making sure a Galton navy had an edge over other navies, making sure a RF navy had an edge over Galton and everyone else, making sure they could clandestinely engineer events through stealth to their benefit, making sure they always were inside others communication loop.

Manticore's technological breakthroughs made some of those goals unattainable unless Manticore was taken out, which is why the MAlign sicced the SLN on them even though the plan was firmly off the rails at that point.

The first time I wondered about there being something like Galton was when in the run-up to Raging Justice where Fillerta was wondering where all those "improved" Cataphract missles came from when they showed up but the shipload. The timing, how did they get to him give where he was and what was going on. Technodyne was too far away and that was a seriously large shipment to provide those missles for all those SD in his fleet including pods. We know that the "Mesan" SDF (or Navy) personnel who were refitting the PRH in Excel ships and suppling them with Cataphract and at that point nobody else had them. I'm sure Technodyne was perfectly happy building loads and loads of privately developed and designed weapons as long as they got some licensing deal to make them for somebody like the SLN but it was too early in the timeline for them to have been making them to be used at Torch.
What Mesa had for warships (and a fair number at that) was apparently, at best, SL military tech and no mention of them building their own ships. That is not to say that they couldn't repair them but no actual menton of building warships there.
My recollection of the Detweilers talking about The Plan, it was Haven that was going to be the physical hammer to break the SLN but some of the plan is a bit fuzzy. I guess the PRESUMPTION was that Haven would eventually capture the Manticore System (and the Junction) and then keep expanding. That would make the direction of the SL the way for them to go since they would now have that access through both the Junction to Sigma Draconus and the other terminus at Hennessy (nobody mentions Hennessy). Since the Alignment is so successful in corrupting all sort of parts of the SL bureaucracy and has at least fingers into some Transtellars, provoking the League into a war with the now ascendant Haven (not PRH), would probably be poked of Office of Frontier Security since Haven would be looking to take at least Non-League system out of there grasp. There is also the non-trivial position Haven would have as it took over all of the Manticorian shipping which did not escape in League or other space BUT all of those Manticorian merchant spaces would have family (and the rest of their assets) at Manticore and you have to believe that Haven would use the families "require" the MMM to "come home" and then take them over. Among other things OFS and ever so much of the SL buracracy would be jealous and quite pissed that Haven took the Junction and want to do something about that. Neo-barbarians....they have no sense of who is supposed to the only people who should be dong things like that. And the League would have direct control (this is pre-Talbot) over two widely separated points to enter the League by wormhole and so now have effective control over all that shipping and revenue.
Manneheim - with the planned RF- would start out as 12 systems, only one of which (we are told) has any sort of SDF and while it would be reasonable at dealing with pirates it would have to seriously build out an RF Navy to deal with anything like remnants /rogue SLN SD coming calling to demand anything. Besides, Galton doesn't have anything like the invisible space ships. How would Galton go about showing up as un-flagged SDs and smashing SL and non-allied systems? Oh, sending even one SD into a system with a BC and some smaller ships would result in total loss of orbital infrasturce since that seems to be what the Alignment planned. No stand-up battles, just smash from outside detection (or beyond identification) and then leave, theoretically scattering some evidence leading back to Haven.
No, Galton makes a great scapegoat and sacrifice (in finest Alignment tradition) but wasn't mentioned in The Plan even at the highest levels of the Alighment for which we see any discussion. A secret arms production center but not an alternative as a crusading military force to supplant the RF. So many questions, so few answers.

Brigade XO wrote:My recollection of the Detweilers talking about The Plan, it was Haven that was going to be the physical hammer to break the SLN but some of the plan is a bit fuzzy.

Yes, but afterwards to prod more systems to join the RF they would use Galton to, for example, smash Beowulf. But all that became moot when Manticore didn't die at the hands of Haven and instead was winning the war.

Brigade XO wrote:No, Galton makes a great scapegoat and sacrifice (in finest Alignment tradition) but wasn't mentioned in The Plan even at the highest levels of the Alighment for which we see any discussion.

Yes, after the SLN was broken. And Galton was never mentioned anywhere prior to TEIF even though it was discovered around 1660PD and settled in 1681.

Brigade XO wrote:A secret arms production center but not an alternative as a crusading military force to supplant the RF. So many questions, so few answers.

Consider Operation Prometheus whose sole purpose was to cement the RF as the only alternative to the fallen SLN through offensive operations against MAlign's enemies. The RF can't do that, only Galton because the moment the RF starts a shooting war with the GA for example they'll lose the moral high ground and other systems will then be leery to join them.

It makes more sense to use Galton to attack systems in an effort to make others feel insecure and tempt them to seek membership in the RF.

That the MAlign have used Galton as an industrial and military production center up to now makes perfect sense, a centralized location that is strictly controlled means there is less chance of something leaking. What is lacking from TEIF and is something that may be brought up later is that it seems Galton had a very sizeable industry which "only" built mostly in-system defenses and a SDF, and that wouldn't make sense to anyone looking it over after the capture unless we factor in that they were supposed to go on the offensive and need that capacity to build up their naval forces.

markusschaber wrote:Why doesn't the alignment just give up? They've demonstrated that their planning doesn't work out at all,

Why? They are human

Smart & Dumb humans think they are BETTER than others and THEY should dictate how others live their lives. True in ALL of history. They are Bullies.

This God complex happens most often in children who grow up with a golden spoon in their mouth without other siblings to hammer down the basic fact THEY are NOT special.

So, we have "Special" genetic kids who KNOW they are "special", who get dumped into positions of power due to genetics AND heredity where they get to dictate. In this scenario, any bully who gets in charge will get RID of anyone who is NOT a bully as said bully will trust other bullies but anyone who is NOT a bully they will NEVER trust. In other words how CORRUPTION happens in EVERY society over time and why civilizations FALL on about ~150 year timeframes unless events happen which eliminate the power structures in government/industry/banking.

As for why do they not give up? Bullies NEVER give up until smashed in the mouth.

Until VERY VERY recently the MALIGN have never been smashed in the face with reality disturbing their god complex. Bullies who eventually get smashed in the mouth do one of two things. Either they quietly slink away and pretend they were never involved(a decidedly deadly Alpha/Beta/gamma line problem with nanotech dumped into their bloodstream + the all present wet work teams they all know will be hunting them) OR, bullies always DOUBLE down on intransigence. Said bullies NEVER give up until they are FORCED to grovel and even then they will not give up and unfortunately, throughout history, the ONLY solution is DEATH or imprisonment.

Joat42 wrote:

tlb wrote:Prior to the introduction of the Spider drive in Storm from the Shadows (which makes clear that they were very new, just out of testing), they were doing everything with streak drive ships without stealth. Everything accomplished before then had been the work of covert agents (which work fine when trying to start a war).

The stealthy ships were only introduced to try and nudge events back to what was needed by the plan.

Jonathan_S wrote:To be fair we don't know how stealthy their conventional wedge powered ships were relative to, say, Manticore's.

(They'd still be way, way, less stealthy than a spider -- but might, or might not, be able to hide their wedges at closer ranges and/or higher power settings than other folks' ships)

tlb wrote:Possibly, but all the stuff in the Talbott Quadrant was done without indicating that stealth was needed. In fact the freighter that connected some of the events there was doing nothing more than changing identifiers. So perhaps stealth was available, but we did not see it used.

Considering what the plan originally was, some modest research into ships and weapons seemed prudent to give the RF an edge. Investing heavily into stealth research seems like a no-brainer for a covert organization who does everything from the shadows. The streak drive seems like a nice addition for a covert organization which allows them to have a much short communication loop than everyone else. And wasn't it mentioned somewhere that the spider-drive grew out of something that had to do with the streak-drive research (if I remember correctly)?

We have to remember that Malign practiced industrial espionage or controlled Transtellars through proxies, so any kind of research or technical papers that caught their attention would be available to them.

Compare that to what Manticore did as an extension to Project Gram, they asked all their merchant Captains to gather information about any new technology or research they ran across or just the rumors about new technology.

It's clear that the MAlign never intended to go on the offensive like they did with Oyster Bay, everything they did before that was to make sure the RF would succeed and then after the fall of the SLN they would go on the offensive to crush their "enemies" (Operation Prometheus). That ended when the war between Haven and Manticore started and it became clear after a while that Manticore had significantly pushed the technological envelope, and that is something that is mentioned a couple of times by the Detweilers.

And brings us to Galton, which I spent some time thinking about. The reveal of Galton and it's subsequent defeat always felt like a retcon, but I have come to the realization that Galton was the boogeyman MAlign was going to use to crush their enemies while the RF was going to be the victors who ended the Galton threat cementing their position as the leaders of the civilized space.

Just think about that, Galton was going to be the bad guy the RF rescued everyone from. Any military research the MAlign did was entirely geared towards a couple of goals, making sure a Galton navy had an edge over other navies, making sure a RF navy had an edge over Galton and everyone else, making sure they could clandestinely engineer events through stealth to their benefit, making sure they always were inside others communication loop.

Manticore's technological breakthroughs made some of those goals unattainable unless Manticore was taken out, which is why the MAlign sicced the SLN on them even though the plan was firmly off the rails at that point.

I agree that the MA had to have been researching the spider drive for a long time. I think it was always planned to be the backbone of their activities. Some say they couldn't have counted on being successful developing the spider drive. Alphas do not plan to fail. And again, they had copious amounts of time; And I agree, research from all over the galaxy.

But your theory about the RF is really interesting. And you could be right, but I never even came close to that. I always envisioned the ships found at Galton to be earmarked for the RF at some later time in the future.

And the RF would not have to fight the GA. Why should they? The GA has policies and beliefs that are tolerable until the time is right. In fact, the RF would want to pass itself off as a legitimate forthright entity initially. And they'd have to earn the trust of the galaxy to accomplish its goals. And to earn the trust of the galaxy, earning the trust of the GA goes a long way.

Nice, and very interesting, post joat.

penny wrote:I agree that the MA had to have been researching the spider drive for a long time. I think it was always planned to be the backbone of their activities. Some say they couldn't have counted on being successful developing the spider drive. Alphas do not plan to fail. And again, they had copious amounts of time; And I agree, research from all over the galaxy.

So when are we going to hear about their plans for the wormhole drive? And how it will allow the RF to instantaneously come to anyone's aid, anywhere in the Galaxy? We do know wormholes exist and anything that can exist naturally can be recreated artificially. And as the MAlign themselves showed with the streak drive, if brute force isn't working, you're just not using enough of it.

No, the spider drive wasn't planned before the spider drive became theoretically possible. We don't know when that is. I will freely admit that it may have been centuries ago that the theory was laid out and only the MAlign paid attention to it because it knew something no one else did (probably because they suppressed it). But more likely than not, if it his had been the case, they'd have abandoned a research proposal that hadn't panned out in centuries.

So it's far more likely that the initial theoretical breakthrough is no more than 50 years old and the last big engineering challenges were only overcome 25 years ago. Until this had been show to be a viable alternative, it would not have been made their central plan.

I agree with you the Alphas don't plan on failure. Which is exactly why I come to a different conclusion: the spider drive was not the plan (until it was). They couldn't know it was going to work, so they wouldn't plan for it to be the only option. They must have had a dozen different possibilities depending on how the technology progressed.

But your theory about the RF is really interesting. And you could be right, but I never even came close to that. I always envisioned the ships found at Galton to be earmarked for the RF at some later time in the future.

Would be mighty suspicious if RF suddenly started getting ships from somewhere, with no yards capable of building them to their name, and crews trained to operate those ships who no one had met before. This is especially important for the members the RF was supposed to have recruited into their polity.

Maybe the technology would make it through, in dribs and drabs. But the existence of the Galton fleet in the size if was discovered to be indicates they planned on using the ships, not just training with them. The Galton Navy, with its multiple squadrons of wallers, was in the Top 20 Navy list.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
So it's far more likely that the initial theoretical breakthrough is no more than 50 years old and the last big engineering challenges were only overcome 25 years ago. Until this had been show to be a viable alternative, it would not have been made their central plan.

I agree with you the Alphas don't plan on failure. Which is exactly why I come to a different conclusion: the spider drive was not the plan (until it was). They couldn't know it was going to work, so they wouldn't plan for it to be the only option. They must have had a dozen different possibilities depending on how the technology progressed.

SPIDER drive ships are not THE PLAN right now. Never have been anymore than the submarine is THE PLAN yesterday, today, or the future.

THE PLAN was the Renaissance Factor rising and taking over using CONVENTIONAL ships and is still THE PLAN while the covert military arm uses spider ships so they can take over the SL a bit more easily and all the rest of human space

Something else that bothers me about Galton is that with it's incredible fleet of SD, all those forts and massive industrialization, it really hasn't seemed to have made an impact - that we have been told about - other than providing equipment and weapons for the PRHN in Exile and the massive number of Cataprhacts provided to Fillerta. ---and on the side of that, what happened to that second SLN fleet of a size of Filler's that was gathered in a separate place and you might presume they would get a similar delivery of "updated" missiles.

We had Darius and it's the Secret Lair of the Alignment. It does have a significant industrialized component and is building the LDs plus, apparently the Ghosts and whatever other Spider Drive ships that are planned. I would be reasonable to think that Darius is also the source of the Streak Drive ships as that would be a very bad thing to let some non-Alignment shipyard have the specs and designs for. Oh, they could actually buy all sorts of what is basically SL level tech parts and gear and copy the metallurgy for hulls but the Streak Drivers and the actual construction are too sensitive to be shopped out anywhere.
But other than that military-industrial complex that is Galton making weapons and military systems plus turning out a population which is probably based on the same "tubing" technology that both Manpower (etc) of Mesa and Darius use, what have they been making?
And where is all that stuff they would have been making?
If Galton could be expected to serve as a foil and semi believable opponent for the RF at the point (in The Plan) where the SLN and PRHN have been smashing systems in the conflict the Alignment was going to provoke , where are the CONVENTIONAL ships? Of whatever recognizable design variants that could be attributed to some new power that just happens to burst on the scene with the fall of the SL?
Heck, the Alignment could have even stolen Havenite designs (from before the war with Manticore) and built ships that looked like and SCANNED LIKE RHN warships and used them to do the EE stuff. But there is nothing like that.

Questions, always questions.