Commerce raiding

penny wrote:How quickly we forget. On ones own planet one may be assisted by ones own Navy. See Thomas Theisman. And on ones own planet it isn't exactly an insurrection, depending on who one asks. See our own "insurrection."

On ones own planet one is merely exercising his perceived political rights and/or ones own political responsibilities. Ring any bells?

How quickly you forgot, since you claimed that insurrection on the home planet was not as bad. But if you are talking about the need for the new Republic of Haven to try Theisman for treason, that has more cracks in it than the Liberty Bell. You might as well say that the Continental Congress of these United States should try Washington (and themselves) for treason.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:How quickly we forget. On ones own planet one may be assisted by ones own Navy. See Thomas Theisman. And on ones own planet it isn't exactly an insurrection, depending on who one asks. See our own "insurrection."

On ones own planet one is merely exercising his perceived political rights and/or ones own political responsibilities. Ring any bells?

How quickly you forgot, since you claimed that insurrection on the home planet was not as bad. But if you are talking about the need for the new Republic of Haven to try Theisman for treason, that has more cracks in it than the Liberty Bell. You might as well say that the Continental Congress of these United States should try Washington (and themselves) for treason.

Huh? This isn't about the thread you dread.

You said it yourself and Theisman verified it. On your own planet there is a chance to succeed. There is no chance to succeed on a planet that has been conquered. Which is my point to Jonathan. How can a planet of unrest realistically restrict Haven's strategic mobility?

penny wrote:How quickly we forget. On ones own planet one may be assisted by ones own Navy. See Thomas Theisman. And on ones own planet it isn't exactly an insurrection, depending on who one asks. See our own "insurrection."

On ones own planet one is merely exercising his perceived political rights and/or ones own political responsibilities. Ring any bells?

tlb wrote:How quickly you forgot, since you claimed that insurrection on the home planet was not as bad. But if you are talking about the need for the new Republic of Haven to try Theisman for treason, that has more cracks in it than the Liberty Bell. You might as well say that the Continental Congress of these United States should try Washington (and themselves) for treason.

penny wrote:Huh? This isn't about the thread you dread.

You said it yourself and Theisman verified it. On your own planet there is a chance to succeed. There is no chance to succeed on a planet that has been conquered. Which is my point to Jonathan. How can a planet of unrest realistically restrict Haven's strategic mobility?

I do not know how to decipher your post above except as I did. Although it is true that an insurrection on a conquered planet cannot topple the government on the home planet, that is not the measure of its success. An insurrection is successful if independence is gained, such as the United Colonies from British rule.

I do not dread discussing your desire to try Theisman for treason, I just think that it is untrue to history. Theisman is a naval officer who swore allegiance to the Constitution of Haven; whereas Robert Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just had massacred the Constitutional leadership, assumed dictatorial control and instituted a reign of terror that they blamed on the Navy. Under any normal reading of the law, Theisman was a patriot and Pierre and St. Just were the traitors (and died as such). Theisman proved he was a patriot by restoring the Constitution.

penny wrote:You said it yourself and Theisman verified it. On your own planet there is a chance to succeed. There is no chance to succeed on a planet that has been conquered. Which is my point to Jonathan. How can a planet of unrest realistically restrict Haven's strategic mobility?

Though insurrectionists rarely seem to logically consider their chances of ultimate success before beginning their fight.

And Haven cares about more than whether, in the end, they'll retain/regain control of the planet. They care about the economic and industrial impacts of the insurrection and its aftermath. Production in the contested areas will effectively stop while fighting continues, output from areas that fall temporarily under insurrectionist control will cease to support Haven's economy and war efforts, suppressing the insurrection will kill workers, damage industry, and increase population disaffection -- so even after the insurrection is crushed planetary output will be reduced. And of course the Peeps likely had to divert additional military force to the planet to help deal with this; which raises costs for which they're going to get reduced returns. (And of course if one planetary insurrection seems to be doing well, even if it's ultimately doomed, it might inspire others to revolt dramatically increasing the impacts and costs)

(Basically when most of your country is made up of occupied territory it takes a lot of military to keep things superficially peaceful and somewhat productive)

And, demonstrably, the Peeps under both the Legislaturalists and the Committee of Public Safety felt these (or potentially other) downsides were worth trying up battleships to secure potentially restive systems -- both to deter insurrection attempts and if any broke out to suppress them quickly.

They might have misjudged what was required (though they'd centuries of experience at this) but their concerns don't seem unreasonable.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:You said it yourself and Theisman verified it. On your own planet there is a chance to succeed. There is no chance to succeed on a planet that has been conquered. Which is my point to Jonathan. How can a planet of unrest realistically restrict Haven's strategic mobility?

Though insurrectionists rarely seem to logically consider their chances of ultimate success before beginning their fight.

And Haven cares about more than whether, in the end, they'll retain/regain control of the planet. They care about the economic and industrial impacts of the insurrection and its aftermath. Production in the contested areas will effectively stop while fighting continues, output from areas that fall temporarily under insurrectionist control will cease to support Haven's economy and war efforts, suppressing the insurrection will kill workers, damage industry, and increase population disaffection -- so even after the insurrection is crushed planetary output will be reduced. And of course the Peeps likely had to divert additional military force to the planet to help deal with this; which raises costs for which they're going to get reduced returns. (And of course if one planetary insurrection seems to be doing well, even if it's ultimately doomed, it might inspire others to revolt dramatically increasing the impacts and costs)

(Basically when most of your country is made up of occupied territory it takes a lot of military to keep things superficially peaceful and somewhat productive)

And, demonstrably, the Peeps under both the Legislaturalists and the Committee of Public Safety felt these (or potentially other) downsides were worth trying up battleships to secure potentially restive systems -- both to deter insurrection attempts and if any broke out to suppress them quickly.

They might have misjudged what was required (though they'd centuries of experience at this) but their concerns don't seem unreasonable.

True. But when I considered it, I just couldn't see why BBs are necessary to keep the peace. Pinnaces and Cutters can do the same. Simply several contingencies of Marines strategically placed? What can BBs do that would not do as much damage as the rioters? Certainly if bombardment is the solution. Seems like LACs could be just as effective as BBs in maintaining peace groundside. IINM that LACs can be fitted for orbittal to ground ordnance.

penny wrote:True. But when I considered it, I just couldn't see why BBs are necessary to keep the peace. Pinnaces and Cutters can do the same. Simply several contingencies of Marines strategically placed? What can BBs do that would not do as much damage as the rioters? Certainly if bombardment is the solution. Seems like LACs could be just as effective as BBs in maintaining peace groundside. IINM that LACs can be fitted for orbittal to ground ordnance.

The Malagasy insurrection included naval mutineers, so they had naval warships; which means "Pinnaces and Cutters" would not be sufficient.

penny wrote:True. But when I considered it, I just couldn't see why BBs are necessary to keep the peace. Pinnaces and Cutters can do the same. Simply several contingencies of Marines strategically placed? What can BBs do that would not do as much damage as the rioters? Certainly if bombardment is the solution. Seems like LACs could be just as effective as BBs in maintaining peace groundside. IINM that LACs can be fitted for orbittal to ground ordnance.

That's true, if every target has been thoroughly crushed in the initial invasion. We know from EoH that was not always the case, sometimes warships would evade and shift to guerrilla style resistance for as long as possible.

Those warships wouldn't have restricted themselves to their home system, they would have ventured into other systems occupied by Haven.

The largest of those warships would have been battlecruisers. We know from the 1905 chart that Haven had very few of those to spread around and they didn't have that many heavy cruisers either.

Destroyers and light cruisers won't deter battlecruisers(or CAs). Indeed, they're exactly what battlecruisers love to snack upon. Battleships, on the other hand, practically guarantees that any pesky "pirates" don't even bother a particular location - allowing uninterrupted looting.

The uninterrupted part is quite important, especially with the interstellar communication lag. The capital's bureaucrats are hopelessly out of date; not knowing a shipment won't arrive at all until two months after it's overdue doesn't help them run the nation.

tlb wrote:I do not dread discussing your desire to try Theisman for treason, I just think that it is untrue to history. Theisman is a naval officer who swore allegiance to the Constitution of Haven; whereas Robert Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just had massacred the Constitutional leadership, assumed dictatorial control and instituted a reign of terror that they blamed on the Navy. Under any normal reading of the law, Theisman was a patriot and Pierre and St. Just were the traitors (and died as such). Theisman proved he was a patriot by restoring the Constitution.

Though, tiny detail... he didn't restore the Constitution he had sworn allegiance to. He and Pritchart restored the original Péricard Constitution, not the one that existed under the Legislaturalist regime, which allowed for hereditary presidency.

Though one may argue that since the Constitution was in abeyance during the Reign of Terror, a Constitutional Conventional was indeed called for and that they should simply take the best they could find.

tlb wrote:Beowulf had the system defense pods and not the flat pack pods, but that does not alter the substance of your questions. One possible answer is that there are many more pods than there are Mycroft units and since the weapon on the Silver Bullet explodes after three seconds of operation, then you would need to send perhaps an order of magnitude more SBs to blunt the defense. Admittedly these weapons could be much dumber, just looking for heat signatures instead of FTL transmission.

I wasn't thinking of attacking the pods themselves, in case that was the impression you got. Given that everyone and their grandmas knows that those are subject to proximity kills, the pods would be somewhat dispersed even inside their shoals. But I had the impression we were concluding there's one Mycroft per shoal, so the Mycroft can receive FTL instructions from the C&C centre, allowing the missiles to not have to run their own FTL transceivers.

When you say "battery power" what are you thinking? The hand launched units might have something that we would recognize as a battery, but when you get to missiles in space the choice is between reactors or capacitors. The SB's went with capacitors, since they did not have use of the mini-reactor.

I'm not entirely sure myself.

Before I wrote "battery power", I imagined that the sysdef pods are connected to a "shore power" reactor, which would allow a more concentrated place that would need to be refuelled. Moreover, this central place would also be able to store far more fuel than the pods themselves usually do, so the time between refuelings would also be longer.

However, I realised such a bigger reactor would probably be even more visible. But now I wonder if it would: a bigger reactor could dedicate more volume to insulation and to passive radiators, thus making the emission per unit of area smaller.

So I just wrote "battery power" without thinking through what it would be, other than "not the pods' own reactors."

A problem with the mini-reactor is that it has radiation output that is damaging to humans. So how does the maintenance and refueling work? Done with robots? Does that mean that reactor equipped pods are no longer recoverable after a certain period of use?

Why not use robots? The ships have near-AI quality computers, which just haven't been relevant to the story. There's no reason to presume that automation is absent in the Honorverse. Other than, you know, human slavery still being somehow profitable.

There's also a question of exposure. Maintenance does not need to be in the presence of such reactors for as long as a crew would in a ship. They can also wear protective garments that would be impractical inside a ship.

And that's also a reason not to use a mini-reactor and instead use a regular, bigger one that supplies power to lots of pods in standby.

tlb wrote:I do not dread discussing your desire to try Theisman for treason, I just think that it is untrue to history. Theisman is a naval officer who swore allegiance to the Constitution of Haven; whereas Robert Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just had massacred the Constitutional leadership, assumed dictatorial control and instituted a reign of terror that they blamed on the Navy. Under any normal reading of the law, Theisman was a patriot and Pierre and St. Just were the traitors (and died as such). Theisman proved he was a patriot by restoring the Constitution.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Though, tiny detail... he didn't restore the Constitution he had sworn allegiance to. He and Pritchart restored the original Péricard Constitution, not the one that existed under the Legislaturalist regime, which allowed for hereditary presidency.

Though one may argue that since the Constitution was in abeyance during the Reign of Terror, a Constitutional Conventional was indeed called for and that they should simply take the best they could find.

Whether it is the same (substantially) or a different one depends on whether the Constitution as amended or replaced (I do not know). The US Constitution became active on March 4, 1789 and has been amended 27 times, but is still considered the same basic document.