Concepts: Today's similarities and differences to the HV

tlb wrote:I think it was Theisman who pointed out that the LAC's were a lesser problem, it was the missile range that needed a solution. What if Haven had come up with the Cataphract at that point, since there is nothing special about its design?

And as White Haven pointed out in that communique, Haven couldn't do it in time to make a difference. Time was the issue. He hadn't counted on the High Ridge administration pausing the war for years.

In the end, Haven did come up with solutions, including MDMs, LACs, FTL comms, and SD(P)s.

tlb wrote:That depends on what he means by "recently". When were the SD's built in enough numbers to be significant? Was he old enough to remember when "destroyers and cruisers" were all that they had?

I'm assuming that even if Galton decided only recently to begin building anything bigger than a light-cruiser, it would have taken them several decades to get to where Galton was when Honor arrived. They had several dozen capital ships, in various classes, so this must have been an iterative approach. It's reasonable to assume that they had the same approach to the rest of the tech tree.

And it wouldn't have been recently. We're told that Galton was made much more militaristic when Darius was discovered and founded, so that should date back 150 years.

PS: I expect, because of where the Malign is located, that their attention has always been most focused on the Solarian League; that is the entity that they want to destroy. While they are aware of what is happening in the Haven Sector, they think that something similar to Oyster Bay will tip the scales enough to create their desired conclusion; because the League is huge and the others are not.

That's a reasonable assumption and similar to one I made above: he'd think that the RHN and RMN were about to destroy themselves, with the "MAN" picking up the pieces. But the Galton Navy at the state it was in 1924 wasn't sufficient to take on the SLN. The MAlign didn't think the RMN, which was bigger than the Galton Navy, could do that and at about this time too, otherwise they wouldn't have caused the war to start. We're still missing something new -- that he was aware of -- that would allow be a game-changer.

tlb wrote:PS: I expect, because of where the Malign is located, that their attention has always been most focused on the Solarian League; that is the entity that they want to destroy. While they are aware of what is happening in the Haven Sector, they think that something similar to Oyster Bay will tip the scales enough to create their desired conclusion; because the League is huge and the others are not.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That's a reasonable assumption and similar to one I made above: he'd think that the RHN and RMN were about to destroy themselves, with the "MAN" picking up the pieces. But the Galton Navy at the state it was in 1924 wasn't sufficient to take on the SLN. The MAlign didn't think the RMN, which was bigger than the Galton Navy, could do that and at about this time too, otherwise they wouldn't have caused the war to start. We're still missing something new -- that he was aware of -- that would allow be a game-changer.

I agree that the League Navy, as a whole, was more than Galton could take; but armed with weapons that only later would be given to the SLN, a Galton ship could defeat a similar League ship. Maddock actually proved that by only narrowly losing to Rozsak, who was armed with improved weapons from Erewhon. So I believe Maddock is comparing to the League, but only on a ship to ship basis; justified because the MAN is not going to directly fight the SLN.

tlb wrote:I agree that the League Navy, as a whole, was more than Galton could take; but armed with weapons that only later would be given to the SLN, a Galton ship could defeat a similar League ship. Maddock actually proved that by only narrowly losing to Rozsak, who was armed with improved weapons from Erewhon. So I believe Maddock is comparing to the League, but only on a ship to ship basis; justified because the MAN is not going to directly fight the SLN.

And he wasn't aware that such weapons had already been given to the League and, thus, Galton no longer had the advantage he thought they had?

tlb wrote:I agree that the League Navy, as a whole, was more than Galton could take; but armed with weapons that only later would be given to the SLN, a Galton ship could defeat a similar League ship. Maddock actually proved that by only narrowly losing to Rozsak, who was armed with improved weapons from Erewhon. So I believe Maddock is comparing to the League, but only on a ship to ship basis; justified because the MAN is not going to directly fight the SLN.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And he wasn't aware that such weapons had already been given to the League and, thus, Galton no longer had the advantage he thought they had?

So far as I know, the Cataphracts (marked with made in Mesa) given to Fleet Admiral Massimo Filareta after Mission of Honor for use against Manticore were the first use of such weapons by the SLN. If you have better information, I would like to hear it.

tlb wrote:So far as I know, the Cataphracts (marked with made in Mesa) given to Fleet Admiral Massimo Filareta after Mission of Honor for use against Manticore were the first use of such weapons by the SLN. If you have better information, I would like to hear it.

This would suffice. Once it's given to the SLN, the secret is out. Filareta knew they didn't come from Yildun or an SLN base, so he'd have them scanned, some put away for later, if this wasn't standard procedure anyway. So the secret was out.

We're not told, but I'd say Yildun had already been the plans for the Cataphracts at this point. It makes sense, because they'd have to claim they were the ones making them. So yes, at this point the advantage of the Cataphract was gone.

And it's possible Maddock wouldn't know this yet, given how long he was away for and he might not have been told anyway because he didn't need to know (and this is independent of where he's from). He might additionally have been aware of an R&D project to make true MDMs, but if he's from Galton then said project can't have been well advanced at all, because we know Galton didn't have anything close to them when the GF came calling.

So, conclusion, for him to be from Galton he'd have to be thinking that the SD(P)s they'd just got, with Cataphracts whose first real use (for all he knew, because it's unlikely that he'd have been briefed on Oyster Bay) would be right now, would be able to take on "just about anyone else." That still doesn't explain how the Galton Navy had "a handful of destroyers and light cruisers secreted away until recently." That latter fact tells me that Maddock didn't know about Galton at all.

Could it be he was from neither? That he and Milliken were from Mesa itself. They'd have been briefed on "a secret base" producing the Cataphracts and capital units to go along, but had never seen them? Still, they appeared to be real officers, so where would Mesan citizens have had their training?

tlb wrote:So far as I know, the Cataphracts (marked with made in Mesa) given to Fleet Admiral Massimo Filareta after Mission of Honor for use against Manticore were the first use of such weapons by the SLN. If you have better information, I would like to hear it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:This would suffice. Once it's given to the SLN, the secret is out. Filareta knew they didn't come from Yildun or an SLN base, so he'd have them scanned, some put away for later, if this wasn't standard procedure anyway. So the secret was out.

We're not told, but I'd say Yildun had already been the plans for the Cataphracts at this point. It makes sense, because they'd have to claim they were the ones making them. So yes, at this point the advantage of the Cataphract was gone.

And it's possible Maddock wouldn't know this yet, given how long he was away for and he might not have been told anyway because he didn't need to know (and this is independent of where he's from). He might additionally have been aware of an R&D project to make true MDMs, but if he's from Galton then said project can't have been well advanced at all, because we know Galton didn't have anything close to them when the GF came calling.

So, conclusion, for him to be from Galton he'd have to be thinking that the SD(P)s they'd just got, with Cataphracts whose first real use (for all he knew, because it's unlikely that he'd have been briefed on Oyster Bay) would be right now, would be able to take on "just about anyone else." That still doesn't explain how the Galton Navy had "a handful of destroyers and light cruisers secreted away until recently." That latter fact tells me that Maddock didn't know about Galton at all.

Could it be he was from neither? That he and Milliken were from Mesa itself. They'd have been briefed on "a secret base" producing the Cataphracts and capital units to go along, but had never seen them? Still, they appeared to be real officers, so where would Mesan citizens have had their training?

You do realize that Filareta and the attack on Manticore by the SLN are about two years after Maddock made those thoughts, since the attack was AFTER Mission of Honor. So of course, he did not know that the SLN would be given them at some point in the future.

In the time between the attack on Torch and Filareta's attack on Manticore, Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat had time for their hyper-generator to break and get it fixed by building a lathe to construct the shaft, then bring Herlander Simões to the attention of both Haven and Manticore and finally see the beginning of the Grand Alliance.

tlb wrote:You do realize that Filareta and the attack on Manticore by the SLN are about two years after Maddock made those thoughts, since the attack was AFTER Mission of Honor. So of course, he did not know that the SLN would be given them at some point in the future.

Filareta had been positioned in Tasmania and Crandall in McIntosh for a while and the MAlign was planning on causing a conflict between the League and Manticore for some time. So in theory it's possible he could have been part of the strategic planning for that. In practice, there's little chance he was one of such, because that would actually make him an unacceptable security risk for Operation Ferret if he had been.

In the time between the attack on Torch and Filareta's attack on Manticore, Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat had time for their hyper-generator to break and get it fixed by building a lathe to construct the shaft, then bring Herlander Simões to the attention of both Haven and Manticore and finally see the beginning of the Grand Alliance.

True, but Filareta had months of travel and so did the Cataphracts. And someone had to make a decision, which would have been around the time of when the news of either Bing's or Crandall's fates came to light. Either way it's after when he'd have left any MAlign base, so I agree the shipping orders would not have happened yet. But my guess is that this had been gamed out.

So you're right, he couldn't and wouldn't have known that the MAlign was giving Cataphracts to the League. So he could have thought those Cataphracts were the edge.

I still think that's unlikely, because the true MDMs were out there, he knew about them, and he was bound to know the secret would leak to others soon. Even the Cataphracts were not hard to copy: there was little secret on how they were put together, strapping a shipkiller missile at the end of a CM. Engineering issues aside, everyone would build that as soon as they saw the first Cataphract flying. The Cataphracts were not so advanced the SLN SDs had just become "targets:" remember the SD-launched Cataphract-Bs had cruiser-grade warheads that SDs should have good defences against. So if the League was likely to survive long enough to reactivate the Reserve and go into a crash development programme - and have enough budget for it because there was no Operation Lacoön II - the SLN would have won in the end.

Therefore, I maintain he was aware of some other innovation that would allow his "Mesan Alignment Navy" to "take on just about anyone else."

tlb wrote:You do realize that Filareta and the attack on Manticore by the SLN are about two years after Maddock made those thoughts, since the attack was AFTER Mission of Honor. So of course, he did not know that the SLN would be given them at some point in the future.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:True, but Filareta had months of travel and so did the Cataphracts. And someone had to make a decision, which would have been around the time of when the news of either Bing's or Crandall's fates came to light. Either way it's after when he'd have left any MAlign base, so I agree the shipping orders would not have happened yet. But my guess is that this had been gamed out.

So you're right, he couldn't and wouldn't have known that the MAlign was giving Cataphracts to the League. So he could have thought those Cataphracts were the edge.

The final go ahead was not given for Filareta, until after Oyster Bay; but that might not matter to the Malign, they could have prepared, because they knew how they would push things. But there is no reason for the people involved with the PNiE to know about these deliberations.

Maybe we will learn more about Captain Maddock, Commander Milliken and the background for this in the next book. I do not think we can prove much here. I do wish we had a more up to date map of the known Universe, showing Galton, Hole in the Wall and the Renaissance Factor. Given the time between the attack on Torch and Filareta, I still do not understand how the more modern Cataphracts went to the attack on Torch. Even Zilwicki and Cachat, with a broken down hyper-generator, made better time than that.