Honorverse ramblings and musings

stewart wrote:The Treecat Clans appear to be matriarchal -- not entirely, but the Singers are all female and they hold a significant voice (pun in 10 did) on clan decisions.

-- Stewart

Actually, from all the various novels and stories, it would appear that the SENIOR memory singers actually have the final say. However, it would also appear that they don't get all that involved in the normal day-to-day "administrivia" of clan life; unless a consensus can't be reached at a lower level.

OrlandoNative wrote:I'd have to re-read that book, but I vaguely seem to remember that Honor's ship "ran interference" that allowed some/most of the rest to escape. Obviously in any serious battle some ships are going to be destroyed outright, or else damaged severely enough to have to be scuttled; but in this case I think she surrendered at the point where it was impossible for Prince Adrian to win *or* escape, and all the other ships were already gone - one way or another.

Yes, Prince Adrian was the only ship of that particular convoy to be captured. I believe the poster was asking how many ships were captured by Tourville's ships during their entire romp through several RMN systems over several weeks. It is unfortunate we don't have any information on that.

SWM wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:I'd have to re-read that book, but I vaguely seem to remember that Honor's ship "ran interference" that allowed some/most of the rest to escape. Obviously in any serious battle some ships are going to be destroyed outright, or else damaged severely enough to have to be scuttled; but in this case I think she surrendered at the point where it was impossible for Prince Adrian to win *or* escape, and all the other ships were already gone - one way or another.

Yes, Prince Adrian was the only ship of that particular convoy to be captured. I believe the poster was asking how many ships were captured by Tourville's ships during their entire romp through several RMN systems over several weeks. It is unfortunate we don't have any information on that.

From again what I remember of that novel, I'd say very few. Most of them were system defenders, not convoy escorts, and it would appear that in that conflict system defenders tended to "defend to destruction" rather than surrender. Probably because mobile platforms like ships tend to be regarded as expendable. Every enemy ship they can destroy is one less that the planetary defense has to worry about.

Planets, on the other hand, tended to surrender once defense became impractical or impossible, in order to avoid a LEGAL repetition of the Eridani Incident.

You know, the previous musings on treecats made me remember a point that I wondered about since Honor's talk with Rabenstrange in A Rising Thunder; where they mention the problem with treecats going to the Anderman Empire as "bodyguards".

Nimitz and Samantha already allegedly established a treecat colony on Grayson in Harrington Steading, so why couldn't a similar colony be established, possibly on imperial land, on the Andermani capital planet?

No one seems to have even *thought* of that... ...even though the Alignment obviously must have some agents within the Anderman Empire that could create future mischief.

OrlandoNative wrote:

SWM wrote:Yes, Prince Adrian was the only ship of that particular convoy to be captured. I believe the poster was asking how many ships were captured by Tourville's ships during their entire romp through several RMN systems over several weeks. It is unfortunate we don't have any information on that.

From again what I remember of that novel, I'd say very few. Most of them were system defenders, not convoy escorts, and it would appear that in that conflict system defenders tended to "defend to destruction" rather than surrender. Probably because mobile platforms like ships tend to be regarded as expendable. Every enemy ship they can destroy is one less that the planetary defense has to worry about.

Planets, on the other hand, tended to surrender once defense became impractical or impossible, in order to avoid a repetition of the Eridani Incident.

Ships defending the system's core real estate tend to be near that core to start, so to escape, they need to get all the way out to the hyperlimit but not in excess of .3c in order to hyper out. It's tricky to do that and fight effectively, so it usually takes a little luck and an immediate move to leave without fighting, or a lot more luck to run out with one fighting pass and keep going.

Distant pickets - assuming the system defender set them - can bug out to let nearby systems and the nearest command site know what happened.

You could deploy system "defenders" in a way that they are less able to defend the system but more able to leave, and the fact that you don't usually do so does have something to do with their expendability. But it likely has more to do with what doing their job at all there demands - if you're that concerned with ship survival over system defense, just declare the force an outside-the-hyperlimit picket, assign a CL or DD to do the job, and send the rest of the ships somewhere you're willing to use them.

Not to mention that, except for pre-planned traps sprung before the missiles actually start to fly, it can be hard to surrender before being destroyed when the battle commences.

It's a valid point, though. If you're deep within the gravity well, and without long range FTL communication capability other than by ship, you really have to fight your way out in order to go get re-enforcements. You couldn't really surrender unless you *know* that enough have already made it out to relatively ensure the news is spread.

Otherwise the system becomes a trap for the next ship or convoy that comes along.

munroburton wrote:No hard numbers on captured RMN ships. I think textev says Prince Adrian was the first one to be formally surrendered whilst still relatively intact. Being an old heavy cruiser, it did not have much in the way of first-string tech and its crew had enough time to purge the databases and use demolition charges on the sensitive technologies(such as the FTL com). Furthermore, the Peeps did not have time to make the necessary repairs to Prince Adrian to take it with them when they left the Adler system.

And it was specifically mentioned in that book that Prince Adrian hadn't been retrofit for FTL transmission - when acting as a scout it had to use a tethered Ghost Rider drone to FTL data back to the rest of the escort.

(FTL reception is basically a software load that teaches the computer how to decipher the grav pulses that can be seen by pretty much any grav sensor array. FTL transmission required replacing drive nodes with ones capable of high (for the time) pulse rates; a far from trivial refit/overhaul.)

So that would make it very easy to demolish the FTL transmition capability -- just jettison and blow any remaining recon drones.

OrlandoNative wrote:You know, the previous musings on treecats made me remember a point that I wondered about since Honor's talk with Rabenstrange in A Rising Thunder; where they mention the problem with treecats going to the Anderman Empire as "bodyguards".

Nimitz and Samantha already allegedly established a treecat colony on Grayson in Harrington Steading, so why couldn't a similar colony be established, possibly on imperial land, on the Andermani capital planet?

No one seems to have even *thought* of that... ...even though the Alignment obviously must have some agents within the Anderman Empire that could create future mischief.

People here have thought of it several times. There has been much speculation on where the next treecat colonies will be. So far there are two--on Grayson and on Gryphon. A number of people has speculated that there will soon be colonies on Manticore, Haven, and New Berlin.

But you're right that there hasn't been any discussion about it in the text. Perhaps that's because that's a decision the treecats themselves have to make; it's their choice. The humans only get involved in the planning and decisions after the treecats have decided they want a new colony.

SWM wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:You know, the previous musings on treecats made me remember a point that I wondered about since Honor's talk with Rabenstrange in A Rising Thunder; where they mention the problem with treecats going to the Anderman Empire as "bodyguards".

Nimitz and Samantha already allegedly established a treecat colony on Grayson in Harrington Steading, so why couldn't a similar colony be established, possibly on imperial land, on the Andermani capital planet?

No one seems to have even *thought* of that... ...even though the Alignment obviously must have some agents within the Anderman Empire that could create future mischief.

People here have thought of it several times. There has been much speculation on where the next treecat colonies will be. So far there are two--on Grayson and on Gryphon. A number of people has speculated that there will soon be colonies on Manticore, Haven, and New Berlin.

But you're right that there hasn't been any discussion about it in the text. Perhaps that's because that's a decision the treecats themselves have to make; it's their choice. The humans only get involved in the planning and decisions after the treecats have decided they want a new colony.

Actually, when I said "people haven't even thought of it", I didn't actually mean here in the forums, I meant in the text. There wasn't even a suggestion that it might be possible. And that seemed strange, given it was Honor conversing with Rabenstrange and *one* of the dispersed treecat colonies was on her own property on Grayson.

I really would have expected something on the order of "I don't think any unbonded treecat would do very well that far from it's clan, UNLESS THEY CAN ESTABLISH A COLONY THERE LIKE THEY HAVE ON GRAYSON." for example. Even Nimitz didn't suggest it via sign; and he was involved in setting up the first one. It's like the whole concept had been forgotten by the author. Of course, maybe it had.

OrlandoNative wrote:I really would have expected something on the order of "I don't think any unbonded treecat would do very well that far from it's clan, UNLESS THEY CAN ESTABLISH A COLONY THERE LIKE THEY HAVE ON GRAYSON." for example. Even Nimitz didn't suggest it via sign; and he was involved in setting up the first one. It's like the whole concept had been forgotten by the author. Of course, maybe it had.

I figure that treecats stepping up to help two-legs defend their shared spaces from their shared enemies are also figuring that the duty may well keep them from other treecats of their clans for long periods. Most of them will have at least the company of other treecats in the same situation (wave at your colleague riding that shoulder over there, share a coffee or a rabbit after work, etc.), so you'd get impromptu treecat communities short of clans or colonies that way.

So - it's plausible to me at least that there may be treecats spending a few years (1-2 at least) at a time away from treecat colonies riding important shoulders on New Berlin, Haven, IAN fleet commands, Torch immigration and naturalization, etc. And it may well be that treecat colonies on places like that follow those foreign worker communities rather than precede them. (For that matter, the Shoulder-Mounted Telempathic Security Details may well be doing scouting for such colonies as a secondary duty that the two-legs needn't concern themselves with for now.)