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Charles in 1923 PD...

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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by Theemile   » Tue Aug 13, 2019 3:15 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Maldorian wrote:
If the Grayson Compensator was invented after the slit up with Masada, the Masadians would still have the tec. Masada and Grayson were at war for qa long time. I bet Masada get one of the Grayson Compensators in their hands.

The big difference would be, that the knowledge of the Compensator wouldn´t be common technical knowlege, but somewere buried in an archiv with a topic like "matching Grayson Compensator with Compensators delivered by the silesians".

With other words: If Masada had the Compensator tec at the first travel to masada and used them to today = good chance to get that tec.

If the tec is buried somewere in a database unused = very low chance to get the data.
I wouldn't be surprised very if Masada had managed to steal that tech -- they had people deeply buried in various parts of Grayson government and it'd be surprising if they didn't have any in shipbuilding or the military. So if they'd wanted to steal it they probably could have.

Though remember that even as late as when Honor arrived in Yeltsin the Grayson compensators were less effective than those of the wider galaxy. They had more development potential - but at their current state of development they weren't as good. So while Masada would definitely need compensator technology they don't have to steal Grayson's in particular for their military to remain competitive. (And make no mistake, failing to match Grayson's acquisition of wedge and compensator tech would put Masada's navy at a fatal disadvantage)

Now stealing it from Grayson might still have been their approach; since they were even more isolated than Grayson they might not have had any other source.

OTOH Masada is also more ruthless so they might have gotten the tech through means Grayson wouldn't stoop to. (Say killing off the entire crew of a visiting freighter in order to steal its tech and reverse engineer it for military purposes). Without knowing we don't know Masada is a potential source of the tech. Though if they are they're still under pretty tight Manticoran control; so going after the tech there is still potentially risky. But more importantly the Grayson compensator still took a couple of years of research from Manticore before realizing even the first improvements. Assuming your researchers were as good and Manticore's you'd still be almost 20 years behind the curve. If possible you'd want to get your hands on something more recent so you don't have to redo 2 decades of R&D


Assuming, of course, you knew that the Grayson compensator was the key to unlocking Advanced Comps, and know the History of Grayspn/Masada enough to look there for it.

We know in 1906, Haven had it's eve on Masada for part 2 of Stalking Horse - and no mention was made of the Grayson compensator. One would have thought that if the secret origin of the Manty compensator was known, capturing a Masadian ship - any ship, even a slow, intersystem ore boat still in use working for the Masadian system infrastructure, would be a principle target for Stalking Horse, or a later deep raid... but it was never mentioned. So perhaps, no one knows the true origins of the technology, or that Masada might still have it....
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by Dauntless   » Wed Aug 14, 2019 10:03 am

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anyone who isn't part of the GA or Andermani probably wouldn't believe that the new compensators are based of grayson tech.

same with the new fisson piles for the new generations of LACs.

to be fair them Grayson was VERY backward when they first formed their alliance with Manticore. that coupled with the fact that the manties had very basic FTL comm even then, would understandably make it seem that the manties were the brains behind the new tech.
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by Maldorian   » Wed Aug 14, 2019 2:15 pm

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I am not so familiar with the timeline, but has anyone thought of the cennection between Maya and Erewhon?

What is, if Charles was in Erewhon and searching for oppotunities and made the connection between Maya and Erewhon.
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by Theemile   » Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:47 pm

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Maldorian wrote:I am not so familiar with the timeline, but has anyone thought of the cennection between Maya and Erewhon?

What is, if Charles was in Erewhon and searching for oppotunities and made the connection between Maya and Erewhon.


Our 2 interactions with Charles were before 1910pd, All the stuff we know of between Maya and Erewhon started ~1917 or so - So anything's possible!
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by bert953   » Thu Dec 26, 2019 11:17 am

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Our 2 interactions with Charles were before 1910pd, All the stuff we know of between Maya and Erewhon started ~1917 or so - So anything's possible![/quote]

Just re-read the Timothy Zhan story "with one stone" I had forgotten that story. Looks Like Charles is a con man trying to sell useless (for war fighting) tech to the Peeps. I havent had a chance to read "an act of war" yet but that was the story I remembed where Charles seemed to be a Solly working for some secret organization. After re-reading it I'll post again.

I still think Charles has good potential as a character.

I also noticed that in "with one stone" Honor caused her ships to flicker her impeller strength, which caused FTL gravity ripples that she used to signal an Andies cruiser. At the end of the story, Admiral Hemphill was looking into this technique, which could have resulted in their FTL tech. Extrapolating, this would be a major contribution to the Manties war fighting tech.

"And since gravity pulses effectively moved faster than light and were detectable from much further away...
Especially if they could combine this idea with the new high-yield fusion bottles and superconductors being designed for the next generation electronic warfare drones, and mabye throw in something from the compact LAC beta nodes already undergoing testing over at BeauWeps..."
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Thu Dec 26, 2019 1:00 pm

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bert953 wrote:Just re-read the Timothy Zhan story "with one stone" I had forgotten that story. Looks Like Charles is a con man trying to sell useless (for war fighting) tech to the Peeps. I havent had a chance to read "an act of war" yet but that was the story I remembed where Charles seemed to be a Solly working for some secret organization. After re-reading it I'll post again.

I still think Charles has good potential as a character.

I also noticed that in "with one stone" Honor caused her ships to flicker her impeller strength, which caused FTL gravity ripples that she used to signal an Andies cruiser. At the end of the story, Admiral Hemphill was looking into this technique, which could have resulted in their FTL tech. Extrapolating, this would be a major contribution to the Manties war fighting tech.

"And since gravity pulses effectively moved faster than light and were detectable from much further away...
Especially if they could combine this idea with the new high-yield fusion bottles and superconductors being designed for the next generation electronic warfare drones, and mabye throw in something from the compact LAC beta nodes already undergoing testing over at BeauWeps..."


Please reread the other story. Like you, the first story makes it sound like he's a con man. But the second makes it sound like he's got friends in high places.

As for the FTL tech, as I've argued, making FTL transmissions was known for centuries, probably over a millennium. Honor's unknown contribution was to remind Sonja of the possibility, which combined with the miniaturisation and work done for Ghost Rider in Project Gram allowed her to conceive of a much better solution. She'd still need to solve the problem of proper modulation to have reasonable bandwidth before the technology was useful.
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Dec 26, 2019 6:27 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
As for the FTL tech, as I've argued, making FTL transmissions was known for centuries, probably over a millennium. Honor's unknown contribution was to remind Sonja of the possibility, which combined with the miniaturisation and work done for Ghost Rider in Project Gram allowed her to conceive of a much better solution. She'd still need to solve the problem of proper modulation to have reasonable bandwidth before the technology was useful.

Yeah, I've always been bugged by the way that final coda was written - like everybody had overlooked that you might send an FTL signal using the only known method of seeing activity FTL.

It would have been much less jarring if it had been Sonja musing something along the lines of "hmm, everone's come to believe that there isn't a significant practical use of this FTL phenomenon for signalling and Honor's use shows why; she could only send 1 pre-arranged signal so if the situation played out other than expected that signal is useless. But given the <project gram tech babble> that belief might finally become obsolete. I'll have to experiment but I think given this inspiration we might finally be able to get a usable transmission rate out of FTL signals"
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by bert953   » Tue Dec 31, 2019 8:35 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
bert953 wrote:Just re-read the Timothy Zhan story "with one stone" I had forgotten that story. Looks Like Charles is a con man trying to sell useless (for war fighting) tech to the Peeps. I havent had a chance to read "an act of war" yet but that was the story I remembed where Charles seemed to be a Solly working for some secret organization. After re-reading it I'll post again.

I still think Charles has good potential as a character.

I also noticed that in "with one stone" Honor caused her ships to flicker her impeller strength, which caused FTL gravity ripples that she used to signal an Andies cruiser. At the end of the story, Admiral Hemphill was looking into this technique, which could have resulted in their FTL tech. Extrapolating, this would be a major contribution to the Manties war fighting tech.

"And since gravity pulses effectively moved faster than light and were detectable from much further away...
Especially if they could combine this idea with the new high-yield fusion bottles and superconductors being designed for the next generation electronic warfare drones, and mabye throw in something from the compact LAC beta nodes already undergoing testing over at BeauWeps..."


Please reread the other story. Like you, the first story makes it sound like he's a con man. But the second makes it sound like he's got friends in high places.
.


Charles grimaced. “I suppose there’s no putting the genie back into the bottle now, is there?” he said.
“Very well. My name is—well, my real name is irrelevant. Just call me Charles. I’m part of an organization
of League citizens who strongly disagree with our government’s gutless neutrality in the Haven/Manticore
war. We see Haven as not only a threat to every other star nation around it, but also an oppressive
regime that deals out chaos and death to its own citizens. Since the League as a whole hasn’t seen fit to
get involved on the side of justice, we’ve decided to do so on our own.”
“Interesting,” Rabenstrange said. “
Herr
Weiss had mentioned that you have access to unusually
extensive information sources.”
“They’re actually more extensive than even
Herr
Weiss realizes,” Charles told him.

Ok, Ive re-read "An act of war" and it reads like a mission impossible script. The pertinent excerpt on Charles' identity is attached. Lots of potential for character development here since he disappeared soon afterwards and we only have his "word" for who he really is.
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Jan 01, 2020 4:23 pm

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bert953 wrote:Charles grimaced. “I suppose there’s no putting the genie back into the bottle now, is there?” he said.
“Very well. My name is—well, my real name is irrelevant. Just call me Charles. I’m part of an organization
of League citizens who strongly disagree with our government’s gutless neutrality in the Haven/Manticore
war. We see Haven as not only a threat to every other star nation around it, but also an oppressive
regime that deals out chaos and death to its own citizens. Since the League as a whole hasn’t seen fit to
get involved on the side of justice, we’ve decided to do so on our own.”
“Interesting,” Rabenstrange said. “
Herr
Weiss had mentioned that you have access to unusually
extensive information sources.”
“They’re actually more extensive than even
Herr
Weiss realizes,” Charles told him.

Ok, Ive re-read "An act of war" and it reads like a mission impossible script. The pertinent excerpt on Charles' identity is attached. Lots of potential for character development here since he disappeared soon afterwards and we only have his "word" for who he really is.


Indeed. All that he said may be disinformation. Though I find it hard to believe he's not a League citizen or at least in the employ of a League or League member-world three-letter agency, simply by exclusion. If not the League, and not Manticore, not Haven and not the Andermani, then who? I don't think it's the MAlign, since if they did have that level of access, we'd be screwed. Ditto for Erewhon: if they had that level of access, the balance of power would be very different between High Ridge and them. That would only leave some other shining economic exception like Manticore elsewhere in the Verge.

If he is Solarian, then the most likely agency to have employed him would be the Biological Survey Corps.

That reminds me: who blew the whistle to Pat Givens that Filareta and Eleventh Fleet were coming? All she knew was that it was a very, very high-level contact, very secretive, coming from Beowulf. I was given the impression it was the BSC, but on second thought, the BSC has been much more forthcoming with intel and assets since the Liberation of Torch. So could it be the same organisation that is behind Charles?
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Re: Charles in 1923 PD...
Post by locarno24   » Tue Jan 07, 2020 4:32 am

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That reminds me: who blew the whistle to Pat Givens that Filareta and Eleventh Fleet were coming? All she knew was that it was a very, very high-level contact, very secretive, coming from Beowulf. I was given the impression it was the BSC, but on second thought, the BSC has been much more forthcoming with intel and assets since the Liberation of Torch. So could it be the same organisation that is behind Charles?

Quite possibly. Beowulf doesn't really need to hide its identity when dealing with Manticore - it's a trusted ally and it's not like they risk their couriers getting caught since they're literally next door via the Junction.
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