SPOILER - How is the GA going to discover Darius or Felix?

Brigade XO wrote:Will be interesting to see if and when the Alignment decides that they should establish both an Astro Control system for their own networks AND place at least ships and probably forts with minefields on both sides of any of the wormholes. The possible exception would be the one covered by Mannerheim's SDF since that system is at least on the charts as being owned by someone -though uninhabited- but without the secret wormhole.

The MA has a desire to not make their WH very noticeable to anyone who might drop by. So mines are possible, an actual fort seems unlikely, at least until the MAN has much more effective MDMs.

Once the SL blows up I suspect that Mannerheim will simply move some sort of industrial or other function into the system to give them an excuse for activity.

Brigade XO wrote:At this point all Manticore and Torch really know is that Harvest Joy did not come back through the wormhole and nobody has heard anything from there from any other place. There is at least one wormhole which had been dubed a "killer" from which nothing has returned. Nobody is looking at sending another ship -of any kind- through this one at the present time.

Amoung the scenarios mentioned in the book is that it is POSSIBLE (but we know different) that the Harvest Joy either came out with damage which is keeping them from going anywhere, especially back through the wormhole. An alternative is that while they may have hyperspace ability, the other end of this wormhole may be so far away from anything in known space that they are going to have to travel for YEARS to get back to Human civilization. There is also the possibility that they ended up so far away that they can't find a reference point or two to let them even start to travel in the direction which may take them to human space.

This doesn't make astrographic sense. As long as you can see several of the closer galaxies (e.g. Magellenic Clouds), and have the ability to measure arcs between known reference points in them to fractional sub-second of arc precision, you can locate yourself within the galaxy.

It's called triangulation. In case you're wondering about how far triangulation can take you - I've seen a press release in the last couple of weeks where someone has extended Hubble's ability to triangulate out to around 10,000 ly with some very clever image analysis. They're proposing using it to nail down the distance to a number of Cephid variables to refine the cosmological distance ladder.

Ordinary ships wouldn't carry sensors with the needed precision, but the Harvest Joy certainly did. Or if it didn't, someone should sue the designers.

Brigade XO wrote:There was indications that Manpower knew the terminus existed but NOTHING about any information on it in the Verdant Vista computers. That may seem odd but since they lost a bunch of the computer information when the slaves seized the planet they can guess that whatever was on-planet may have been lost at that time.

Also so far, there is NOTHING that the GA knows about the Alignment having ANY secret wormholes. There is nothing to suggest (yet) that they may have run into some sort of guard force that captured or destroyed the ship.

I've discussed this before. Only an incompetent intelligence analyst drops things from the list of possibilities, and both Victor Cachet and Anton Zilwiki are presented as very competent, with Princess Ruth not that far behind and coming up fast.

Keeping it on the list, though, doesn't mean either reporting it up the line or spending scarce resources on confirming or disconfirming it - especially when there doesn't seem to be any way to do either.

Brigade XO wrote:However, should any information about a "private" Alignment worm hole -or worse, a wormhole network- surface, there is a good possibility that someone from Manticore may decide that it would be A GOOD IDEA to post something like a blocking force and mine field at the Torch wormhole. Sending a ship through again would still not be a good idea because the same idea could get around to the thought that there was something waiting on the other side that killed Harvest Joy and a 2nd ship is unlikely to do any better.

Will be interesting to see if and when the Alignment decides that they should establish both an Astro Control system for their own networks AND place at least ships and probably forts with minefields on both sides of any of the wormholes. The possible exception would be the one covered by Mannerheim's SDF since that system is at least on the charts as being owned by someone -though uninhabited- but without the secret wormhole.

If you leave Felix out of it, then there is only Darius, which they own and which they presumably already have fortified, The Twins, which they will probably fortify, and the two other termini, which have been turned over to Mannerheim.

The possibility that's been in the back of my mind, though, is this:

The Universe of Honor Harrington wrote:There are other ambiguities in the current understanding of wormholes, as well. In theory, for example, one should be able to go from any terminus of a wormhole junction directly to any other. In fact, one may go from the central nexus of the junction to any of its other termini and vice versa but cannot reach any secondary terminus from another secondary. That is, one might go from point A to points B, C, or D but could not go from B to C or D without returning to A and reorienting one's vessel.

If the MAlign has this, it means they could go from Darius to The Twins without passing through Felix. Releasing it would also hammer Manticore's economy like nothing else since people could bypass the transit fee collector at the center.

kzt wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:Will be interesting to see if and when the Alignment decides that they should establish both an Astro Control system for their own networks AND place at least ships and probably forts with minefields on both sides of any of the wormholes. The possible exception would be the one covered by Mannerheim's SDF since that system is at least on the charts as being owned by someone -though uninhabited- but without the secret wormhole.

The MA has a desire to not make their WH very noticeable to anyone who might drop by. So mines are possible, an actual fort seems unlikely, at least until the MAN has much more effective MDMs.

The Twins are represented as being 40 ly away from anywhere inhabited, and since they're in a planetless M8 dwarf system there's no reason for anyone to drop by.

Felix, on the other hand, is a K2 system with a barely inhabitable planet that's only 10 ly from Mannerheim. Given that there are stellar "fingerprints" for stars that have wormhole termini, I wonder why nobody had noticed it long ago.

kzt wrote:Once the SL blows up I suspect that Mannerheim will simply move some sort of industrial or other function into the system to give them an excuse for activity.

They're planning on doing that anyway, since they're in the process of securing sole rights to the system, at which point they're presumably going to announce it and start developing the routes through the two termini they officially know about.

Or at least, that's what their senior non-Alignment planners think.

JohnRoth wrote:This doesn't make astrographic sense. As long as you can see several of the closer galaxies (e.g. Magellenic Clouds), and have the ability to measure arcs between known reference points in them to fractional sub-second of arc precision, you can locate yourself within the galaxy.

It's called triangulation. In case you're wondering about how far triangulation can take you - I've seen a press release in the last couple of weeks where someone has extended Hubble's ability to triangulate out to around 10,000 ly with some very clever image analysis. They're proposing using it to nail down the distance to a number of Cephid variables to refine the cosmological distance ladder.

Ordinary ships wouldn't carry sensors with the needed precision, but the Harvest Joy certainly did. Or if it didn't, someone should sue the designers.

It makes perfect sense, under certain conditions. Rare but not impossible conditions.

Like having all the regular primary navigation stars hidden by other stars or stellar objects.

Because no, you don´t generally just try to match up a 3D stellar map with everything you can see, because that isn´t very effective.
Instead you try to find specific stars that you can positively identify regardless of your position in relation to them.

Or you could be on the inside of a gaseous area, or such an area could hide or distort all stars you have properly mapped.

Or the wormhole could be a major anomaly and put you REALLY far away.

JohnRoth wrote:I've discussed this before. Only an incompetent intelligence analyst drops things from the list of possibilities, and both Victor Cachet and Anton Zilwiki are presented as very competent, with Princess Ruth not that far behind and coming up fast.

Keeping it on the list, though, doesn't mean either reporting it up the line or spending scarce resources on confirming or disconfirming it - especially when there doesn't seem to be any way to do either.

Which effectively means noone is working on it. Because they pretty much can´t.

You can´t just say "this COULD be possible, therefore it must be taken into account", because if you do that, then everything that haven´t been actually dismissed by evidence, is still possible, and since proving that something uncertain does not exist is close to impossible, you will then end up with your planning based on ghosts.

And any agent or military that tries to work like that will quickly provide itself with the Darwin award.

Brigade XO wrote:However, should any information about a "private" Alignment worm hole -or worse, a wormhole network- surface, there is a good possibility that someone from Manticore may decide that it would be A GOOD IDEA to post something like a blocking force and mine field at the Torch wormhole. Sending a ship through again would still not be a good idea because the same idea could get around to the thought that there was something waiting on the other side that killed Harvest Joy and a 2nd ship is unlikely to do any better.

And even then, the Torch wormhole may not be the MA one ( unless specified ), meaning that it could still just be one more "killer" wormhole.
So there would still be no good reason to send anything through it.

Brigade XO wrote:At this point all Manticore and Torch really know is that Harvest Joy did not come back through the wormhole and nobody has heard anything from there from any other place. There is at least one wormhole which had been dubed a "killer" from which nothing has returned. Nobody is looking at sending another ship -of any kind- through this one at the present time.

Amoung the scenarios mentioned in the book is that it is POSSIBLE (but we know different) that the Harvest Joy either came out with damage which is keeping them from going anywhere, especially back through the wormhole. An alternative is that while they may have hyperspace ability, the other end of this wormhole may be so far away from anything in known space that they are going to have to travel for YEARS to get back to Human civilization. There is also the possibility that they ended up so far away that they can't find a reference point or two to let them even start to travel in the direction which may take them to human space.

JohnRoth wrote:This doesn't make astrographic sense. As long as you can see several of the closer galaxies (e.g. Magellenic Clouds), and have the ability to measure arcs between known reference points in them to fractional sub-second of arc precision, you can locate yourself within the galaxy.

It's called triangulation. In case you're wondering about how far triangulation can take you - I've seen a press release in the last couple of weeks where someone has extended Hubble's ability to triangulate out to around 10,000 ly with some very clever image analysis. They're proposing using it to nail down the distance to a number of Cephid variables to refine the cosmological distance ladder.

Ordinary ships wouldn't carry sensors with the needed precision, but the Harvest Joy certainly did. Or if it didn't, someone should sue the designers.

Tenshinai wrote:It makes perfect sense, under certain conditions. Rare but not impossible conditions.

Like having all the regular primary navigation stars hidden by other stars or stellar objects.

Because no, you don´t generally just try to match up a 3D stellar map with everything you can see, because that isn´t very effective.

Instead you try to find specific stars that you can positively identify regardless of your position in relation to them.

Or you could be on the inside of a gaseous area, or such an area could hide or distort all stars you have properly mapped.

Or the wormhole could be a major anomaly and put you REALLY far away.

OK, let's take this apart piece by piece. First, the point I was trying to make is that you don't start out by trying to locate "beacon" stars. That takes way too long because you've got to look at a lot of stars and make spectroscopic measurements. You start by trying to localize where you are first, and then refine it by locating those "beacon" stars.

You start with the Milky Way - that's obvious from anywhere and it gives you an immediate orientation. Then you look for the Magellenic clouds. They ought to be clearly visible from anywhere in the galaxy - they're big, they're bright, and they're visible by naked eye.

Once you've got yourself localized and oriented, you can decide which "beacon" stars to look for, and you know the general direction, usually to within a couple of degrees. If your sensors have enough precision, you probably don't need to do spectroscopic analysis: most of the "beacon" stars will be the only really bright star of that color in the expected patch of sky. Some more angular measurements, a little bit of trigonometry, and there you are.

Total elapsed time, given the appropriate instruments, computer support and references? About five seconds.

So why does just about everyone start off with the "beacon star" thing? It's tradition! And that tradition most likely started before the astronomical community realized that these fuzzy patches were outside of our own galaxy!

Yes, it's possible you've wound up in a dusty area. You survey what you can see so you can get back to the wormhole terminus, then move a couple of dozen light years to see if you can find a clear area to locate yourself. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Or else you've been equipped with a set of infra-red sensors in anticipation of exactly this situation.

There are some other special cases, but there aren't any that can't be solved by one of those strategies --- assuming they're solvable at all. If your hyper generator failed, or you came out next to a black hole, white dwarf or pulsar or inside of a hypergiant, you've got more serious problems than figuring out your location.

Tenshinai wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:I've discussed this before. Only an incompetent intelligence analyst drops things from the list of possibilities, and both Victor Cachet and Anton Zilwiki are presented as very competent, with Princess Ruth not that far behind and coming up fast.

Keeping it on the list, though, doesn't mean either reporting it up the line or spending scarce resources on confirming or disconfirming it - especially when there doesn't seem to be any way to do either.

Which effectively means noone is working on it. Because they pretty much can´t.

You can´t just say "this COULD be possible, therefore it must be taken into account", because if you do that, then everything that haven´t been actually dismissed by evidence, is still possible, and since proving that something uncertain does not exist is close to impossible, you will then end up with your planning based on ghosts.

And any agent or military that tries to work like that will quickly provide itself with the Darwin award.

There are planners, and then there are planners. We tend not to see really good planners in stories because that makes for boring stories. We sometimes see people who suffer from the "paralysis of analysis," because that can turn into a good story --- or at least a deus ex machina.

The point I've been trying to hammer on is that only a bad planner --- or certain politicians who will remain nameless to avoid incivilities on the list --- dismiss possibilities out of hand. Everyone else establishes contingency plans. In this case, the contingency plan is to ask Erewhon, or Haven, or Manticore, for a few hundred mines and make sure that anything that doesn't look like a survey ship gets blown to cosmic dust.

The only Alignment terminus we have a location for that is in a place someone might go looking is the one with the Mannerheim SDF sitting on the system. That provides "control" for it though I don't recall anything about ships using it being mentioned in the book. I would presume that it is the way the Mannerheim BCs sitting on the other end of the Torch Wormhole accessed the system

As for the ends of the several wormholes, I would expect that the Alignment would want to put at least something for traffic control on each terminus. Otherwise things could get sticky very quickly if two ships happen to try to use the wormhole at the same time.

Why not fortify or at least mine with a warship (and a dispatch boat) at each end of the termini other than the one that Mannerheim is sitting on and which presumably someone in Mannerheim is tracking use for. The same thing for some sort of Astro Control if only a ship (probably a warship) sitting on it. WHEN, NOT IF, someone else gets into the system, it will be a bit late to scramble around looking for ways to block wormholes. Even if you put a CA at each end (with mines) you will have your basic control. You can use this as training for Alignment Navy in anticipation of taking over wormholes out in the rest of the known universe if not for basic training opertunities.

Traffic has probably been picking up unless all of the ships involved in Houdini are getting to Darius (and other places not yet named) by hyper-space instead of accessing the Alignment network. As things gain momentum and more of the MASN is being deployed and used, this would be one way of getting them on the way to destinations.