Honorverse ramblings and musings

Duckk wrote:Of course they know why. They're the ones who shot down the survey vessel.

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:Wait. What! Huh?

You obviously haven't read Torch of Freedom yet, so I won't spoil it for you. You really need to catch up on your Honorverse reading.

The main Honorverse series (Includes the mainline Honor books, the Shadows books, the Crown of Slaves books, and the anthologies.)

1. On Basilisk Station (Apr 1992)
2. Honor of the Queen (June 1993)
3. The Short Victorious War (Apr 1994)
4. Field of Dishonor (Dec 1994)
5. Flag In Exile (Sep 1995)
6. Honor Among Enemies (Feb 1996)
7. In Enemy Hands (Jul 1997)
8. More Than Honor (Jan 1998) (Anthology)
9. Echoes of Honor (Oct 1998)
10. Worlds of Honor (Feb 1999) (Anthology)
11. Ashes of Victory (Mar 2000)
12. Changer of Worlds (Mar 2001) (Anthology)
13. War of Honor (Oct 2002)
14. The Service of the Sword (Apr 2003) (Anthology)
15. Crown of Slaves (Sep 2003)
16. The Shadow of Saganami (Oct 2004)
17. At All Costs (Nov 2005)
18. Storm from the Shadows (Mar 2009)
19. Torch of Freedom (Nov 2009)
20. Mission of Honor (June 2010)
21. In Fire Forged (Feb 2011) (Anthology)
22. A Rising Thunder (Mar 2012)
23. Shadow of Freedom (Mar 2013)
24. House of Steel (May 2013) (Compendium)
Grayson Navy Letters Home (2012) in the Baen Free Short Stories 2012 collection.
25. Beginnings (July 2013) (Anthology)
26. Cauldron of Ghosts (Apr 2014)
27. Shadow of Victory (forthcoming Fall 2016)

The Star Kingdom series: (Stephanie Harrington & treecats)

0. Honorverse Tech Bu9 (Oct 2011) in the Baen Free Short Stories 2011 collection.
1. A Beautiful Friendship (Oct 2011)
2. Fire Season (Oct 2012)
3. Treecat Wars (Oct 2013)

The Manticore Ascendant series: (very early RMN)

0. A Call to Arms in the Beginnings anthology (July 2013)
1. A Call to Duty (Oct 2014)
2. A Call to Arms (Oct 2015)

Weird Harold wrote:

Duckk wrote:And you're missing my (well, David's) point: that such a pool does not exist in useful numbers.

[i] ...[b]they are still going to be far too short of trained, experienced officers and senior enlisted to crew even one or two wallers. ...

You and David are talking about several thousand needed to crew Wallers. I'm talking about a couple hundred to take on apprentices and build a ship-building industry -- not even one to build ships for the Torch Navy in the beginning; just "baby steps" to build up a cadre capable of eventually training up ship-builders and semi-skilled naval crews.

In my original post on this matter, I noted that the optimum time to pull this off would have been before BoM and the trashed infrastructure. And I envisioned the baby steps as Harold mentions as well. Actually, that's how reality works anyways. In the early days of Manticore, they didn't just jump right into building SD's. Your workforce has to become familiar with the tools and methods, working out solutions off paper to solve problems unforeseen. It's a process.

For my information, Torch's ships are repaired by other polities. How does that work, exactly? I can't imagine a ship towed from Torch space to some other system, especially if operating is dangerous or hyper capability is lost. Therefore, at least some rudimentary repair facility must already be in place if a polity makes "house calls."

I can imagine a repair ship(s) which could be given or sold to Torch.

Torch needs to expand it's technical base and pool of experienced people in a lot of fields and industries. If you are talking shipbuilding, they are probably best off starting with the facilities and capabilities to repair what they have and manufacturing parts. The parts thing would be as ONE component of being able to manufacture equipment and parts for more than just those warships they either have or are likely to have as they aquire more. Manticore is going to be not an opton on supplying warships (or much in the way of parts) until it gets well along in it's own recovery/rebuilding needs.

Erwhon might be a source of parts and probably will be but they are- at least in the short term- a better source than Haven except for whatever would be needed to refit the former PRHIE warships. Erwhon is also going to be a better (but perhaps not cheaper) source of the equipment to manfuacture things for Torch. Remember that Erwhon has the benifit of "Manticore Lite" tech and both it's civilian and military gear is going to be closer to what Manticore sources would have been able to supply. They also have relatively more trained & experienced tech/mfg/shipyard personel that could be used to both partially staff and certainly train Torch citizens in the various industries and trades.

Torch is reported as this massive source of biological and pharmaceutical products just being developed. That whold mean that they would be looking to export these products. Presuming that they can do the research and then the development of both the harvesting/ production and marketing of the products, they are going to have to ship the products to whatever and wherever the markets are developed. That demands trade and ships. Torch knows someplace that has a lot of freighters sitting idle but there is the challange that Manticorian Flagged ships are big targets right now inside and around the edges of the League. There are some ways around that. Torch could be the new flag of convenience which would somewhat mitigate that. Torch is also going to want to expand the ability to service commercial shipping that calls there in trade, either on spec or as part of (to be developed) regular routes of commerce. At this point, a lot of trade is probably going to move via the Erwhon wormhole. So Torch needs repair and maintence facilities -with knowlegable staff and sources of parts. We are back to Torch being able to build-out the capasity to 1st fix and modify ships and fabricate required stuff then build at least commercial ships to create it's own merchant shipping (the more of the supply and delivery chain you control, the more of money that gets spent should flow at least through your economy with a bunch of it sticking there).
A Torch merchant marine is probably going to be foreign built for a long time. May be Torch (Torch citizens/corporations) owned but built elsewhere and purchased/finances.
In a major twist of irony, one of the new businesses workng as Torch orbital industry could be converting former slave ships to legitimate freighters. These could have been seized as prizes by Torch Naval vessels or Manticore etc and then converted by having all of the equipment that made them illegal under the Chartwell Convention compleatly removed and replaced by normal commercial gear. You really don't care if the ship is 100yrs old if it can be operated at a profit with only "normal" maintenance expenses in addition to the actual operating costs. It would be a question of economics but buying as prizes in need of specific refitting could be a lot less expensive than buying used on the regular market. Getting said ships to Torch to made the changes vs doing the refit where they are purchased is a seperate question.

Either way, using Torch bottoms to move Torch products out and bring whatever is being purchase in along with the earnings from moving other cargo in normal commerce will provide Torch with income, build experienced spacer population and supporting those industry segments will build out the manufacturing and service base.

It will put Torch in other competition with Erwhon, the Maya Sector, etc, but that is developing industry and trade and they all will just have to work at it.

cthia wrote:In my original post on this matter, I noted that the optimum time to pull this off would have been before BoM and the trashed infrastructure. And I envisioned the baby steps as Harold mentions as well. Actually, that's how reality works anyways. In the early days of Manticore, they didn't just jump right into building SD's. Your workforce has to become familiar with the tools and methods, working out solutions off paper to solve problems unforeseen. It's a process.

For my information, Torch's ships are repaired by other polities. How does that work, exactly? I can't imagine a ship towed from Torch space to some other system, especially if operating is dangerous or hyper capability is lost. Therefore, at least some rudimentary repair facility must already be in place if a polity makes "house calls."

I can imagine a repair ship(s) which could be given or sold to Torch.

Cthia, I think you need to check the timeline here, everything, from the freeing of Torch in Crown of Slaves to the Fall of Mesa, happens in a span of less than 4 years - all the while another interstellar war started to rage and was fought to bloody exhaustion. (If you didn't check the numbers, both sides in those 4 years lost several times the number of ships lost in the ~10 years of the first war. Both Manticore and Haven were scrambling to get literally thousands of ships built, updated and manned in an incredibly short period of time.) Meanwhile, Torch's other friends were frantically building their own construction capabilities to upgrade their navies - There really was no good time for Torch to borrow resources from anyone.

JeffEngel wrote:The wormhole is currently useless. It looks like the theoretical natural ship-eater. In fact, it's an artificial ship-eater, but that is exactly as bad for any economic use of it. Once it's cleared out - assuming, say, that Torch can annex the Twins and Felix - they'd command a wormhole nexus that would replicate a portion of the use of Erewhon's and Manticore's - or maybe a little more, depending on where the unknown termini land. That would be a nice boost, and it would have some effect encouraging space industries to support it, but even then it looks like it would more or less just allow some freight a slightly different pattern of movement as an alternative to others of similar length.

I don't think I'd try grabbing Felix. That's just sewing seeds for a war with Mannerheim (even if Alignment sooges are removed from power) that Torch can't win without calling in help from their friends.

Shadow of Saganami - Chapter 1

Admiral of the Red Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Steadholder and Duchess Harrington, sat beside Vice Admiral of the Red Dame Beatrice McDermott, Baroness Alb, and watched silently as the comfortable amphitheater seating of the huge holographic simulator filled up. It was an orderly audience. It was also quite a bit smaller than it would have been a few years earlier. There were fewer non-Manticoran uniforms out there, as well, and the vast majority of the foreign ones which remained were the blue-on-blue of the Grayson Space Navy. Several of the Star Kingdom's smaller allies had cut back sharply on the midshipmen they sent to Saganami Island, and there were no Erewhonese uniforms at all. Dame Honor managed—somehow—to maintain her serene expression as she remembered the tight-faced midshipmen who had withdrawn from their classes in a body when their government denounced its long-standing alliance with the Star Kingdom of Manticore.

She didn't blame the young men and women, many of whom had been her students during her own time on the Island, despite her personal sense of betrayal. Nor could she really blame their government. Part of her wished she could, but Dame Honor believed in being honest with herself, and it had not been Erewhon which betrayed the Star Kingdom's trust. It had been Manticore's own government.

You know, it someone failed to completely settle in my brain that other allies sent midshipmen to Saganami Island. I knew that Grayson did, but somehow I thought that was a special case. I wonder if the RMN gets first shot at any graduates.

Erewhon pulled all of its midshipmen and ceased sending candidates to Saganami. I know that Erewhon felt that they had to do what they had to do, but it seems that that would have hurt Erewhon as well.

At any rate, I'm wondering if BuPers formally has the green light to feed its massive butcher's appetite with allied personnel?

[Shadow of Saganami - Ch. 1[/i]

She didn't blame the young men and women, many of whom had been her students during her own time on the Island, despite her personal sense of betrayal. Nor could she really blame their government. Part of her wished she could, but Dame Honor believed in being honest with herself, and it had not been Erewhon which betrayed the Star Kingdom's trust. It had been Manticore's own government.

She watched the final midshipman take his place with a -military precision fit to satisfy even a Saganami Marine. Then Dame Beatrice rose from the chair beside hers and walked with brisk yet measured strides to the traditional podium.

"Atttten—SHUN!"

Command Sergeant Major Sullivan's harsh voice filled even the vastness of the simulator with a projection the finest opera singer would have been hard-pressed to match, and a perfectly synchronized, thunderous "Bang!" answered as eleven thousand brilliantly polished boots slammed together in instant response. Fifty-five hundred midshipmen and midshipwomen came to attention, eyes front, shoulders square, spines ramrod straight, thumbs on trouser seams, and she looked back at them unblinkingly.

I never quite figured that the male/female ratio was so even -- which suggests all sorts of things.

Is there as many female as male applicants, and an even number of evenly qualified between the sexes, that merits a conscious decision to select an even amount of both male and female?

Veddy in-teresting, indeed.

cthia wrote:[Shadow of Saganami - Ch. 1[/i]

.... eleven thousand brilliantly polished boots slammed together in instant response. Fifty-five hundred midshipmen and midshipwomen came to attention, ...

I never quite figured that the male/female ratio was so even -- which suggests all sorts of things.

What gives you the impression that the ratio is even?

Hint: unless Saganami is admitting one-legged cadets, 5500 cadets == 11000 boots.

cthia wrote:[Shadow of Saganami - Ch. 1[/i]

.... eleven thousand brilliantly polished boots slammed together in instant response. Fifty-five hundred midshipmen and midshipwomen came to attention, ...

I never quite figured that the male/female ratio was so even -- which suggests all sorts of things.

Weird Harold wrote:What gives you the impression that the ratio is even?

Hint: unless Saganami is admitting one-legged cadets, 5500 cadets == 11000 boots.

Thanks for doing the math for me Harold. This is an example of the pitfalls of trying to read with the enticing smell of parfum and a beautiful woman scantily dressed on the sofa beside you - who is feigning innocence.

= blushing laughter.

cthia wrote:"cthia"][Shadow of Saganami - Ch. 1[/i]

.... eleven thousand brilliantly polished boots slammed together in instant response. Fifty-five hundred midshipmen and midshipwomen came to attention, ...

I never quite figured that the male/female ratio was so even -- which suggests all sorts of things.

Weird Harold wrote:What gives you the impression that the ratio is even?

Hint: unless Saganami is admitting one-legged cadets, 5500 cadets == 11000 boots.

Thanks for doing the math for me Harold. This is an example of the pitfalls of trying to read with the enticing smell of parfum and a beautiful woman scantily dressed on the sofa beside you - who is feigning innocence.

= blushing laughter.[/quote]


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Cthia --
And suggests your priorities are somewhat askew if, on Valentines Day, with a significant other making suggestive eyes at you, WHY ARE YOUR FINGERS TAPPING THE KEYBOARD ?
In naval parlance, Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, over.

-- Stewart