Honorverse ramblings and musings

Because if they start down that path they drop dead.

Hi Weird Harold,

I agree with your viewpoint as to the appeal of the glory and results from service with the Salamander, compared to the very selfish NTM narrow personal attitudes of the attempted renegades who eventually got their just desserts.

By the way, the AMC's only had a crew of ~2500, with the the traitors thus being only 1/500-1/400th of Honor's crew; a far more pitiful ratio than one would expect given history's experience with human nature.

L

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:I didn't like Steilman and his crew. But I fully understand the human side, that aboard Honor's ship, they felt that chances of them making it out alive were slim and none.

Strange that only a small handful of bullies, thugs and sociopaths felt that way. The other three or four thousand crew members didn't seem to exhibit that "human side."

Hi Jonathan S,

Thanks very much for answering Cthia's silly suggestion so definitively.

Cthia has a brain and knows the series well but persists in promoting its suggestions without considering them in the light of textev and the collected pearls NTM all the previous explanations why it wouldn't work, apparently just to post.

Throwing anything that comes to mind against the wall in the hope something sticks, smacks far too much like like Facebook selfies or something worse.

Blogging just to try to impress others is pitiful.


I hope and expect more intelligence from Cthia.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Ok, I should probably put this one in the snotty thread, but here goes.

When considering Sonja's test bed in Fearless, why isn't it feasible to station hundreds of the smallest ship possible to mount TWTSNBN, just sitting scattered along the most likely threat vectors awaiting prey as did Honor? It would be a boring job, but they could come in handy. And a CO maneuvering to fight an enemy can utilize the location of that sort of minefield.

Could TWTSNBN be mounted on a captured Solly ship? Can small, stealthy manned platforms be designed to mount them? They'll be kamikraze platforms, of course, but just curious.

One other question. How long was it stated before a ship can repair the damages caused by TWTSNBN?

You need a mil grade starship's propulsion to utilize for a GL, so the minimum size is roughly Frearless, a small CL or large modern DD. RFC has said if definitely cannot be mounted on a small unmanned platform or even a LAC. So your talking about a fairly expensive disposable ''platform'.
Given than you can't also squeeze in the missiles and weapons of a similar sized conventional warship it is probably a bit cheaper that it's conventional counterpart but stiil, hundreds of platforms is swarms of normal more flexible warships you counted have funded for that same budget.

And even hundreds is no guarantee that they'll be in position to score a GL hit before being crushed. Or even if in position that the enemy force won't have a recon screen of DDs or even RDs out sanitizing their path. It'd be pretty crappy return on investment to GL the sidewall of a DD before your DD/CL based platform got swatted by the missiles of the enemies moon force.

The good news is that it seems the GL does actual damage to the sidewall generators; it's apparently not just tripping the equivalent of a circuit breaker. So it's probably more on the order of 10s of minutes, possibly even over an hour before the damaged generators could be repaired and fill sidewall protection restored.

Of and a GL should be compatible with even a SLN warship, if your willing spend the money and time to "drydck" it long enough to make room for a major engineering system install. Personally I don't see a sufficient reason to bother, but it shouldn't be a technical impossibility.

Hi KZT,

Thanks again for another brief response to more silly speculation by someone who should know better.

L

kzt wrote:Because if they start down that path they drop dead.

Lyonheart.

Here we go again. You come out of the woodworks and start slinging mud. Silly questions? Blogging just to try to impress? Facebook selfies? I went through this with you a year or two back. I don't intend to again. This is the last time.

I don't see a need to impress anyone in a forum. Does anyone here on the forum have the type of credentials I need to impress? Is anyone the President? Not that I see a reason to impress him either.

Facebook selfies? I'm not even registered with Facebook. Or Twitter. I am not a social media whore. Although I do chat with family and friends and colleagues on skype. I've never had the need to impress anyone - unless they were wearing a skirt. You got one of those? Kilts don't count - there are real men under there for certain. Been to Scotland and Ireland more than a time or two under a not so gentle breeze.

I was aware that it was a snotty question, but I've never been afraid to ask questions. It got me far in school. I actually got a diploma. It's real purty too. Yet, I was honestly curious. If you're going to condemn questions to being silly, then newbies will ever steer clear. And many foreigners as well. I've long since given up on trying to persuade my foreign friends to join because of people like you. They love the series. But rather be doing much more with their time than be verbally assaulted. Ph.d's normally do. Sometimes I do feel "silly" by remaining in the forum and putting up with people like you. But I've learned that most people in the forum just wanna have fun and communicate about the series - like I. And there's always going to be someone committing malum in se, like you.

I don't know the series as well as you think. I don't know an im-peller from a pro-peller. Or a sidewall from drywall. And I don't own an Honorverse manual. A Jayne's manual. A ships and engines manual or anything else not standard issue. I don't have that luxury of time. And I haven't gotten around to reading all of the spinoffs. Heck, some of the mainline novels I've only read once. And I apologize for that. That's why I steer clear of technical threads.

Yet, if you need to waste three posts calling me silly, then I guess that highlights who among us is impressed by post count - its certainly not me. And since it is obvious that you have nothing decent to add to the discussion, I suppose name calling is your only outlet to achieve your post count.

And if you still doubt that I'm not a social media whore who certainly feels no need to impress nameless faces on a forum, as this is my first and only social media site and will most likely be my last, do remember this, as I thought I long since made perfectly clear...

Cthia doesn't need to impress anyone. He's already happily married to a beautiful and brilliant trophy wife of a skirt. And he writes his own check. Now repeat after me until it sticks...

"Cthia has a beautiful trophy wife and he writes his own check."

Now repeat this until it sticks...

"Cthia writes himself a big check too."

lyonheart wrote:Hi KZT,

Thanks again for another brief response to more silly speculation by someone who should know better.

L

kzt wrote:Because if they start down that path they drop dead.

Now, getting back to regular programming before the constipation caused by a rude interruption...
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7904

I wasn't aware that the MAlign conditions everyone in their society with a "self-destruct" mechanism. If that's the case, why isn't the lone defector (sorry, name escapes me) dead?

(Sorry in advance if this is another "silly question." Since I don't have much experience with silly, I can't seem to identify it.)

No, they just do it to everyone in a position to do damage to the Alignment. Lajos Irvine was barely on the inside of the Onion, yet he still had suicide protocols which were eventually triggered. Someone with access to the Alignment's exclusive ships would certainly have them.

Duckk wrote:No, they just do it to everyone in a position to do damage to the Alignment. Lajos Irvine was barely on the inside of the Onion, yet he still had suicide protocols which were eventually triggered. Someone with access to the Alignment's exclusive ships would certainly have them.

Thanks Duckk.

So no one on the inside of the onion has these protocols? Then is it possible that a secret cabal inside the onion could defect? And if anyone from this cabal gives orders to officers, then wouldn't they be legitimate orders and not set off the protocols?

Again, just curious.

The likelihood of that happening infinitely approaches zero. That's a cabal that:

1. Manages to find one another, in a system which compartmentalizes information and interaction,

2. Evades detection by the ever watchful and motivated internal security forces,

3. Either converts or suborns a sufficient number of said security forces to prevent them from interfering when their activities appear suspicious,

4. Either converts or suborns someone in the naval hierarchy to give orders to the MAN, which are pretty much under the direct supervision of the Detweilers,

5. Either converts or suborns the naval crew into going through with this, instead of remaining loyal

This requires a chain of dependencies so long that it's too brittle to ever work.

Duckk wrote:The likelihood of that happening infinitely approaches zero. That's a cabal that:

1. Manages to find one another, in a system which compartmentalizes information and interaction,

2. Evades detection by the ever watchful and motivated internal security forces,

3. Either converts or suborns a sufficient number of said security forces to prevent them from interfering when their activities appear suspicious,

4. Either converts or suborns someone in the naval hierarchy to give orders to the MAN, which are pretty much under the direct supervision of the Detweilers,

5. Either converts or suborns the naval crew into going through with this, instead of remaining loyal

This requires a chain of dependencies so long that it's too brittle to ever work.

Not quite so fast.

First, only a small proportion of those inside the onion have suicide protocols. Remember simoens? How about aldona asimovna? How about those that had to be escorted to darius during Houdini.

Remember the Ghosts. They are unarmed scouts. In other words, they have less weapons than a frigate, are probably not much bigger than a courier, and probably have less than 20 crew.

Suicide protocols won't work on a spacecraft that spends months at a time on missions and is away from home base, unless someone onboard knows about it and knows to send the code.

I could see a small, close knit crew defecting. It would be even more likely if they find out about a suicide protocol.

Seriously, I don't expect a defection. IMO if RFC wants a spider drive ship to fall into GA hands, far more likely someone in the GA stumbles onto one of the ghosts or sharks and captures it.

OTOH, My ability to predict what RFC does is about 1%