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Honorverse ramblings and musings

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Theemile   » Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:47 am

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cthia wrote:
saber964 wrote:You really don't want to challenge Honor to a duel when she's pissed off at you. Because she's going to make you hurt before the death blow.

Summerville gut shot four times before blowing his brains out the back of his head.

Burdette reverse 7 sword cut. Massive pain before his head departed his body. He had a second or two of agony before the end.

Definitely agree. Is there really a good time to challenge Honor? Now that I think about it, Honor's genie status isn't exactly common knowledge either, so none of her challengers really knew who, or what, they were going up against. Poor intel on their part if "know your enemy" is something they aspired to. You can bet Honor researched her foe in great detail in each case.


Forget the Genie stuff. You have a girl who at 12 years old killed 2 Peak bears in the Sphixian Bush with a oversized handgun. As a teenager, she won pistol and rifle competitions. Entering the Academy, she qualified for the pistol and rifle competition teams, but instead took Neue Stile Handgemange, to challenge herself. As a Freshman, her natural abilities and native heavy worlder capabilities allowed her to routinely throw hand to hand combat instructors, and quickly move up the levels of the craft. As a field commander, she lead the raids against the Casimir field depot and Blackbird base with the Marines. At Grayson, she defeated a hit team with her treecat and a dinner service.

Really, no one has done their homework on Honor. Young shouldn't have messed with a heavy worlder hand to hand specialist in the shower, Macabeus shouldn't have tried to time the assassination attempt with her visit, Summerville shouldn't have tried a gun dual with someone who as a child took down apex predators, and Burdette shouldn't have attempted a swordfight with someone who can kill with a chaffing dish.
******
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: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by ldwechsler   » Thu Oct 11, 2018 6:32 pm

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Theemile wrote:
cthia wrote:You really don't want to challenge Honor to a duel when she's pissed off at you. Because she's going to make you hurt before the death blow.

Summerville gut shot four times before blowing his brains out the back of his head.

Burdette reverse 7 sword cut. Massive pain before his head departed his body. He had a second or two of agony before the end.

Definitely agree. Is there really a good time to challenge Honor? Now that I think about it, Honor's genie status isn't exactly common knowledge either, so none of her challengers really knew who, or what, they were going up against. Poor intel on their part if "know your enemy" is something they aspired to. You can bet Honor researched her foe in great detail in each case.


Forget the Genie stuff. You have a girl who at 12 years old killed 2 Peak bears in the Sphixian Bush with a oversized handgun. As a teenager, she won pistol and rifle competitions. Entering the Academy, she qualified for the pistol and rifle competition teams, but instead took Neue Stile Handgemange, to challenge herself. As a Freshman, her natural abilities and native heavy worlder capabilities allowed her to routinely throw hand to hand combat instructors, and quickly move up the levels of the craft. As a field commander, she lead the raids against the Casimir field depot and Blackbird base with the Marines. At Grayson, she defeated a hit team with her treecat and a dinner service.

Really, no one has done their homework on Honor. Young shouldn't have messed with a heavy worlder hand to hand specialist in the shower, Macabeus shouldn't have tried to time the assassination attempt with her visit, Summerville shouldn't have tried a gun dual with someone who as a child took down apex predators, and Burdette shouldn't have attempted a swordfight with someone who can kill with a chaffing dish.[/quote]

People always seem to forget Honor's genie background. Which is strange since a lot of Sphynxians have them. I doubt Summervale had any idea of her skills and it is a different one from being able to shoot bears...although keeping calm is a useful trait.
Add to that Nimitz tended to get a lot of headlines.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:03 am

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Likening Honor to Tsang, and Nimitz to the Dispatch Boat tasked with summoning Tsang at the moment of truth makes me laugh my ass off. Talk about a burst transmission! Imagine Nimitz sitting there watching Burdette intently, emotional impellers hot. As soon as he detected Burdette's crease he summoned the cavalry in a burst transmission . . .

<Now! Honor! Now! Cut the bastard in half!>

'SHA WING!'

<Now off with his head!>

'SHA WING!'

<Atta Girl>

<Thought you were going to kill my love affair with celery did you? Silly rabbit, Keys were meant to be cut>

2 agin 1

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:04 am

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Kael Posavatz wrote:
cthia wrote:Oh, I don't doubt that Tester would have been on Honor's side. So there was no reason not to come clean and let Tester sort out the wicked.


To which I feel compelled to refer to:
Comte de Bussy-Rabutin wrote: God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small.


Honor is notably taller than most Graysons, which gives her the reach advantage.

And:
Voltaire wrote:God is on the side not of the heavy battalions but of the best shots.


While Honor might not have been the most experienced combatant, I believe that there is sufficient textev to argue that she is the superior shot (cut, whatever)


(Trying desperately not to make a pun about how it's a good thing Honor has never taken up golf)

Comte de Bussy-Rabutin isn't exactly correct. Voltaire is closer but yet so far. In fact, a good argument could be mounted against. Remember the story of Samson and Delilah? The Walls of Jericho? David and Goliath? Daniel in the lion's den? God is on the side of the righteous, not the mightiest. Might doesn't make right in God's eye. Faith of a mustard seed can move mountains. Be it mountains of evil or mountains of people. Strength comes from faith, not by secular magnitude. The bigger they are the harder they fall.

God only requires faith, as little as a mustard seed . . .

E = MC² - A little faith (Mass) goes a long way.

God created all the Mass of the world in six days. Then he said . . .

"Let there be light." So that we can C.


"I can't see! I can't see!

"What's the matter?"

"I got my eyes closed."


O ye of little faith.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Oct 18, 2018 5:27 pm

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cthia wrote:I've been meaning to ask. First, I have to admit that Honor & Co.'s discussion that there are undoubtedly many more unforeseen ways to squeeze utility out of the Apollo program never left my mind.

Consider the MDMs. Will it be useful to shut down the first stage just to force the enemy to lose lock then bring them back up, even if they are well within the missile's range and needing no ballistic stage? IOW, utilizing a ballistic component solely for the sake of confusing the enemy's ECM. Could that make them more effective under certain conditions, like a certain sweet spot in distance to target that wouldn't forego too much accel?

It is a tactic I always wondered about, which this new series of snippets reminded me of. Could it be useful? Especially if an enemy, perhaps malignant in origin, developed a more stubborn ECM and point defense.

Catching up on the forums after taking a break to avoid UH spoilers and came across this.

You'd be throwing away terminal velocity if you did an unnecessary drive shutdown. It might still have a place, but in a 3 drive MDM it wouldn't make sense to me to shut the 1st drive down early.

Yeah the defenders would lose tracking, but they'd be losing it in the earliest part of the missile's flight when they often can't separate an individual missile from the thundering herd anyway. They'd have lots of time (up to 6 minutes) once the 2nd and then 3rd drives came up to achieve a lock and engage, and the lower terminal velocity makes the intercept easier and gives the defense more time to take shots at the missile.

If you did a shutdown trick I think you'd want to insert the delay before your final drive, and hope that you'd guessed the enemy's future location well enough that you only needed to bring the final drive up for seconds to achieve firing position.



OTOH missile without wedges up lose most of their rad shielding, so if you were trying to coast in that close you run a somewhat higher risk of losses from proximity nukes. Plus if the enemy is maneuvering after your missiles go ballistic you'd have to run the final drive for much longer to get a firing position and that negates a lot of the advantage of disappearing off their tracking when the penultimate drive shuts down.

So maybe situtationally useful, but far from a slam dunk tactic - IMHO.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by cthia   » Fri Oct 26, 2018 8:30 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:
cthia wrote:I've been meaning to ask. First, I have to admit that Honor & Co.'s discussion that there are undoubtedly many more unforeseen ways to squeeze utility out of the Apollo program never left my mind.

Consider the MDMs. Will it be useful to shut down the first stage just to force the enemy to lose lock then bring them back up, even if they are well within the missile's range and needing no ballistic stage? IOW, utilizing a ballistic component solely for the sake of confusing the enemy's ECM. Could that make them more effective under certain conditions, like a certain sweet spot in distance to target that wouldn't forego too much accel?

It is a tactic I always wondered about, which this new series of snippets reminded me of. Could it be useful? Especially if an enemy, perhaps malignant in origin, developed a more stubborn ECM and point defense.

Catching up on the forums after taking a break to avoid UH spoilers and came across this.

You'd be throwing away terminal velocity if you did an unnecessary drive shutdown. It might still have a place, but in a 3 drive MDM it wouldn't make sense to me to shut the 1st drive down early.

Yeah the defenders would lose tracking, but they'd be losing it in the earliest part of the missile's flight when they often can't separate an individual missile from the thundering herd anyway. They'd have lots of time (up to 6 minutes) once the 2nd and then 3rd drives came up to achieve a lock and engage, and the lower terminal velocity makes the intercept easier and gives the defense more time to take shots at the missile.

If you did a shutdown trick I think you'd want to insert the delay before your final drive, and hope that you'd guessed the enemy's future location well enough that you only needed to bring the final drive up for seconds to achieve firing position.



OTOH missile without wedges up lose most of their rad shielding, so if you were trying to coast in that close you run a somewhat higher risk of losses from proximity nukes. Plus if the enemy is maneuvering after your missiles go ballistic you'd have to run the final drive for much longer to get a firing position and that negates a lot of the advantage of disappearing off their tracking when the penultimate drive shuts down.

So maybe situtationally useful, but far from a slam dunk tactic - IMHO.

Jonathan_S wrote:
cthia wrote:I've been meaning to ask. First, I have to admit that Honor & Co.'s discussion that there are undoubtedly many more unforeseen ways to squeeze utility out of the Apollo program never left my mind.

Consider the MDMs. Will it be useful to shut down the first stage just to force the enemy to lose lock then bring them back up, even if they are well within the missile's range and needing no ballistic stage? IOW, utilizing a ballistic component solely for the sake of confusing the enemy's ECM. Could that make them more effective under certain conditions, like a certain sweet spot in distance to target that wouldn't forego too much accel?

It is a tactic I always wondered about, which this new series of snippets reminded me of. Could it be useful? Especially if an enemy, perhaps malignant in origin, developed a more stubborn ECM and point defense.

Catching up on the forums after taking a break to avoid UH spoilers and came across this.

You'd be throwing away terminal velocity if you did an unnecessary drive shutdown. It might still have a place, but in a 3 drive MDM it wouldn't make sense to me to shut the 1st drive down early.

Yeah the defenders would lose tracking, but they'd be losing it in the earliest part of the missile's flight when they often can't separate an individual missile from the thundering herd anyway. They'd have lots of time (up to 6 minutes) once the 2nd and then 3rd drives came up to achieve a lock and engage, and the lower terminal velocity makes the intercept easier and gives the defense more time to take shots at the missile.

If you did a shutdown trick I think you'd want to insert the delay before your final drive, and hope that you'd guessed the enemy's future location well enough that you only needed to bring the final drive up for seconds to achieve firing position.



OTOH missile without wedges up lose most of their rad shielding, so if you were trying to coast in that close you run a somewhat higher risk of losses from proximity nukes. Plus if the enemy is maneuvering after your missiles go ballistic you'd have to run the final drive for much longer to get a firing position and that negates a lot of the advantage of disappearing off their tracking when the penultimate drive shuts down.

So maybe situtationally useful, but far from a slam dunk tactic - IMHO.

Thanks for the post Jonathan. No, I don't think it'd be a slam dunk tactic either, or even a tactic that should be adopted against any traditional opponent. I was thinking more of a situational tactic as well, against an opponent whose ECM, as mentioned, proves to be rather difficult, again, like with the MA who I'm hoping comes out of the closet with quite a few new wrinkles - where more hits, or some hits are better than little to none. I'm imagining and predicting the Lenny Dets to be extremely hard to find touting ECM that makes them insanely effective against GA tech without a GA rabbit pulled out of the hat.

Lenny Dets: Advantages. Disadvantages.
  1. Extremely stealthy and hard to hit.
  2. As brittle as eggshells against RMN missiles.

Considering range to target, I was thinking there might be a sweet spot where the loss of terminal velocity is made up for by optimal range to target and sheer numbers. A targeted ship always seem to take significant time to achieve missile lock of the incoming missile.

****** *

On another front . . .

For sake of argument, let's say the RMN can't control but 50 missiles but launched 200 in groups of four far enough apart to bounce control from group A to group B to group C to group D as group A goes into attack run. Seems it could be effectively achieved because of the optimal launching distances well inside the need for FTL.

There's an inherent problem with this solution, yes, but I always believed FTL could be used to establish initial control of different broods of missile groups instead of overcoming enormous distances. And/or even quickly bouncing updated position between groups.

I'm sure the tactics I've mentioned have been thought of before, with the application being so obvious. The difference I'm proposing is attempting to accomplish it well within sub light distances of sub light missile control that doesn't need FTL control in the first place, but utilizing it anyway to jockey control between groups of missiles - effectively overcoming the limitation of fire control and controlling more missiles - instead of using the advantage of FTL to overcome extreme distances. Think of an Indy 500 car racing around the track lapping a Yugo, updating the Yugo as to where it is.

I also wonder if group B thru C can be auto programmed to lock onto the wedges of the group ahead of them to follow them in. That would effectively eliminate the need to control three separate groups of missiles who are simply following the wedges in front of them.

I apologize for the jumbled thoughts for a path of logic whose plot hasn't completely settled in my head.

At any rate, FTL used to augment fire control instead of to overcome extreme firing range. Used in conjunction with shutting down drives to confuse an enemy's effective ECM. The RMN has never encountered an opponent whose ECM is on a par or better than theirs. But of course, that's where RMN advantage lay. However, I see Apollo as being more adaptable. Or rather, Honor does.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by tlb   » Fri Oct 26, 2018 1:48 pm

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RFC has used the meme about an ancient Chinese curse that goes "May you live in interesting times". I hope most people know that this is neither ancient nor Chinese. I found this all in the internet (so you might want to recheck that I am not repeating falsehoods).

It was first used in that form by Sir Austen Chamberlain (brother of Neville) in 1936 when addressing a Birmingham association about the "grave injury" to collective security by German's violation of the Treaty of Locarno:
It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, "May you live in interesting times." There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us.
We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.

His father had used the same figure of speech in 1898, but without claiming that it was either Chinese or a curse:
I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety.

The closest Chinese saying that people can find was reported in 1836 by a British diplomat named John Francis Davis, who published “The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants” which included this adage:
The Chinese have lived so much in peace, that they have acquired by habit and education a more than common horror of political disorder.

“Better be a dog in peace than a man in anarchy”.

“It is a general rule, that the worst of men are fondest of change and commotion, hoping that they may thereby benefit themselves; but by adherence to a steady, quiet system, affairs proceed without confusion, and bad men have nothing to gain.”
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by ldwechsler   » Fri Oct 26, 2018 8:56 pm

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tlb wrote:RFC has used the meme about an ancient Chinese curse that goes "May you live in interesting times". I hope most people know that this is neither ancient nor Chinese. I found this all in the internet (so you might want to recheck that I am not repeating falsehoods).

It was first used in that form by Sir Austen Chamberlain (brother of Neville) in 1936 when addressing a Birmingham association about the "grave injury" to collective security by German's violation of the Treaty of Locarno:
It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, "May you live in interesting times." There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us.
We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.

His father had used the same figure of speech in 1898, but without claiming that it was either Chinese or a curse:
I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety.

The closest Chinese saying that people can find was reported in 1836 by a British diplomat named John Francis Davis, who published “The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants” which included this adage:
The Chinese have lived so much in peace, that they have acquired by habit and education a more than common horror of political disorder.

“Better be a dog in peace than a man in anarchy”.

“It is a general rule, that the worst of men are fondest of change and commotion, hoping that they may thereby benefit themselves; but by adherence to a steady, quiet system, affairs proceed without confusion, and bad men have nothing to gain.”



But it's such a useful quote. Add to that the OTHER Chinese quotes:

"May could come to the attention of the authorities" and

"May you get your heart's desire" and you realize how interesting some quotes are no matter who actually said them.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by tlb   » Sat Oct 27, 2018 11:42 am

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ldwechsler wrote:But it's such a useful quote. Add to that the OTHER Chinese quotes:

"May could come to the attention of the authorities" and

"May you get your heart's desire" and you realize how interesting some quotes are no matter who actually said them.

It is better to have no attribution for outside quotes, than a false one.

The lines you give are fine without claiming to be Chinese (although I think you meant "May you come to the attention"), but it is much better to have the correct attributions for things both outside the forum and within. Which is something that really bugs me about people who mess up the begin-quote end-quote structure.

The problem is when you get into the borderline racist "Confucius say" jokes.
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Re: Honorverse ramblings and musings
Post by ldwechsler   » Mon Oct 29, 2018 7:04 am

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tlb wrote:
ldwechsler wrote:But it's such a useful quote. Add to that the OTHER Chinese quotes:

"May could come to the attention of the authorities" and

"May you get your heart's desire" and you realize how interesting some quotes are no matter who actually said them.

It is better to have no attribution for outside quotes, than a false one.

The lines you give are fine without claiming to be Chinese (although I think you meant "May you come to the attention"), but it is much better to have the correct attributions for things both outside the forum and within. Which is something that really bugs me about people who mess up the begin-quote end-quote structure.

The problem is when you get into the borderline racist "Confucius say" jokes.


Thanks for the typo correction.

As for attribution, after a while some things that are incorrect become "common knowledge." You are right about the Chinese origin of the quotes although some similar things have been written there over the years. But at this point, most people who hear that it is Chinese believe. In a few thousand years, it will seem like an absolute fact.

And it is a great line.
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