Black Jack vs The Salamander

Roguevictory wrote:The only real I see to determine which commander is best cleanly would be to drop them into command of identical fleets from a non-Honorverse, non-Lost Fleet setting and let them have the same amount of time to study their new fleets and ships before letting them loose in a meeting engagement.

Make it a best out of 3 or best out of 5 contest using fleets from different settings in each match to make sure the first win isn't a fluke.

That only tests tactical ability. There are many other features of a successful fleet commander that will not test. ( planning, strategic thought, training, teambuilding, personel building,etc.)

Roguevictory wrote:The only real I see to determine which commander is best cleanly would be to drop them into command of identical fleets from a non-Honorverse, non-Lost Fleet setting and let them have the same amount of time to study their new fleets and ships before letting them loose in a meeting engagement.

Make it a best out of 3 or best out of 5 contest using fleets from different settings in each match to make sure the first win isn't a fluke.

Advantage Honor, I think. I haven't done more than skim the Lost Fleet series (it's on the list for a binge reading session) but I haven't seen any references to Clausewitz or other Historical strategists or tacticians. Honor understands that technology doesn't matter as much as the people manning it. (See the "bluff" she ran on Theisman at the end of Flag in Exile, as an example.)

Yeah I don't really see a way to test everything unless you have them running full campaigns against the other.

I would give the training ability edge to Geary though. Honor is a great trainer but she never had to overcome a century's worth of how her fleet's crews was taught to fight to get them to fight the way she needed them too the way Geary did and I personally feel doing so was much, much more difficult then any training challenge Honor has faced.


As for Geary on an operational level he's managed to keep his fleet functioning despite many of its ships being past their decommission by date (Due to how fast ships were being destroyed in the war and an attempt to save time and resources modern Alliance Warships are intended for very short service lifetimes because they are expected to be destroyed within a few years at most.) against both forces with unknown technology and forces with newer, faster, and more heavily armed and armored warships and emerged victorious despite forces in his government trying to sabotage his fleets and missions. Working around these issues takes skill IMO and is another problem he's surpassed which Honor hasn't. The closest she came to this IMO was the CL Fearless and while the issues there were certainly bad but not nearly as bad as having to deal with this kind of problem across an entire fleet.

Now based on my understanding of the Lost Fleet setting a lot more of Humanity's 20th and 21st century AD knowledge including history has been lost then in the Honorverse but I don't believe this should be used to declare Geary an inferior strategist or tactician.