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Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3

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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by Weird Harold   » Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:25 pm

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pappilon wrote:IIRC (maybe not) ...The SL newsies were already in system covering the BoM when it happened. ...


There were Solly newsies in the system -- on the station when it was destroyed. :cry:

There may have been some swanning about the system, but the only one we know of for sure was killed.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by pappilon   » Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:05 pm

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Weird Harold wrote:
pappilon wrote:IIRC (maybe not) ...The SL newsies were already in system covering the BoM when it happened. ...


There were Solly newsies in the system -- on the station when it was destroyed. :cry:

There may have been some swanning about the system, but the only one we know of for sure was killed.



You can't hide the destruction of so many cruise ships & passengers. Lots of shipping passing through the terminii had to pick up something over the radio channels. best to report it and ge tit out quickly than to let rumor make it seem like you're hiding something.

Nonehteless The Mandarins knew about the attack, Rampajet knew. That is what inspired Filareta's Folly. One can assume it was widely reported.

yes there was the reporter and her cameraman passing through, can't cover that up when her reports don't get filed.
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by Bewildered   » Thu Sep 21, 2017 3:04 am

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You may have missed earlier comments - I'm not restricting attacks to GA forces. If the SLN is attacking NAWs, and they don't have conventional forces, their only option is non-conventional warfare or complete surrender. If said NAWs modify generic freighters - think bombardment Q-ships, then they can drop out of warp in deep space, target the approximate location of all designated infrastructure, and launch on ballistic approaches. If the attack takes a month or more to arrive how does the SLN identify the offending force? Even if the SLN is aware their systems may be targeted, how can they hope to detect such missiles unless they run active systems 24/7 and go to red alert the moment any missile goes active? Of course this assumes the missiles do go active rather than rely on archaic tech and chemical propulsion etc for corrections as a deliberate measure to bypass traditional protections. My suspicion is that the requirements to hit military or economic infrastructure is far lower than that required to hit ships with active defences.

quite possibly a cat wrote:
Bewildered wrote:Agree the GA want to present themselves as the reasonable but aggrieved party but is the issue as serious as you make out? If the SLN targets NAWs then why would attacks by unidentified parties against SU worlds affect the GA's reputation amongst NAWs? So long as such attacks focus on infrastructure, and do their utmost to avoid deliberate Eridani violations, is there any significant difference between what the SLN is doing and said unidentified third parties?
If Manticore is risking accidental EEE violations they aren't doing their utmost to avoid them. Manticore has all that super cool guidance tech remember? Also it won't be an unidentified party since only Manticore has the best missile tech which will sort of be a dead give away.

More to the point the one thing the GA does NOT want to do is set precedent for risky ultra-long range bombardment because Sollies are fully capable of doing exactly the same, except without Apollo they are way more likely to miss. They're using a brand new super buggy lame DDM. Or even worse they might "miss" and fry a few billion people. Also playing MAD chicken with non-rational actors, like the Mandarian clearly are, is a bad idea. Especially since they probably want a few billion dead Solly civilians.

Finally, the League seems likely to explode on its own. Manticore probably just has to protect worlds trying to leave and the League will die on its own.

That's my analysis at least.

That's my two cents.
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by pappilon   » Thu Sep 21, 2017 3:49 am

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Bewildered wrote:You may have missed earlier comments - I'm not restricting attacks to GA forces. If the SLN is attacking NAWs, and they don't have conventional forces, their only option is non-conventional warfare or complete surrender. If said NAWs modify generic freighters - think bombardment Q-ships, then they can drop out of warp in deep space, target the approximate location of all designated infrastructure, and launch on ballistic approaches. If the attack takes a month or more to arrive how does the SLN identify the offending force? Even if the SLN is aware their systems may be targeted, how can they hope to detect such missiles unless they run active systems 24/7 and go to red alert the moment any missile goes active? Of course this assumes the missiles do go active rather than rely on archaic tech and chemical propulsion etc for corrections as a deliberate measure to bypass traditional protections. My suspicion is that the requirements to hit military or economic infrastructure is far lower than that required to hit ships with active defences.


Without "conventional forces", where do they get missiles, launchers, targeting guidance equipment, EW, even the Tactital crews? May as well get your freighter, load it up with boulders and use your ship loading equipment to launch them as KEWs. Any astrogation apprentice should be able to plot an intercept course with a planet from high orbit.
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by kzt   » Thu Sep 21, 2017 6:28 am

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You grossly underestimat how hard this is. Compute the angular size of a 12,000 km wide target from 6 light hours out. Iirc, that’s about 6 billion km. At 10 percent of light it’s 600 hours.which if I’m not mistaken means that if you have a vector error of 3 mm per second you miss.
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by cthia   » Thu Sep 21, 2017 6:34 am

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kzt wrote:You grossly underestimat how hard this is. Compute the angular size of a 12,000 km wide target from 6 light hours out. Iirc, that’s about 6 billion km. At 10 percent of light it’s 600 hours.which if I’m not mistaken means that if you have a vector error of 3 mm per second you miss.

Isn't that what NASA does with comets from much farther out?

Of course Earth is a bigger target, but still, more capable computers.

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: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by ldwechsler   » Thu Sep 21, 2017 6:53 am

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Starsaber wrote:I just hope the SLN decides that Grayson is one of those "lightly defended periphery systems" and tries to attack there. :twisted:



They know enough about Grayson not to target it. Kingsford has already given up on that kind of thing. They'll go after their own planets as we've seen, looking for weak ones.

That is counter-productive, of course. But they'll do it anyway. And will more or less lose.
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by isaac_newton   » Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:04 am

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cthia wrote:
kzt wrote:You grossly underestimat how hard this is. Compute the angular size of a 12,000 km wide target from 6 light hours out. Iirc, that’s about 6 billion km. At 10 percent of light it’s 600 hours.which if I’m not mistaken means that if you have a vector error of 3 mm per second you miss.

Isn't that what NASA does with comets from much farther out?

Of course Earth is a bigger target, but still, more capable computers.



mid course corrections is the key...
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by ldwechsler   » Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:30 am

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isaac_newton wrote:You grossly underestimate how hard this is. Compute the angular size of a 12,000 km wide target from 6 light hours out. Iirc, that’s about 6 billion km. At 10 percent of light it’s 600 hours.which if I’m not mistaken means that if you have a vector error of 3 mm per second you miss.




Keep in mind that this takes place thousands of years in the future. Chances are the computers are doing most of the plotting.

Actually the whole series of books is anachronistic. That means it uses far simpler tech than will probably be the case. After all, we have cars without drivers that can find destinations in cities. Far more complex than moving from one planet to another.

Most planes now just use their autopilots. Yes, the pilots can take over but they usually don't have to do much.

Now move thousands of years ahead and we have astrogators. Most of the time the ship is just moving ahead, generally following Newton's laws. Yet we have a whole class of officers whose main job is to plot out how to go. And in a fleet each ship has at least one and they probably just follow the orders of the leader's staff astrogator.

Also notice that defenses work far faster than most people can act. Dealing with hundreds of missiles in a handful of missiles would basically be impossible without computers and the computers are essentially pre-set. Also, the staff tac officer of the leader divides up the targets. All of this requires really fast, essentially AI computers. It makes sense that the overall plan is run by people but a real lot is organized and run through computers.

Another point: we have seen missiles shot down by other missiles now. The Israelis have done it with short range missiles and the US has managed it with ICBM's. And that is now.
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Re: Uncompromising Honor, Snippet #3
Post by cthia   » Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:21 am

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Absolutely, and NASA wouldn't be sitting right atop said comet affording it a chance to more closely study its perturbations and aberrations. Whereas someone who launches the "raging projectile" would be keenly aware of any perturbations and aberrations -- along with control of any course corrections from a much more capable computer.

But to be fair, kzt has a point as well. In the Honorverse, as written by RFC, projectiles do have a limitation on accuracy imposed on them from great distances. Well, non Manty missiles that is. The RMN's Apollo seems to be capable of performing a few pirouettes right before crawling up the backside of someone's orifice.

We have to entertain the possibility of an entity developing state of the art computers to do just that, to augment their unbridled, unprecedented stealth and submarine warfare. Incidentally, at the advent of the wet navy submarines, the development of the Torpedo Data Computer (TDC) aboard the USS Pampanito revolutionized submarine warfare.

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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