Sonja Hemphill

munroburton wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:Yeah as much as I love small and midsized warships picking one as a flagship when you have large warships in the fleet is nuts.

There are some small advantages, one of which is temporary in nature. Sometimes a flag officer has gotten their flagship trained and doesn't have time to break in a new crew. We saw Honor take on many of Sarnow's headaches and that was technically before a war started!

In fleet combat, a smaller ship has as much chance of surviving as any individual waller, as the missiles won't be prioritised upon them. That probably affected the Havenites more, as the Manticorans with their better missile seekers would probably suffer fewer "lost" missiles that end up reacquiring smaller ships.

True but if the enemy manages to figure out that your flagship is a lighter unit they can shift their fire there. Your strategy is a viable one I just prefer to have my flagship, in strategy games and wargames that let you pick your flagship, be something that can survive as many hits as possible. That or a carrier kept back from the battle zone with a good escort screen.

In games that allow it, without some massive drawbacks involved my typical taskforce consists of

1 to 5 capital ships (DNs, SDNs or SDN(P)s in main era honorverse,

1 to 3 carriers (CLACs in Honerverse, usually replaced with more capital ships in settings or eras that don't have carriers or those where capital ships, and sometimes smaller ships, carry decent strike craft compliments of their own.)

3 to 25 Heavy warships (BCs or BC(P)s in Honorverse)

Option A:

8 to 50 Medium warships (CAs or CLs in Honorverse)

4 to 30 Light warships (DDs in Honorverse, maybe FFs if early enough in the setting)

or Option B:

4 to 30 Medium warships

8 to 50 Light warships.

Flagship as either a capital ship or carrier.

With raiding groups consisting of 1 to 3 task forces, small attack fleets 1 to 5 and heavy fleets 5 to 20.

In Honerverse I would most likely go for upper mid sized option B task forces.

Roguevictory wrote:True but if the enemy manages to figure out that your flagship is a lighter unit they can shift their fire there. Your strategy is a viable one I just prefer to have my flagship, in strategy games and wargames that let you pick your flagship, be something that can survive as many hits as possible. That or a carrier kept back from the battle zone with a good escort screen.

Yup, I would tend to do the same thing. However, situations do arise in which a predictable flagship is a drawback - this isn't a tremendous problem in the Honorverse with its more homogeneous squadrons.

I recall a battle shortly before Operation Buttercup in which a Peep task force CO was killed because his flagship was in the volume of a wall where the RMN had come to expect flagships. That's a little more to do with the formation positions, but if he had been aboard a BC? Ghost Rider would've ignored him.

Obviously, if a particular Navy started using screening vessels as flagships in general, its enemies might start hammering the screen a little harder than otherwise.

Roguevictory wrote:Yeah as much as I love small and midsized warships picking one as a flagship when you have large warships in the fleet is nuts.

It used to be a standard practice in a number of navies in the 17th through the early 19th century, for quite practical reasons.

The primary strength and requisite of a flagship is not to help fight the enemy ships directly. The primary requisite is to aid the commander in managing the fleet as IT fights the enemy ships.

dreamrider

munroburton wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:True but if the enemy manages to figure out that your flagship is a lighter unit they can shift their fire there. Your strategy is a viable one I just prefer to have my flagship, in strategy games and wargames that let you pick your flagship, be something that can survive as many hits as possible. That or a carrier kept back from the battle zone with a good escort screen.

Yup, I would tend to do the same thing. However, situations do arise in which a predictable flagship is a drawback - this isn't a tremendous problem in the Honorverse with its more homogeneous squadrons.

I recall a battle shortly before Operation Buttercup in which a Peep task force CO was killed because his flagship was in the volume of a wall where the RMN had come to expect flagships. That's a little more to do with the formation positions, but if he had been aboard a BC? Ghost Rider would've ignored him.
Obviously, if a particular Navy started using screening vessels as flagships in general, its enemies might start hammering the screen a little harder than otherwise.

Yeah If it isn't predictable having a smaller warship as your flag is a great idea. But if it becomes predictable it doesn't work too well.

And I don't always choose capital ships or heavies as my flagship even when I get the chance. I've played a lot of scifi RPGs as naval officers and know a few times I've chosen what I consider medium warships as my flagship when heavies or capitals were available.

Of the two most memorable ones the first time the task force had initially been composed solely of medium and light warships plus their fighter compliments and some support craft so when 2 heavy warships got added to the force I decided shifting my flag wasn't worth it. Especially since my current flagship had equivalent shielding and armor to the newly arrived heavies, better maneuverability, more HP, and only slightly inferior point defenses.

The other my character was one of 5 admirals in the navy of a newly formed alliance of worlds whose combined navy had a total of two heavy and 1 capital warships in it. But he was also their chief starship designer and while they could maintain heavy and capital warships they could only build fighters, freighters, and light or medium warships until their shipyards were expanded.

Plus the medium warships they were building were the most advanced in known space and had 80 percent the armor and shielding of their one capital ship, which was a 25 year old model, and a little over 70 percent the shields and armor of their one advanced model heavy warship with point defenses and maneuverability superior to either of their heavies and their one capital ship so he opted for one of the mediums when offered his choice of flagship.

And I know that dreamrider but in a modern or future setting a flagship needs very good communications and sensor equipment, and larger hulls usually have more space for that as well as superior defenses. If you can get the sensor and comm gear a flagship needs onto a smaller ship without making it obvious what you've done, and thus paint a 'To kill admiral shoot here' sign on the vessel than yeah a smaller flag can work great. And in case you are wondering both the cases I mentioned above all warships had roughly equivalent comm systems and the mediums I was using as my flag had equal, superior, or at least only slightly inferior sensors to the larger vessels I rejected.

runsforcelery wrote:The point of all of the above is that Honor was a superior, pragmatic tactician who insisted (correctly) that tactical doctrine must be based upon the actual capabilities of the tonnages and weapons one has rather than on the tonnages and weapons one wishes one had. She didn't think the jeune ecole was doing that. For that matter, Hemphill probably didn't think most of the jeune ecole was doing that. Those members of it who didn't know about Gram or the work already ongoing on Ghostrider were basing their hopes on those incremental systems superiorities which were public knowledge (at least within the RMN), and that incremental superiority was insufficient to make the jeune ecole's rejection of "conventional" tactical wisdom effective. Even Hamish Alexander, who was in a better position than most to know what was happening behind the scenes, had no concept of everything that was being worked out in Gryphon orbit. Both he and Honor (and Hemphill, really) would have agreed that in the absence of Gram, victory had to be found in some development or adaptation of existing tactical thinking that took into account the increased lethality of the laserhead.

I'd nitpick that in the absence of Gram the development or adaptation might have been (at least partly) strategic; not just tactical.


I'm wondering if going to a heavy deep raiding approach might have paid off for Manticore in a hypothetical first Havenite ware that lacked pods.

Basically try to make that lack of decisive battles an asset rather than a limitation. Seek battles in places where there is unlikely to be a heavy enough force to defend the infrastructure (which can't run), and where you can turtle up and run if you do get surprised by a heavier force.

Add that to the fact that Haven has a lot more vulnerable rear areas that the Manticoran Alliance. It'll take a lot more forces to even begin to provide an equivalent level of defnese.


Of course to free up the ships to do this would essentially require Manticore to give up on advancing on Trevor's Star. At least unless or until Haven drew significant forces back to cover their rear areas.

This would be a huge change in strategy, and one that hadn't been employed before. And it does tie up a lot of valuable units in transit; totally out of contact with higher. (Not to mention the logistical demands; especially without having the use of Trevor's Star and it's wormhole). But without pods, and with only single drive missiles, its a lot harder to crush a raiding force even if you do mousetrap them with superior numbers; so the raiders should be more likely to escape a trap than Honor's ships were in Cutworm/Sanskrit.

Also, without pods Haven doesn't have a cheap (or quick building) option to defend systems against any raid that can drive off or crush a BB or below picket. They either have to deploy wallers of their own or accept the loss of one orbital infrastructure after another. And even in the height of Robspierre's dictatorship there has to be a limit to how long Haven can politically (if not economically) survive the systematic destruction of the orbital infrastructures of third tier systems.

I could certainly be wrong on that specific strategy working, but in the absence of decisive new weapons innovative strategy, not just tactics, should play a major role.

Why do I get the feeling the ensuing consequences of killing honor may well become an event of galaxy spanning proportions......?


And if its not canon, or going to be canon, could we pretty please get another how the series wont end like the one you did for safehold about this event????? Please????? (begging my heart out here..... )

runsforcelery wrote: Remember the Grayson's reaction to her "execution" in Basilisk. Now project that same sort of reaction across the entire GA.

Would you really want to be the Mesan Alignment after killing Honor Harrington?

Spacekiwi wrote:Why do I get the feeling the ensuing consequences of killing honor may well become an event of galaxy spanning proportions......?


And if its not canon, or going to be canon, could we pretty please get another how the series wont end like the one you did for safehold about this event????? Please????? (begging my heart out here..... )

runsforcelery wrote: Remember the Grayson's reaction to her "execution" in Basilisk. Now project that same sort of reaction across the entire GA.

Would you really want to be the Mesan Alignment after killing Honor Harrington?

Hmm...I'm Mesan Alignment, and Honor Harrington knows that we staged the Yawata Strike and the Blackbird Strike

or

I'm Mesan Alignment, and the 'Friends of Honor' club otherwise known as the Grand Alliance is convinced that we offed Honor Harrington.

I'm not feeling the material difference here.

dreamrider

dreamrider wrote:Hmm...I'm Mesan Alignment, and Honor Harrington knows that we staged the Yawata Strike and the Blackbird Strike

or

I'm Mesan Alignment, and the 'Friends of Honor' club otherwise known as the Grand Alliance is convinced that we offed Honor Harrington.

I'm not feeling the material difference here.

dreamrider

Quoting this because accuracy.

Either way, the Alignment is dead. They just happen to still be breathing.

cthia wrote:I must apologize to Sonja Hemphill. I think most of us have been too hard on her. So we assumed she had a weapons development fluke, but as RFC has pointed out, as did Sonja herself, Fearless was simply meant to be a testbed. It is only human to remember one's controversial snafus (justified or no) than their many successes

Sorry disagree. At the least Honor should get Hemphill in a dark alley will no witnesses and kick the 'H' put of her and inflict as much damage up to but just short of death.

Hemphill did not do her duty and vote to convict and sentence Northhollow to death. That allowed Northhollow to have Tinkersley murdered.

This is my Treecat side coming out.

Tim wrote:

cthia wrote:I must apologize to Sonja Hemphill. I think most of us have been too hard on her. So we assumed she had a weapons development fluke, but as RFC has pointed out, as did Sonja herself, Fearless was simply meant to be a testbed. It is only human to remember one's controversial snafus (justified or no) than their many successes

Sorry disagree. At the least Honor should get Hemphill in a dark alley will no witnesses and kick the 'H' put of her and inflict as much damage up to but just short of death.

Hemphill did not do her duty and vote to convict and sentence Northhollow to death. That allowed Northhollow to have Tinkersley murdered.

This is my Treecat side coming out.

I'd explain to you why you are wrong, wrong, so very very wrong, but I'm tired and I don't have the time or the patience. I suggest, however, that you check out what RFC has to say on the matter, since he'd know better than anybody.

I stand with Sonja Hemphill. #StandWithSonja