Honorverse ramblings and musings

Jonathan_S wrote:

SWM wrote:I'm no strategist, but here is the way I've been looking at it.

He was doing exactly what his force was stationed at Hancock to do. His mission was always intended as a fast reactionary force to attack at one or more of the nearby inhabited systems; he was simply following through on his mission by moving his forces to counter. He had evidence of an impending attack, so he reacted. If there actually had been attacks on those systems, he would have split his forces to counter-attack--that's exactly what he was there to do.

He had full discretion on how to react. The War Warning had gone out, so he was fully authorized--indeed, required--to counter any attacks by Haven. Exactly how he reacted was up to his best judgment. Splitting his forces to counter multiple strikes was one of the options all along.

Now, it turns out that he was suckered, and he had been advised not to do it. But remember that Sarnow was only one of his unit commanders. He had other unit commanders as well. It is not unreasonable for an officer to choose his own plan rather than that of a single subordinate's. (Honor doesn't count, as she was an advisor to Sarnow rather than to Parks.) And Parks did listen well enough to Sarnow that he modified his plan to leave a force behind in Hancock.

Splitting his forces was well within the parameters of Parks' discretion, part of the options available to him from the beginning. It turned out to be the wrong decision, but there was nothing inherently wrong with splitting forces. In fact, if he was going to trap the attacks he thought were coming, splitting his forces was the only way to do it. That it was the wrong decision is a sign that Parks is not as good a strategist as Sarnow, not a sign that he actually did anything wrong.

And it was pointed out the Parks had no suspicion of the type of reconnaissance net the Peeps had snuck in. So he was working under the assumption that they wouldn't know he'd left Hancock unless they sent a ship to scout the inner system (which would almost certainly be detected; and a courier could alert him of in time to respond before the Peeps could likely take advantage of their knowledge.

So for Hancock the likely outcomes as he saw them were:
1) The Peeps would hit it with sufficient force to (in their opinion) crush his forces if he chose to stand and fight; or
2) The Peeps would attempt to raid or seize nearby systems bypassing Hancock.
3) No major activity in that sector.
He specifically did not believe they'd raid or attack Hancock with forces too weak to take on his concentrated force because they'd have no way to know his force wasn't home. (And once he discovered his error he immediately re-concentrated his forces and headed back to Hancock)

He left Sarnow and Honor primarily to drive off or destroy any scouting missions, to delay the Peeps realization that he's moved his forces elsewhere.


And in the first scenario it's arguably better to have his forces elsewhere else. Hancock is a nice base but it's not worth losing a noticeable fraction of the Mantie's wall holding. Better to let it fall and then clear it back out with a reenforced attack. (Admittedly a bit of a gamble, but Parks rated defending the inhabited systems around Hancock as worth the risk of losing the repair base and it's personnel)

In the second scenario it's also arguably better to have his forces elsewhere. That gives a much better chance to have some Peep raid break its teeth on Park's battle squadrons (and their towed pod surprise) by running into them in some system that's supposed to be lightly defended until the nodal response force can arrive. Secretly uncovering Hancock might well have let Parks whittle down the forces facing him as smaller raids blunder into him. (Plus of course providing the best chance to keep those inhabited Allied worlds from having their in-system traffic and orbital infrastructure from being trashed in the interval between the raiding forces arrival and when a nodal force from Hancock could arrive to engage them; or more likely just cause them to scamper off unhurt)

And in the third plausible scenario it doesn't much matter where his ships are because the war won't be kicking off there.


Yes Parks could have adopted a more aggressive posture, but that did run the risk that even if he could guarantee that no Peeps could sneak past him out of Seaford Nine his nodal force would be totally out of position to defend or react to any other attack on Hancock or the other systems he was responsible for defending.

In hindsight Honor and Sarnow were more right, but only because of information that nobody at the time knew (the Argus net).



Heck, the Peeps original plan was the scenario 1 I outlined above. Reenforcing Seaford Nine enough that they had what should have been a decisive advantage over Parks and then proceeding directly to punch out his battle squadrons at Hancock. (Now whether that actually would have worked in the face of the SD towed pods that the Peeps didn't know about is an interesting question in and of itself)

But the way things actually went down gave Parks an unexpected gift of being able to fight the Peep forces in detail (instead of concentrated); which he wouldn't have had if he'd either stayed in Hancock or picketed Seaford Nine.

SWM wrote:I'm no strategist, but here is the way I've been looking at it.

He was doing exactly what his force was stationed at Hancock to do. His mission was always intended as a fast reactionary force to attack at one or more of the nearby inhabited systems; he was simply following through on his mission by moving his forces to counter. He had evidence of an impending attack, so he reacted. If there actually had been attacks on those systems, he would have split his forces to counter-attack--that's exactly what he was there to do.

tonyz wrote:The fundamental strategic problem here was putting the base at Hancock at all, instead of putting it on in one of the systems the Alliance was there to defend in the first place. Putting the base well away just meant that the Peeps had four targets to go for instead of three, and that any reaction was almost bound to be too late if the Peeps really did move in force.

"Oh, no you don't, Stinker. It's not time for frisbee yet," she told him, and he curled back down with a mournful sigh. She chuckled at him and stepped up onto the diving board, which was one thing she unequivocally approved of. Most spacers were perfectly happy "swimming" in a null-gee tank, but Honor preferred water, and Nike's designers, in a burst of no doubt misplaced zeal, had provided a pool for the admiral's use. The water in it formed part of the battlecruiser's consumables storage system, which probably explained how the architect had convinced BuShips to buy it, and it was on the small side, but it was deep enough for diving. She took three gliding steps along the board, arced gracefully through the air, and entered the water with no more splash than a fish, and Nimitz shuddered fastidiously on his perch. Humans, he'd long ago concluded, found pleasure in some very strange activities. The water was warmer than Honor would have chosen . . . but then again, she was from Sphinx.

Something plopped into the water near her, and she frowned. There was another, closer plop, and she opened her eyes . . . just as the third tennis ball hit her squarely in the midriff.

Honor oofed, and her toe lost its anchorage. Her head went under with a splutter before she could spin upright and tread water, and a chitter of delight echoed in the gym. She turned indignantly to face it, and Nimitz hopped back and forth on his hand-paws and true-feet on the end of the diving board and launched a fourth fuzzy sphere at her.

The ball splatted into the water in front of her nose, and she shook a fist at the furry bombardier as he picked up yet another.

"Throw it and you're bedroom shoes!" she told him. He only chittered and bounced a ball off the crown of her head, and she went under again with a fresh splutter as she snatched at the rebounding missile. She managed to catch it and kicked her way back to the surface, and it was Nimitz's turn to oof as she pegged a quick, straight shot back at him. The ball caught him dead center, and his oof became a squeal as he went over the edge of the board and hit the water in a sprawling splash.

He bobbed to the surface like an Old Earth otter, but treecats were arboreals. They disliked swimming, however good at it they were, and Nimitz's disgusted expression wrung a peal of laughter from his person. He ignored her unseemly delight and swam quickly to the edge of the pool, then climbed out of the water with a bedraggled, splattering flip of his normally fluffy tail. It was rat-tailed and dripping, and he sat with a sniff of disdain for her unbecoming snickers, gathered it in true-hands and hand-paws, and began to wring it dry.

"Serves you right," she chuckled, swimming to the side with a few brisk strokes, and he gave her a baleful look as she heaved herself easily over the edge. "Oh, don't worry! You won't shrink. Here."

She sat on the pool's raised lip and picked up her towel. He took the cue and hopped up into her lap, and his disgust quickly gave way to purrs as she dried him.

cthia wrote:

"Throw it and you're bedroom shoes!" she told him.

Okay, now we are considering tennis balls launched at an opponent, and hitting Honor in a dialed up gravity. Geezus, Nimitz could kill Honor. You ever been hit by a tennis ball? The fastest female serve is 131 mph by Sabine Lisicki, breaking Serena's 129. Imagine Nimitz launching a ball that fast in a Sphinx-like 1.6g and taking it to the head.

Sobering, eh?

cthia wrote:

"Throw it and you're bedroom shoes!" she told him.

Okay, now we are considering tennis balls launched at an opponent, and hitting Honor in a dialed up gravity. Geezus, Nimitz could kill Honor. You ever been hit by a tennis ball? The fastest female serve is 131 mph by Sabine Lisicki, breaking Serena's 129. Imagine Nimitz launching a ball that fast in a Sphinx-like 1.6g and taking it to the head.

Sobering, eh?

crewdude48 wrote:
He was throwing them, not serving them. And his arms a significantly shorter than ours are, so less leverage, and less speed.

Furthermore, it does not matter what kind of g field an object was being launched in if it is going in a mostly horizontal direction. While a high g environment would change the weight of the Frisbee or tennis ball, it would have no effect on the mass of the object, and momentum is proportionate to mass, not weight. All that would be changed would be the size of the parabola the motion would describe.

Edit: One more thing. If you think there are no air currents in a spaceship, you are about as wrong as man can be. Otherwise, people would suffocate in their sleep every night. The only difference is that the currents are almost always unchanging, as opposed to near constant variation on a planet's surface. (Also, your Frisbee creates its own air currents by spinning. That, and gyroscopic progression, is why it bends to the right when you throw it in standard form with your right hand.)

cthia wrote: quote="cthia"]

"Throw it and you're bedroom shoes!" she told him.

Okay, now we are considering tennis balls launched at an opponent, and hitting Honor in a dialed up gravity. Geezus, Nimitz could kill Honor. You ever been hit by a tennis ball? The fastest female serve is 131 mph by Sabine Lisicki, breaking Serena's 129. Imagine Nimitz launching a ball that fast in a Sphinx-like 1.6g and taking it to the head.

Sobering, eh?

crewdude48 wrote:
He was throwing them, not serving them. And his arms a significantly shorter than ours are, so less leverage, and less speed.

Furthermore, it does not matter what kind of g field an object was being launched in if it is going in a mostly horizontal direction. While a high g environment would change the weight of the Frisbee or tennis ball, it would have no effect on the mass of the object, and momentum is proportionate to mass, not weight. All that would be changed would be the size of the parabola the motion would describe.

Edit: One more thing. If you think there are no air currents in a spaceship, you are about as wrong as man can be. Otherwise, people would suffocate in their sleep every night. The only difference is that the currents are almost always unchanging, as opposed to near constant variation on a planet's surface. (Also, your Frisbee creates its own air currents by spinning. That, and gyroscopic progression, is why it bends to the right when you throw it in standard form with your right hand.)

chapter 6

"I see it." She sighed. "How did the builder's scans miss it?"

"Because it wasn't there." Ravicz scratched his nose, deep-set eyes more mournful than ever, and gave the generator a disgusted kick. "There's a flaw in the matrix, Skipper. It looks like good old-fashioned crystallization to me, even if that isn't supposed to be possible with the new synth alloys. The actual fracture probably didn't occur until we went to a normal operational cycle."

"I see." Honor readjusted her eye to normal vision and straightened, feeling the gentle pressure of Nimitz's true-hand on her head as he balanced against her movement.

Like Honor's last ship, Nike had three fusion plants, yet her energy requirements were huge compared to a heavy cruiser's. HMS Fearless could have operated on a single plant, but Nike needed at least two, which gave her only one backup. She needed Fusion Three back before she could be considered truly operational, and from the look of things, getting it back was going to take far longer than Honor cared to think about.

Admiral Parks' greeting message had been perfectly correct, but she'd sensed a coolness behind it, and, under the circumstances, she would have loved to blame this on Hephaestus' yard dogs. Deprived of a legitimate human target for his unhappiness, Parks might well decide Nike's captain ought to have known it could happen . . . and taken steps to see that it didn't.

saber964 wrote:
There are always air currents on space ships.

1) Air movement from fans and what not.
2) Air movement from skin heating and cooling.
3) Air movement from bodies moving around.
4) Air movement from ordinary breathing.

cthia wrote:

"Throw it and you're bedroom shoes!" she told him.

Okay, now we are considering tennis balls launched at an opponent, and hitting Honor in a dialed up gravity. Geezus, Nimitz could kill Honor. You ever been hit by a tennis ball? The fastest female serve is 131 mph by Sabine Lisicki, breaking Serena's 129. Imagine Nimitz launching a ball that fast in a Sphinx-like 1.6g and taking it to the head.

Sobering, eh?

crewdude48 wrote:
He was throwing them, not serving them. And his arms a significantly shorter than ours are, so less leverage, and less speed.

Furthermore, it does not matter what kind of g field an object was being launched in if it is going in a mostly horizontal direction. While a high g environment would change the weight of the Frisbee or tennis ball, it would have no effect on the mass of the object, and momentum is proportionate to mass, not weight. All that would be changed would be the size of the parabola the motion would describe.

Edit: One more thing. If you think there are no air currents in a spaceship, you are about as wrong as man can be. Otherwise, people would suffocate in their sleep every night. The only difference is that the currents are almost always unchanging, as opposed to near constant variation on a planet's surface. (Also, your Frisbee creates its own air currents by spinning. That, and gyroscopic progression, is why it bends to the right when you throw it in standard form with your right hand.)

Edit:
Would be nice if mass was an ass so the fear would be founded.