Honorverse ramblings and musings

Re: Captured crew members forced to work for pirates:

In Honor Among Enemies, didn't Caslet take two Manticoran merchanters off of a pirate? They had been forced to work as crew. The Peep Marines seemed doubtful at first, as did Caslet, except for the way the female XO defended her Captain.

Promotion Party! Beer's on me!

(Upends pitcher over head)

Or do I need a silver dollar for the first enlisted to salute me?

cthia wrote:

n7axw wrote:You can only buy ships of the war if they are for sale. There are limits to even SL lunacy...

Don

Ah! Which was going to be my next question. Why would the SLN sell their tech to neobarbs that may end up using it against them? Like America fighting countries armed with their own weaponry.

JeffEngel wrote:Someone proposing to fight the Solarian League?! That's simply unthinkable. And, being neobarbs, they have a hard time figuring out what end of the ship to point at an enemy anyway, so sure, sell them all they can afford, it's harmless.

Now, I suppose I walked into that one.



But there wasn't much difference that I could see, in the League's basic tech that was sold to Haven and what they went hunting in the Haven sector with.

Only thing I can remember is Aegis and the Cataphract. And what a deflated balloon of results Aegis was. Damn, at least Haven got a few battles of positive results out of their surprises until the RMN adjusted. (Remembering the triple Ripple for starters.) Haven always got mileage out of all of their upgrades.

Aegis. Pfft. They should have left that junk at home. If ever there was a more proper and fitting taunting of "Is that the best you've got," then I don't know what is.

As a reader, I was all prepared for Aegis to deliver.


Should we even be concerned with future SLN upgrades? If you upgrade junk to super junk, still equals junk. And I'd really hate to endure another thread of what to do with all of the captured, fresh off the assembly line, new junk.

Perhaps the SLN should have aimed for something a bit more practical of an upgrade. Such as, well... cruise control. Or better yet, collision sensors that automatically reduce speed, flip, reverse engines and haul ass to prevent collision with advanced tech. Advanced Navy Sensors! (ANS)

cthia wrote:Should we even be concerned with future SLN upgrades? If you upgrade junk to super junk, still equals junk. And I'd really hate to endure another thread of what to do with all of the captured, fresh off the assembly line, new junk.
(ANS)

Halo is not bad. It's a reasonable and effective response to the state of the art of 15-20 years back. The idea of it may play some small part in the next generation of Grand Alliance decoy/ECM systems - 5% to 10%, if these could be quantified.

If they had the time, and could shake off the dust of centuries of accumulated bad habits, the SLN could enjoy the benefits of the greatest tech base and economy and re-invent itself as a true nightmare. But they don't have the time, and that is so very much dust.

With nothing going on by way of battles, does that mean Abigail will not gain rank? No wars, no fast promotions?

Is Henke the only one having fun right now?

cthia wrote:With nothing going on by way of battles, does that mean Abigail will not gain rank? No wars, no fast promotions?

The fast promotions were only partly due to stepping into a dead man's shoes. They were mostly due to a rapidly expanding navy. The RMN and GSN both needed to expand rapidly (or explosively in the case of Greyson) due to the fight with the People's Republic. Now, with that out of the way, I could see promotions slowing down, but only to a point and certainly not back to Travis Long speeds.

Once the SL crumbles, the RMN will still need to expand, due to both a suddenly much larger star nation and a much greater need for commerce protection in the former SL area. The GSN on the other hand, I really don't see any reason for them to keep their navy at even half the size it is now after the breakup. They may, or not, but I wouldn't bet on it either way. On the gripping hand, most of the Greysons senior to Abigail were not young enough to get prolong, so all she has to do is out live them.

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:Should we even be concerned with future SLN upgrades? If you upgrade junk to super junk, still equals junk. And I'd really hate to endure another thread of what to do with all of the captured, fresh off the assembly line, new junk.
(ANS)

Halo is not bad. It's a reasonable and effective response to the state of the art of 15-20 years back. The idea of it may play some small part in the next generation of Grand Alliance decoy/ECM systems - 5% to 10%, if these could be quantified.

If they had the time, and could shake off the dust of centuries of accumulated bad habits, the SLN could enjoy the benefits of the greatest tech base and economy and re-invent itself as a true nightmare. But they don't have the time, and that is so very much dust.

I could have seen Halo delivering (at least somewhat). The idea of playing with lots of little tethered ECM drones - so you could play games with mixing signals from multiple ones - looked like it might have some promise (though not being able to keep Ghost Rider drones from hovering close enough to real-time your ECM details back would undermine almost anything; even if the software / ECM programs they were using were worthy of the hardware)

But Aegis - giving up offensive firepower to provide a minor boost to their pathetically insufficient CM capabilities - seemed like a forlorn hope to me.
Even with the mod they can fire and control fewer CMs than recent Havenite or Mantie ships; and it turns out those CMs are even more outclassed that you might have thought.


But, the basic League technology should be able to fairly quickly address the worst of their deficiencies in CM numbers and effectiveness. Some of it is just a mater of overhauling the software (and possibly upgrading the computers) to handle the terminal velocities they should now know are possible from MDMs. And radically increasing the number of CM tubes (and CM fire control) in any new design should be simple enough. At least their next generation ships (should they last long enough to build them) should have at least most of the defensive ability of fairly recent Havenite designs.
The real question is could they leapfrog past that to where they need to be -- able to survive in an environment that includes Apollo (something the Havenite designs weren't really up to)

It has been mentioned, that with podlayers, there is no more need to limpet pods to the hull. Just call me a Hamish-like holdout for the days of yore. I like the idea of limpeted pods and a massive initial volley. Why can't really huge missiles be limpeted?

Question.

Could two missiles be mated together achieving even higher acceleration (sort of a twin turbo thing?) It would offer a greater radar signature to the opponent, then at the proper time, separate - confusing the hell out of opposing Tac-Ops. They'd be massive duos but they could be limpeted. Just a twist on an existing theme.

Would that place the wedges too close?

cthia wrote:Ah! Which was going to be my next question. Why would the SLN sell their tech to neobarbs that may end up using it against them? Like America fighting countries armed with their own weaponry.

I misspoke here a bit...I meant ships of the wall, in other words, SDs. I don't believe that those were being sold outright although I don't have textev to prove it.

What they were probably willing to sell was ships with export version or downgraded tech or designs that they believed completely obsolete.

It is also helpful to remember that BC class and lighter, in other words actual working class ships in FF, although not up to Haven sector standards, were probably a bit better off tech wise than the SDs if for no other reason than they had actual jobs to do.

Don

JeffEngel wrote:Halo is not bad. It's a reasonable and effective response to the state of the art of 15-20 years back. The idea of it may play some small part in the next generation of Grand Alliance decoy/ECM systems - 5% to 10%, if these could be quantified.

If they had the time, and could shake off the dust of centuries of accumulated bad habits, the SLN could enjoy the benefits of the greatest tech base and economy and re-invent itself as a true nightmare. But they don't have the time, and that is so very much dust.

We do need to remember that both halo and aegis were developed in ignorance of the actual threat level. There is no good excuse for that. Had the League's ONI been paying attention to what was going on during the Haven sector wars, they could have passed their findings on to people who could have designed ships capable of surviving in that threat environment. What happened is the League is falling victim to its own institutional arrogance.

Don