Honorverse ramblings and musings

Jonathan_S wrote:

munroburton wrote:The problem is, there are usually a high number of convoys going around. It is impossible to cover all of them against the maximum possible threats(BC or even BB+ raiders), especially as enemy raiders can pick and choose what to attack. We only really hear about the few that are attacked; the vast majority of convoys arrive safely.

That's helped by the fact that it takes a massive investment in raiders to hope to detect and intercept in hyper especially if they take even slightly evasive routing; so convoys are normally only vulnerable at their layovers in n-space.

That's where Honor got captured, while scouting Adler, and how Terekhov got ambushed in Hyacinth. But its really not feasible to equip every convoy going to a supply base with an escort powerful enough to defeat a force capable of having punched out that system's defenders.

And for the most part you mitigate that risk with better signalling. Now FTL comms are plentiful enough that any system you'd be sending a convoy to would be expected to have them, so send one of your escorts ahead and if they don't return with an "all ok" from the system defenders have the convoy bug out.

The other place colliers are at risk is when they accompany raiding forces. But for most the the trip their escort is the entire raiding force; which would seem to constitute a strong escort. Then when they peel off from the raid they're protected by the vastness of space - pick an out of the way part of n-space or hyper and leave the colliers there with a few DDs to keep an eye on them. Possibly consolidate that with the holding spot for an CLACs that dropped their loads and fell back.

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Exactly. Yet it is this part of their probable strategy that prompted my initial concern of a need for armed colliers. I think it obviously prudent strategy to leave your colliers squirreled away in what you think is an obscure region of space. I suppose that is also the doctrine of most navies.

Which means that most navies will also be aware that it is also your MO. That has always been a paranoia of mine - which begat the initial post of armed colliers - space is big, huge, yes. But during the apex of the Peeps numerical superiority, yet also when they severely lagged behind the RMN technologically -- yet before the RMN became aware of their numerical inferiority -- I always thought that the Peeps would try and anticipate likely hyper vectors and station many ships in stealth to try and isolate a collier. A "find-the-flag-in-stratego" sort of strategy. I know space is huge, which makes it difficult to impossible, but I'm surprised the Peeps didn't at least try. McQueen (I think it was her) was pretty damn savvy in guessing Honor's raiding pattern and ripping a piece of Sally's ass. IIRC she used the computers to analyze it. I'm surprised Haven didn't try to orchestrate a battle to isolate a collier alone or lightly defended.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:You know, now that I think of it, I can't recall any battles other than at Zanzibar where missile colliers were used in any fashion. I only recall the worry of the possibility of the opposing enemy combatant having them. There must have been plenty of times that colliers were sent out.

The thing that has made me go "hmmm" is wondering what type escort would normally draw that duty? My thinking, frequently flawed as it is, is that an ammo ship stock full of so much classified technology has to have a serious escort. Since the collier itself is impotent in battle the escort has to be formidable. Or it would be well worth it to an enemy to commit huge losses to capturing the collier in hopes of a windfall in tech. Certainly the RMN wouldn't want to make it a habit of self-destructing colliers. The problem then becomes how many ships would the RMN have available to act as escorts with so many simultaneous prongs of the war effort?

Remember the Battle of Hyacinth, in Terekhov's flashbacks? He had a division or so of light cruisers escorting a convoy of freighters stuffed with MDM resupplies for Eighth Fleet. Only two freighters escaped; the other six were destroyed, along with their escorts, when a Peep counterattack briefly retook Hyacinth.

There's no hard and fast rule for convoy escorts. Back in HotQ, two cruisers and two destroyers were considered adequate. In IEH, a heavy cruiser squadron. I think in EoH/AoV a training simulation had two DNs escorting a convoy. It all depends on a number of factors, mainly threat assessment and escort availability.

The problem is, there are usually a high number of convoys going around. It is impossible to cover all of them against the maximum possible threats(BC or even BB+ raiders), especially as enemy raiders can pick and choose what to attack. We only really hear about the few that are attacked; the vast majority of convoys arrive safely.

There's no hard and fast rules for convoy escorts. During WWII in an attempt to nail Tirpitz the RN used a convoy as bait. The convoy had close escort of 2 CA's 2 CL's and 8 DD/DE's with a distant escort of 2 BB's 3 CA 4 CL/AA 8 DD and a CVE. Also in the early days of the war a 16 ship convoy sole escort was HMS Ramilies which forced the S&G twins to disengage. It was also not uncommon for certain ships to sail with no escort at all like the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary.

cthia wrote:Exactly. Yet it is this part of their probable strategy that prompted my initial concern of a need for armed colliers. I think it obviously prudent strategy to leave your colliers squirreled away in what you think is an obscure region of space. I suppose that is also the doctrine of most navies.

Which means that most navies will also be aware that it is also your MO. That has always been a paranoia of mine - which begat the initial post of armed colliers - space is big, huge, yes. But during the apex of the Peeps numerical superiority, yet also when they severely lagged behind the RMN technologically -- yet before the RMN became aware of their numerical inferiority -- I always thought that the Peeps would try and anticipate likely hyper vectors and station many ships in stealth to try and isolate a collier. A "find-the-flag-in-stratego" sort of strategy. I know space is huge, which makes it difficult to impossible, but I'm surprised the Peeps didn't at least try. McQueen (I think it was her) was pretty damn savvy in guessing Honor's raiding pattern and ripping a piece of Sally's ass. IIRC she used the computers to analyze it. I'm surprised Haven didn't try to orchestrate a battle to isolate a collier alone or lightly defended.

Generally it's just not worth trying. The chances of finding the colliers by accident are essentially nil. You could send the entire Havenite navy out looking, and not find it. Usually you have better things for your ships to do.

cthia wrote:Exactly. Yet it is this part of their probable strategy that prompted my initial concern of a need for armed colliers. I think it obviously prudent strategy to leave your colliers squirreled away in what you think is an obscure region of space. I suppose that is also the doctrine of most navies.

Which means that most navies will also be aware that it is also your MO. That has always been a paranoia of mine - which begat the initial post of armed colliers - space is big, huge, yes. But during the apex of the Peeps numerical superiority, yet also when they severely lagged behind the RMN technologically -- yet before the RMN became aware of their numerical inferiority -- I always thought that the Peeps would try and anticipate likely hyper vectors and station many ships in stealth to try and isolate a collier. A "find-the-flag-in-stratego" sort of strategy. I know space is huge, which makes it difficult to impossible, but I'm surprised the Peeps didn't at least try. McQueen (I think it was her) was pretty damn savvy in guessing Honor's raiding pattern and ripping a piece of Sally's ass. IIRC she used the computers to analyze it. I'm surprised Haven didn't try to orchestrate a battle to isolate a collier alone or lightly defended.

But if you don't need to reload mid-battle the collier doesn't need to be "nearby", so you'd just call it up to reload you after you finished your fighting, then the area of space becomes literally astronomical.

If you wanted to collier somewhere within roughly 10 hours of the system your attacking that puts in anywhere within a couple lightyears of the target. And to spot a ship laying doggo you probably need to be within a lightminute or so. There are 2.19 * 10^17 cubic lightminutes within 2 cubic lightyears!!
If you could search a combined 100,000 cubic lightminutes per second it would take over 4 million years to search.
Space is unfathomably vast.


And that's assuming that the collier is hanging out in n-space. If it could also be waiting in hyper then the space to cover it smaller (spacial compression), but it could be in any accessable band, so you keep stacking more volume to search. Plus you have to get closer to see someone in hyper because the sensor conditions suck.



And if you just need to ammo up at some point before arriving at the next target there's no reason the collier has to hang around within 10 hours of either target.
I totally understand why nobody wasted resources on a wild goose chase like that.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Exactly. Yet it is this part of their probable strategy that prompted my initial concern of a need for armed colliers. I think it obviously prudent strategy to leave your colliers squirreled away in what you think is an obscure region of space. I suppose that is also the doctrine of most navies.

Which means that most navies will also be aware that it is also your MO. That has always been a paranoia of mine - which begat the initial post of armed colliers - space is big, huge, yes. But during the apex of the Peeps numerical superiority, yet also when they severely lagged behind the RMN technologically -- yet before the RMN became aware of their numerical inferiority -- I always thought that the Peeps would try and anticipate likely hyper vectors and station many ships in stealth to try and isolate a collier. A "find-the-flag-in-stratego" sort of strategy. I know space is huge, which makes it difficult to impossible, but I'm surprised the Peeps didn't at least try. McQueen (I think it was her) was pretty damn savvy in guessing Honor's raiding pattern and ripping a piece of Sally's ass. IIRC she used the computers to analyze it. I'm surprised Haven didn't try to orchestrate a battle to isolate a collier alone or lightly defended.

But if you don't need to reload mid-battle the collier doesn't need to be "nearby", so you'd just call it up to reload you after you finished your fighting, then the area of space becomes literally astronomical.

If you wanted to collier somewhere within roughly 10 hours of the system your attacking that puts in anywhere within a couple lightyears of the target. And to spot a ship laying doggo you probably need to be within a lightminute or so. There are 2.19 * 10^17 cubic lightminutes within 2 cubic lightyears!!
If you could search a combined 100,000 cubic lightminutes per second it would take over 4 million years to search.
Space is unfathomably vast.


And that's assuming that the collier is hanging out in n-space. If it could also be waiting in hyper then the space to cover it smaller (spacial compression), but it could be in any accessable band, so you keep stacking more volume to search. Plus you have to get closer to see someone in hyper because the sensor conditions suck.



And if you just need to ammo up at some point before arriving at the next target there's no reason the collier has to hang around within 10 hours of either target.
I totally understand why nobody wasted resources on a wild goose chase like that.

No I suppose not Johnathan. Since you put it like that.

But I was thinking more like catch the entire squadron or fleet en route by lying doggo in assumed approach vectors. I know, still impossible, but Haven was desperate at one point and they had so many BCs. And if they'd dangle a morsel in a system to be attacked and staked out possible approach vectors praying for a little luck. May be.

The worst that could happen is their officers would be bored of eating donuts in a cop-like stake-out. But if they had gotten lucky and captured a collier, many of their lives may have been saved from Apollo and other tech. And their many BCs were just sitting at Bolthole doing nothing.

cthia wrote:The worst that could happen is their officers would be bored of eating donuts in a cop-like stake-out. But if they had gotten lucky and captured a collier, many of their lives may have been saved from Apollo and other tech. And their many BCs were just sitting at Bolthole doing nothing.

And after all that luck, the collier's crew would have destroyed the pods themselves. The RMN is very canny about preparations to keep its technology from falling into others' hands.

Meanwhile, it's not as though all those BC's can't be doing better things, like attacking targets they can find. And Haven's espionage services aren't bad. Granted, their technical branches aren't as good as their political sabotage sorts, but it's so, so much cheaper than gambling with deep-space interceptions of colliers with escorts and pods prepped to self-destruct.

Honor Harrington's genetic enhancement is specifically due to the Meyerdahl beta genetic modification. If Honor was the sort of person, she could consciously seek out others with the same modification with intent of keeping her gene pool pure to benefit from superior offspring. Not exactly on the same path of the MAlign. Or one could seek to mate with an other different yet complimentary genetic modification

I think there is textev, IIRC, that RFC says this cannot happen. (Is that correct?) That the modifications are far enough along the gene sequence that it is "safe." But life finds a way. Life always finds a way. (a line from Jurassic Park). I would not be surprised if errant genes do not manifest itself in some births. Producing phenomenal IQs and the like. Even if it isn't supposed to happen, people are people and I can conceive of them seeking each other out with a prerequisite question of considering a mate "what's your gene sequence" becoming as common and superstitious as "what's your zodiac sign?" Surely people born in a binary system are more prone to split personalities. lol

But then there is the MAlign, whose modifications ventured outside the safe zone. There is also the added fact that they procreate within their own gene pool. The Nazis of the Honorverse. What genetic aberrations might manifest itself out of the MAlign gene pool after so many generations.

cthia wrote:Honor Harrington's genetic enhancement is specifically due to the Meyerdahl beta genetic modification. If Honor was the sort of person, she could consciously seek out others with the same modification with intent of keeping her gene pool pure to benefit from superior offspring. Not exactly on the same path of the MAlign. Or one could seek to mate with an other different yet complimentary genetic modification

I think there is textev, IIRC, that RFC says this cannot happen. (Is that correct?) That the modifications are far enough along the gene sequence that it is "safe." But life finds a way. Life always finds a way. (a line from Jurassic Park). I would not be surprised if errant genes do not manifest itself in some births. Producing phenomenal IQs and the like. Even if it isn't supposed to happen, people are people and I can conceive of them seeking each other out with a prerequisite question of considering a mate "what's your gene sequence" becoming as common and superstitious as "what's your zodiac sign?" Surely people born in a binary system are more prone to split personalities. lol

But then there is the MAlign, whose modifications ventured outside the safe zone. There is also the added fact that they procreate within their own gene pool. The Nazis of the Honorverse. What genetic aberrations might manifest itself out of the MAlign gene pool after so many generations.

The Meyerdahl sequences are somehow coded such that they are more than dominant--they actually copy themselves into the genes donated by the other parent. So every person with the Meyerdahl modifications has two copies of it, even if one parent did not have it, and it will always pass it on to future children.

In addition, it is not hard to find others with the Meyerdahl mods. The superdominance of the Meyerdahl genes means that they will spread through the population fairly quickly. Every descendant of a Meyerdahl genie is a Meyerdahl genie, no matter how many non-Meyerdahls are in the family tree. The text tells us that by now, the great majority of the population of Sphinx has the Meyerdahl mods.

And in any case, you can always make minor modifications to your child's genetic sequence, regardless of your partner's genetics. There is no pressing need to worry about your partner's genes.

cthia wrote:No I suppose not Johnathan. Since you put it like that.

But I was thinking more like catch the entire squadron or fleet en route by lying doggo in assumed approach vectors. I know, still impossible, but Haven was desperate at one point and they had so many BCs. And if they'd dangle a morsel in a system to be attacked and staked out possible approach vectors praying for a little luck. May be.

The worst that could happen is their officers would be bored of eating donuts in a cop-like stake-out. But if they had gotten lucky and captured a collier, many of their lives may have been saved from Apollo and other tech. And their many BCs were just sitting at Bolthole doing nothing.

It occurs to me that it's basically impossible to intercept a military formation in most parts of hyper.

(The two mid-hyper intercepts we've seen were both convoys contianing non-milspec freighters)

Those you can at least run down if you see them because a warship's rad shielding lets them achieve a 20% faster top speed in hyper (0.6c vs 0.5c) or they can attempt to throw up roadblocks by sending a unit to two through the next higher hyper band to drop in front. (Though you bleed off too much energy to be is a good position to get more than a single shot and the convoy blows past you)


But probably 95 percent of the time in hyper you'd moving at top speed; as fast as your rad shielding will allow. So if both sides have milspec shielding their top speeds are identical.

Plus milspec freighters are going to be up in at least the Eta bands, leaving at most only the Theta bands to try to get in front of them.

And finally the sensor conditions suck. If you were stationary relative to the convoy they'd fly all the way through your sensor range in about half an hour (I think sensors are good for under 10 lightminutes in hyper; so a 20 lightminute bubble around your ship).


If you were in a grav wave then you could get up to about 0.3c in that time; which is impressive but their accel is also roughly 10x normal, so they still have a good chance of staying entirely out of your energy range unless you were dead ahead of them when they entered sensor range.

If you were in a rift then you can increase your weapons reach by using missiles (preferably MDMs, or at least DDMs), but you have only normal accel; so the speed you can achieve in 30 minutes is more like 0.03c.


So pull off an interception where you can hold them in range and hope to capture them you need to guess not only their route but almost their exact timing so you can basically get up to nearly their speed and go silent before anybody is in sensor range. Seems virtually impossible...

SWM wrote:

Captain Thomas Bachfisch, owner and master of the armed merchant ship Pirates' Bane, was a lean, spare man with a thin, lined face. He was more than a little stoop-shouldered, and despite his immaculately tailored blue civilian uniform, he did not cut an impressive figure. Nor, for that matter, did Pirates' Bane. At around five million tons, the freighter was of little more than average size for most regions of space, although she did tend towards the upper end of the tonnage range here in Silesia. But although she was obviously well maintained, she was not—despite her defiantly aggressive name—much to look at. To an experienced eye, it was apparent that she was at least half a T-century old, and probably a product of the now-defunct Gopfert Yard in the New Berlin System. Gopfert had once been one of the busiest shipyards in the entire Andermani Empire, supplying not only the Empire's great merchant houses but also building warships and auxiliaries for the Imperial Navy.

That doesn't say anything about Pirate's Bane having been built as a collier. Is there textev for that? Might it have been a civilian ship originally?

2 Paragraphs down from the above quoted text it does:

"As a matter of fact, she started life as a Vogel-class armed collier for your own Navy something like seventy T-years ago. I picked her up cheap when she was finally listed for disposal about ten T-years ago because her inertial compensator was pretty much shot. Aside from that, she was in fairly good shape, though, so it wasn't too hard to get her back on-line. I replaced and updated her original armament at the same time, and I put a good bit of thought into how to camouflage the weapon ports while I was at it."