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Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"

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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by pappilon   » Wed Oct 04, 2017 2:06 pm

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George J. Smith wrote:Even with the sensor readings/logs, the mandarins have already spun BoM2 as Manticore getting Filareta to scuttle his pods before firing on him.


Which is all true. They are fighting a PR war to keep Solly public opinion from turning on them

What is Daoud al Fanoudhi going to glean from it and how much of that is his boss going to just toss out of hand as the wild eyed sky-is-falling ranting of the guy on everybody's s#&* list?

And what actionable data are they receiving? Can they act on it before the wheels come off or the entire navy is reduced to navigational hazards?
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by runsforcelery   » Wed Oct 04, 2017 3:34 pm

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pappilon wrote:
George J. Smith wrote:Even with the sensor readings/logs, the mandarins have already spun BoM2 as Manticore getting Filareta to scuttle his pods before firing on him.


Which is all true. They are fighting a PR war to keep Solly public opinion from turning on them

What is Daoud al Fanoudhi going to glean from it and how much of that is his boss going to just toss out of hand as the wild eyed sky-is-falling ranting of the guy on everybody's s#&* list?

And what actionable data are they receiving? Can they act on it before the wheels come off or the entire navy is reduced to navigational hazards?



They got pretty much bupkis in the way of actionable information. They've got Honor demanding Filaretta's surrender and pitilessly enumerating his capabilities. Then they have com footage of her showing him a sh --- crapload of missile pods. (They don't have anything showing them the actual pods.) Then they have a tactical display that shows Filaretta launching and a delay of several seconds before the first GA missile drives appear on it (thus demonstrating who fired first). And then they have the tac data of a single GA salvo wrecking 11th Fleet from one end to the other. :shock:

Aside from that, they've got nothing. Of course, what they did get was ample to convince just about anyone that they really, really don't want to provoke a GA wall of battle, and Honor's dissection of Filaretta's missile load out (and his fire control capabilities) should also suggest that (a) the GA learned a little something after crawling around Crandall's surrendered SDs and (b) the GA's sensor capability and (by implication) drone stealth is one hell of a lot better than the SLN's. Neither of those conclusions should have been much of a stretch for anyone with a brain (I realize we are talking about Solarian analysts, but still . . . .) to figure out on his own. And indicating to the SLN's personnel just how much they want to avoid finding themselves the target of a GA podnought (and all of the morale and aggressive implications that carries with it) has to be considered a Good Thing from the GA's perspective. They want any SL officer they face to already be defeated inside his own head before the first shot is fired. . . and actually seeing what happened to Filaretta ought to go quite a ways in that direction, don't you think? :twisted:


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by pappilon   » Wed Oct 04, 2017 4:08 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:
pappilon wrote:[

Which is all true. They are fighting a PR war to keep Solly public opinion from turning on them

What is Daoud al Fanoudhi going to glean from it and how much of that is his boss going to just toss out of hand as the wild eyed sky-is-falling ranting of the guy on everybody's s#&* list?

And what actionable data are they receiving? Can they act on it before the wheels come off or the entire navy is reduced to navigational hazards?



They got pretty much bupkis in the way of actionable information. They've got Honor demanding Filaretta's surrender and pitilessly enumerating his capabilities. Then they have com footage of her showing him a sh --- crapload of missile pods. (They don't have anything showing them the actual pods.) Then they have a tactical display that shows Filaretta launching and a delay of several seconds before the first GA missile drives appear on it (thus demonstrating who fired first). And then they have the tac data of a single GA salvo wrecking 11th Fleet from one end to the other. :shock:

Aside from that, they've got nothing. Of course, what they did get was ample to convince just about anyone that they really, really don't want to provoke a GA wall of battle, and Honor's dissection of Filaretta's missile load out (and his fire control capabilities) should also suggest that (a) the GA learned a little something after crawling around Crandall's surrendered SDs and (b) the GA's sensor capability and (by implication) drone stealth is one hell of a lot better than the SLN's. Neither of those conclusions should have been much of a stretch for anyone with a brain (I realize we are talking about Solarian analysts, but still . . . .) to figure out on his own. And indicating to the SLN's personnel just how much they want to avoid finding themselves the target of a GA podnought (and all of the morale and aggressive implications that carries with it) has to be considered a Good Thing from the GA's perspective. They want any SL officer they face to already be defeated inside his own head before the first shot is fired. . . and actually seeing what happened to Filaretta ought to go quite a ways in that direction, don't you think? :twisted:


Yes, assuming the powers that be actually disseminate the information to anyone beyond the 400th floor. Which, of course, we have to assume they will.
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by Brigade XO   » Wed Oct 04, 2017 6:16 pm

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I could be wrong but I thought that along with sending a surviving senior officer of Fillerta's fleet back to Sol with copies of the conversation with Filerta and evicerating the SLN fleet as well as shruging off it's entire (if somewhat unsyncrinized) massed volley, that the GA sent the same thing along to all the news outlets so about half the universe could have a look at the information without the Mandarin's propaganda machine playing with it first even to the point that "the Public" saw the stuff ahead of the Mandarins.
That, as the saying goes "has to hurt".
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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by ldwechsler   » Wed Oct 04, 2017 6:34 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:I could be wrong but I thought that along with sending a surviving senior officer of Fillerta's fleet back to Sol with copies of the conversation with Filerta and evicerating the SLN fleet as well as shruging off it's entire (if somewhat unsyncrinized) massed volley, that the GA sent the same thing along to all the news outlets so about half the universe could have a look at the information without the Mandarin's propaganda machine playing with it first even to the point that "the Public" saw the stuff ahead of the Mandarins.
That, as the saying goes "has to hurt".


We've already seen them playing games with the New Tuscany tape.
They can fiddle around with the Filareta one. Use the sound track but leave out the seconds when the Sollie missiles leave. Then put them in as a reaction.

This should be fairly simple and on a lot of worlds that will be all they see.
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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by n7axw   » Wed Oct 04, 2017 11:24 pm

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IIRC it was Rafe who pointed out to Honor that she hadn't given Filereta the full truth about her capabilities, where Theisman responded that what she had given was more than enough to make the point.

I guess what annoys me as much as anything is giving the tac recordings to Abuzzi to twist and distort for propaganda purposes. Why help the League out like that? Some PR oportunity that turns out to be!

Don

-
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by runsforcelery   » Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:08 am

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n7axw wrote:IIRC it was Rafe who pointed out to Honor that she hadn't given Filereta the full truth about her capabilities, where Theisman responded that what she had given was more than enough to make the point.

I guess what annoys me as much as anything is giving the tac recordings to Abuzzi to twist and distort for propaganda purposes. Why help the League out like that? Some PR oportunity that turns out to be!

Don

-



Because, as has been pointed out above, they were also handed to the newsies at the same time. In other words, Abruzzi can twist away all he wants, can provide an "official" version which "scrubs all the CGI" out of that awful, fake version that went straight up on the public boards thanks to gullible so-called journalists who didn't know better than to fall for fake news, but he can't make it go away.

So while he can --- and does --- dispute the timing of Honor's conversation with Filaretta, and while he can --- and does --- insist that the Manties cut out the bit where Filaretta surrendered, he's still got the problem of when the missile traces appeared for both sides. He can still convince quite a lot of Core World population, but you know what Abraham Lincoln had to say about that. :twisted:


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by pappilon   » Thu Oct 05, 2017 2:27 am

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runsforcelery wrote:
n7axw wrote:IIRC it was Rafe who pointed out to Honor that she hadn't given Filereta the full truth about her capabilities, where Theisman responded that what she had given was more than enough to make the point.

I guess what annoys me as much as anything is giving the tac recordings to Abuzzi to twist and distort for propaganda purposes. Why help the League out like that? Some PR oportunity that turns out to be!

Don

-



Because, as has been pointed out above, they were also handed to the newsies at the same time. In other words, Abruzzi can twist away all he wants, can provide an "official" version which "scrubs all the CGI" out of that awful, fake version that went straight up on the public boards thanks to gullible so-called journalists who didn't know better than to fall for fake news, but he can't make it go away.

So while he can --- and does --- dispute the timing of Honor's conversation with Filaretta, and while he can --- and does --- insist that the Manties cut out the bit where Filaretta surrendered, he's still got the problem of when the missile traces appeared for both sides. He can still convince quite a lot of Core World population,

runsforcelery wrote: but you know what Abraham Lincoln had to say about that. :twisted:


Yeah "the trouble with quotes on the internet is that they are a wooly bugger to verify."

We are responsible for doing our best. We are not responsible for the outcome. That is a quote but I forgot the source :( .

Yes, Don, we are all entitled to our opinions, even our very valid ones. Unfortunately, that decision was made way above our pay grades, possibly even Duckks one. We'll just hav to see how history judges that tiny pecadillo.
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by lyonheart   » Thu Oct 05, 2017 6:53 am

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Hi Don,

It's good to read your excellent posts again.

As RFC, pappilon and Brigade XO have pointed out, they really didn't get that much in the first place.

While Tamaguchi in SoV thinks about podnaughts in passing, even someone as good as he didn't begin to appreciate all the ramifications of what he did know or inferred, until the combined avalanche of all the 'unk-unks' finally got through his solarian arrogance.

Honor's major doctrinal base is that the SL isn't a single cohesive monolithic block [which is the general mandarin view], but lots of single star systems, each with plenty of reasons not to like the SL, which the SEM/GA can appeal to if not remedy.

In short the real war is for the hearts and minds of almost 2000 member star systems, which can be reached and perhaps affected far more quickly by news [NTM propaganda] reports than any fleet the GA can send however powerful, and winning their support or at least neutrality is the true key to victory, the sooner the better.

The news the GA is sharing with them is how the mandarins have been violating their own constitution, without any attempt to consider the various SEM mediation proposals, the repeated refusals to recall Filaretta, then blaming and scapegoating Beowulf for trying to prevent the stupid disaster.

Given Beowulf's far better reputation than the mandarins, which almost a quarter of the Executive Council supported, the non-core SL members may respect and admire Beowulf enough to agree with its attempts to prevent the war.

Then the quick and easy destruction of a quarter of the active Battle Fleet SD's [about 8 minutes at Spindle, maybe 5 Manticore] totally upsets all the strategic calculus of these star nations.

First: The basis of Solarian power for several centuries has been the absolute indisputable invincibility of the Solarian League Navy, that no one would ever be able to contest, thus likely to be an eternal verity that had to be faced and accepted however hated it was.
[yeah I know how thick it is] :roll:

Now, suddenly all that has entirely changed.

The SLN Battle Fleet is so incredibly obsolete it can't face these new 'Johnie come latelies' navies at all, ie 60-70 billion tons of very expensive SD's [~500 TRILLION M$] totally worthless, such that using FF BC's for commerce raiding is the only viable military action that Kingsford or the mandarins can see [granted they're being 'helped' by Gweon].

Instantly going from the only 800 kilo gorilla extant to mice or rats [comparing BC's to SD's] is quite a status change.
:o :shock: 8-)

But the time taken by most SL members to recognize and internalize that fact slows the sea-change the GA needs to create; but when you're dealing with humans, expect more than the usual grit in the gears to slow down optimal results.

Second: The important thing about sending the footage to Sol, is that it means the GA has a minimum ten day lead from Beowulf [5 days each way to Terra] before the mandarin's lies can follow them, assuming it takes E&I only hours to falsify its version without leaving its fingerprints; ie about half the league saw the GA's version first coming from Beowulf and reinforced by ten days of followup reports, before calculating how quickly the GA messages reached the other wormholes, thus Erewhon's is only 3+ days behind and the RMN/GA controls 3-4 other wormholes within 60-100 LY of Sol, though they're more than ten days from Manticore apparently, IIRC.

Still the truth is going to beat the mandarins' lies to most of the league, even if only by hours [the contrast and comparison should make it obvious who's lying] particularly the shells and especially the verge, as the mandarins themselves admit their lies won't last long.

Third: This new 'Grand Alliance', dismissed as neobarbs for centuries, has humbled the mighty SLN, rendered the huge BF Fleet [and its vast Reserve Fleet] club irrelevant, which was the inevitable threat behind every SL/mandarin demand, and made it look absurdly easy.

Fourth: Remember the league membership is composed of sovereign states, who are independent star nations, upon whom the SL is largely distant and benign; it doesn't rule them, nor directly tax them, so very few 'solarian' citizens normally give much thought at all about the SL, which was the way it preferred things to be, in order to continue to feed on the verge and grow ever larger like a cancer in the dark.

Then publicly violating its constitution in multiple obvious ways, the SL/mandarins ignored the Executive Council, made undeclared war, made no declaration of war, attempted to coerce members to submit to its whims with the threat of deadly force against league civilian citizens, refuses to alert most members it is at war, or notify the EC of all of its actions in their name, then scapegoated Beowulf for trying to stop the SL mandarins/bureaucrats.

All of which it could also do to each solitary member, almost alone with far fewer friends than Beowulf with its galactic moral reputation, it opposition to the 'business as usual' SL corruption, its devotion to social liberty, not unlike the founders of the USA's opposition to government controls.

Rather than continue to be part of such a monster, Beowulf then announced it will leave the SL, after several centuries of being one of its major leaders, that many younger SL members tried to model themselves upon. Incredible!

For the leaders of an SL member responsible for billions of their system citizens, who do have to think about the SL and its appetites every day, this is a paradigm change in the life of your star system, of the SL itself, if it survives; and of humanity beyond the stars, ie everybody else outside it.

Which side would you choose?

If you're only following the reports of your EC delegation and embassy, that is not using your own other sources of information [spies, etc]; you knew about Byng, Crandall and Filaretta's future attack from the newsies and the public efforts by Beowulf and the SEM to stop it weeks before he reached Manticore, their prophecy he would be destroyed, it's quick fulfillment, and the bureaucratic mandarin response of punishing the innocent and rewarding the guilty, before getting into the corruption that is the SL.

If you had reason to hate or object to the bureaucratic SL dictatorship, the corruption that is the SL, how quickly would you contact this potential savior, this 'Grand Alliance' that Beowulf appears headed to join?

If thanks to your very critically needed spies, you know how E&I lies and can't be trusted about anything, how corrupt the SL truly is, so the fact that Beowulf seems to be even considering joining the GA is a very good sign.

Personally, it'd take me only a day or two before at least sending observers to contact this GA ASAP to check them out if I already didn't know enough [just how many SL members have embassies on Manticore or Beowulf already?], via the nearest wormhole if possible.

Since Filaretta was destroyed in the middle of June and it only takes 5 days by db to reach Terra, and another ~18 days from there to reach members about 150 LY from Sol, ie most (those beyond that [up to ~200 LY from Sol] should probably have received notice via wormholes from Manticore by then if not SL newsies), every member in the SL should have learned of this political tsunami by the middle of July, though acting on it, ie getting the GA's attention could take another 3 weeks, or early August.

CoG and SoV ended in early October, and SoV concentrated on the verge around Talbot, so we haven't yet seen what happened on Beowulf, or elsewhere within and around the SL for 3-4 monthes, so that's why RFC is giving us that missing very very interesting data in UH.

Given that almost a quarter of the EC didn't take the mandarins' bribes or submit to their threats to vote against Beowulf, quite a bit of the membership seem willing to consider other options, and might be receptive to the GA.

Given Beowulf's penetration of the SL/N, I suspect the GA will send rescue TF's to some systems before some of them might have talked to the GA yet, to their very good fortune.

Given what just a pair or two of GA SDP's [from around 1200] could do to 8-10% (let alone 1.6-2.2%) of what's left of BF [especially with a missile collier along], mousetrapping the BF secession suspension fleets ought to be pretty easy and demonstrations of RHN MDM's and even Apollo might save a quarter million plus SLN sailors each time , as well as profoundly impressing all the observers, newsies and locals alike.

Such collapses of Solly power in the shells in some outer core systems, widely distributed :D , could generate the avalanches of secessions the mandarins fear.

Of course, that's quite aside from whatever HA-H does about the BF reserve fleets in the 6-7 system anchorages etc. 8-)

So the war could easily end (or be effectively over) by March of 1923, or at least the first phase, the breakup of the SL.

Not an example of brevity. ;)

L


[quote="n7axw"][quote="pappilon"]quote="n7axw"

[Snip]
A couple of things me a bit. Why send records of 2nd BOM to the League at all? I can understand the two Tuscany incidents. I can even stretch a bit to include Spindle. That was done in the hope that the League would get a clue and start treating Manticore's demands seriously. But the BOM? By that time it was completely clear that the League wasn't acting in good faith and had no intention of doing so.

Had I been calling the shots, I would simply sent a note home to the League telling the League that their fleet has been destroyed and that a state of war now exists between the GA and the League, along with a list of POWs and a statement that those POWs were being treated in according to the Deneb accords.-quote

Good question. it is not only a Political Statement, it is also a Public Relations Event. They sent copies of all their prevkious requests to recall Filareta with the dire warnings of what would happen to his fleet if they did carry out this illegal invasion. They sent (probably) The bridge recordings of Honor's ultimatum to Filarta, and the tactical recordings of the actual destruction of his fleet.

[quote]They certainly weren't entitled to any tactical info about how it was done or any further looks at Manty weapons systems.

Don [/quote]

They didn't really get any better look at Manty capabilities, they did get put on notice that the Republic of Haven had joined them in their war against the SL. "Maybe we are low on missiles, but the Second-Best-navy-in-the- 'Verse has plenty of missiles, SDs to fire them and an entire intact infrastructure to replace their losses.[/quote]

It's just that I think that the SLN should be getting their tactical info the hard way rather than the RMN assisting their Intel with blow by blow accounts.

As for PR, having entire fleets blown out of space should make the point without the blow by blow. That certainly isn't how the wars with Haven were fought. All the tactical recordings do is provide grist for the Solly propaganda mill to distort.

Don

-[/quote]
Any snippet or post from RFC is good if not great!
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Re: Solarian warships/tech : "What is possible!"
Post by lyonheart   » Thu Oct 05, 2017 7:13 am

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Hello Runs For Celery!

Always good to read your posts!

I believe the quote you're referring to is:

"You can fool all of the people some of the time, or you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time".

Which was only credited to Lincoln 2 decades after he died, by some prohibitionist politicians, while PT Barnum is also given earlier credit by some; a French protestant, Jacques Abbadie, in his 1684 book put it thus, after translation and 333 years of language shifts:

"One can fool some men, or all men in some places and times, but one cannot fool all men in all places and ages"

Which Diderot published in a very similar form in his Encyclopedia and Dictionary in 1754.

-from Quote investigator.

Very interesting site, certainly worth the search.

Keep smiling,

L


runsforcelery wrote:
n7axw wrote:IIRC it was Rafe who pointed out to Honor that she hadn't given Filereta the full truth about her capabilities, where Theisman responded that what she had given was more than enough to make the point.

I guess what annoys me as much as anything is giving the tac recordings to Abuzzi to twist and distort for propaganda purposes. Why help the League out like that? Some PR oportunity that turns out to be!

Don

-



Because, as has been pointed out above, they were also handed to the newsies at the same time. In other words, Abruzzi can twist away all he wants, can provide an "official" version which "scrubs all the CGI" out of that awful, fake version that went straight up on the public boards thanks to gullible so-called journalists who didn't know better than to fall for fake news, but he can't make it go away.

So while he can --- and does --- dispute the timing of Honor's conversation with Filaretta, and while he can --- and does --- insist that the Manties cut out the bit where Filaretta surrendered, he's still got the problem of when the missile traces appeared for both sides. He can still convince quite a lot of Core World population, but you know what Abraham Lincoln had to say about that. :twisted:
Any snippet or post from RFC is good if not great!
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