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Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoilers?)

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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by SYED   » Fri Apr 06, 2018 6:45 pm

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Has all the ships going to Darius as part of operation Houdini reached it yet? With the advancement of Malignment plans, more people and ships would be going to and from Darius. Sure they will scrub their data banks, but information will leak and spread.
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by kzt   » Fri Apr 06, 2018 7:27 pm

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Not in the honorverse.
"So, you want to talk to us about Darius?"
Thump
"Wow, both a heart attack AND a brain aneurysm."
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by PeterZ   » Sat Apr 07, 2018 12:33 pm

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The more Darius sends out transports to Yildun and the RF, the more likely Firebrand ....er Plays with Fire will have a conversation about Darius with someone who knows about it. He may or may not drop dead.

Background: a skipper logs trips to suspect star systems as well as spending a significant amount of unaccountable time "somewhere". Plays with Fire and Indy interview the captain.

Scenario 1: they kidnap him and ask directly. He dies.

Scenario 2: they meet with him about a legitimate shipping contract in line with the skipper's cover as a shady merchie captain. They talk to him about the sorts of contracts he's taken in an effort determine whether or not to hire him. Fire Watch is hidden nearby to detect lies.

Scenario 2 doesn't result in death and legitimate questioning can determine where the captain spends most of his time. Not specifically, but the region of space. Conversations with enough merchies that deal with suspect systems will provide a picture of those systems' distribution network including any region that doesn't involve identifiable merchant business.

This will take a very long time to accomplish and will require agents that are abviously NOT Alliance members. A kid from the sticks of the Fringe very well versed in black market activity and the most forgettable man in the galaxy fit the bill nicely. All the need is some seed money and a select number of legal suppliers and they can establish a suitably .....flexible suppliers of desirable items. Montanan beef, Mobius mutton and lamb as well anything of suitably questionable legality. Nothing truly black, but suitably gray depending on the star system.
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by SYED   » Sat Apr 07, 2018 6:21 pm

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They must be curious about why the Malignment was not using the torch wormhole. So wonder if it is part of the conspiracy. It is a long shot but it could eventually lead to Felix.

Part of the Malignment plans is scrubbing any ship of mention of Darius, but why bother with ships from Darius. Sure it would be part of the protocol, but secret ships naturally have self destruct orders. So if captured or crippled, they might not have wiped the databases as cleanly.
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by kzt   » Sat Apr 07, 2018 7:21 pm

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SYED wrote:They must be curious about why the Malignment was not using the torch wormhole. So wonder if it is part of the conspiracy. It is a long shot but it could eventually lead to Felix.

Part of the Malignment plans is scrubbing any ship of mention of Darius, but why bother with ships from Darius. Sure it would be part of the protocol, but secret ships naturally have self destruct orders. So if captured or crippled, they might not have wiped the databases as cleanly.

There is an explanation that matches all the available. It's a deathtrap. Nobody can use it.

The MA isn't run by idiots. You won't get the location of Darius from a captured ship anymore than 200+ captured ships, most with intact computer cores, led to Bolthole.
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by pappilon   » Mon Apr 09, 2018 4:01 am

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Frankjg wrote:When will it be revealed publicly and will the torch junction be figured out?


The torch junction has been figured out ... from Torch. Whatever is causing the unusual readings is just a big shipkiller. Nothing that goes in ever returns.

We know from a couple or 3 books back that Mannerheim has a squadreon of ships parked at the whj waiting to destroy any Nosy Parkers coming through for a looksie. Even when/if the MA/RF launches an ttack through the wormhole an assault beck through is total insanity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by Eagleeye   » Mon Apr 09, 2018 7:52 am

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pappilon wrote:
Frankjg wrote:When will it be revealed publicly and will the torch junction be figured out?


The torch junction has been figured out ... from Torch. Whatever is causing the unusual readings is just a big shipkiller. Nothing that goes in ever returns.

We know from a couple or 3 books back that Mannerheim has a squadreon of ships parked at the whj waiting to destroy any Nosy Parkers coming through for a looksie. Even when/if the MA/RF launches an ttack through the wormhole an assault beck through is total insanity.


How fast can a squadron of two of BCs (or Shrike-LACs, to put the most challenging benchmark in your way), tasked with watching over a terminus, destroy a SD which comes through that terminus? Can a SD, relying only on its armor, survive an attack long enough, that a 2nd one can come through, before the 1st one is destroyed or mission killed?

If that's the case - that could be a chance, if you're ruthless and/or desperately enough. Put some voluntaries (or some war criminals with death sentences) aboard such vessels and send them through the Torch-end of the terminus in as tight a sequence as technical possible - and send your own regular vessels through only after a big enough number of the deathtraps went through. The guardians should still be occupied with destroying the deathtraps while your own warships can reestablish their fighting capability after the transit ...

I admit, you should've got knowledge beforehand about the theoretical survivability of the passage through other ways, while the Alignment/RF remains in the dark about that - but if you're reasonable sure about that minor fact, you could (I say again: could) try it that way.
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by runsforcelery   » Mon Apr 09, 2018 12:26 pm

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Eagleeye wrote:
Frankjg wrote:When will it be revealed publicly and will the torch junction be figured out?


pappilon wrote:The torch junction has been figured out ... from Torch. Whatever is causing the unusual readings is just a big shipkiller. Nothing that goes in ever returns.

We know from a couple or 3 books back that Mannerheim has a squadreon of ships parked at the whj waiting to destroy any Nosy Parkers coming through for a looksie. Even when/if the MA/RF launches an ttack through the wormhole an assault beck through is total insanity.


How fast can a squadron of two of BCs (or Shrike-LACs, to put the most challenging benchmark in your way), tasked with watching over a terminus, destroy a SD which comes through that terminus? Can a SD, relying only on its armor, survive an attack long enough, that a 2nd one can come through, before the 1st one is destroyed or mission killed?

If that's the case - that could be a chance, if you're ruthless and/or desperately enough. Put some voluntaries (or some war criminals with death sentences) aboard such vessels and send them through the Torch-end of the terminus in as tight a sequence as technical possible - and send your own regular vessels through only after a big enough number of the deathtraps went through. The guardians should still be occupied with destroying the deathtraps while your own warships can reestablish their fighting capability after the transit ...

I admit, you should've got knowledge beforehand about the theoretical survivability of the passage through other ways, while the Alignment/RF remains in the dark about that - but if you're reasonable sure about that minor fact, you could (I say again: could) try it that way.


Won't work, unless you've got enough SDs to run the other side out of ammunition, which would be . . . like, a lot of them. They come through with no sidewalls and no wedges. That means their entire upper and lower unarmored hulls are exposed to fire. Even a seven or eight-million ton ship with that kind of exposure to defending fire is pretty much dead on arrival, and all you really have to do to keep it from reporting back is to take out a single alpha node. Mind you, having a pissed off SD "trapped" amongst your DDs might not be the ideal tactical scenario, but how many of these ships are you willing to use up? By now, the defending squadron has been reinforced by a boatload of mines and IDEW, as well, which ups the odds against your SDs several times over.

Like I say, you'd need to have a lot of SDs you don't need any more lying around. Especially since there is no way to tell a "killer" wormhole from any other without making transit. The logical conclusion, if your survey ships don't come back, is that there is a reason which has nothing at all to do with enemy action. At which point shoving SDs through just to prove a point becomes . . . ah, suboptimal, I believe. :lol:


"Oh, bother!" said Pooh, as Piglet came back from the dead.
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by Peregrinator   » Mon Apr 09, 2018 3:59 pm

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runsforcelery wrote:Like I say, you'd need to have a lot of SDs you don't need any more lying around. Especially since there is no way to tell a "killer" wormhole from any other without making transit. The logical conclusion, if your survey ships don't come back, is that there is a reason which has nothing at all to do with enemy action. At which point shoving SDs through just to prove a point becomes . . . ah, suboptimal, I believe. :lol:

There is a polity with a lot of SDs that are just sitting around gathering dust....
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Re: Felix junction, key aspect of the story (possible spoile
Post by pappilon   » Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:40 pm

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Peregrinator wrote:
runsforcelery wrote:Like I say, you'd need to have a lot of SDs you don't need any more lying around. Especially since there is no way to tell a "killer" wormhole from any other without making transit. The logical conclusion, if your survey ships don't come back, is that there is a reason which has nothing at all to do with enemy action. At which point shoving SDs through just to prove a point becomes . . . ah, suboptimal, I believe. :lol:

There is a polity with a lot of SDs that are just sitting around gathering dust....


IIRC SPOILER ALERT




Somewhere in the textev it says to reconfigure from Warhaawski sails (which o=are not impenetrable wedges) to spin up the wedge takes 30 minutes for a SD, 20 for a destroyer.

So how many pods can you launch in 20 minutes? Which comes to how many pods do I have and how many obsolete SD's dou have and can you crew? How many ae you going to send into the Gravity well of a Brown dwarf before you fill it up?

Remember, you're on the blind side. You can't see what's on the other side. Maybe its Mannerheim BCs with a collier of cataphract SD killers, maybe its a black hole. Either way, your ships are toast. NO Commander is going to keep pouring ships, even obsolete SDs crewed by idiot SLN BF crews, into a black hole.
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The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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