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-SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes

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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by Brigade XO   » Wed May 16, 2018 10:59 pm

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Just because nobody (GA, SLN, anybody) has seen an Alignment warship doesn't mean that at least the GA presumes they have them.

Sure, you could have pulled off Oyster Bay (in two systems including a binary one) with merchant shipping--except that there was dam little in the way of sensor data and there was something very new and different about parts of those attacks. The sensor ghosts which couldn't be pinned down are just one bit of the puzzle.
All the weapons that came in on ballistic courses (timed - across both systems of the binary star) in both Manticore and Grayson came after massivly good tactical data was aquired on the targets. Then there was the grasers that did all that havoc on the space stations....those were NOT ballistic in the attack phase and they did maneuver (read the descriptions of the cutting actions) and NOBODY saw anything on any surviving sensor logs. That would include those of the tugs working around the stations before and after the attack.

So, not exactly "merchant shipping" level gear and there are only the start of working on what was involved for delivery.

The RF is all conventional warships in the Solly design style except for what we have not yet been told about. Other than the Streak Drive ships and those vessels used by the Alignment in their sneaking around and covert activities (and all those subcontracted agents and henchmen who don't have access to the really good stuff) we have only been told about the spyder drive ships of the Alignment: Ghosts, Sharks, Lenny Detts.
We don't know the overall fleet strength of the Alignment nor the numbers of any given class though the Sharks are a fairly low number if all of them was what could be scraped up to commit to OB and designed as training and testbed units.

The GA and friends (Grayson, the Andermani etc) are going to work from the proposition that there is an unknown navy out there with ships (a lot of them) of generaly unknown capability excpet that they they can avoid dam near every sensor presently in posession of the GA, can carry our large precision attacks on a system wide scale and nobody knows exactly what they want.
Hell, it might as well be the Gorba, just not the massive attacks with not much care to what they lose as long as they wipe out the humans.

Interesting times indeed.
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by Slneezy   » Thu May 17, 2018 2:18 am

Slneezy
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n7axw wrote:
10000 SD(p)s??? Were I John Q Public on a League world, I'd be asking what on earth for? Who are we planning to conquer? It would make more sense to make friends with your neighbors and promote trade, perhaps negotiating some arms limitation agreements.

Don

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If I were John Q Public on a League world I'd be asking why not 20000. The SLN has just gotten its ass handed to it on all levels - the apropriate answer is to build stuff up so the League can actually defend itself even if it doesn't recover its super-heavy status.

The League had over 1700 worlds - even if over a third of them leave that still means New League will go over a thousand. Some of them will be as rich as Manticore - Earth's GDP (Gross System Product?) was something like 20% or 30% higher than Manticore's several years ago and then Oyster Bay happened.

Manticore had a couple hundred SDs and DNs prior to the war with Haven plus the Junction forts and lighter units and etc, etc, etc. Then they built several hundred other SDs and SD(P)s and financed Grayson's buildup and etc, etc, etc.

A thousand plus League with a 10000 SD(P) fleet would have less than 10 SD(P)s per planet.

That's not a lot. Sure it'd be more expensive than the pittance the League previously threw in - but considering how badly the League has been hit by two entirely independent powers that's an expense they'll most likely want to make.
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by Weird Harold   » Thu May 17, 2018 4:38 am

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Slneezy wrote:If I were John Q Public on a League world I'd be asking why not 20000.
...

A thousand plus League with a 10000 SD(P) fleet would have less than 10 SD(P)s per planet.

That's not a lot. Sure it'd be more expensive than the pittance the League previously threw in - but considering how badly the League has been hit by two entirely independent powers that's an expense they'll most likely want to make.


How many countries currently feature Battleships -- dreadnought size or bigger, excluding aircraft carriers -- in their Navies?

John Q Solly isn't going to worry about how many SDs the SLN has, he's going to worry about how much his taxes are going up to pay for them. The SLN Admiralty is going to look at the way four RMN CAs destroyed 90+ SLN BCs and one RMN Destroyer drove off the remaining 100+ ships.

Dollar for dollar, the SLN can buy more combat power in Cruisers and more powerful missiles than they can in SDs. That doesn't mean they won't build a few pod-layer designs but they'll probably experiment with a BC(P) or Marksman/Arsenal design first.

The SLN has had dramatic illustrations of how effective Cruisers and SysDef missile pods can be -- even with the FTL command modules trashed -- and equally dramatic illustrations of how vulnerable SDs can be. The minor detail that SD(p)s were used in the conquest of Sol system, is going to weigh less than the emotional impact of the many "lesser" defeats.

I fully expect all of the Navies in the Honorverse to start looking at packing the most lethality into the smallest packages and wind up with a mix of CLACs, Destroyers and Cruisers that are as capable as present day SD(p)s.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by Joat42   » Thu May 17, 2018 4:49 am

Joat42
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Brigade XO wrote:..snip..
The GA and friends (Grayson, the Andermani etc) are going to work from the proposition that there is an unknown navy out there with ships (a lot of them) of generaly unknown capability excpet that they they can avoid dam near every sensor presently in posession of the GA, can carry our large precision attacks on a system wide scale and nobody knows exactly what they want.
Hell, it might as well be the Gorba, just not the massive attacks with not much care to what they lose as long as they wipe out the humans.

Interesting times indeed.

I thought the GA already concluded that whoever did the sneak attacks did it just because they didn't have a lot of ships.

And the GA already have enough information to draw a pretty good picture of what MAligns goals are, especially in light of all the information Firebrand had.

The MAlign has in a sense painted themselves into a corner with the willful destruction of the habs in Beowulf. From this point on they must destroy the GA but at the same time they can't be associated with the RF because that would totally trash their plan for humanity. This means that if they build a large navy of spider ships they can never be used in support of the RF.

When I think of the technological progression of warships in Honorverse it's a bit akin to going from tall ships era to early 1900's and the introduction of submarines with some wrinkles added in. I predict we will see an analogue of the Battle of the Atlantic where spider ships prey on merchant shipping until the GA comes up with an ftl "ASDIC" to detect the spiders.

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by n7axw   » Thu May 17, 2018 8:10 am

n7axw
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Joat42 wrote:
Brigade XO wrote:..snip..
The GA and friends (Grayson, the Andermani etc) are going to work from the proposition that there is an unknown navy out there with ships (a lot of them) of generaly unknown capability excpet that they they can avoid dam near every sensor presently in posession of the GA, can carry our large precision attacks on a system wide scale and nobody knows exactly what they want.
Hell, it might as well be the Gorba, just not the massive attacks with not much care to what they lose as long as they wipe out the humans.

Interesting times indeed.

I thought the GA already concluded that whoever did the sneak attacks did it just because they didn't have a lot of ships.

And the GA already have enough information to draw a pretty good picture of what MAligns goals are, especially in light of all the information Firebrand had.

The MAlign has in a sense painted themselves into a corner with the willful destruction of the habs in Beowulf. From this point on they must destroy the GA but at the same time they can't be associated with the RF because that would totally trash their plan for humanity. This means that if they build a large navy of spider ships they can never be used in support of the RF.

When I think of the technological progression of warships in Honorverse it's a bit akin to going from tall ships era to early 1900's and the introduction of submarines with some wrinkles added in. I predict we will see an analogue of the Battle of the Atlantic where spider ships prey on merchant shipping until the GA comes up with an ftl "ASDIC" to detect the spiders.


Yep. This makes the R&D in Bolthole the critical thing at the moment. Any asdic to detect the spiders will have to be ftl since they are playing games with hyper. I have this image of an ultra sensitive white surface with spider tracks going across it...

Don

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When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by Slneezy   » Thu May 17, 2018 8:52 am

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Weird Harold wrote:How many countries currently feature Battleships -- dreadnought size or bigger, excluding aircraft carriers -- in their Navies?

John Q Solly isn't going to worry about how many SDs the SLN has, he's going to worry about how much his taxes are going up to pay for them. The SLN Admiralty is going to look at the way four RMN CAs destroyed 90+ SLN BCs and one RMN Destroyer drove off the remaining 100+ ships.


John Q Solly is going to get worried about security more than about the economy. Like sure there's going to be some economic upheaval but the sheer impact of a military defeat coupled by an intelligence fiasco of huge proportions is going to influence the public more than an extra 2% tax on their income.

Frankly the inside of the Kuiper belt should feel like the peak of the Red Scare times a hundred. That's not an environment conductive to calm credit counting.

Weird Harold wrote:Dollar for dollar, the SLN can buy more combat power in Cruisers and more powerful missiles than they can in SDs. That doesn't mean they won't build a few pod-layer designs but they'll probably experiment with a BC(P) or Marksman/Arsenal design first.

The SLN has had dramatic illustrations of how effective Cruisers and SysDef missile pods can be -- even with the FTL command modules trashed -- and equally dramatic illustrations of how vulnerable SDs can be. The minor detail that SD(p)s were used in the conquest of Sol system, is going to weigh less than the emotional impact of the many "lesser" defeats.

I fully expect all of the Navies in the Honorverse to start looking at packing the most lethality into the smallest packages and wind up with a mix of CLACs, Destroyers and Cruisers that are as capable as present day SD(p)s.


The neat trick about SD(P)s is that they're not that expensive. At their most basic they're an uparmored and heavily reinforced ammunition ship which can withstand enemy fire and profide fire control for its own missiles. They don't even require much new tech - the SLN can just load them with the current MDMs and they'll do just fine against anyone who isn't GA. For the matter they'll do resonably well against GA ships that stray within the MDM range.

The emotional impact of the many lesser defeats isn't going to counter that when Manticore was serious (Manticore; Beowulf; Sol) they used SD(P)s to send a message. The League and especially its core worlds are used to seeing themselves as the big guys of the galaxy. They're almost certainly going to opt for a very serious navy.
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by Theemile   » Thu May 17, 2018 10:38 am

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n7axw wrote:We know that both the sharks and the Lenny Dets are spiders. Further we know that the sharks were active in Manticore and Grayson. I'm not sure about Beowulf. So far they are avoiding contact with conventional forces, relying instead on stealth.

In terms of numbers, we don't have enough info to guess, although I am inclined to speculate that the numbers would be low rather than high.

Don

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We know exactly what they had at the time of OB - They used EVERY active ship in the MAN had to pull off OB; fewer than 30 sharks, and about a dozen and a hslf Ghosts. At most 60 ships.

Not 100, not 1000 and surely not 10,000.

What's being built, of course, is another matter.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by George J. Smith   » Thu May 17, 2018 11:28 am

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Theemile wrote:
n7axw wrote:We know that both the sharks and the Lenny Dets are spiders. Further we know that the sharks were active in Manticore and Grayson. I'm not sure about Beowulf. So far they are avoiding contact with conventional forces, relying instead on stealth.

In terms of numbers, we don't have enough info to guess, although I am inclined to speculate that the numbers would be low rather than high.

Don

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We know exactly what they had at the time of OB - They used EVERY active ship in the MAN had to pull off OB; fewer than 30 sharks, and about a dozen and a hslf Ghosts. At most 60 ships.

Not 100, not 1000 and surely not 10,000.

What's being built, of course, is another matter.


We the readers know, but the GA, Andies & SL don't.
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T&R
GJS

A man should live forever, or die in the attempt
Spider Robinson Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) A voice is heard in Ramah
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by Vince   » Fri May 18, 2018 12:37 am

Vince
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n7axw wrote:We know that both the sharks and the Lenny Dets are spiders. Further we know that the sharks were active in Manticore and Grayson. I'm not sure about Beowulf. So far they are avoiding contact with conventional forces, relying instead on stealth.

In terms of numbers, we don't have enough info to guess, although I am inclined to speculate that the numbers would be low rather than high.

Don
Theemile wrote:We know exactly what they had at the time of OB - They used EVERY active ship in the MAN had to pull off OB; fewer than 30 sharks, and about a dozen and a hslf Ghosts. At most 60 ships.

Not 100, not 1000 and surely not 10,000.

What's being built, of course, is another matter.
George J. Smith wrote:We the readers know, but the GA, Andies & SL don't.

The RMN was able to determine, to a high degree of accuracy, the approximate numbers of the Mesan Alignment Navy ships used to carry out the Yawata strike, in their report to Queen Elizabeth:
Mission of Honor, Chapter 30 wrote:Elizabeth started to speak, but White Haven raised an index finger, requesting attention. She looked at him for a moment, then nodded.
“I’d just like to add something to what Tom’s said, Your Majesty,” he said. “First, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the people who did this did it in hopes that either the League or the Republic will finish us off before we can recover. Frankly, I don’t know how likely they are to succeed, if that was their intention; there are too many political and diplomatic elements tied up in that kind of decision tree for me to offer any kind of meaningful opinion. But, secondly, the one thing that’s struck me about this—in addition to what Tom and Sonja have said about new drive technologies—is that the people behind it can’t have a very large navy.
“What?” Grantville blinked at his brother, and most of the other people around the table looked either surprised or downright skeptical. Caparelli, on the other hand, nodded firmly.
“Think about it, Willie,” White Haven said. “If someone had anything like the number of capital ships we have, and if all of them had this kind of technology, they wouldn’t have had to raid our infrastructure. They could have simply arrived, demonstrated their invisibility, and demanded our surrender, and we wouldn’t have had any choice but to give it to them. If they’d gotten a couple of dozen capital ships with this new drive of theirs as far in-system as they got their pods before launch, what other option would we have had? Even if we’d wanted to bring in Home Fleet—every single ship at Trevor’s Star, for that matter—they’d already have control of the planetary orbitals long before we could get into position. For that matter, they’d’ve been into missile range of the planets before we could even bring the system-defense missiles online to nail them! And even under the Eridani Edict, they’d be fully justified in bombarding the planets if we refused to surrender under those circumstances. But instead of going for the jugular, they attacked our arms and legs.
“Not only that, but the nature and pattern of the attack strongly suggest that whoever planned and launched it was operating with strictly limited resources. Yes, it was extraordinarily well planned and executed. From a professional perspective, I have to admire the ability, imagination, and skill behind it. But successful as it was, it was essentially a hit-and-run raid, albeit on a massive scale, and its success—as Tom has just pointed out—derived entirely from the fact that it achieved total strategic and tactical surprise. If any significant percentage of the weapons committed to it—either those graser platforms or the missile pods—had failed, or been detected on their way in, or even if we’d only suspected something was coming in time to alert the stations and activate their sidewalls and get the tugs deployed to interpose their wedges against potential attacks, the damage would have been much less severe. Give us fifteen or twenty minutes’ warning, and we’d’ve had a good ninety-five percent of our personnel off Hephasteus and Vulcan, for that matter, not to mention getting a lot of our ships out of the station docking slips! The people who put this together had to be as well aware of those possibilities as I am, and they have to know the axiom that anything which can go wrong, will go wrong. True, they seem to have pretty much avoided that this time around, but they damned well knew better than to count on that. So if they’d had more resources to commit to the attack, we’d have seen overkill, not just ‘exactly enough to do the job if everything works perfectly.’ ”
He shook his head.
“All of it points to the same conclusion. They’ve got this revolutionary new drive technology, but they don’t have it in large numbers. If they had the numbers, they’d either have been able to follow through with an outright knockout blow or have at least been able to deploy enough additional weapons to give them the sort of redundancy factor any competent planner would be looking for.”
Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.
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History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
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Re: -SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes
Post by n7axw   » Fri May 18, 2018 12:52 am

n7axw
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That quote doesn't really establish any precision on nymbers used in OB. But it does establish that Manticore believed that the numbers used were small, infering a smaller navy. White Haven's reasoning seems sound based on what Manticore knew at that moment in time.

It does not, however, provide any context for speculating how fast the MA navy is growing or when the first wave of major construction will clear the building slips in the shipyards...or how big that wave will be.

Don

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When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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