?

penny wrote:Are you mad? Nobody can replace Honor. Not a single solitary soul. Especially over in the Attacking Darius thread.

Anyone other than Honor stick their head in that meat grounder is going to become hamburger. They might have become hamburger at Galton. Honor changed her tactics, but anyone else would not have. And died.

Why do you think "anyone else would not have"? It's an unknown enemy, and the best other leaders are also smart, well above average, so what makes you confident that noone else could have had that idea? After all, David Weber came up with that idea, and he's a great author, but not a genetically improved, trained and experienced military leader.

And if you have a choice of a handful excellent officers, each one has different preferred tactics, so how should the enemy even know which one to expect?

Also, though Honor was the one to take the final decision about tactics, she discussed everything with others during the planning meetings, including some people who stayed back in Manticore. She's not infallible, and she knows it, so it would be stupid to not brainstorm together, and try to craft the best out of the whole team.

Honor might be the best, but there are quite a few others which are also excellent. I also think if you team up some of the best ones (Tourville, Henke, Terekhof, White Haven, Alfredo Yu and a few others, especially the officers who had served with her, or Andrea Jaruwalski who has been her deputy at the Advanced Tactical Course at Saganami Island), together, they're better than Honor.

tlb wrote:So the author is mad because his original plan was kill Honor off at the Battle of Manticore? Whether someone dies is up to him. It would be rather poignant if Honor were the commanding officer in the attack that succeeds in capturing Darius, but she dies in the climax of the battle.

PS: I clearly missed the change in tactics at Galton that only Honor could have done. It seemed a simple brute force plan. Note that it was only plot armor that kept Honor from dying there.

I agree here, except that it's only "plot armor". IIRC, they had more than 210 Super Dreadnaughts, and less than 20 had actually been destroyed in the end. So she had good chances to survive just by statistics.

tlb wrote:So the author is mad because his original plan was kill Honor off at the Battle of Manticore? Whether someone dies is up to him. It would be rather poignant if Honor were the commanding officer in the attack that succeeds in capturing Darius, but she dies in the climax of the battle.

PS: I clearly missed the change in tactics at Galton that only Honor could have done. It seemed a simple brute force plan. Note that it was only plot armor that kept Honor from dying there.

markusschaber wrote:I agree here, except that it's only "plot armor". IIRC, they had more than 210 Super Dreadnaughts, and less than 20 had actually been destroyed in the end. So she had good chances to survive just by statistics.

Here is another set of statistics, somewhere around 24 X-ray laser strikes are sufficient to guarantee an SD kill (this is from a faulty memory); the attack after the surrender hit HMS Imperator with 6 and the author describes her as "luckier" than the ships that were destroyed. So Honor odds of dying were closer to 25% than the 10% you suggest; but in reality Honor's true odds of dying here were zero percent, because the author needs her for another book or two.

markusschaber wrote:

penny wrote:Are you mad? Nobody can replace Honor. Not a single solitary soul. Especially over in the Attacking Darius thread.

Anyone other than Honor stick their head in that meat grounder is going to become hamburger. They might have become hamburger at Galton. Honor changed her tactics, but anyone else would not have. And died.

Why do you think "anyone else would not have"? It's an unknown enemy, and the best other leaders are also smart, well above average, so what makes you confident that noone else could have had that idea? After all, David Weber came up with that idea, and he's a great author, but not a genetically improved, trained and experienced military leader.

And if you have a choice of a handful excellent officers, each one has different preferred tactics, so how should the enemy even know which one to expect?

Also, though Honor was the one to take the final decision about tactics, she discussed everything with others during the planning meetings, including some people who stayed back in Manticore. She's not infallible, and she knows it, so it would be stupid to not brainstorm together, and try to craft the best out of the whole team.

Honor might be the best, but there are quite a few others which are also excellent. I also think if you team up some of the best ones (Tourville, Henke, Terekhof, White Haven, Alfredo Yu and a few others, especially the officers who had served with her, or Andrea Jaruwalski who has been her deputy at the Advanced Tactical Course at Saganami Island), together, they're better than Honor.

Shall we mount this horse from the other end.

Do shut up Pavel Young. LOL

There is no one in the whole of the RMN that could even handle Trevor's Star. McQueen kept putting her foot in every Manty's ass that hypered in, while she was on a shoestring naval budget! Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if McQueen was defending Trevor's star with a bunch of decrepit old destroyers! Heck, she wasn't being supported by her government. Yet, she sure kicked some Manty ass. Her 'smoke and mirrors' baffled the mighty Manty machine.

Admittedly, the author had to put me in my place regarding Hamish and McQueen. He said it wasn't Hamish whose ass McQueen constantly put her foot in. Too bad. Because I can't let go of this scene ...

Imagine McQueen constantly bending Hamish over her lap, like Uma Thurman did the young swordsman in Kill Bill and proceeded to warm up his backside with a sword ... "Didn't. Your. Momma. Tell. You. Not. To. Play. With. Warships!!! Now go home to your mother!" WHACK!

As I said the author denied that it was Hamish who took an ass whipping from McQueen. The drunken wiki seems to disagree which reminds me to reread as much about that as possible. Although, it would be nice if the author gave us that scene.

Wiki: He (Hamish) led the primary thrust at the People's Republic of Haven after war was declared and was only stopped in the Nightingale System. He continued his drive on the Trevor's Star System and considered making a direct attack despite his reputation as a master of the indirect approach. He also managed to incorporate certain ideas of the jeune ecole despite his general distaste for it. (HH4, HH6)

Darius is going to be a lot more difficult than Trevor's Star.


Synopsis:

Hamish was part of the traditional school of tactical thought. He preferred tactics over brute force. Which is commendable. But it made it ironic that Honor had to browbeat him to accept Apollo. But, utilizing tactics in favor of brute force would get Hamish in trouble at Darius.

Honor was a member of the jeune ecole, a school that preferred material based warfare. It opposed the traditional school which preferred tactics.

So, against Darius it will come down to tactics (traditional school) or a big hammer, jeune ecole. If the MAN's stealth is successful, it will render the big hammer impotent by preventing Manty systems from "acquiring a lock," preventing engaging. One cannot engage an enemy one cannot see.

The jeune ecole's toys have been rendered impotent until a target can be acquired. Enter tactics, the traditional school.

Honor is the only tactician who is an expert in both schools of tactics.

The author won't tell, but if it wasn't Hamish who took a Queen's, er, a McQueen's ass whipping, I will assume whoever's sore ass it was is still alive and certainly isn't the best officer to send to Darius.


P.S. IINM, I seem to recall at the last minute that what the author actually said was that it was Hamish at Trevor's Star, but by the time he got there McQueen had been recalled.

penny wrote:Hamish was part of the traditional school of tactical thought. He preferred tactics over brute force. Which is commendable. But it made it ironic that Honor had to browbeat him to accept Apollo. But, utilizing tactics in favor of brute force would get Hamish in trouble at Darius.

Honor was a member of the jeune ecole, a school that preferred material based warfare. It opposed the traditional school which preferred tactics.

So, against Darius it will come down to tactics (traditional school) or a big hammer, jeune ecole. If the MAN's stealth is successful, it will render the big hammer impotent by preventing Manty systems from "acquiring a lock," preventing engaging. One cannot engage an enemy one cannot see.

The jeune ecole's toys have been rendered impotent until a target can be acquired. Enter tactics, the traditional school.

Honor is the only tactician who is an expert in both schools of tactics.

I agree that Honor will be in command when Darius is finally conquered, but not for the various in universe reasons that you prefer; it will be because the author has made this Honor's saga and the final end of the Malign will be the saga's climax. We will see whether she survives it.

However Honor was NOT Jeune École, the text makes it clear that she identified more with the tactical side. The final fusion of the two was not limited to Honor.

From On Basilisk Station:

Chapter 2 wrote:It was all quite simple, she thought. She'd fallen into the clutches of Horrible Hemphill and her crowd, and now it was up to her to make their stupidity look intelligent.

She gritted her teeth. There were two major schools of tactical thought in the RMN: the traditionalists, championed by Admiral Hamish Alexander, and Admiral of the Red Lady Sonja Hemphill's "jeune ecole." Alexander—and, for that matter, Honor—believed the fundamental tactical truths remained true regardless of weapon systems, that it was a matter of fitting new weapons into existing conceptual frameworks with due adjustment for the capabilities they conferred. The jeune ecole believed weapons determined tactics and that technology, properly used, rendered historical analysis irrelevant. And, unfortunately, politics had placed Horrible Hemphill and her panacea merchants in the ascendant just now.

From Honor Among Enemies:

Chapter 5 wrote:Some of the traditionalists, however, were—exactly as the jeune ecole argued—simply afraid of change. They understood the present rules, and they had no desire to face a radically different combat environment in which their advantages in experience became irrelevant. Honor understood that, and she disagreed with them at least as strongly as she did with the jeune ecole, just as she knew White Haven did. The problem was that Hemphill had fought so hard for changes that she seemed to see any new concept as desirable simply because it was new. Worse, for all her talk of new weapons, she was firmly wedded to the concept of material warfare . . . which was simply another term for the very sort of attrition Honor wanted to break free of. Hemphill's ideal was to wade straight into the enemy, hopefully equipped with superior weapons, and simply keep smashing until something gave. Sometimes that was the only option, but officers like Honor and White Haven were appalled by the body counts the jeune ecole was prepared to accept.

From Storm from the Shadows:

Chapter 12 wrote:In the end, they'd both turned out to be right . . . and wrong. Hemphill's near-obsession with new weapons and command-and-control systems might have left people feeling as if they'd been "run down by an air lorry without being physically injured," as one of her contemporaries had put it, but it had also led directly to the FTL com, the new missile pods, the new LACs, Ghost Rider, and, ultimately, to the multidrive missile and the podnought. Yet for all of the huge increases in lethality which those new systems had made possible, the strategic and tactical constraints faced by military commanders had not magically disappeared. At the same time, however, the historical school had been forced to admit that the new technology had fundamentally transformed the parameters of those constraints to an extent which had created a radically new tactical paradigm.

And it seemed that, along the way, White Haven and Hemphill had learned to tolerate one another again. Or, at least, to recognize that each of them had vital contributions to make.

penny wrote:There is no one in the whole of the RMN that could even handle Trevor's Star. McQueen kept putting her foot in every Manty's ass that hypered in, while she was on a shoestring naval budget! Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if McQueen was defending Trevor's star with a bunch of decrepit old destroyers! Heck, she wasn't being supported by her government. Yet, she sure kicked some Manty ass. Her 'smoke and mirrors' baffled the mighty Manty machine.

Um WHAT!!!

Trevor's Star was taken while Honor was stuck on Cerberus - she literally wasn't involved in a single combat in the entire Trevor's Star campaign.

So other people in the RMN absolutely handed Trevor's Star.

We know of exactly one, ONE, fight where McQueen almost pulled off a significant win -- Nightingale; where her subordinate panicked and engaged early; allowing White Haven to deftly extract the majority of his fleet from an overwhelmingly superior number of enemy units.

White Haven though he was "only" outnumbered 4:3 (and with the Peep's usual additional tonnage advantage in being mostly SDs, while the RMN still had a heavy leavening of the smaller less powerful DNs - the battle started with 32 Peep SDs vs the RMN's 8 SDs and 16 DNs). But it turned out that McQueen actually held over a 2:1 advantage: 56 wallers to White Haven's 24. And White Haven still killed almost as many ships he lost; while he escaped that overwhelmingly more powerful force.



McQueen was able to slow down the capture of Trevor's Star because, far from defending it with "a bunch of decrepit old destroyers", for the entire campaig she always had the larger fleet of SDs! Manticore, White Haven, was always fighting smarter and exploiting the RMN's tech edge to wear down that consistently larger, more powerful, fleet and force it to surrender system after system as smaller RMN fleet steadily (if slowly) pushed their way to Trevor's Star.

And remember, the reason McQueen was back over Haven to save the committee from the Levelers is that Pierre had pulled her from Trevor's Star because - despite still having the larger more powerful fleet the Peeps knew she couldn't successfully hold it (and didn't want to be forced to execute their best Admiral for failing to do the impossible -- hold a strategically vital system while having the larger fleet)

McQueen was, as far as we know, the best of the Peep officer corps after the post-coup purge of them.

And yes, she did hold onto Trevor's Star much longer than the RMN initially hoped, after they saw the disastrously poor performance of the Peep fleet after it was crippled by the purge of it's senior officers and then further hobbled by placing political commissioners, who lacked naval understanding, in a position to second guess and even override the remaining captains and commanders.

But losing more slowly that expected, while having the larger more powerful force, isn't really what most people would conceive of has having "kicked some Manty ass."

1)The Silver Bullets were designed to deal with the new generation of RMN deployable defensive missile system -specifically by targeting the communications nodes using FTL transmissions. They also were built with deployable solar panels to extend the loiter time since the Alignment couldn't be confident of exactly when the SLN fleet would arrive at Beowulf.

2) One of the sets of rational that comes back up from time to time is that Japan launched the strike on Pearl Harbor as close to the presumed opening of their overall campaign to take the colonies and European possessions in the South Seas and down through Malaysia/Indonesia to keep the US from being able to deploy across the Pacific in time to do anything about it. Yes, there was the challenge of not knowing if the US carriers were at Pearl -it was projected they would be - but to be sure there was a scouting mission scheduled to be run out of French Frigate Shoal but a US Destroyer there kept the IJN from surfacing to launchthe float plane(s) to do the recon. Clearly that did not stop the attack.
The line of thought was that the strike at Pearl would vastly slow down the US response to the attack on the French/Dutch/English colonies. What Japan couldn't count on was that faced with a rapid attack all across the theater that the US would decide that they wouldn't get involved. So take out the majority of the most capable of the US Pacific fleet. Remember that they didn't hit the Philippines till essentially the next day
(yeah, "somebody" should have been not only fired but put in prison for not getting the US forces in the Phillippines on dispersal and full alert but 24 hours later.)


3) Do we know what the actual power range of the G-Torps are and how long they can loiter? With a fleet of LDs able to be dispersed across 25+ target systems at ranges that nobody can detect them and just wait, they can launch multiple attacks against the same targets over weeks as they update targeting information and damage assessment. That would probably require Ghosts to get within the hyperlimits but they are much smaller and really dam stealthy.
Blitz multiple target systems- which not caring about EE violations, who's going to enforce that against whom?. Then get a damage assessment back in less than week to the LDs and send in another volley to destroy whatever is going on with repair and recovery operations. Repeat as prudent. That would include whatever remote basing various feeds have like Marsh for RMN or at Midguard or Hennessy or the forts around the Lynx terminus. Do the same for Haven, SLN, IAE. Heck, they could also destroy the Ylden operation. Hit all the targets at the same time and just keep cutting back their ability to rebuild anything.

Brigade XO wrote:Blitz multiple target systems- which not caring about EE violations, who's going to enforce that against whom?. Then get a damage assessment back in less than week to the LDs and send in another volley to destroy whatever is going on with repair and recovery operations. Repeat as prudent. That would include whatever remote basing various feeds have like Marsh for RMN or at Midguard or Hennessy or the forts around the Lynx terminus. Do the same for Haven, SLN, IAE. Heck, they could also destroy the Ylden operation. Hit all the targets at the same time and just keep cutting back their ability to rebuild anything.

I wonder about the logistics of this, particularly because the only wormhole that we know they can use is the one that connects Darius. It is one thing to send freighters everywhere; but if you want to send spider drive ships to locations all around the inhabited locations, then it will be purely through hyperspace. Note that they do not currently know the location of Bolthole, so they cannot completely eliminate construction. The movements you are taking about could take weeks one way, even if the spider drive ships have a compensator to make full use of the streak drive (and maybe months without the compensator).

Brigade XO wrote:3) Do we know what the actual power range of the G-Torps are and how long they can loiter? With a fleet of LDs able to be dispersed across 25+ target systems at ranges that nobody can detect them and just wait, they can launch multiple attacks against the same targets over weeks as they update targeting information and damage assessment. That would probably require Ghosts to get within the hyperlimits but they are much smaller and really dam stealthy.

I think they effectively have unlimited range, only limited by their on-board supply of power. Which is why the Silver Bullets had the ability to recharge using solar panels, so they could loiter for weeks. That would imply the torpedoes do not have weeks of on-board energy storage... but they may not need the energy to coast ballistically to a target. They may be able to do that while in stand-by power levels and prolong their endurance for those self-same weeks.

That said, I don't expect them to have months of endurance. And undetected insertions in any regional capital or higher system would require translating a light-month or more out. If those torpedoes are coasting in stand-by power, they can't have their particle shields up, so I wouldn't expect them to exceed 40% light-speed, so that journey would be a minimum of 2 months, possibly much longer.

What could change for the MAlign is if they do indeed make a breakthrough in power production from analysing Manty tech.