SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!

cthia wrote:Did all of Houdini's people end up on Galton???

tlb wrote:We know that the MacBryde brother and his girlfriend (Gail?) ended at Darius. I would expect most to go to Darius, to limit the outside information going to Galton.

But wouldn't that also be suspicious? If they can work out prominent names of people in Houdini, then anyone who did not arrive at Galton is someone who went elsewhere.

cthia wrote:Thanks for the correction. They all went to Darius and not Galton.

About Gail. Is that the same Gail Weiss who had been gaming out tactical scenarios for System Alpha / Galton? What was her expertise when she was on Mesa, that she would be a proper fit for Tactical Analysis 3 in the Darius System?

I do not know that they all went to Darius instead of Galton; but yes, it is Gail Weiss that I referenced (I am on vacation again, so do not have support literature).

In Cauldron of Ghosts, I believe that it briefly mentions that she was in weapons research; so I expect that Darius put her to work in her field of expertise.

[quote="tlb"]I do not know that they all went to Darius instead of Galton; but yes, it is Gail Weiss that I referenced (I am on vacation again, so do not have support literature).quote]

The majority went to Galton; only a fraction went to Darius.

So, yes, that is another indication that Galton was not the final hidey-hole of the Alignment.

tlb wrote:I do not know that they all went to Darius instead of Galton; but yes, it is Gail Weiss that I referenced (I am on vacation again, so do not have support literature).

In Cauldron of Ghosts, I believe that it briefly mentions that she was in weapons research; so I expect that Darius put her to work in her field of expertise.

In CoG Gail says that "astrogation is one of my specialties"
Ah here we are the real meat of the info:

Cauldron of Ghosts-earc wrote:“And what makes you such an expert on the subject?” she demanded.
“The fact that I am an expert on the subject. Project Mir—” Weiss began, then stopped and flicked a glance in Zhilov’s direction. The Gaul clearly wasn’t concerned about maintaining security about project code names at this point, however, but habits died hard, so she shrugged, then looked back at Juarez.
“The project I headed up,” she continued, naming no names, “was devoted to the study of naval tactics. Which, for anyone with a brain—that excludes pretty much the entire officer corps of the Sollies’ Battle Fleet, of course—means constant and careful analysis of the Manty-Haven war. If it would settle your nerves, I can lecture you into a state of utter stupor on the capabilities of any class of warships in the galaxy.”
A crooked half-smile came to her face. “I’ll grant you, my expertise is academic, not hands-on. But I’m not the one flying this ship. Captain Bogunov is—and I’ve seen nothing so far that leads me to think she’s no good at it.”

Later we get
"It was obvious to him that Gail Weiss must have been as good at her job as he’d been at his, because every single thing she’d predicted about Bogey One had come true…so far, at last."
and
"But Zachariah was a physicist. He wasn’t a weapons expert like Gail Weiss, but he could solve simple intercept problems, and he’d solve this one long since."

So that expertise must be why Marinescu said "Gail Weiss is…let’s just say she has special skills we don’t want to lose." when she informed that little group of 5 that Houdini was being activated. And I guess those skills are why she was put into a group that presumably was all bound for Darius instead of Galton.

Jonathan_S wrote:In CoG Gail says that "astrogation is one of my specialties"
Ah here we are the real meat of the info:

Cauldron of Ghosts-earc wrote:“And what makes you such an expert on the subject?” she demanded.
“The fact that I am an expert on the subject. Project Mir—” Weiss began, then stopped and flicked a glance in Zhilov’s direction. The Gaul clearly wasn’t concerned about maintaining security about project code names at this point, however, but habits died hard, so she shrugged, then looked back at Juarez.
“The project I headed up,” she continued, naming no names, “was devoted to the study of naval tactics. Which, for anyone with a brain—that excludes pretty much the entire officer corps of the Sollies’ Battle Fleet, of course—means constant and careful analysis of the Manty-Haven war. If it would settle your nerves, I can lecture you into a state of utter stupor on the capabilities of any class of warships in the galaxy.”
A crooked half-smile came to her face. “I’ll grant you, my expertise is academic, not hands-on. But I’m not the one flying this ship. Captain Bogunov is—and I’ve seen nothing so far that leads me to think she’s no good at it.”

Later we get
"It was obvious to him that Gail Weiss must have been as good at her job as he’d been at his, because every single thing she’d predicted about Bogey One had come true…so far, at last."
and
"But Zachariah was a physicist. He wasn’t a weapons expert like Gail Weiss, but he could solve simple intercept problems, and he’d solve this one long since."

So that expertise must be why Marinescu said "Gail Weiss is…let’s just say she has special skills we don’t want to lose." when she informed that little group of 5 that Houdini was being activated. And I guess those skills are why she was put into a group that presumably was all bound for Darius instead of Galton.

Thanks for the textev. That is certainly some delicious morsels of meat!

But something still seems to be missing. I think Gail puts her own finger on the problem. Gail has no "hands on" experience. Hers is all academic. I wouldn't expect any officer to become so accomplished in naval tactics if they didn't have a stint aboard ship. That is why the RMN rotates its officers between other positions. I wouldn't expect Hemphill to have become such a force in the jeune ecole without having first served in the Navy. I wouldn't expect a civilian working for Lockheed or Grumman to become so sufficient in naval tactics with simply classroom instruction. Well, not enough to become "the chosen one" for the MA's Tactical Analyis 3. There are officers in the RMN who graduated from Saganami Island who cant, or couldn't as it were, handle Weiss's assignment.

Much less Solly officers. I suppose it comes back to the many posts in several threads which questions from what furnace the MA would forge its strategic and tactical giants. I am surprised that there is no former experience in a navy. And I wonder if Gail is among the MA's best. She certainly doesn't lack in confidence.

I don't doubt that she is "an expert on the subject," and many more, academically. I am sure Honor was just as prepared academically coming out of Saganami Island. But could Honor have filled Weiss's billet w/o having served in the Navy?

No more than a Naval Aviator can ever hope to become a Top Gun pilot with simply classroom instruction.

cthia wrote:Thanks for the textev. That is certainly some delicious morsels of meat!

But something still seems to be missing. I think Gail puts her own finger on the problem. Gail has no "hands on" experience. Hers is all academic. I wouldn't expect any officer to become so accomplished in naval tactics if they didn't have a stint aboard ship. That is why the RMN rotates its officers between other positions. I wouldn't expect Hemphill to have become such a force in the jeune ecole without having first served in the Navy. I wouldn't expect a civilian working for Lockheed or Grumman to become so sufficient in naval tactics with simply classroom instruction. Well, not enough to become "the chosen one" for the MA's Tactical Analyis 3. There are officers in the RMN who graduated from Saganami Island who cant, or couldn't as it were, handle Weiss's assignment.

Much less Solly officers. I suppose it comes back to the many posts in several threads which questions from what furnace the MA would forge its strategic and tactical giants. I am surprised that there is no former experience in a navy. And I wonder if Gail is among the MA's best. She certainly doesn't lack in confidence.

I don't doubt that she is "an expert on the subject," and many more, academically. I am sure Honor was just as prepared academically coming out of Saganami Island. But could Honor have filled Weiss's billet w/o having served in the Navy?

No more than a Naval Aviator can ever hope to become a Top Gun pilot with simply classroom instruction.

I agree. The problem is that rotation into the Mesan Alignment Navy (MAN) isn't anywhere near as helpful when it's still fairly nacent and has no combat experience of it's own (much less ongoing peer level combat to give full trial to its tactics)

Now, presumably the Mesan Alignment Navy tried to compensate for that lack by tons of full up combat simulations to test out and gain experience on naval tactics. But you're right nothing shows the flaws in your tactics like actual combat against an enemy force (especially if you've based your tactics on ignorance or misunderstanding of their tactics or capabilities).
Even full up all-hands simulations of the entire fleet (not just the "sandtable" command level exercises) are nowhere near as good because everybody involved tends to be coming from the same background and starting from the common fleet playbook.
(That's one place it can help to have pure analysists involved as they can either play an enemy following their understanding of that enemy's tactics or at least help prepare a dedicated OpFor that uses the best understanding of the enemy's tactics and capabilities -- so you're not just training against your own tactics and capabilities)

But I'm not sure how the MAlign could have gathered real combat experience, especially not with their own tactics. The only major combat happening was Manticore vs Haven and neither of the navies we know the MAN had officers embedded into (Mesa's or Mannerheim's) have any business providing officers (or ships) to either side of that fight. So, denied first hand experience, their second best is to have analysts like Gail studying everything their intel service can pick up and feeding that into various simulations to work out and trial tactics or counters.


Though having Gail heading up the Galton strategy team hints that the MAlign may have made a poor personnel choice. No matter how excellent she is as an analyst they might have been better off having her provide input to an actual MAN officer who'd spent serious time in simulated combat. (Though it's possible the issue was at a higher level and none of the MAN officers she'd have been feeding her analysis to, while still on Mesa, were brought to Darius. She may have been the best at hand once the top levels of the MAlign decided that Darius had to generate and provide strategic planning input for the defense of Galton)

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Thanks for the textev. That is certainly some delicious morsels of meat!

But something still seems to be missing. I think Gail puts her own finger on the problem. Gail has no "hands on" experience. Hers is all academic. I wouldn't expect any officer to become so accomplished in naval tactics if they didn't have a stint aboard ship. That is why the RMN rotates its officers between other positions. I wouldn't expect Hemphill to have become such a force in the jeune ecole without having first served in the Navy. I wouldn't expect a civilian working for Lockheed or Grumman to become so sufficient in naval tactics with simply classroom instruction. Well, not enough to become "the chosen one" for the MA's Tactical Analyis 3. There are officers in the RMN who graduated from Saganami Island who cant, or couldn't as it were, handle Weiss's assignment.

Much less Solly officers. I suppose it comes back to the many posts in several threads which questions from what furnace the MA would forge its strategic and tactical giants. I am surprised that there is no former experience in a navy. And I wonder if Gail is among the MA's best. She certainly doesn't lack in confidence.

I don't doubt that she is "an expert on the subject," and many more, academically. I am sure Honor was just as prepared academically coming out of Saganami Island. But could Honor have filled Weiss's billet w/o having served in the Navy?

No more than a Naval Aviator can ever hope to become a Top Gun pilot with simply classroom instruction.

I agree. The problem is that rotation into the Mesan Alignment Navy (MAN) isn't anywhere near as helpful when it's still fairly nacent and has no combat experience of it's own (much less ongoing peer level combat to give full trial to its tactics)

Now, presumably the Mesan Alignment Navy tried to compensate for that lack by tons of full up combat simulations to test out and gain experience on naval tactics. But you're right nothing shows the flaws in your tactics like actual combat against an enemy force (especially if you've based your tactics on ignorance or misunderstanding of their tactics or capabilities).
Even full up all-hands simulations of the entire fleet (not just the "sandtable" command level exercises) are nowhere near as good because everybody involved tends to be coming from the same background and starting from the common fleet playbook.
(That's one place it can help to have pure analysists involved as they can either play an enemy following their understanding of that enemy's tactics or at least help prepare a dedicated OpFor that uses the best understanding of the enemy's tactics and capabilities -- so you're not just training against your own tactics and capabilities)

But I'm not sure how the MAlign could have gathered real combat experience, especially not with their own tactics. The only major combat happening was Manticore vs Haven and neither of the navies we know the MAN had officers embedded into (Mesa's or Mannerheim's) have any business providing officers (or ships) to either side of that fight. So, denied first hand experience, their second best is to have analysts like Gail studying everything their intel service can pick up and feeding that into various simulations to work out and trial tactics or counters.


Though having Gail heading up the Galton strategy team hints that the MAlign may have made a poor personnel choice. No matter how excellent she is as an analyst they might have been better off having her provide input to an actual MAN officer who'd spent serious time in simulated combat. (Though it's possible the issue was at a higher level and none of the MAN officers she'd have been feeding her analysis to, while still on Mesa, were brought to Darius. She may have been the best at hand once the top levels of the MAlign decided that Darius had to generate and provide strategic planning input for the defense of Galton)

I certainly agree with everything you said. I would like to add the possibility that the MA could have intentionally picked Weiss for the job so that they could save showcasing their better talent until a later date. IOW, I can conceive of wanting to keep a lid on showing your best strategy and tactics as well as any new hardware.

After all, her post might imply that there is a Tactical Analysis 1 and 2.

Ironically, I don't think many of the officers from Galton could have survived the experience to be able to pass any of it along.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though having Gail heading up the Galton strategy team hints that the MAlign may have made a poor personnel choice. No matter how excellent she is as an analyst they might have been better off having her provide input to an actual MAN officer who'd spent serious time in simulated combat. (Though it's possible the issue was at a higher level and none of the MAN officers she'd have been feeding her analysis to, while still on Mesa, were brought to Darius. She may have been the best at hand once the top levels of the MAlign decided that Darius had to generate and provide strategic planning input for the defense of Galton)

cthia wrote:I certainly agree with everything you said. I would like to add the possibility that the MA could have intentionally picked Weiss for the job so that they could save showcasing their better talent until a later date. IOW, I can conceive of wanting to keep a lid on showing your best strategy and tactics as well as any new hardware.

After all, her post might imply that there is a Tactical Analysis 1 and 2.

Ironically, I don't think many of the officers from Galton could have survived the experience to be able to pass any of it along.

I see no reason for the Malign to handicap the defense of Galton more than they did by withholding the knowledge of the spider drive.

Yes, Galton was expecting to lose in the end; but how much sweeter for them if the defense could put an enormous dent in the forces of the Grand Alliance. If they could beat off the first attack, they might eliminate some of the best and brightest on the other side. Obviously Galton would fall in the end, but the more that took the less people would question.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though having Gail heading up the Galton strategy team hints that the MAlign may have made a poor personnel choice. No matter how excellent she is as an analyst they might have been better off having her provide input to an actual MAN officer who'd spent serious time in simulated combat. (Though it's possible the issue was at a higher level and none of the MAN officers she'd have been feeding her analysis to, while still on Mesa, were brought to Darius. She may have been the best at hand once the top levels of the MAlign decided that Darius had to generate and provide strategic planning input for the defense of Galton)

cthia wrote:I certainly agree with everything you said. I would like to add the possibility that the MA could have intentionally picked Weiss for the job so that they could save showcasing their better talent until a later date. IOW, I can conceive of wanting to keep a lid on showing your best strategy and tactics as well as any new hardware.

After all, her post might imply that there is a Tactical Analysis 1 and 2.

Ironically, I don't think many of the officers from Galton could have survived the experience to be able to pass any of it along.

tlb wrote:I see no reason for the Malign to handicap the defense of Galton more than they did by withholding the knowledge of the spider drive.

Well, maybe, but I really think there is something to be said about keeping the lid on unprecedented tactics, as well as hardware. The tactics the MA used for defense utilizing the hastas is impressive. Surely if they would have kept this tactic under wraps until the final showdown - when all cylinders are firing - then the GA would be in some deep shit. The only reason they had to unleash the tech was because it needed to be field tested. But, since Galton was to be a sacrificial lamb anyways, any other reason besides a field test would have been insane to unleash the tech. But since they were going to unleash the tech anyways, because they had to unleash the tech, then what they needed to know is its native effectiveness. As is. Without the use of any superior and unprecedented tactics - which unprecedented tech enables - that the enemy does not yet need to see.

At any rate, I can believe that Gail may not be the best strategist or tactician in MA clothing. However, I can also believe that Gail has a lot more to offer with all of the MA's toys in play. It makes me wonder just how much hardware she is privy to. Does she know about the LDs and the Sharks? The Streak Boat?

tlb wrote:Yes, Galton was expecting to lose in the end; but how much sweeter for them if the defense could put an enormous dent in the forces of the Grand Alliance. If they could beat off the first attack, they might eliminate some of the best and brightest on the other side. Obviously Galton would fall in the end, but the more that took the less people would question.

Absolutely. You said a mouthful there. Recall upstream or in one of the other threads when I said that the GA took a huge risk with so many of the officers on the who's who list participating at Galton. Honor was almost bragging when she was name-dropping almost everyone on the list. Even Allen Higgins made the trip. (Did anyone seriouely not think of roseandheather then?)

But, yeah, I agree, that battle could have went very bad for the GA. Would have went very bad had it been Darius.

I still maintain, that if the author really wanted to entertain killing Honor, dying in a battle against the MA would be believable. Thank God for a sane Sharon Weber.

Question. Did the GA showcase any new toys?

tlb wrote:I see no reason for the Malign to handicap the defense of Galton more than they did by withholding the knowledge of the spider drive.

cthia wrote:Well, maybe, but I really think there is something to be said about keeping the lid on unprecedented tactics, as well as hardware. The tactics the MA used for defense utilizing the hastas is impressive. Surely if they would have kept this tactic under wraps until the final showdown - when all cylinders are firing - then the GA would be in some deep shit. The only reason they had to unleash the tech was because it needed to be field tested. But, since Galton was to be a sacrificial lamb anyways, any other reason besides a field test would have been insane to unleash the tech. But since they were going to unleash the tech anyways, because they had to unleash the tech, then what they needed to know is its native effectiveness. As is. Without the use of any superior and unprecedented tactics - which unprecedented tech enables - that the enemy does not yet need to see.

At any rate, I can believe that Gail may not be the best strategist or tactician in MA clothing. However, I can also believe that Gail has a lot more to offer with all of the MA's toys in play. It makes me wonder just how much hardware she is privy to. Does she know about the LDs and the Sharks? The Streak Boat?

I assume Gail must know about all that, otherwise she could have been sent to Galton to plan the defense.

The only unprecedented technology that the Malign has is the spider drive, since the streak drive does nothing in normal space. Whatever they try with Hastas etc, at Galton can then be turned up to eleven with a spider drive at Darius. So there was no reason to hold back.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:I see no reason for the Malign to handicap the defense of Galton more than they did by withholding the knowledge of the spider drive.

cthia wrote:Well, maybe, but I really think there is something to be said about keeping the lid on unprecedented tactics, as well as hardware. The tactics the MA used for defense utilizing the hastas is impressive. Surely if they would have kept this tactic under wraps until the final showdown - when all cylinders are firing - then the GA would be in some deep shit. The only reason they had to unleash the tech was because it needed to be field tested. But, since Galton was to be a sacrificial lamb anyways, any other reason besides a field test would have been insane to unleash the tech. But since they were going to unleash the tech anyways, because they had to unleash the tech, then what they needed to know is its native effectiveness. As is. Without the use of any superior and unprecedented tactics - which unprecedented tech enables - that the enemy does not yet need to see.

At any rate, I can believe that Gail may not be the best strategist or tactician in MA clothing. However, I can also believe that Gail has a lot more to offer with all of the MA's toys in play. It makes me wonder just how much hardware she is privy to. Does she know about the LDs and the Sharks? The Streak Boat?

I assume Gail must know about all that, otherwise she could have been sent to Galton to plan the defense.

The only unprecedented technology that the Malign has is the spider drive, since the streak drive does nothing in normal space. Whatever they try with Hastas etc, at Galton can then be turned up to eleven with a spider drive at Darius. So there was no reason to hold back.

The spider drive and the countermissile platforms. The use of the unprecedented spider drive allowed unprecedented tactics. Tactics which most likely have other variations and possibilities.

How can you assume that Gail knows anything if it isn't specifically spelled out in text? The MA are so need to know and compartmentalized.

Don't underestimate the tactical advantages of the streak drive in offsetting the RMN's interior lines of operation with their monopoly on junctions. A monopoly that shouldn't exist when attacking Darius. So, in the right setting, the streak drive can provide Darius with the advantage of having the interior lines of communication.