SPOILER SEASON IS OVER FOR TEiF!!!

cthia wrote:How are you promoted from a Lieutenant or Captain or Admiral with only classrooms and sims. What, slaying dragons on a SIM can get you promoted? Perhaps it is some threshold of hours logged on the SIM.

The MAlign hasn't engaged in combat operations, there's no way for their officers to get realistic experience. Might as well use a simulator.

Also, I doubt she planned the defense alone. I suspect there were several others we did not see, she was simply the best of them. (Or maybe even not--who knows if her plan was the one executed??)

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:How are you promoted from a Lieutenant or Captain or Admiral with only classrooms and sims. What, slaying dragons on a SIM can get you promoted? Perhaps it is some threshold of hours logged on the SIM.

The MAlign hasn't engaged in combat operations, there's no way for their officers to get realistic experience. Might as well use a simulator.

Also, I doubt she planned the defense alone. I suspect there were several others we did not see, she was simply the best of them. (Or maybe even not--who knows if her plan was the one executed??)

True, but, come on. No access to any real ships? Heck, not even any boarding experience? Quite a while ago, I suggested that they might train with some contingent of the RF, somehow. Or, Darius would certainly have traditional warships in which to at least wargame. Wargaming has its issues, as well, but only academic instruction without at least setting foot on a warship just sounds crazy to me.

Going out on a limb. Once upon a time, I considered that the MA - having so much time on their hands - could actually adopt a truly live fire exercise. If people died they can just replace them. If injured, they can regenerate. I thought that missiles with weaker warheads could be used in wargames to dish out actual battle damage. And I can imagine that the OpFor in MAN SIMS are really difficult.

cthia wrote:True, but, come on. No access to any real ships? Heck, not even any boarding experience? Quite a while ago, I suggested that they might train with some contingent of the RF, somehow. Or, Darius would certainly have traditional warships in which to at least wargame. Wargaming has its issues, as well, but only academic instruction without at least setting foot on a warship just sounds crazy to me.

Going out on a limb. Once upon a time, I considered that the MA - having so much time on their hands - could actually adopt a truly live fire exercise. If people died they can just replace them. If injured, they can regenerate. I thought that missiles with weaker warheads could be used in wargames to dish out actual battle damage. And I can imagine that the OpFor in MAN SIMS are really difficult.

Note that many sims in the Honorverse are run from the normal bridge, tactical, etc. consoles of their real ships. Just because the combat is simulated does not mean the folks involved haven't set foot aboard real ships.

(Now, sure, there are school or academy sims which aren't ship based -- and cadets would be exposed to those before graduating and being allowed to serve on a real ship. But those aren't the sims that actual naval officers, serving aboard real ships, would be using most frequently)




Also, be the MAlign ever so callous of human life (and they definitely are), I still can't see them adopting routine deaths in their training. Doing so would almost assuredly have significant and measurable negative effects on crew cohesion and performance, and even if they didn't care about that each crewman or officer is still a significant investment of the navy's time and resources. Instructors can only teach and train so many at a time, and it takes somewhere between 1-4 years of post-high school education and training to get most crew positions and officers up to even minimally acceptable standards. And while there are genetic clones in the Honorverse they're not magic; they're born as babies and grow at the normal rate, and have none of the knowledge or skills of their clone-parent -- so the MAlign can't just punch out a replacement every time they kill off a crewman or officer. (Sure, they'll have some extras in the system as replacements; and they could scale up their naval schools and academies to produce enough new crew each year to replace additional attrition. But that's still more expensive, and you've still got the negative impact on crew performance of unnecessary deaths during training.

Brigade XO wrote:My guess is that Galton did NOT build the Streak Drive ships. They may have had input on initial research but -given the paranoia and the intention to sacrifice Galton as a bait & switch for the Alignment brains location- everything would have been swept up and removed.

They developed the streak drive. It was being refined on Mesa and hardware testing was on Darius. But it was a Galton development.

tlb wrote:Otherwise most nations have to use training exercises and war-gaming simulations. These can be valuable in weeding out officers that do not have command abilities, but suffer from replaying last year's war.

The MAlign doesn't even have last year's war to replay. They have zero experience in anything resembling modern combat.

tlb wrote:Otherwise most nations have to use training exercises and war-gaming simulations. These can be valuable in weeding out officers that do not have command abilities, but suffer from replaying last year's war.

Loren Pechtel wrote:The MAlign doesn't even have last year's war to replay. They have zero experience in anything resembling modern combat.

Unlike all too many countries that send observers to wars and then do not analyze the results; at least the Malign has been observing and analyzing the Manticore wars with Haven and the Solarian League. The biggest fault there was that they should have realized that the SLN was too far behind the curve to deliver the desired results (as we have said in this forum a number of times).

Also there is one surviving officer of the Mesan Alignment Navy that has actual combat experience in the attack on Torch; unfortunately she is a captive as of the last book.

In addition there are the Ghost and Shark crews from Oyster Bay!

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:How are you promoted from a Lieutenant or Captain or Admiral with only classrooms and sims. What, slaying dragons on a SIM can get you promoted? Perhaps it is some threshold of hours logged on the SIM.

The MAlign hasn't engaged in combat operations, there's no way for their officers to get realistic experience. Might as well use a simulator.

Also, I doubt she planned the defense alone. I suspect there were several others we did not see, she was simply the best of them. (Or maybe even not--who knows if her plan was the one executed??)

It is a given that you are correct. The defense had to have been discussed already by top brass, at least, since it was predetermined what weapons of the available cache would be available to her. But I got the impression that other than that, she was inventing the wheel.

cthia wrote:It is a given that you are correct. The defense had to have been discussed already by top brass, at least, since it was predetermined what weapons of the available cache would be available to her. But I got the impression that other than that, she was inventing the wheel.

I wonder if she held back. At this point, she was already having doubts about the Alignment. The exercise itself proved that someone might be discarding a preciously-productive system in favour of staying hidden, for a hidden agenda.

tlb wrote:Unlike all too many countries that send observers to wars and then do not analyze the results; at least the Malign has been observing and analyzing the Manticore wars with Haven and the Solarian League. The biggest fault there was that they should have realized that the SLN was too far behind the curve to deliver the desired results (as we have said in this forum a number of times).

They're looking from a distance, they're not really seeing or they would have known the SLN was out of it.

Also there is one surviving officer of the Mesan Alignment Navy that has actual combat experience in the attack on Torch; unfortunately she is a captive as of the last book.

Which makes them irrelevant.

In addition there are the Ghost and Shark crews from Oyster Bay!

They never engaged in combat. They dropped off sensors and weapons--nothing that involved an intelligent opponent.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

tlb wrote:Unlike all too many countries that send observers to wars and then do not analyze the results; at least the Malign has been observing and analyzing the Manticore wars with Haven and the Solarian League. The biggest fault there was that they should have realized that the SLN was too far behind the curve to deliver the desired results (as we have said in this forum a number of times).

They're looking from a distance, they're not really seeing or they would have known the SLN was out of it.

I don't think anyone had realised just how outmatched the SLN was until the first shorts were fired (and landed with barely any defence). The SLN was so arrogant and corrupt that not only did it believe its own lies, it was too good at convincing others. So the MAN analysts had no way to know the real capabilities of the SLN.

It also looks like the MAN severely underestimated the GA RMN capabilities too. The RMN knew how good it was and approached the problem with caution, until it had data, though. But for both I guess it was difficult to simulate just how the direct encounters would be, because the RMN wasn't fighting anyone of SLN's capabilities.