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Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by cthia   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 1:44 am

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Brigade XO wrote:Part of the challenge is that - at the point where OFS is now horrified that Manticore is in Talbot-the Alignment is about to go batshit crazy as their plans to derail Manticore being there and within reasonable hyperspace cursing time to Mesa.

Monica didn't turn out the way it was expected- which would have put OFS with FF carrying the load- holding the Talbot end of the Lynx terminus of the MWJ.

Haven has Harrington on their doorstep in negotiations but she returns to Manticore in response to Oyster Bay.......at that point, would Haven tried to rush a 2nd try at taking Manticore? My thought is no.....I don't recall if Honor told Prichard much beyond somebody attacked the orbital infrastructure but Haven, at least, knows that Manticore has what they need to defeat Haven in the field just with what Harrington had with her...,if the replenished Home Fleet was not involved in OB and Harrington told Prichard that, I doubt she would have tried to roll the dice one more time and try to attack into what would already be a hornet nest or really angry RMN.

In that same time frame, the SL hasn't yet gotten their soft parts in a vice by having tried to strike at Spindle and lost Carandal's force along with Bing's So other than actually sending "observers" to the MBS to see what happened and offer the dubious assistance of the SL via OFS, SL isn't all that likely to send a massive war fleet to just try and "rescue" the "Manticorian Survivors".

And, yes, the SL and Haven have not yet crossed swords so they probably have a lesser knowledge of Haven's military size and capability than they have of Manticore's
Unless the Alignment pushed, and pushed hard, SL isn't going to make an overt try at Manticore AT THAT TIME.
So The Plan sort of goes back on track.

Yeah, but a thought just occurred to me, which coincides with Jonathan's post about timing. There is no way the MA could have known about and prepared for Honor showing up in Noveau Paris, but if Oyster Bay had been aimed at Haven and its timing coincidentally coincided with Harrington's arrival, it would have definitely become a hornet's nest.

Honor is such a scrupulous enemy, that gal, I admit, but I am unsure if she would have purposely taken any losses if battle broke out, simply because she would be able to understand that that damn Demon Murphy -- and malignant Providence -- made it appear as if Eighth Fleet was responsible and that they had come to show off some shiny new toys.

The RMN could not afford to lose Eighth Fleet, and if Haven had erroneously blamed their OB on Honor and attacked Eighth Fleet, Honor would have had no other recourse but to destroy them. Now imagine if the MA had planned on blaming Manticore anyway. Talk about Providence working on the MA's behalf.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 1:45 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:Haven has Harrington on their doorstep in negotiations but she returns to Manticore in response to Oyster Bay.......at that point, would Haven tried to rush a 2nd try at taking Manticore? My thought is no.....I don't recall if Honor told Prichard much beyond somebody attacked the orbital infrastructure but Haven, at least, knows that Manticore has what they need to defeat Haven in the field just with what Harrington had with her...,if the replenished Home Fleet was not involved in OB and Harrington told Prichard that, I doubt she would have tried to roll the dice one more time and try to attack into what would already be a hornet nest or really angry RMN.


As you say, Haven knew what Manticore had. There are two crucial points here that Honor's very presence in the Haven system conveys: first, that the Python Lump is out, because Eighth Fleet is reconstituted again as Eighth, not Home Fleet. That means that the Alliance has made good on some of its losses during the Battle of Manticore. Sure, Haven would have too -- remember that Theisman was expecting to commission 600 new SDs prior to Beatrice, so those might be there too. But that brings me to the second point: this is eight months after the battle, with the Alliance producing Apollo missiles at full scale, so Honor showed up at Haven with Eight Fleet fully loaded with Apollo birds. Haven knows just how deadly those were in the two instances they were used, they are not looking for a rematch.

Moreover, there's timing again: they learned about the attack from Honor, because of the Trevor's Star terminus. And Honor will take this terminus to get back to Manticore, so any forces that Haven launched now can't beat Honor to Manticore. Not only would those forces have to face the reconstituted Home Fleet, they'd also face Eighth. They couldn't have launched earlier, because they couldn't have known before Honor did (the reports from their local observers in Manticore is still two weeks away at a minimum).

There's yet another wild card here, which are the Andermani Adlers, that had been MIA -- had they shown up yet? And did NavInt know about them?

So, no, there's no way that Haven restarts the war at this point. The MAlign couldn't have known this when they launched Oyster Bay because the effectiveness of Apollo wasn't completely shown yet, because they had planned on catching the Python Lump in the yards, and IIRC they didn't know yet that Haven had lost 300+ SD(P)s to the Alliance, between destroyed and captured/surrendered.

All of this is in addition to the fact that the negotiations were going well.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 1:55 pm

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cthia wrote:Yeah, but a thought just occurred to me, which coincides with Jonathan's post about timing. There is no way the MA could have known about and prepared for Honor showing up in Noveau Paris, but if Oyster Bay had been aimed at Haven and its timing coincidentally coincided with Harrington's arrival, it would have definitely become a hornet's nest.


For a while, agreed.

But why would Honor do this sneaky attack if she were on her way with a fully loaded Eighth Fleet? She didn't need to try a sneaky attack with unproven technology to accomplish her goals. She could do exactly what she did to Galton two years later: sit at the hyperlimit and lob missiles at the infrastructure. Unlike Galton, the time limit would be much shorter, because reinforcements to the trapped Capital Fleet would have likely been close by. But a week is a long time and more than enough to force Haven to capitulate.

Moreover, why would Manticore disclose this technology at this stage? And why wouldn't they claim credit, if the objective is to end the war? Circumstantially this may look bad, but on second thought it would make no sense.

So the question is only whether cooler heads would prevail. I believe that if Honor arrived in Haven to find it attacked, she'd have gone out of her way to provide humanitarian support to prove the Alliance had nothing to do with this, and also to obtain any scrap of intel on who did. She'd also do exactly what she did when she did arrive: take the Paul Tankersley unescorted down the gravity well to Nouveau Paris. And unlike Beth, Pritchart is not known to have a Winton Temper either, nor does Theisman.

Honor is such a scrupulous enemy, that gal, I admit, but I am unsure if she would have purposely taken any losses if battle broke out, simply because she would be able to understand that that damn Demon Murphy -- and malignant Providence -- made it appear as if Eighth Fleet was responsible and that they had come to show off some shiny new toys.


Agreed, she'd have looked after her crews and not taken unnecessary losses or risk. But my counter-argument is above: she already didn't have to.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri Jul 29, 2022 2:52 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:There's yet another wild card here, which are the Andermani Adlers, that had been MIA -- had they shown up yet? And did NavInt know about them?

I can't rule out NavInt missing them -- but shortly before the BoM 8th picked up the IAN's TF 16, with 22 KHII equipped Adlers. That meant that during the BoM the IAN ships formed a majority of the KHII equipped units; heck a majority of 8th fleet's SD(P)s!

So that was the main tranche of upgraded Adlers that were out of the yards and participating in the BoM. (And there were apparently some of the older pre-alliance, non-keyhole, Adlers also serving in Manticore's Home Fleet during the BoM)


There's been debate in other threads about whether the IAN would pull those older, pre-KH, Adlers back and spend the better part of a year to refit them into Keyhole (II) status. Alternatively they could keep building new KHII Adlers to replace any remaining initial ones; design and start building a 2nd gen KHII SD(P); or even sign on to the 'Alliance' SD(P) design that Haven and Beowulf are collaborating on building.

But regardless it's been long enough since the Adler's combat debut that I couldn't count of NavInt being ignorant of them. (Though I can't recall, offhand, any textev specifically noticing Haven's awareness of them)
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by Brigade XO   » Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:15 pm

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I agree that Haven would not have tried to re-open the war at the point where Honor had to break off talks in response to OB.
Pritchard knows it's not Haven (and Honore is not mentioned about getting any reading off Prichard when she tells Prichard about the attack) so she's also pretty sure it's not have even if we don't get detail about what happened in the OB strike that was sent to honor.

Exactly what the Alignment knows about the Python Lump and where it was in it's progress is also not clear but there certainly was no specific urgency to push OB to a point where the Ghosts did only a cursory look before sending the targeting data. I suppose from the Alignment's standpoint, it was presumed that Haven would be blamed and that eliminating all that building and manufacturing capacity from Manticore's system would trigger a Haven strike. Just how much does the Alignment know about Apollo and it's capability at that time anyway.

Prichard knows- care of Harrington showing up and "just" wanting to come in with the "civilian yacht" and present a VERY reasonable treaty to end the way- that Harrington could have come in with that full new Apollo equipped fleet and destroyed the Haven Home Fleet on the way before then dictating the terms of the Treaty. Not that having left the fleet out where it was would give a lot of consolation knowing that she was going to have to deal with whatever Harrington was going to put on the table,

It also appears that the Alignment never considered the possibility that Manticore - having badly hammered Haven's navy at Battle of Manticore- would do any less that show up at haven and shoot it's way though the Haven fleet to compel surrender of the system. This also implies that they didn't also have a handle on how far along or what the delivery date was for most of the ships that had been building in the MBS system. I think that also goes for the time it took them to ramp up the production of that latest (Apollo) missile production to outfit a fleet truly taking the fight to the Haven system.

Pritchard looked at what she knew (particularly where RHN now stood even with that new production due "soon"), what she had been told by Harrington. You have to figure that since she had let Mike be paroled back to Manticore as sincere offer to negotiate an end to the war and was now sure that she was going to take what Harrington was offering after some negotiation, that she saw the possibility of any window of ending the war slamming shut if Manticore decided Haven really had been responsible for OB. So she shows up just outside San Martin's hyperlimit to both continue the discussion and offer Haven's assistance in dealing whit whomever attacked Manticore.
Not something the Alignment would be considering since they seem only to see havoc and retribution as the outcomes of any attack.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by Brigade XO   » Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:15 pm

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I agree that Haven would not have tried to re-open the war at the point where Honor had to break off talks in response to OB.
Pritchard knows it's not Haven (and Honore is not mentioned about getting any reading off Prichard when she tells Prichard about the attack) so she's also pretty sure it's not have even if we don't get detail about what happened in the OB strike that was sent to honor.

Exactly what the Alignment knows about the Python Lump and where it was in it's progress is also not clear but there certainly was no specific urgency to push OB to a point where the Ghosts did only a cursory look before sending the targeting data. I suppose from the Alignment's standpoint, it was presumed that Haven would be blamed and that eliminating all that building and manufacturing capacity from Manticore's system would trigger a Haven strike. Just how much does the Alignment know about Apollo and it's capability at that time anyway.

Prichard knows- care of Harrington showing up and "just" wanting to come in with the "civilian yacht" and present a VERY reasonable treaty to end the way- that Harrington could have come in with that full new Apollo equipped fleet and destroyed the Haven Home Fleet on the way before then dictating the terms of the Treaty. Not that having left the fleet out where it was would give a lot of consolation knowing that she was going to have to deal with whatever Harrington was going to put on the table,

It also appears that the Alignment never considered the possibility that Manticore - having badly hammered Haven's navy at Battle of Manticore- would do any less that show up at haven and shoot it's way though the Haven fleet to compel surrender of the system. This also implies that they didn't also have a handle on how far along or what the delivery date was for most of the ships that had been building in the MBS system. I think that also goes for the time it took them to ramp up the production of that latest (Apollo) missile production to outfit a fleet truly taking the fight to the Haven system.

Pritchard looked at what she knew (particularly where RHN now stood even with that new production due "soon"), what she had been told by Harrington. You have to figure that since she had let Mike be paroled back to Manticore as sincere offer to negotiate an end to the war and was now sure that she was going to take what Harrington was offering after some negotiation, that she saw the possibility of any window of ending the war slamming shut if Manticore decided Haven really had been responsible for OB. So she shows up just outside San Martin's hyperlimit to both continue the discussion and offer Haven's assistance in dealing whit whomever attacked Manticore.
Not something the Alignment would be considering since they seem only to see havoc and retribution as the outcomes of any attack.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:30 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:Exactly what the Alignment knows about the Python Lump and where it was in it's progress is also not clear but there certainly was no specific urgency to push OB to a point where the Ghosts did only a cursory look before sending the targeting data. I suppose from the Alignment's standpoint, it was presumed that Haven would be blamed and that eliminating all that building and manufacturing capacity from Manticore's system would trigger a Haven strike. Just how much does the Alignment know about Apollo and it's capability at that time anyway.


I think catching the Python Lump in the yards was part of the objectives, but it was not something they could control. That is, they launched early from Darius, with prototype ships, because they had a window of opportunity that was closing. But once they did launch, the timeline was set. They couldn't arrive any earlier than they had, and they had to synchronise the attacks with Grayson to within ± 1 week, to avoid one side advising the other and taking precautions.

It's not like the Ghosts could have willed the ships back into the yards.

I don't think this was in dialogue, but instead was only on the narrator's description. So as you say, we don't know exactly what the MAlign knew or how likely they thought the ships would still be there. My feeling is that they indeed thought the ships wouldn't have launched yet, but I think they missed the deadline by nearly 3 months or so. That is, the OB insertions were already too late, even if they had attacked immediately. So f their intel was good, they would have thought the chance of catching the ships in the yards was good, but not great.

More likely, given just how off they were on Alliance and later Grand Alliance military prowess, they had applied their own timelines from Galton and thought they still had a month or two before the launch.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT*
Post by cthia   » Tue Sep 06, 2022 11:07 pm

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cthia wrote:
kzt wrote:Yes. The SLN can outbuild everyone if they decide to. It will take about as long to construct 50 SLN shipyards as it does for the RMN to build their new shipyard. Ship design is more complex, but they can build dozens of new designs and see what works.

They are the largest system in the Galaxy with the largest Navy. I don't think the largest collection of planets having the largest Navy but yet the weakest Navy is natural. Especially in light of the SL's lone history of dominance. Mother nature will take its course.

The fact that these spin off polities can each outbuild the GA also gives their previous master pause. If each spinoff polity join together to form their own Block of Successor States (BOSS) then they could challenge the League. This is essentially what the MA had in mind with the RF. There is no reason something like that can not form on its own naturally. And if they do form a BOSS, their revanchism could be directed towards their former League of oppressors.

If that happens, then a space race will have been fueled in the Sol Sector and the Salamander's efforts will have been the catalyst.

I would sure like to see how these new variables change the MAlign's master spreadsheet analysis of long-term strategy.

I forgot to point out that we could be wrong about where the wishbone breaks between the SL and the Block of Successor States. Both of them has a hand on the wishbone.

What if the wishbone breaks in the BOSS's favor? The BOSS may inherit the systems with the manufacturing capacity. Imagine the BOSS ending up with systems like Technodyne in their corner when the dust settles. The BOSS could also end up with control over the real funds.

And btw, we all agree that ...

BOSS = RF :o






Don't we?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT*
Post by tlb   » Tue Sep 06, 2022 11:34 pm

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cthia wrote:I forgot to point out that we could be wrong about where the wishbone breaks between the SL and the Block of Successor States. Both of them are holding the wishbone.

What if the wishbone breaks in the BOSS's favor? The BOSS may inherit the systems with the manufacturing capacity. Imagine the BOSS ending up with systems like Technodyne in their corner when the dust settles. The BOSS could also end up with control over the real funds.

And btw, we all agree that ...

BOSS = RF :o






Don't we?

All the core worlds might have equivalent manufacturing capacity; I am not sure that we know, because it has not been relevant to the story. I consider the Renaissance Factor more of a flunky than a boss and because the war with the Solarian League did not go to plan, I do not expect that the RF with be able to expand to extent that the Malign hoped.
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Re: Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT*
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Sep 07, 2022 7:16 pm

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tlb wrote:All the core worlds might have equivalent manufacturing capacity; I am not sure that we know, because it has not been relevant to the story. I consider the Renaissance Factor more of a flunky than a boss and because the war with the Solarian League did not go to plan, I do not expect that the RF with be able to expand to extent that the Malign hoped.


The RF members definitely do not have anywhere near core world manufacturing capabilities. They were Verge systems (it looks like they've been retconned to all be Verge now; originally some of the members were League members).

I suppose it's possible the RF will woo a Core System into joining, but I think it's a) very unlikely, because I don't see the upside for that system and b) not what The Plan called for.
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