"What if" after HH09

Theemile wrote:Welcome to thread drift - it happens often here.

Supply chain vulnerability is a important item to consider, especially when you are considering war. The upheaval caused by every major modern war has killed millions as breadbaskets are lost, blocked or redirected, and as Napoleon famously said, "An Army travels on it's stomach."

It's all theoretical, but logistics, economics and supply chains do end up frequent topics here - they are really the long term drivers of how a war is waged.

"Amateurs strategy. Professionals talk logistics." - attributed to Gen. Omar Bradley. Though I'd say that logistics should be part of your strategy talk.

And one of the things that sets David Weber's military sci-fi apart from most of the others is that he does take a lot of this into consideration. He has an incredible attention to detail and sticks to it (most of the time).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
And one of the things that sets David Weber's military sci-fi apart from most of the others is that he does take a lot of this into consideration. He has an incredible attention to detail and sticks to it (most of the time).

His grasp on Honorverse economics is a bit 'vague'. Like how are 300 million people in the asteroids supported by 'asteroid mining'. These are not going to be open pit mines with guys swinging hammers, these are going to be massive mobile industrial platforms that use wedges and grav fields and electrical fields to devour asteroids, turning them sorted tanks full of 99% pure dust at hundreds of tons per minute. With a crew size and operation probably similar to an off-shore oil rig.

So there might be (at most generous) 50,000 miners, and 500,000 support people. What do the other 299.45 million people do? Feminist Interpretive Dance troupes? I have no idea.

kzt wrote:His grasp on Honorverse economics is a bit 'vague'. Like how are 300 million people in the asteroids supported by 'asteroid mining'. These are not going to be open pit mines with guys swinging hammers, these are going to be massive mobile industrial platforms that use wedges and grav fields and electrical fields to devour asteroids, turning them sorted tanks full of 99% pure dust at hundreds of tons per minute. With a crew size and operation probably similar to an off-shore oil rig.

So there might be (at most generous) 50,000 miners, and 500,000 support people. What do the other 299.45 million people do? Feminist Interpretive Dance troupes? I have no idea.

The rest of the economy. Why can't there be banks, software development offices, NFT brokers, travel agents & concierges, amusement park crews and, why not, opera performers specialising in interpretive dance? Successful mining towns aren't restricted to mining and support services, and can outgrow such activity to other activities. It becomes just another place to live. A space habitat is also a place to live, not different from a planet.

Might I also add that there will be space farmers, growing food?

Oh, if there are space farmers, there should also be space cowboys!

Before I continue in the discussion, I'd like to ask about something. I said I will post a question about the strategic depth: it was because I don't know what the significance of "Strategic Depth" is: in HH02, Manticore needed Grayson as a forward base; likewise, books mean about the importance of smaller bases around other critical systems such as Trevor's star, Barnett and Grendelsbane. Was it solely to deny the enemy from having a service base there (for example Peeps on Grayson etc.)? Because I don't understand this:

If there had been no Peep or Manty base on Grayson (and Edincott) during the First Havenite war, the Peeps would have been able to launch an attack from their system A (Barnett or something nearer...) to a system B in the Manticoran territory, for example Manticore itself - exactly the kind of attack whose prevention (making harder) was the reason to build a base on Grayson. How does the Manty base on Grayson prevent/complicate this attack? What prevents Haven from launching an attack from A, travelling to B slightly around to avoid Grayson, attack B and return (with damaged ships etc.) back to A while evading Grayson again? Or the same with Grendelsbane or Barnett. Ships are extremely hard to intercept in the hyperspace. (Except when transferring between two gravity ways, but I have several arguments why this could not work here.)

I don't understand it. Is it one of the topics where "David wanted the atmosphere of 18th century wet navy battles and therefore arguing this logically, factually or scientifically is irelevant, because David never promised that the tale will have a 100% realistic and logical physics"...

The degree of logic in HV and of scientific realism is absolutely wonderful. Wonderful! Maybe that's why I thought that it was David's priority and therefore I can reason from this position. I am absolutely amazed how convincing and believable world David created. I can probably imagine no other universe where we could have this discussion: One modern SD squadron wins over ~50 Havenite SDs; as a Grayson commander, I would keep such and such number at home plus pods; Havenites would attack with ABC, I would do XYZ, what would the outcome be? Etc. Wonderful. Even in Lord of the Rings it would probably be much harder.

So of course I am curious in which topics I should or shouldn't argue with logic, science and realism.

So back to the "logical" reasoning: I don't understand why the forward bases could have any significance during the First Havenite War: what prevented the powers during this war to do similar things like Honor's deep strikes in HH11? Or conversely: why did the strategic depth lose (some of) its significance in HH11?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:His grasp on Honorverse economics is a bit 'vague'. Like how are 300 million people in the asteroids supported by 'asteroid mining'. These are not going to be open pit mines with guys swinging hammers, these are going to be massive mobile industrial platforms that use wedges and grav fields and electrical fields to devour asteroids, turning them sorted tanks full of 99% pure dust at hundreds of tons per minute. With a crew size and operation probably similar to an off-shore oil rig.

So there might be (at most generous) 50,000 miners, and 500,000 support people. What do the other 299.45 million people do? Feminist Interpretive Dance troupes? I have no idea.

The rest of the economy. Why can't there be banks, software development offices, NFT brokers, travel agents & concierges, amusement park crews and, why not, opera performers specialising in interpretive dance? Successful mining towns aren't restricted to mining and support services, and can outgrow such activity to other activities. It becomes just another place to live. A space habitat is also a place to live, not different from a planet.

Might I also add that there will be space farmers, growing food?

Oh, if there are space farmers, there should also be space cowboys!

That was kinda the problem - after we heard about OB, we put together a list of 20-25 sources of locations/groups which could help rebuild/build more ships.

On that list was the Unicorn Belt yards that built the original Shrike LACS, and the construction /repair assets that kept up the Habs in Manticore B space and supported the Extraction industry. As well as any heavy industry in the Habs

Guess what David said none of these existed - other than Ore extraction, there is no heavy industry amongst the habitats that the 300 million people in Manticore B space reside in. All ship building, repair, widget creation etc was done on Weyland - even the previously mentioned Unicorn belt yards wasn't in the Unicorn belt, but on Weyland. So that entire vast population, nearly the size of the United States or EU, does nothing but ore extraction and industries directly related to the admin and support of that population - nothing else. We pulled US and world stats, and there are only about 10 million people in today's world mining industry, a couple 100 thousand in the US.

For us, that seemed like a high proportion of kindergarten teachers, EMTs and insurance agents to support a population that should only be a few hundred thousand. Hence our repeated mentions of the millions of strippers, filk bands and interpretive dancers.

Reflame wrote:Before I continue in the discussion, I'd like to ask about something. I said I will post a question about the strategic depth: it was because I don't know what the significance of "Strategic Depth" is: in HH02, Manticore needed Grayson as a forward base; likewise, books mean about the importance of smaller bases around other critical systems such as Trevor's star, Barnett and Grendelsbane. Was it solely to deny the enemy from having a service base there (for example Peeps on Grayson etc.)? Because I don't understand this:

If there had been no Peep or Manty base on Grayson (and Edincott) during the First Havenite war, the Peeps would have been able to launch an attack from their system A (Barnett or something nearer...) to a system B in the Manticoran territory, for example Manticore itself - exactly the kind of attack whose prevention (making harder) was the reason to build a base on Grayson. How does the Manty base on Grayson prevent/complicate this attack? What prevents Haven from launching an attack from A, travelling to B slightly around to avoid Grayson, attack B and return (with damaged ships etc.) back to A while evading Grayson again? Or the same with Grendelsbane or Barnett. Ships are extremely hard to intercept in the hyperspace. (Except when transferring between two gravity ways, but I have several arguments why this could not work here.)

I don't understand it. Is it one of the topics where "David wanted the atmosphere of 18th century wet navy battles and therefore arguing this logically, factually or scientifically is irelevant, because David never promised that the tale will have a 100% realistic and logical physics"...

The degree of logic in HV and of scientific realism is absolutely wonderful. Wonderful! Maybe that's why I thought that it was David's priority and therefore I can reason from this position. I am absolutely amazed how convincing and believable world David created. I can probably imagine no other universe where we could have this discussion: One modern SD squadron wins over ~50 Havenite SDs; as a Grayson commander, I would keep such and such number at home plus pods; Havenites would attack with ABC, I would do XYZ, what would the outcome be? Etc. Wonderful. Even in Lord of the Rings it would probably be much harder.

So of course I am curious in which topics I should or shouldn't argue with logic, science and realism.

So back to the "logical" reasoning: I don't understand why the forward bases could have any significance during the First Havenite War: what prevented the powers during this war to do similar things like Honor's deep strikes in HH11? Or conversely: why did the strategic depth lose (some of) its significance in HH11?

A forward base and strategic depth are 2 different items.

A Forward base is an offensive support point for your front line or raiding forces. A secure place to return to, to rearm, repair and plan your next mission. spares and extra admin personnel are at the forward operating base. A Proper base would also have a population with production ability to support your activities. Aa mobile fleet train could also fit this role to a lesser degree - the Train is a group of ships that have mobile versions of the warehouses and repair yards built in, as well as extra personel and admin functions - you would leave these behind before a mission and regroup with them after a mission.

Grayson has been shown to have neither in 1914 PD, so they have nothing to support their continued war effort after the ceasefire.

Strategic depth is defensive concept, that you have layers of defenses that an invader need to wade through to attack your critical nodes, and a redundancy of critical nodes, so you don't have a single point of failure. This pushes any forward bases of the opponent further from your critical systems, and creates fortified locations that can independently support and launch attacks, and assist defending adjacent systems.

In the 1st Havenite war, as I mentioned previously, Strategic depth was given serious attention. Both sides believed that they needed to protect their lines of supply and retreat, and built their strategies around the gradual taking of in between systems systems, with few, heavy deep raids. Manticore built their alliance to get this strategic depth, and built fleetbases to support their regional partners. Haven could not punch out any node without the danger of other nodes punching back. Even if you took out Manticore, the Manticore fleet would still exist and be able to conduct warfare without the Manticore system, because of it's dispersed basing assets, and fleet assets.

Grayson does not have this without the Manticorian Alliance. They had no regional partners, and no other bases outside the Grayson system. Yes, they can concentrate their defenses in one place, but they have no leadership redundancy, and no supply redundancy.

In "reality", in the Honorverse nothing physically prevents deep strikes through strategic partners to deeper, critical nodes. This was realized as outdated strategic thinking for the 2nd war , and Manticore let their partners securely leave the alliance and conducted deep strikes from Trevor's Star into Haven. However, Manticore still had strategic depth in the 2nd war, as they still had critical node redundancy - they had their fleetbases at Hancock and Marsh, as well as bases at their planets in Manticore B, Basilisk and Trevor's star, in addition to their strategic partners in the Andermani and Graysons. A single strike, no matter how devastating, could not knock out Manticore from the War.

Theemile wrote:That was kinda the problem - after we heard about OB, we put together a list of 20-25 sources of locations/groups which could help rebuild/build more ships.

On that list was the Unicorn Belt yards that built the original Shrike LACS, and the construction /repair assets that kept up the Habs in Manticore B space and supported the Extraction industry. As well as any heavy industry in the Habs

Guess what David said none of these existed - other than Ore extraction, there is no heavy industry amongst the habitats that the 300 million people in Manticore B space reside in. All ship building, repair, widget creation etc was done on Weyland - even the previously mentioned Unicorn belt yards wasn't in the Unicorn belt, but on Weyland. So that entire vast population, nearly the size of the United States or EU, does nothing but ore extraction and industries directly related to the admin and support of that population - nothing else. We pulled US and world stats, and there are only about 10 million people in today's world mining industry, a couple 100 thousand in the US.

For us, that seemed like a high proportion of kindergarten teachers, EMTs and insurance agents to support a population that should only be a few hundred thousand. Hence our repeated mentions of the millions of strippers, filk bands and interpretive dancers.

I can accept that there wasn't heavy, final industry in those habitats. Smelting, processing, sorting, sure. Maybe some of the next level of operation such as creating ingots, casting, or whatever is the next step in HV. But not the next few stages towards the end product, where the value, complexity, and also fragility have increased. I can see shipping towards central facilities done in bulk, with coarse and less breakable materials, but then you want to shorten the time in transit. That would be those space stations around the planets.

I am disagreeing that the rest of the 300 million population is tied to ore extraction. It's a country-sized population, it can do a lot more, in addition to supporting the mining workers and their families, and that supporting staff itself. You just need a few generations: a few kids that have grown up around there and started their own businesses that had nothing to do with their parents' profession without moving.

In fact, it would have been smart for the Crown to invest in jobs for the spouses who did move but had no job in the ore-extraction or supporting industries. They'd be most of a light-hour away from Gryphon, with turnaround time communication to Manticore-A of over a day, so this is really like a mining outpost of the last century before Internet. But unlike then, we should expect a highly educated population, so you shouldn't expect the spouses to stay at home, do nothing but child care or twiddle their thumbs. After a few generations, you have habitats with as diverse and as thriving economies as Landing or Yawata.

Theemile wrote:A Forward base is an offensive support point for your front line or raiding forces. A secure place to return to, to rearm, repair and plan your next mission. spares and extra admin personnel are at the forward operating base. A Proper base would also have a population with production ability to support your activities. Aa mobile fleet train could also fit this role to a lesser degree - the Train is a group of ships that have mobile versions of the warehouses and repair yards built in, as well as extra personel and admin functions - you would leave these behind before a mission and regroup with them after a mission.

Grayson has been shown to have neither in 1914 PD, so they have nothing to support their continued war effort after the ceasefire.

Grayson itself was supposed to be a full and proper forward base of the Alliance, compared to the source of ships and strategy, which was the Manticore Binary System. But this was in 1902-1905, before the war and in particular before the gains made during the war. The front moved further away from Grayson and closer to Haven. The Alliance captured Peep bases like Seaford Nine, which could have served as bases after conversion, but those were Alliance possessions and Grayson might have been denied their use.

In the 1st Havenite war, as I mentioned previously, Strategic depth was given serious attention. Both sides believed that they needed to protect their lines of supply and retreat, and built their strategies around the gradual taking of in between systems systems, with few, heavy deep raids. Manticore built their alliance to get this strategic depth, and built fleetbases to support their regional partners. Haven could not punch out any node without the danger of other nodes punching back. Even if you took out Manticore, the Manticore fleet would still exist and be able to conduct warfare without the Manticore system, because of it's dispersed basing assets, and fleet assets.

Also remember that wars between equals before the First War were slugging matches, with fleet actions hardly producing decisive results. So one did have to rearm and retry multiple times, winning finally because of attrition, through superior strategy of catching an unprepared position, or superior tactics that were few, far between, and often not repeatable.

And mind you, there hadn't been any wars between equals for a really long time, and probably had never been one in this scale of number of systems.

In "reality", in the Honorverse nothing physically prevents deep strikes through strategic partners to deeper, critical nodes. This was realized as outdated strategic thinking for the 2nd war , and Manticore let their partners securely leave the alliance and conducted deep strikes from Trevor's Star into Haven. However, Manticore still had strategic depth in the 2nd war, as they still had critical node redundancy - they had their fleetbases at Hancock and Marsh, as well as bases at their planets in Manticore B, Basilisk and Trevor's star, in addition to their strategic partners in the Andermani and Graysons. A single strike, no matter how devastating, could not knock out Manticore from the War.

Well, it might knock out Manticore but wouldn't knock out the entire Alliance. Though doing so was exactly what Theisman attempted with Operation Beatrice.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Well, it might knock out Manticore but wouldn't knock out the entire Alliance. Though doing so was exactly what Theisman attempted with Operation Beatrice.

David has stated that the lost of Manticore is loss of the war.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I can accept that there wasn't heavy, final industry in those habitats. Smelting, processing, sorting, sure. Maybe some of the next level of operation such as creating ingots, casting, or whatever is the next step in HV. But not the next few stages towards the end product, where the value, complexity, and also fragility have increased. I can see shipping towards central facilities done in bulk, with coarse and less breakable materials, but then you want to shorten the time in transit. That would be those space stations around the planets.

I am disagreeing that the rest of the 300 million population is tied to ore extraction. It's a country-sized population, it can do a lot more, in addition to supporting the mining workers and their families, and that supporting staff itself. You just need a few generations: a few kids that have grown up around there and started their own businesses that had nothing to do with their parents' profession without moving.

In fact, it would have been smart for the Crown to invest in jobs for the spouses who did move but had no job in the ore-extraction or supporting industries. They'd be most of a light-hour away from Gryphon, with turnaround time communication to Manticore-A of over a day, so this is really like a mining outpost of the last century before Internet. But unlike then, we should expect a highly educated population, so you shouldn't expect the spouses to stay at home, do nothing but child care or twiddle their thumbs. After a few generations, you have habitats with as diverse and as thriving economies as Landing or Yawata.

Sure. If the population was a million. Ask yourself what the population of Texas and Louisiana would be if all they did was staff off-shore oil platforms?

But that isn’t what Texas and Louisiana do. Even of the off-shore oil industry, a very small percentage are the people who work on the platforms and do the drilling and production. The industry that builds the equipment, builds the ships that support them, the oil refineries and associated petrochemical plants, etc are where most of the people in the offshore industry work.

David says that doesn’t exist. So the people won’t exist either. Nobody is going to raise a family in a tiny steel box unless there is a compelling reason to be there.