SLN, and MAlign playing catch up with Manticoran superiority

penny wrote:Maybe. If their neurons are firing at all, Bolthole has put certain procedures in place, but I would not bet any money on it. The MBS has perhaps the largest economy in the galaxy.* Second to none. Yet the MBS itself has not implemented any of the measures you speak of. Perhaps because of its expense and impracticality. And Bolthole is hidden, why wouldn't they rely solely on that?

* IINM, I recall a passage saying that the MBS would soon surpass the SL in that respect. Who foots the enormous bill caused by Pac Man gobbling up cogs, sprockets and nodes? Manticore? Haven? I can't imagine Haven being able to afford a 50/50 split.

I think you're confusing things.

There's no way the MBS or the SEM for that matter can rival the entirety of the SL's economy. The difference in scale is of orders of magnitude.

What you can compare is MBS to an average Core World. The MBS has an economy similar to those and probably a GDP per capita in the Top 5% of its peer group. But there are still a dozen or more Core World systems established for well over a thousand years and with populations in the tens of billions. If their per-capita GDP is in line with the MBS's, then their gross GDP is 10 to 15x. And if they dedicate the same 2% of that to military, then it's 10 to 15x that of the MBS. We also know none of them dedicate to a Navy or lots of capital ships, so the only thing they could be dedicating to is fixed defence, LACs, and other minor vessels.

tlb wrote:We do not know how many people are being run through Bolthole and in the case of a compensator failure there is no one alive to wipe the computer database. However they just need to get a spy onto one of the new ships to see if traces of Bolthole's location are still in the logs.

During the war, the Alliance had several ships captured from Haven whose dedication plaque said "built at Bolthole, 1920 PD" or something equivalent that told them it was from there. But none of them had navigational databases that pointed back. It isn't difficult to erase prior to transit back to the Haven sector, to ensure nothing gets captured from the main databases.

Over a longer period of time, someone will slip up, though. Some crew person who took photographs, or some untransmitted message to a loved one describing visiting something.

But note that exact stellar coordinates are NOT needed for Bolthole; as I said someone just has to know that this was the colony for Calvin's Hope that had to escape to a star in a nearby dust cloud. The coordinates for Calvin's Hope are a matter of public record.

Right, and I don't think this the kind of thing that could be kept secret. Even the lowest technician would know there's a native human population who doesn't speak Galactic English and must therefore have been cut off from the rest of the Human Diaspora until recently. That already narrows down to the list of sub-light colony ships that were never heard from again.

Though the fact that everyone knew about Calvin's Hope and couldn't find it probably puts it at the bottom of the list of sites to search if you don't know it's that one. Calvin Hope's fate has been studied for 1500 years and the most likely accepted conclusion is that the ship was destroyed en-route or lost its ability to decelerate. Just knowing the datum from the previous paragraph would set the MAlign intelligence looking for lesser known ships whose destinations are on the far side of Haven from the League, which is exactly where the Alliance was searching for it too. Searching towards the League is a difficult proposition because multiple colonisation waves have passed over the region and one would expect to have heard from any colony.

Which is also why we think the Darius system is on the far side from the League: it's been in existence for 180 T-years and, unlike Sanctuary, they have kept their technology base and don't have a dust cloud to obscure. Despite attempts at stealth, you wouldn't be able to block EM emissions completely, so a neighbour a dozen of light-years away or two would have heard from them. This tells us that there isn't a neighbour in that radius that has technology and is in contact with the Galaxy.

Unless those assumptions are wrong.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Maybe. If their neurons are firing at all, Bolthole has put certain procedures in place, but I would not bet any money on it. The MBS has perhaps the largest economy in the galaxy.* Second to none. Yet the MBS itself has not implemented any of the measures you speak of. Perhaps because of its expense and impracticality. And Bolthole is hidden, why wouldn't they rely solely on that?

* IINM, I recall a passage saying that the MBS would soon surpass the SL in that respect. Who foots the enormous bill caused by Pac Man gobbling up cogs, sprockets and nodes? Manticore? Haven? I can't imagine Haven being able to afford a 50/50 split.

I think you're confusing things.

There's no way the MBS or the SEM for that matter can rival the entirety of the SL's economy. The difference in scale is of orders of magnitude.

What you can compare is MBS to an average Core World. The MBS has an economy similar to those and probably a GDP per capita in the Top 5% of its peer group. But there are still a dozen or more Core World systems established for well over a thousand years and with populations in the tens of billions. If their per-capita GDP is in line with the MBS's, then their gross GDP is 10 to 15x. And if they dedicate the same 2% of that to military, then it's 10 to 15x that of the MBS. We also know none of them dedicate to a Navy or lots of capital ships, so the only thing they could be dedicating to is fixed defence, LACs, and other minor vessels.

I certainly won't/can't argue that I might have confused things, because I recall feeling a mite shocked. I simply concluded that the MBS must be robbing the galaxy at large. At any rate, I am almost sure the passage I allegedly misinterpreted can be found in one of the last two books.

I suppose I'll take your word for it, because it didn't quite sit well with me. I will put a mental APB out for the passage.

Brigade XO wrote:We still need to see how the LDs actually get used.


What happens if there are 25LD and they are sent out against the 24 (hold one pending the finding where HAVEN is building all those new ships)
Hit the 24 largest systems with the largest military capacity. Ok, Start with Manticore, Haven, Erwhon, then Aldermani Empire and then Technodyne's manufacturing system and work down from there including Beowulf.

Take out each systems orbital habits and manufacturing plus any military materials storage.

On the way, (in or out) park a couple of G-torps to take our the Astro Control for any wormhole situated relative to the system.

Work your way down by any criteria you want including absolute toughness of political will and population.

The Alignment doesn't care about regular humans, they want cattle to make stuff for them and to rule over.

Strike #1 with the LDs (depending on what they can actually do) will massively cut back both the relative numbers of trained, capable seafaring humans and the most modern capacity to build warships and other things. After that......sort of just cleanup. The Alignment just can then crush resistance and -ultimatly- hunt down any organized military resistance by survivors. They have to resupply somewhere and need weapons they can load.

How the Alignment intends to Pacify the populations of systems other than by subverting their education and philosophy institutions can wait.
But this would just end up as War Porn and I doubt RFC is going to take this route, at least not on wholesale basis,
We shall see

But I thought that RFC's definition of War Porn was where the good guys DIDN'T die. And somehow taking out all of those systems infrastructure almost guarantees that some good guy will die.

But your (the MA's) proposed usage of the LDs sounds entirely possible, and doesn't bear thinking on. Also very hard (more like impossible) to guard against. I think the MBS and Bolthole are (relatively) safe, but any of the others?

So, where does that leave our intrepid heroes? None of the Detweiller clones are stupid, and the've proven (Beowolf) to be cold blooded megalomaniacs.

I sure hope that RFC isn't going to leave us hanging for a real long time. Aaargh

tlb wrote:

Joat42 wrote:He knew some of the rudimentary basics of it according to textev.

I don't remenber; where did this text occur, so I can examine it?

It's mentioned during the ad-hoc negotiation between Eloise and Elizabeth, and Honor is talking about what Herlander Simões knows.

ART Chapter 11 wrote:And while I could wish he’d been involved in developing this 'spider drive' of theirs, instead of the 'streak drive,' the stuff he’s already given Admiral Hemphill makes it obvious he knows what he’s talking about. And what he does know about the 'spider drive' dovetails entirely too neatly with what happened to us for him to be some delusional nut.

tlb wrote:I would hope that there are loose threads, but I do not know what you mean when you say Galton is "far out of step ... in behavior when we compare it to the MAlign in general". Please explain, since it would have been very much in character for them to be the force behind Oyster Bay and the explosions at Beowulf's orbitals. Also they were the source of the Cataphracts.

Galton is out of step because they presents themselves as fanatics ready to die at the drop of a pin which doesn't fit into MAlign's behavior at all. If MAlign were such die-hard fanatics willing to die they wouldn't have worked from the shadows for centuries as they have now insulating themselves in layers upon layers of cut-outs - those two behaviors are at odds. Even the bombing of Beowulf's orbitals is out of step, because it was an emotional response - not a well thought out strategy and this is touched upon in the books.

Will Manticore et al believe that an organization that have been around for centuries is going to roll over and die when push comes to shove? An organization that has been planning for centuries, that has gone undetected for centuries, that has pulled everyone's string for centuries?

We've been over why many of us think Galton is a retcon written in to put a pin in the current story-arc and that shows, it all comes down to "scouts think they found the MAlign" and then "we blasted those bad acting Nazi's into tiny bits" with some interludes and expositions thrown in to give a modicum of authenticity to Galton's existence, there's little else in TEIF.

penny wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think you're confusing things.

There's no way the MBS or the SEM for that matter can rival the entirety of the SL's economy. The difference in scale is of orders of magnitude.

What you can compare is MBS to an average Core World. The MBS has an economy similar to those and probably a GDP per capita in the Top 5% of its peer group. But there are still a dozen or more Core World systems established for well over a thousand years and with populations in the tens of billions. If their per-capita GDP is in line with the MBS's, then their gross GDP is 10 to 15x. And if they dedicate the same 2% of that to military, then it's 10 to 15x that of the MBS. We also know none of them dedicate to a Navy or lots of capital ships, so the only thing they could be dedicating to is fixed defence, LACs, and other minor vessels.

I certainly won't/can't argue that I might have confused things, because I recall feeling a mite shocked. I simply concluded that the MBS must be robbing the galaxy at large. At any rate, I am almost sure the passage I allegedly misinterpreted can be found in one of the last two books.

I suppose I'll take your word for it, because it didn't quite sit well with me. I will put a mental APB out for the passage.

I quickly searched through the last two books, Uncompromising Honor (UH) and To End in Fire (TEIF).

In UH the Mandarin Nathan MacArtney used some very hyperbolic language about Manticore's intentions to replace the League or destroy Sol's economy. But those don't appear to be something we can take at face value.

There were a couple of statements about economy in To End in Fire:
"a League whose interstellar economy had been so badly damaged by the war with the Grand Alliance" and
"as Brianna Pearson had pointed out immediately after the Nakatomi raid, the Solarian interstellar economy was already on life support."

However elsewhere it is made clear that "interstellar economy" is vastly different from "economy of the worlds of the League"
To whit: "The League’s interstellar economy is still in what you could call a chaotic state thanks to the war, and that’s leaking over onto quite a few of the intra-system economies at this point. Not as much as the woman in the street might expect—however enormous interstellar trade is in absolute terms, it still represents a fairly modest percentage of most developed systems’ economies—but more than is healthy."

But I found nothing in those that compares the League's economies to Manticore's; nor anything comparing a Core World economy, nor even compares the far smaller Federal budget to Manticore's economy or budget. They just seem to say the interstellar bit of the League economy is currently in trouble (hardly a surprise since Manticore had withdrawn their ships and closed every wormhole they could reach to League shipping) and that has some modest spillover into the larger domestic economies of League Worlds.

Though FWIW the late war was also described (in Uncompromising Honor) as "catastrophic" for Manticore's interstellar economy (trade) - despite Haven's markets being newly opened to them and access to the Talbott Quadrant. And interstellar trade is a vastly larger component of Manticore's economy that it would be of any League Core world's.


Guess you'll have to keep that APB out for the passage that made you a might shocked. Please share it if you find it so we can discuss how we each interpret it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think you're confusing things.

There's no way the MBS or the SEM for that matter can rival the entirety of the SL's economy. The difference in scale is of orders of magnitude.

What you can compare is MBS to an average Core World. The MBS has an economy similar to those and probably a GDP per capita in the Top 5% of its peer group. But there are still a dozen or more Core World systems established for well over a thousand years and with populations in the tens of billions. If their per-capita GDP is in line with the MBS's, then their gross GDP is 10 to 15x. And if they dedicate the same 2% of that to military, then it's 10 to 15x that of the MBS. We also know none of them dedicate to a Navy or lots of capital ships, so the only thing they could be dedicating to is fixed defence, LACs, and other minor vessels.

penny wrote:I certainly won't/can't argue that I might have confused things, because I recall feeling a mite shocked. I simply concluded that the MBS must be robbing the galaxy at large. At any rate, I am almost sure the passage I allegedly misinterpreted can be found in one of the last two books.

I suppose I'll take your word for it, because it didn't quite sit well with me. I will put a mental APB out for the passage.

Jonathan_S wrote:I quickly searched through the last two books, Uncompromising Honor (UH) and To End in Fire (TEIF).

In UH the Mandarin Nathan MacArtney used some very hyperbolic language about Manticore's intentions to replace the League or destroy Sol's economy. But those don't appear to be something we can take at face value.

There were a couple of statements about economy in To End in Fire:
"a League whose interstellar economy had been so badly damaged by the war with the Grand Alliance" and
"as Brianna Pearson had pointed out immediately after the Nakatomi raid, the Solarian interstellar economy was already on life support."

However elsewhere it is made clear that "interstellar economy" is vastly different from "economy of the worlds of the League"
To whit: "The League’s interstellar economy is still in what you could call a chaotic state thanks to the war, and that’s leaking over onto quite a few of the intra-system economies at this point. Not as much as the woman in the street might expect—however enormous interstellar trade is in absolute terms, it still represents a fairly modest percentage of most developed systems’ economies—but more than is healthy."

But I found nothing in those that compares the League's economies to Manticore's; nor anything comparing a Core World economy, nor even compares the far smaller Federal budget to Manticore's economy or budget. They just seem to say the interstellar bit of the League economy is currently in trouble (hardly a surprise since Manticore had withdrawn their ships and closed every wormhole they could reach to League shipping) and that has some modest spillover into the larger domestic economies of League Worlds.

Though FWIW the late war was also described (in Uncompromising Honor) as "catastrophic" for Manticore's interstellar economy (trade) - despite Haven's markets being newly opened to them and access to the Talbott Quadrant. And interstellar trade is a vastly larger component of Manticore's economy that it would be of any League Core world's.

Guess you'll have to keep that APB out for the passage that made you a might shocked. Please share it if you find it so we can discuss how we each interpret it.

The earlier books do have mentions about the relative wealth of the central worlds of the League to Manticore. Here are two quotes:
From Honor Among Enemies:

Chapter 1 wrote:Caparelli clenched his jaw and reminded himself to move carefully. Klaus Hauptman was arrogant, opinionated, and ruthless . . . and the wealthiest single individual in the entire Star Kingdom of Manticore. Which was saying quite a bit. Despite its limitation to a single star system, the Star Kingdom was the third wealthiest star nation in a five-hundred-light-year sphere in absolute terms. In per capita terms, not even the Solarian League matched Manticore. A great deal of that was fortuitous, the result of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction which made the Manticore Binary System the crossroads of eighty percent of the long-haul commerce of its sector. But almost as much of its wealth stemmed from what the Star Kingdom had done with the opportunity that presented, for generations of monarchs and parliaments had reinvested the Junction's wealth with care. Outside the Solarian League, no one in the known galaxy could match the Manticoran tech base or output per man-hour, and Manticore's universities challenged those of Old Earth herself. And, Caparelli admitted, Klaus Hauptman and his father and grandfather had had a great deal to do with building the infrastructure which made that possible.

From War of Honor:

Chapter 34 wrote:The Solarian League was the largest, most powerful, wealthiest political entity in human history. On a per capita basis, the Star Kingdom's economy was actually somewhat stronger, but in absolute terms Manticore's entire gross domestic product would disappear with scarcely a ripple into the League's economy.

The main point is that Manticore's per capita wealth might be greater, but Manticore (before the annexations) did not have a comparatively large population. In the FAQ posts the author mentions that Klaus Hauptman might be the richest individual in Manticore, but he would not be in the top 500 richest people in the League.

In the early books is actually a good time to compare, because it is before the massive damage to infrastructure and the disruptions of the wormhole shutdowns.

Joat42 wrote:He knew some of the rudimentary basics of it according to textev.

tlb wrote:I don't remenber; where did this text occur, so I can examine it?

Joat42 wrote:It's mentioned during the ad-hoc negotiation between Eloise and Elizabeth, and Honor is talking about what Herlander Simões knows.

ART Chapter 11 wrote:And while I could wish he’d been involved in developing this 'spider drive' of theirs, instead of the 'streak drive,' the stuff he’s already given Admiral Hemphill makes it obvious he knows what he’s talking about. And what he does know about the 'spider drive' dovetails entirely too neatly with what happened to us for him to be some delusional nut.

tlb wrote:I would hope that there are loose threads, but I do not know what you mean when you say Galton is "far out of step ... in behavior when we compare it to the MAlign in general". Please explain, since it would have been very much in character for them to be the force behind Oyster Bay and the explosions at Beowulf's orbitals. Also they were the source of the Cataphracts.

Joat42 wrote:Galton is out of step because they presents themselves as fanatics ready to die at the drop of a pin which doesn't fit into MAlign's behavior at all. If MAlign were such die-hard fanatics willing to die they wouldn't have worked from the shadows for centuries as they have now insulating themselves in layers upon layers of cut-outs - those two behaviors are at odds. Even the bombing of Beowulf's orbitals is out of step, because it was an emotional response - not a well thought out strategy and this is touched upon in the books.

Will Manticore et al believe that an organization that have been around for centuries is going to roll over and die when push comes to shove? An organization that has been planning for centuries, that has gone undetected for centuries, that has pulled everyone's string for centuries?

We've been over why many of us think Galton is a retcon written in to put a pin in the current story-arc and that shows, it all comes down to "scouts think they found the MAlign" and then "we blasted those bad acting Nazi's into tiny bits" with some interludes and expositions thrown in to give a modicum of authenticity to Galton's existence, there's little else in TEIF.

Thank you for the text, but there is not enough detail to know that a spider drive could be created at Bolthole; let's hope that they can do it nevertheless.

Galton only appears as a bunch of fanatics that are prepared to die "at the drop of a pin" because they have been discovered and attacked. Even the Detweilers were hopeful that they would not be discovered (hence the mission to make an apology).

Yes, it would have made more sense if Galton had been worked into the action in previous books. Galton had everything that Darius has, except for the spider-drive; Galton might even have more production facilities (although we might not know until Darius is found). However Oyster Bay could have been carried out without the spider-drive; despite what Honor said. We really need the book that follows TEiF, so we can know what direction the author is going.

The logic of the secret fortress is such, that Darius should have a place for escape using Second Houdini. And that place should have an escape plan and so on and so on.

I do wonder if the US military are readers? They are experimenting with pod laying transport planes, however in today's news.
The US Navy is experimenting with electromagnetic drives in their submarines. No propellor or moving parts, just a tube through which sea water moves under a field. Supposedly indetectable by the enemy.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think you're confusing things.

There's no way the MBS or the SEM for that matter can rival the entirety of the SL's economy. The difference in scale is of orders of magnitude.

What you can compare is MBS to an average Core World. The MBS has an economy similar to those and probably a GDP per capita in the Top 5% of its peer group. But there are still a dozen or more Core World systems established for well over a thousand years and with populations in the tens of billions. If their per-capita GDP is in line with the MBS's, then their gross GDP is 10 to 15x. And if they dedicate the same 2% of that to military, then it's 10 to 15x that of the MBS. We also know none of them dedicate to a Navy or lots of capital ships, so the only thing they could be dedicating to is fixed defence, LACs, and other minor vessels.

penny wrote:I certainly won't/can't argue that I might have confused things, because I recall feeling a mite shocked. I simply concluded that the MBS must be robbing the galaxy at large. At any rate, I am almost sure the passage I allegedly misinterpreted can be found in one of the last two books.

I suppose I'll take your word for it, because it didn't quite sit well with me. I will put a mental APB out for the passage.

Jonathan_S wrote:I quickly searched through the last two books, Uncompromising Honor (UH) and To End in Fire (TEIF).

In UH the Mandarin Nathan MacArtney used some very hyperbolic language about Manticore's intentions to replace the League or destroy Sol's economy. But those don't appear to be something we can take at face value.

There were a couple of statements about economy in To End in Fire:
"a League whose interstellar economy had been so badly damaged by the war with the Grand Alliance" and
"as Brianna Pearson had pointed out immediately after the Nakatomi raid, the Solarian interstellar economy was already on life support."

However elsewhere it is made clear that "interstellar economy" is vastly different from "economy of the worlds of the League"
To whit: "The League’s interstellar economy is still in what you could call a chaotic state thanks to the war, and that’s leaking over onto quite a few of the intra-system economies at this point. Not as much as the woman in the street might expect—however enormous interstellar trade is in absolute terms, it still represents a fairly modest percentage of most developed systems’ economies—but more than is healthy."

But I found nothing in those that compares the League's economies to Manticore's; nor anything comparing a Core World economy, nor even compares the far smaller Federal budget to Manticore's economy or budget. They just seem to say the interstellar bit of the League economy is currently in trouble (hardly a surprise since Manticore had withdrawn their ships and closed every wormhole they could reach to League shipping) and that has some modest spillover into the larger domestic economies of League Worlds.

Though FWIW the late war was also described (in Uncompromising Honor) as "catastrophic" for Manticore's interstellar economy (trade) - despite Haven's markets being newly opened to them and access to the Talbott Quadrant. And interstellar trade is a vastly larger component of Manticore's economy that it would be of any League Core world's.

Guess you'll have to keep that APB out for the passage that made you a might shocked. Please share it if you find it so we can discuss how we each interpret it.

The earlier books do have mentions about the relative wealth of the central worlds of the League to Manticore. Here are two quotes:
From Honor Among Enemies:

Chapter 1 wrote:Caparelli clenched his jaw and reminded himself to move carefully. Klaus Hauptman was arrogant, opinionated, and ruthless . . . and the wealthiest single individual in the entire Star Kingdom of Manticore. Which was saying quite a bit. Despite its limitation to a single star system, the Star Kingdom was the third wealthiest star nation in a five-hundred-light-year sphere in absolute terms. In per capita terms, not even the Solarian League matched Manticore. A great deal of that was fortuitous, the result of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction which made the Manticore Binary System the crossroads of eighty percent of the long-haul commerce of its sector. But almost as much of its wealth stemmed from what the Star Kingdom had done with the opportunity that presented, for generations of monarchs and parliaments had reinvested the Junction's wealth with care. Outside the Solarian League, no one in the known galaxy could match the Manticoran tech base or output per man-hour, and Manticore's universities challenged those of Old Earth herself. And, Caparelli admitted, Klaus Hauptman and his father and grandfather had had a great deal to do with building the infrastructure which made that possible.

From War of Honor:

Chapter 34 wrote:The Solarian League was the largest, most powerful, wealthiest political entity in human history. On a per capita basis, the Star Kingdom's economy was actually somewhat stronger, but in absolute terms Manticore's entire gross domestic product would disappear with scarcely a ripple into the League's economy.

The main point is that Manticore's per capita wealth might be greater, but Manticore (before the annexations) did not have a comparatively large population. In the FAQ posts the author mentions that Klaus Hauptman might be the richest individual in Manticore, but he would not be in the top 500 richest people in the League.

In the early books is actually a good time to compare, because it is before the massive damage to infrastructure and the disruptions of the wormhole shutdowns.

Thanks for the text, tlb. However, the passage I recall was not vague. It says something to the order of, "... but that will change as the MBS will soon overtake the Solarian League in that respect."