Spoilers! Be warned ...So, what happens next?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The math doesn't add up there, Peter. At 11c, the trip of 241.5c takes nearly 22 years. If PUNS Vanguaurd returned to Earth immediately after the close of the normal chapters and then David immediately transferred to a newly-built and ready ship to go after Vlad, he'd arrive on Year 46 or 47.

That means the ship that intercepts Vlad must have had a pseudo-velocity of more than 11c. But note that she could only accelerate in n-space at 100 gravities, which is less than double what Târgoviște could do (maybe they were holding back...).

Yeah, I misremembered the text. I recalled that Earth tech reached speeds 11 times faster than Hegemony tech rather than c. They managed to breach the Beta wall at year 24-25 of the Terran Empire in their initial series of experiments. So, Earth managed to exceed the max speed Hegemony ships achieved by a factor of 1.75 times in Phase space. Assuming David's ship can reach the Beta band, that argues a significant increase in speeds relative to c in normal space.

I don't recall the exact difference between the Alpha and Beta bands in the Honorverse for speeds relative to c in normal space. I do recall it was significant. Assuming similar numbers or even a significantly smaller differential, I can see that differential being at least an order of magnitude greater than Hegemony tech. It all depends on how far into the upper bands of Phase space David's ship can reach. That would give the Terran Empire something like 10-12 years to build David's ship.

Moreoever, it would give the Terran Empire 10-12 years of applying the new power tech and artificial gravity to construction. That's just construction with Hegemony printer technology. Insights into the Vamp's nanites suggest that there is room to explore nanite based construction.

Loads of room for fun ahead folks!

Joat42 wrote:We don't know what happened to the progress of technology between the mission to Sarthar and Dvorak catching up with Vlad. Considering how much they pushed the boundaries up to the first failed experiment it's entirely possibly they pushed it even farther before Dvorak returned to Earth.

Which is why I pointed out that the n-space acceleration of David's ship was only 67% better than the Târgoviște's. Though we can't assume equal progress in all areas of technology.

PeterZ wrote:I don't recall the exact difference between the Alpha and Beta bands in the Honorverse for speeds relative to c in normal space. I do recall it was significant. Assuming similar numbers or even a significantly smaller differential, I can see that differential being at least an order of magnitude greater than Hegemony tech. It all depends on how far into the upper bands of Phase space David's ship can reach. That would give the Terran Empire something like 10-12 years to build David's ship.

See http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/95/1 for the table. The HV beta is 12x faster than the alpha. But we can't use that because the HV alpha band is 62x normal space and the phase space alpha band is merely 6x.

In any case, I understood from the book that there were higher bands.

Moreoever, it would give the Terran Empire 10-12 years of applying the new power tech and artificial gravity to construction. That's just construction with Hegemony printer technology. Insights into the Vamp's nanites suggest that there is room to explore nanite based construction.

That's just above what I expect: 10 years after the Sarth mission would place the departure around Year 37. If so, then the ship would cross 241.5 LY in less than 4 years, for a speed of at least 80c. If it's 12 years, then double the speed.

I'm not sure David and Chris want to go there. Having ships better than 25x faster in hyper than their enemy gives the Terran Empire a huge strategic advantage. Possibly insurmountable, which means fewer books to write about.

I don't see the GH suddenly throwing off its placid outlook of technology to catch up with the Empire. They simply can't catch up in time with our heroes, unlike what Haven does to Manticore in the Honorverse. It would be like the GA against the Solarian League, only much more so. And David has said that what he had planned for the SL simply couldn't be done after the change in the HV timeline, so I suspect he's avoiding the same mistake again here.

Unless the The Other Guys are the Alignment...

ThinksMarkedly wrote:snip

Unless the The Other Guys are the Alignment...

Obviously, I believe the Other Guys ARE the MAlign.....from the GH's perspective. The ideal in question isn't genetic manipulation but innovation in general. The OG want innovation and were ejected from the the GH for that desire. Yes, there is a parallel, but the symmetry between RFC's literary universes strikes me as appropriate. RFC may well be using the MAlign plot device and twisting it sideways for THIS literary universe.

Again, I think the closest parallel to another author would be Larry Niven's Protector.

PeterZ wrote:Obviously, I believe the Other Guys ARE the MAlign.....from the GH's perspective. The ideal in question isn't genetic manipulation but innovation in general. The OG want innovation and were ejected from the the GH for that desire. Yes, there is a parallel, but the symmetry between RFC's literary universes strikes me as appropriate. RFC may well be using the MAlign plot device and twisting it sideways for THIS literary universe.

Again, I think the closest parallel to another author would be Larry Niven's Protector.

I don't know Niven's Protectors, so I can't comment. Chris Kennedy's Progenitors I do, but they wouldn't apply (I'm waiting for the third book in the third trilogy).

Still, my problem with this is that being ejected for being creative doesn't add up. Any ejectees that survived wouldn't stop being creative. Especially if their intent is revenge on the GH or domination.

100k years is a very long time for an advanced civilisation to remain in hiding. The HV MAlign took 600 years to surface because they were searching for something that eluded them until then (genetic perfection). In fact, this brings a discussion we had over there in forum 1 about the possibility of the MAlign just going into hiding a light-millennium away to build their tech base. I argued there that this is not a good strategy and the same applies here, for two reasons. First, you can't command technical innovation at will and you can't guarantee that you will come up with a silver bullet or a series of them that allow you to overpower your enemy. It's different in this case because the enemies are not innovating in the first place and, if some of the theories are right, the fifth race already had better technology, or at least theory.

But the second reason is the most relevant one: you can't hide for long and expect never to be noticed. Your population will grow and you will make EM noise. The enemy's population will also grow, so there's a non-zero chance of accidental contact. A chance that grows as time goes by. And as Isaac Arthur points out in his Fermi Paradox series on YouTube, you need to keep your entire population hidden, with absolutely no exceptions. If your race is curious and innovative, even if at a tenth of Humanity's, the chance that someone is going to break away and contact the GH approaches certainty over the period of time we're talking about here.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But the second reason is the most relevant one: you can't hide for long and expect never to be noticed. Your population will grow and you will make EM noise. The enemy's population will also grow, so there's a non-zero chance of accidental contact. A chance that grows as time goes by. And as Isaac Arthur points out in his Fermi Paradox series on YouTube, you need to keep your entire population hidden, with absolutely no exceptions. If your race is curious and innovative, even if at a tenth of Humanity's, the chance that someone is going to break away and contact the GH approaches certainty over the period of time we're talking about here.

Suppose though that they weren't in hiding, but they were in stasis, fleeing the GH. That could explain why it's been so long and it could also explain the presence of a ship crashing on Earth.

That said, the problem is outrunning the GH without leaving the Galaxy. If they left in FTL at 6c, in 50k years they'd be 200,000 to 275,000 light-years outside the Galaxy (past the Small Magellanic Cloud). Maybe they did go to the SMC and LMC, with just one ship getting lost and crashing on Earth. But that means they've been there for some time and wouldn't be back now. It would be a major coincidence if they happened to return at the exact time Humanity was attacked.

If they left in slower-than-light ships instead, possibly because it was a Safehold-like last-attempt at survival with whatever they had in hand, they wouldn't be outrunning the GH. In 150,000 years, it's possible to survey the entire Galaxy and return, at a mere average speed of 1.33c. With an average roundtrip of 3 times light for a phase space speed of 6c, the GH would have covered pretty much the entire Galaxy by now and would have set up detection stations beyond the slowboat stasis ship. Anywhere they set up shop, they'd be detected and the GH warned about, in due time.

But... food for thought: the Other Guys are the MAlign and the GH is the Gbaba?

I don't think the OG left the galaxy. I do think they ...changed. Suppose they became nanitoids like Vampires. We know that Vamps can become insubstantial like mist. Further suppose that in such a state or something similar, the OG don't need physical space and still interact in no space with more physical species. In such a state they can still participate in the universe and remain separate from those that were most threatened by their innovative nature.

Vamps can't do this because they don't have the tech support necessary to sustain an insubstantial society as I postulated is true for the OG. So, the OG create opportunities for species to embrace innovation and perhaps kick start the GH into moving forward beyond their beloved stasis.

Ps. Read Protector by Larry Niven. Its a classic.

PeterZ wrote:I don't think the OG left the galaxy. I do think they ...changed. Suppose they became nanitoids like Vampires. We know that Vamps can become insubstantial like mist. Further suppose that in such a state or something similar, the OG don't need physical space and still interact in no space with more physical species. In such a state they can still participate in the universe and remain separate from those that were most threatened by their innovative nature.

And what would they have been doing for the past 100,000 years? They might have "transcended" into nanite form and infected the GH ruling council, but what for? What are they trying to accomplish?

It could be their doing that technology stagnated. Because they control all researchers, scientists, engineers as well as all the communication means, they could keep the GH exactly where it is. Ostensibly, so they don't invent technologies that can detect them.

But again, why? Self-fulfilling goal of becoming invisible so you can keep yourself invisible?

Either way, if this is the case, then the GH itself isn't to blame, but those who are pulling the strings.

Note that this is the plot of the Space Carrier series by Ian Douglas.

Ps. Read Protector by Larry Niven. Its a classic.

Will add to my list, thanks.

There's a web serial called Deathworlders, which has a variety of bad guys, but one of whom is a group of bad guys who have left the physical reality for the immortality of cyber reality. They've uploaded their whole race into the virtual realm.

They, through the virtual/networked world, have the means to influence, control and otherwise direct virtually everything going on everywhere. Until humanity comes along and upsets the applecart.

In many ways the Out of the Dark/Into the Light series reminds me some of the Deathworlders series. And it also occurred to me that the OG/5th Race might well have gone totally into cyber space to exist. They wiped away all evidence of themselves from the GH's databases and missed a few spots or couldn't conveniently wipe those spots away without being obvious. They wanted to vanish and are happy with the relative stasis of the other races.

Now here comes humanity bursting out of their little corner of the galaxy, it's quite possible that the OG might not be so cool with this idea. They've been existing, potentially, in cyber space all this time. Which is why they've discouraged/kept the GH from developing AI or uploading people to their computer systems. Basically blocking that avenue of tech exploration (even over 100k years some progress would have surely been made otherwise!) to protect themselves.

Maybe they're entirely benevolent otherwise but just don't want to be sharing the cyber realm with the other races. Or maybe they're like the bad guys in Deathworlders, who have actively kept control for themselves.

I believe the OG aren't trying to be invisible. If they exist as nanites, their activities may simply be difficult for biological beings to detect. Their systems may be very well protected. The GH might have purged the data base of info on them because of just how tough the OG are. So the OG are in their home systems going about their lives. They can and do leave their homes to visit other planets that interest them. After they have progressed as far as they have, there might not be anything that interests them about the HG. That might not be true about the newer species.

I had an off the wall idea last night. What if the 5th race was attacked and genocided by the other races somehow? And what if the Other Guys doesn't exist? And what if the remnants of the 5th race went to Earth and tinkered with our evolution to produce Homo Sapiens in an effort to somehow preserve their legacy?

I know, that is a lot of "what if's"