What happens to all that debris?

cthia wrote:And there is no way Honor could have known that other unscheduled units wouldn't show up.

Well, yes, but at this time she's in possession of a large enough force to stop any unscheduled arrivals that could be expected: supply runs, regular comm packets by StateSec, new prisoner dumps, etc. When Ransom dumped her on that planet, she only came with two BCs and that was already unusual.

Most likely, an unexpected arrival would notice that the inmates had taken over and would turn back to go into hyper to summon forces. THAT would have started the countdown clock. Of about a month.

no doubt there was certain amount of worry about more unscheduled ships but it is something they can do very little about.

using my rough numbers above just loading the warships alone would probably take most of a week. add in the transports and it is more like two/three and it time they have to take.

Getting as many people on the ships is the whole point but there are a limited number of shuttles, so loading can only go so fast. even with additional shuttles from the new ships.

Toss of a coin if it is better to do transports or warships first. Warships will be taking less people then the troop transports, so they load faster and they can get back on station watching for trouble faster, but the warships really were not supposed to take the amount of people they crammed into them and stressing the life support earlier then you have to could lead to trouble later plus that increases the odds of going into combat with life support overloaded.

transports will take a quite a while with the number of people, after all they have take lots of people OFF before they can start putting people ON. which is again dead time as only so many shuttles and flights per day.

Time that can be spent on watch or clearing debris both have their uses, as that many ships will start to clutter the orbitals, particularly as the troop transports, even proper military troop transports, are more fragile and vulnerable to debris strike then a warship.

so it comes back to the fact that loading time is dead time, they have to load people and that will take as long as it takes. no point having all warships in orbit or any while they were loading transports (assuming they went first which does seem more likely). so they can do 3 things, train, keep and eye out for trouble or clear debris.

as clearing debris is good training and helps reduce risk the transports and shuttles, it is a good way to use up some of the dead time.

from tlb's numbers they were loading over a 100,000 people and as we have no info on shuttle numbers we can only guess and I think loading a 100K of people is not something you can do in a day or even 2 (especially as mentioned before that you have to unload the transports first).

so if you are stuck in system for 2/4 weeks then the day or three spent on the debris clearance while they unload and then load transports does nothing to expand the risk of more unexpected ships when they are stuck there for most of a month anyway.

again this on the assumption of 20 shuttles moving 100 people per 4 hour round trip. 2000 people per trip. 6 trips per 24 hour T day. 50 trips needed, just to load the escapees. 12000 multiplied by 7 means 84K people per week. so just roughly 1.5 weeks just to load 100K escapees.

Again that doesn't factor in the unload of enemy troops first, which would likely also take several days, plus despite the desperate nature a certain amount of maintenance would likely be needed, which could have sorts of effects on the schedule if 3 or 4 need work around the same time.

I freely admit this is all based of guess work, by all means share numbers if you have them. I believe we have made it clear that unless my numbers are massively wrong then the risk or having some of ships spend time on tiding while the others load or watch for trouble, can make the orbitals more secure and not add any significant additional risk.

tlb wrote:Yes, all her ships would eventually be used to carry escapees; but the troop transports would be loaded first, while the big warships would go back to the ambush positions and the small warships would be free for other tasks (all warships eventually rotate through refueling). All of the transports would have their own shuttles so the initial number at Camp Charon would not be the limiting factor. The limiting activities are just moving the intervention troops off the ships and out to the various camps and in return bringing back the prisoners that want to leave and loading them on the ships. The final task is setting up the new administration at the camp to keep the prisoner sites supplied with food. Would that be in the hands of StateSec or some of the prisoners that stayed behind (I expect StateSec)?.

Glad you mentioned the refueling -- because after that thruster burn all of the Elysian Space Navy ships will need to stop by Charon's orbital fuel depot. They need to refill their bunkers in order to make the trip to Trevor's Star.

And since the debris clearance is primarily running your wedges through a defined volume of space much of it could be done just by carefully picking the courses all Honor's ships use to travel from the battle location to the planet -- so they've got a little bit of overlapping spread.

Then, as you said, detail a couple of the smaller ships to play wedge blocker for anything that's left -- after all you're only diverting them for a maximum of about 3 hours; after which the debris has either flown past the planet or hit it. Either way there'd be nothing left for a debris patrol to do.

Plenty of time for that given the number of personnel that need to be moved and the need to queue up for refueling.

Dauntless wrote:Toss of a coin if it is better to do transports or warships first. Warships will be taking less people then the troop transports, so they load faster and they can get back on station watching for trouble faster, but the warships really were not supposed to take the amount of people they crammed into them and stressing the life support earlier then you have to could lead to trouble later plus that increases the odds of going into combat with life support overloaded.

transports will take a quite a while with the number of people, after all they have take lots of people OFF before they can start putting people ON. which is again dead time as only so many shuttles and flights per day.

Though assuming you've got the StateSec troopers disarmed and have adequate security forces aboard the transports you could start loading before you finished unloading. You just need to make sure the StateSec troopers and the escapees are kept out of contact with each other.

Whether or not it makes sense to do so would depend on how long the shuttle flight takes relative to the time to load and unload it. If the travel time is an insignificant part of the overall time them it's probably not worth the hassle. But if travel time adds up then by sending the shuttles loaded each way you cut the number of round trips down significantly -- for each shuttle load you remove from the transport that shuttle brings a load back. (Though you might want the first few shuttle drops from the transports to return empty - just to free up some working space and allow you to establish buffer zones between the remaining StateSec and any escapees)

The big troop transports have a lot of very big assault shuttles. Like 84 EACH.

Charon is going to get a brand new load of administrators with all those troops and Peep naval personnel being dumped down there. There IS an existing administration system and farming operation with most of it's equipment intact enough to support at least the population on the ground when Honor staged her takeover.

Where are all the people who are going to be lifted off the planet by Honor? Was everybody brought to the HQ island? IF so there are a lot of recently emptied camps- probably with at least what supplies were already there.

You might consider what had or had not been down by Honor's staff to prep from evacuation. Among other things, Dump troops there in appropriate lots of a bit smaller when you take them down to the planet. That would immediately get them away from the HQ.

Not clear how many of the original transport craft on Charon are planetary transport only or how many were ground to space transfer capable. Use the planetary transport to move the new Peeps to camps to get them away from the control center. Your going to have to get their admin people at least to be told how the camp and food production/distribution systems work and they can be held at the HQ area--there was "housing" of some sort for the prisoner labor force, the new people to be in charge could be stuck in there for the moment.

Marines oversee the evacuation of the transports and warships.. ..and if you don't cooperate, well, bad things happen. Officers of the PEEP NAVY are to be in charge - even if they are SS --and it is/will be their responsibility to keep the population alive and well

Based on the conversations in the books, Honor's ships were using shuttles and other space worth craft to house people in the journey home. It is not unreasonable that she stripped Charon of all or almost all of the remaining sopaceworthy shuttle and transport craft to augment
those "add-on" berthing compartments (and environmental systems) by docking them to some of her ships at various emergency or access hatches.

Brigade XO wrote:Charon is going to get a brand new load of administrators with all those troops and Peep naval personnel being dumped down there. There IS an existing administration system and farming operation with most of it's equipment intact enough to support at least the population on the ground when Honor staged her takeover.

Where are all the people who are going to be lifted off the planet by Honor? Was everybody brought to the HQ island? IF so there are a lot of recently emptied camps- probably with at least what supplies were already there.

You might consider what had or had not been down by Honor's staff to prep from evacuation. Among other things, Dump troops there in appropriate lots of a bit smaller when you take them down to the planet. That would immediately get them away from the HQ.

Not clear how many of the original transport craft on Charon are planetary transport only or how many were ground to space transfer capable. Use the planetary transport to move the new Peeps to camps to get them away from the control center. Your going to have to get their admin people at least to be told how the camp and food production/distribution systems work and they can be held at the HQ area--there was "housing" of some sort for the prisoner labor force, the new people to be in charge could be stuck in there for the moment.

Marines oversee the evacuation of the transports and warships.. ..and if you don't cooperate, well, bad things happen. Officers of the PEEP NAVY are to be in charge - even if they are SS --and it is/will be their responsibility to keep the population alive and well

Based on the conversations in the books, Honor's ships were using shuttles and other space worth craft to house people in the journey home. It is not unreasonable that she stripped Charon of all or almost all of the remaining sopaceworthy shuttle and transport craft to augment
those "add-on" berthing compartments (and environmental systems) by docking them to some of her ships at various emergency or access hatches.

Indeed. I recall Honor using some of her ships as well. I got the feeling that every ship that returned was stuffed to the gills like sardines in a can. I wasn't aware that each transport had 84 shuttles. That should have helped quite a bit with the logistics. Even so, quite a lot of people would have had to endure being cramped together so tightly for a couple of days before they even left orbit. And life support would begin to be stressed as well. For so many reasons they were in a hurry. Knowing Honor, she probably had people bunking out in her quarters.

How did they eat?

Can you imagine the lavatory conditions under that much stress? Holy shit, Batman! Sorry. I've been holding it for days because I couldn't get to the restroom.

For many reasons I recall my first read thru when they returned to the MBS and Honor had to wait patiently like a little child before proceeding in. She had to get authorization to enter Manticore orbit? Or risk getting turned into more orbital debris.

Even the cargo holds of those big troop transports probably housed many people, temporarily. But they wouldn't have been able to do so while loading. Which means the inner ship must have been standing room only. I am sure that even the transports themselves were used as living quarters. What a mess.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:And there is no way Honor could have known that other unscheduled units wouldn't show up.

Well, yes, but at this time she's in possession of a large enough force to stop any unscheduled arrivals that could be expected: supply runs, regular comm packets by StateSec, new prisoner dumps, etc. When Ransom dumped her on that planet, she only came with two BCs and that was already unusual.

Most likely, an unexpected arrival would notice that the inmates had taken over and would turn back to go into hyper to summon forces. THAT would have started the countdown clock. Of about a month.

About that. How well can you fight a ship of someone else's design? I suppose command codes and the like would be "tickled" out of the officers, but being able to actually fight the ship would require familiarity with Havenite ship design to be effective. I suppose there are RMN officers who have been checked out on Havenite designs using captured ships throughout the war, but were those officers among Honor's original ragtime band of bandits? And most of the officers from the planet had not been aboard a ship in decades.

I was never comfortable believing the Masadans were able to operate, let alone fight, a Havenite ship. What was the largest ship a Masadan had even been in. And they had commandeered an SD. That should have been like going from a crop duster to a 747. Everything should have been alien to them. It isn't like operating a car. Which isn't necessarily easy either from model to model especially when the models are so new and different and you haven't been in a car for eons. Where are the high beams?

cthia wrote:For many reasons I recall my first read thru when they returned to the MBS and Honor had to wait patiently like a little child before proceeding in. She had to get authorization to enter Manticore orbit? Or risk getting turned into more orbital debris.

They traveled to San Martin at Trevor's Star, the closest place that they knew would be under the control of Manticore, and not to the Maticore home system itself. This was Manticore's most important military base (next to the home planet) and they were arriving in ships that were recognizable as having belonged to the Peoples' Republic, in a society that could successfully fake video of Honor's execution. So of course everything would involve the highest security.

cthia wrote:About that. How well can you fight a ship of someone else's design? I suppose command codes and the like would be "tickled" out of the officers, but being able to actually fight the ship would require familiarity with Havenite ship design to be effective. I suppose there are RMN officers who have been checked out on Havenite designs using captured ships throughout the war, but were those officers among Honor's original ragtime band of bandits? And most of the officers from the planet had not been aboard a ship in decades.

I was never comfortable believing the Masadans were able to operate, let alone fight, a Havenite ship. What was the largest ship a Masadan had even been in. And they had commandeered an SD. That should have been like going from a crop duster to a 747. Everything should have been alien to them. It isn't like operating a car. Which isn't necessarily easy either from model to model especially when the models are so new and different and you haven't been in a car for eons. Where are the high beams?

They clearly did.

Remember that White Haven captured over a dozen SDs at Third Yeltsin and turned over half a dozen to the GSN, the rest was bought into the RMN service. So those at least were able to be effectively used by Manticore and allies.

I don't expect that it was easy, but it was doable, in all of the cases above. They all had time to train and learn how to use their ships. They might never be as effective as the force that ship was designed for, but they did get them to combat effectiveness.

I don't think crop duster to 747 is a good one. But comparing being certified to fly an A320 and then being thrown on the seat of a B777, or conversely someone certified on B737 (especially the Classic ones, the -400, -500 and -600) being thrown on an A350. There'll be a lot you don't know, but the manuals are aboard and given enough time you'll do a passable job at it. The Masadans had Peeps to teach them and the ships pressed into service after Third Yeltsin had time.

Honor had the time pressure.