The Future of Honorverse [Spoilers]

[Lord Iames Osari]

SPOILERS! I'M NOT KIDDING!

So, as of the last book, At All Costs, McKeon is dead, Manticore is down to Honor's fleet plus the captured hundreds of Havenite warships, and both sides are just too stunned to think after the titanic Battle of Manticore.

Our two favorite superspies, Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki, are haring off after evidence to prove that the Mesan scumbags are manipulating the Havenites and Manties into continuing their war, all while Manticore is expanding into a gen-u-ine Star Empire and the Solarian League is starting to look like it's on the verge of fracturing into bzillions of smaller polities.

What happens in the next book(s)? And no crossovers, please.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Char creates Neo-Zeon

Sorry, but between the no crossovers statement and your avatar, you were just asking for it.

[Lord Iames Osari]

:smalltongue:

[Foeofthelance]

Hmmm.

Well, my bet is on them catching Mesa or the Frontier Security (?) at monkeying around. Not sure how much they'd be able to do, with both sides having smashed themselves so badly over Manticore. There's a good chance that they'll have to work together in the face of a Solarian threat, especially if Earth tries to reunite its power structure by trying its own version of the Short Victorious War. Of course, if they do then it is almost guarenteed that the Andermani will join Haven and Manticore in an alleigance to secure their soverigenty.

Problems I can see:

1) Elizabeth's hatred of the Havenits posing diplomatic problems.
2) Political problems with Grayson. By now they've probably had enough of Manticore's wars.
3) Remnants of State Security joining with Solarians.
4) Another Haven coup. (Least likely of all options.)

[Eita]

(2) They aren't tired of Lady Harrington's though. :smallamused:

[Swordguy]

Hmmm.

Well, my bet is on them catching Mesa or the Frontier Security (?) at monkeying around. Not sure how much they'd be able to do, with both sides having smashed themselves so badly over Manticore. There's a good chance that they'll have to work together in the face of a Solarian threat, especially if Earth tries to reunite its power structure by trying its own version of the Short Victorious War. Of course, if they do then it is almost guarenteed that the Andermani will join Haven and Manticore in an alleigance to secure their soverigenty.

Problems I can see:

1) Elizabeth's hatred of the Havenits posing diplomatic problems.
2) Political problems with Grayson. By now they've probably had enough of Manticore's wars.
3) Remnants of State Security joining with Solarians.
4) Another Haven coup. (Least likely of all options.)

It's gonna be this. The bolded text has been building for 4 books now, arguably more.

And that list of problems with the Alliance is pretty accurate. The first one is going to be be huge stumbling block. You thought Liz was mad before? She's gonna see the recent Peep assault as a headhunting mission aimed directly at wiping out Manticore itself. That's not really what it was - but it's how she's gonna see it. With that in place, there's no way she's going to remain Queen and allow it to happen. I see Henke being placed on the throne by behind-the-scenes maneuvering to give Manticore a chance to ally with its enemies in the face of Solaran interference.

Either that, or the Peeps have ironclad evidence that the Sollies were behind the assassination of her father. That would rather neatly transfer her rage over to the Sollies. Woe betide them.

[Foeofthelance]

How would Michelle end up on the throne? Elizabeth has several children as far as I can recall, not to mention her consort. I'm fairly sure if it came down to replacing her there are closer options than her cousin.

As for Sollies assissinating her father, I doubt it. That probably was done by the Peeps. No reason for the Sollies to have done so, not when having both sides gearing up for war is what has been in there best interest in the first place. Remember, they've been operating on the same belief that motivated Haven in the first place: that their navy is simply too big to be stopped by any of the fringe forces. How they'd deal with the changes in technology, especially if both side were working against them... Well, that fear is one of the reason why they've been so keen on maintaining the Haven-Manticore hostility, now isn't it?

[Lord Iames Osari]

It was, in fact, the Peeps who assassinated her father.

The only way I can see Elizabeth remaining on the throne of Manticore and allying with Haven is through the medium of her treecat, Ariel, and that itself is a long shot.

[MeklorIlavator]

It was, in fact, the Peeps who assassinated her father.

The only way I can see Elizabeth remaining on the throne of Manticore and allying with Haven is through the medium of her treecat, Ariel, and that itself is a long shot.

Actually, she was willing to talk to the Republic of Haven before the Mesa started assassinating a whole bunch of Manticorians while framing the Republic of Haven. If those two super-spies manage to get the right kind of evidence, I think that her current batch of anger towards them would be shifted post-haste to Mesa. Plus, if they get enough info, then Andermani will join in a war against Mesa, as the attempted assassination of their high prince was a testing ground for this tech.

Also, Weber has hinted that he intends the next set of books to deal with the dissolution of the Solarian League, and what better way to do that then have it dissolve when the Pro-Mesa faction splits with the Anti mesa faction when the extent of Mesa's activities are revealed. Not to mention a possible invasion by the Manticorian/Andermani/Republic of Haven/Grayson Alliance.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, his next two books aren't going to be in the direct Honorverse storyline (probably to give some breathing space after the Battle of Manticore), but are going to be sequels to Crown of Slaves and Shadow of Saganami. That's some pretty good circumstantial evidence right there that the emerging boogeyman will be Mesa, Manpower, and/or the Sollies. It'll also be fun to see Zilwicki and Catchat working together from the outset for once...Victor is one of my favorite minor characters in the series.

[Lord Iames Osari]

Well, his next two books aren't going to be in the direct Honorverse storyline (probably to give some breathing space after the Battle of Manticore), but are going to be sequels to Crown of Slaves and Shadow of Saganami. That's some pretty good circumstantial evidence right there that the emerging boogeyman will be Mesa, Manpower, and/or the Sollies. It'll also be fun to see Zilwicki and Catchat working together from the outset for once...Victor is one of my favorite minor characters in the series.
I totally agree. I've been wanting more in the Crown of Slaves line in particular.

[Sundog]

I totally agree. I've been wanting more in the Crown of Slaves line in particular.

Crown of Slaves didn't grab me, to be honest. But Shadow of Saganami was the best thing Weber's done in years, aside from Off Armageddon Reef.

[TheElfLord]

I just finished At All Costs today. I hate seeing Manticore and Haven fighting since the Thiesman coup. For the next book I want them to work together to show the arrogant Solarian League a thing or two. Its horrible to see two groups of characters who I like being manipulated into killing each other (Alister and Javier gone in the same book! Thankfully Lester and Alice are okay) When it was Pieere and St. Just running things I was okay with seeing Peeps crushed, but not anymore. Mesa and the Sollies need to learn not to tangle with the RMS and the RHN.

[Eita]

I am in complete agreement with the two people above me on all points. Except the reef thing. Haven't read that book yet.

Honestly, it was way more fun to read about the two defunct Peep Governments that we've had in the series being crushed.

Now then, I can quite honestly see an Andermani-Manticoran-Peep Alliance to deal with the Peeps.

Personally though, I want to see something on the Asgard and Midgard.

[Dervag]

I just finished At All Costs today. I hate seeing Manticore and Haven fighting since the Thiesman coup. For the next book I want them to work together to show the arrogant Solarian League a thing or two. Its horrible to see two groups of characters who I like being manipulated into killing each other (Alister and Javier gone in the same book! Thankfully Lester and Alice are okay) When it was Pieere and St. Just running things I was okay with seeing Peeps crushed, but not anymore. Mesa and the Sollies need to learn not to tangle with the RMS and the RHN.The Solarians themselves aren't the problem; Mesa and the special interest groups of the Solarian bureaucracy and industrial sectors allied to them are.

[Lord Iames Osari]

I am in complete agreement with the two people above me on all points. Except the reef thing. Haven't read that book yet.

Honestly, it was way more fun to read about the two defunct Peep Governments that we've had in the series being crushed.

Now then, I can quite honestly see an Andermani-Manticoran-Peep Alliance to deal with the Peeps.
You forgot Grayson.

[LordVader]

What I want to know is what happens now that Manticore has the ubar-1337, pwnin' Apollo missile system that utterly invalidates all previous forms of interstellar combat.There obviously has to be some kind of response to this, but what can it be?

I'd also like to see the new, improved Haven stop getting railed on and have the Sollies get their long-deserved comeuppance. Or at least, the more shadowy parts, and people like OFS.

[Dervag]

What I want to know is what happens now that Manticore has the ubar-1337, pwnin' Apollo missile system that utterly invalidates all previous forms of interstellar combat.There obviously has to be some kind of response to this, but what can it be?Hmm...

Gravitic jamming? Probably not; we haven't seen any precedents for it.

Brute force? Actually a credible option. Apollo is still range limited by the limits of the control missiles' communication system. As Honor observed in At All Costs, if her fleet had been in the position that Kusak's Third Fleet was, it would have been broken as a fighting force even though every one of her capital ships had Apollo missiles. On the other hand, even Haven would have trouble making that many ships.

Of course, there's going to be a strategic pause- the Battle of Manticore did so much damage to the Allied fleet that they no longer have a Home Fleet. Honor's Eighth Fleet is the new Home Fleet, and I have no idea who is covering Trevor's Star now. Manticore no longer has anything like a strategic reserve, because they have to commit their reserves to covering the home system.

If the Havenites have any meaningful amount of free tonnage left, it's quite possible that they might try an attack on Trevor's Star again. Of course, such an attack would be a disaster if there are Apollo missile pods seeded into the defensive systems, but I don't know if that's true or not.

What all this means is that there will be a period of at least six months to a year during which effectively nothing can happen in the Manticore-Haven War, simply because neither side is in any position to launch further attacks right now.

It's entirely possible that events unfolding in the Talbott Cluster and Mesa will preempt the further evolution of the Manticore-Haven War. For instance, if Zilwicki and Cachat uncover evidence proving that Mesa was behind all those assassinations, it's going to change everything. Except possibly Elizabeth's mind.

[Eita]

You forgot Grayson.

By Manticore I meant the entire Alliance.

[LordVader]

I just don't see how the Peeps have any chance whatsoever seeing as Apollo quite handily negates the only advantage they ever had, numbers.

I honestly expect the Peeps (although technically we shouldn't call them that, they're a legit republic now) to simply capitulate: Pritchard isn't stupid.

[Lord Iames Osari]

I just don't see how the Peeps have any chance whatsoever seeing as Apollo quite handily negates the only advantage they ever had, numbers.

I honestly expect the Peeps (although technically we shouldn't call them that, they're a legit republic now) to simply capitulate: Pritchard isn't stupid.
You're forgetting at least two important factors: First, the fleet Haven committed to the Battle of Manticore was about half of their total (modern?) wall of battle. While it would be foolish of them to commit to another battle on that scale, they aren't in nearly as bad a position as the Manticoran Alliance.

Second, as you pointed out, Haven is a republic. This, among other things, means that Pritchart does not have absolute power, and requires the approval of Congress to declare a war or conclude a peace.

[Swordguy]

You're forgetting at least two important factors: First, the fleet Haven committed to the Battle of Manticore was about half of their total (modern?) wall of battle. While it would be foolish of them to commit to another battle on that scale, they aren't in nearly as bad a position as the Manticoran Alliance.

Second, as you pointed out, Haven is a republic. This, among other things, means that Pritchart does not have absolute power, and requires the approval of Congress to declare a war or conclude a peace.

The won't realize that for a while, though. Communications lag, remember? IIRC, it's about 3 months from Manticore to Haven, unless somebody takes the news through Trevor's Star wormhole.

Even then, what will they hear? Their offensive fleet is gone. Can they afford to risk the other half? They've got a lot more systems to cover, and they don't know how many ships the Andermani are willing to commit to offensive operations now that there's been a serious (moral) victory by the Alliance. The ships they committed to the offensive op was most everything that the Peeps had that wasn't committed to defensive duty somewhere else. It'll take time to pull them all off-station and concentrate them, time to work up an operations order, time to train, and time to actually make the final assault on Manticore. I'd be impressed if they could pull it off in under a year.

Also, didn't Honor capture a whole lot of ships there at the end? There's a bunch of extra defensive ships for Manticore - and I think there's going to be a lot more volunteers in the RMN now that the home systems' been assaulted directly. Manticore just dodged a pulser dart - and they'll be feeling how close it really was in the next few weeks. Hope they're prepared for a lot of enlisted volunteers.

[Foeofthelance]

You're forgetting at least two important factors: First, the fleet Haven committed to the Battle of Manticore was about half of their total (modern?) wall of battle. While it would be foolish of them to commit to another battle on that scale, they aren't in nearly as bad a position as the Manticoran Alliance.

On the otherhand, Haven is now out:

1) Half of their wall of battle

2) Their best commanding officers, with the exception of Theisman. Anyone who was anyone was involved in that battle, and for good reason! (It was supposed to be Honor that bit the dust, not McKeon. Weber's wife, (sort of) talked him out of it.)

3) Six months of preperation time. It's three months for the ships to escape to get back with the news, so figure that long to turn around. Manticore has at least a month, probably two, to outfit Trevor's Star with Apollo and Mistletoe. Since all they need is pods and missiles, not ships, that shouldn't be too long.

4) A minimum of 1.7 million casulties, as of the end At All Costs, with a projected total of over two million. In a single afternoon. So that's somewhere near 3-4 times as many casualities as Manticore, for a loss.

Manticore, on the other hand:

1) Has time to step up Apollo production, and the means to distribute it. Third and Home Fleet managed to intercept the Haven fleet before it could attack any industrial platforms. Manticore still maintains possession of the junction and all outlets.

2) 100-200 capital ships capable of being restored into service.

3) The Andermani navy to be called on. With Silesia now put to bed, it is even more important to the Andermani that Manticore survives to keep a buffer between them and Haven.

4) Grayson has been fairly untouched since Honor of the Queen, including their industry.

Put together, Manticore seems to be holding all the cards at the moment, espeically since Pritchard is still trying to rebuild the Haven economy into something that works, and has to deal with the damage from Cutworm I&II as well. Now, admittedly, I'd much prefer it if Weber put the whole Manticore/Haven war to rest as well, and if Elizabeth tries to be difficult about it I can almost hear Michelle, Honor, Hamish, and her aunt smacking some sense into her. Even if they have kidnap her and fly her to Haven personally.

Hmmm. Now there's an interesting idea for a plot...

[Dervag]

On the otherhand, Haven is now out:

1) Half of their wall of battle

2) Their best commanding officers, with the exception of Theisman. Anyone who was anyone was involved in that battle, and for good reason! (It was supposed to be Honor that bit the dust, not McKeon. Weber's wife, (sort of) talked him out of it.)

3) Six months of preperation time. It's three months for the ships to escape to get back with the news, so figure that long to turn around. Manticore has at least a month, probably two, to outfit Trevor's Star with Apollo and Mistletoe. Since all they need is pods and missiles, not ships, that shouldn't be too long.

4) A minimum of 1.7 million casulties, as of the end At All Costs, with a projected total of over two million. In a single afternoon. So that's somewhere near 3-4 times as many casualities as Manticore, for a loss.In terms of manpower, they can take three or four times as many casualties as Manticore; they have something like (50? 100?) planets to the Manticore/Grayson Alliance's four.

Shipbuilding is much more of a problem. I strongly suspect that the new Republic of Haven is actually oversupplied with volunteer manpower, and that their main problem is organizing that manpower and making sure they don't lose people from their key war industries too fast (the problem that some democracies faced during the World Wars in the early phases).

So the real question is how fast Haven can replace hulls, and whether they still have any mobile formations that aren't nailed to a critical target. Remember, they no longer have to cover the systems between Trevor's Star and Haven against raids because Eighth Fleet is now nailed to covering Manticore. They may not be able to try any major offensives, but they're still in this.

Moreover, they have a long grace period before the Alliance can even think of mounting a counteroffensive. This gives them time to try to work out a countermeasure to Apollo- and I'm sure they'll think of something that at least marginally reduces their disadvantage. For example, I'm sure they could build something like the Apollo control missiles (the missile equivalent of an AWACS, if you will). They might not be able to miniaturize grav-pulse comm units down into the missile bodies, but I think they could do it. And that would at least partly offset the weaknesses that Apollo eliminates (difficulty of controlling large missile salvos, long communications loop).


Manticore, on the other hand:

1) Has time to step up Apollo production, and the means to distribute it. Third and Home Fleet managed to intercept the Haven fleet before it could attack any industrial platforms. Manticore still maintains possession of the junction and all outlets.

2) 100-200 capital ships capable of being restored into service.Which?

A lot of the Havenite ships captured will take many months, if not years, to refit. Remember how long it took to refit the captured Havenite dreadnoughts after 3rd Yeltsin? The Manticoran ships won't be much better, either.


3) The Andermani navy to be called on. With Silesia now put to bed, it is even more important to the Andermani that Manticore survives to keep a buffer between them and Haven.Yes, but the Andermani already sent a large fraction of their fleet to reinforce Home and Eighth Fleet. They only have so many SDs, and they can't send all of them to the Manticoran front line.


4) Grayson has been fairly untouched since Honor of the Queen, including their industry.Absolutely true. On the other hand, the Havenites' capital ship building yards are mostly just as intact.

What's really happened here is that both sides have lost a large fraction of the 'legacy' fleet they spent most of the past five years or so building up. However, the old equations regarding building rates still apply.


Put together, Manticore seems to be holding all the cards at the moment, espeically since Pritchard is still trying to rebuild the Haven economy into something that works, and has to deal with the damage from Cutworm I&II as well.The Cutworm raids did some damage, but they didn't actually hurt the Republic's warfighting ability that badly. They only actually managed to hit a few industrial nodes, and those nodes were less than critical.

[Executor]

I dunno what'll happen next, but I know what will happen in the end. There will be some terrific Trafalgar-style battle in which Manticoran space dominion is ensured for a century at least, and Honor will die just as she completes her victory. That's what happened to Nelson, and Honor is just basically a Space Nelson.

[Lord Iames Osari]

In terms of manpower, they can take three or four times as many casualties as Manticore; they have something like (50? 100?) planets to the Manticore/Grayson Alliance's four.

Actually, the Andermani Empire held at least 6 star systems by the time of Gustav Anderman's death, and has continued to expand since. It's a good bet they had at least a dozen systems under their control by the time of War of Honor, not even counting the systems they've added since from the Silesian Confederacy. Altogether, I suspect the Andies now control about 3, maybe 4 dozen systems, with probably at least a dozen more in Silesia.

The Manties, in addition to Manticore, Sphinx, Gryphon, Basilisk (not that there's much recruitable population there), and San Martin, have by now probably also added all 17 inhabited systems of the Talbott Cluster, as well as their Silesian holdings - we'll say at least a dozen there, since it seems the Manties and the Andies split it pretty evenly.

So, for the Manticoran-Andermani-Grayson Alliance, we have (going with the lower-end estimates) 58 systems under relatively secure control, with 24 more on the way. Haven still has a staggering manpower advantage, but with the Alliance's greater use of automation, I'm not sure that in itself is a significant factor in the balance of power.


Shipbuilding is much more of a problem. I strongly suspect that the new Republic of Haven is actually oversupplied with volunteer manpower, and that their main problem is organizing that manpower and making sure they don't lose people from their key war industries too fast (the problem that some democracies faced during the World Wars in the early phases).

So the real question is how fast Haven can replace hulls, and whether they still have any mobile formations that aren't nailed to a critical target. Remember, they no longer have to cover the systems between Trevor's Star and Haven against raids because Eighth Fleet is now nailed to covering Manticore. They may not be able to try any major offensives, but they're still in this.

The difference between Havenite and Alliance construction rates has been shrinking throughout the whole war. I believe the last estimate we got was that the Alliance could build an SD in 18 months, while a Havenite shipyard would take 24. This, however, is more than offset by the Havenite advantage in volume of construction.

However, I don't think that it will take 6 months for Haven to figure out that they lost the Battle of Manticore - after all, if Tourville had been successful, he would've been able to use the Junction to send them the good news.

But you're right that no more strategically important actions will be taken for quite some time - a year at least, probably closer to two while the two sides build up their forces again. Oh, there'll be minor raids and probes, but no major battles. That's a year or two in which Cachat and Zilwicki can hopefully dig up all the damning evidence they need to convince Elizabeth that Mesa is the bastard here.

I agree that Honor is nearing the end of her usefulness as a protagonist. Hopefully, within the next book or two, two things will happen: 1) Peace breaking out between Haven and the Alliance; 2) Haven and the Alliance joining forces to eradicate Mesa.

If even the first of those things happens, then I think Honor can safely be retired to "guest character" status, while the "sideline" books deal with new characters and new plots revolving around Mesa and the heavily foreshadowed fracturing of the Solarian League.

[TheElfLord]

I dunno what'll happen next, but I know what will happen in the end. There will be some terrific Trafalgar-style battle in which Manticoran space dominion is ensured for a century at least, and Honor will die just as she completes her victory. That's what happened to Nelson, and Honor is just basically a Space Nelson.

Seconded. Honor is a strong parody of Nelson, although I would say that the Napoleonic era comparisons have gotten much weaker as the series continues. I still think we are likely to end things with a heroic death in the midst of a smashing victory.

[Dervag]

I dunno what'll happen next, but I know what will happen in the end. There will be some terrific Trafalgar-style battle in which Manticoran space dominion is ensured for a century at least, and Honor will die just as she completes her victory. That's what happened to Nelson, and Honor is just basically a Space Nelson.People have been predicting that for the last four books or so; I suspect that Weber is going to do something different just because he doesn't want his character to be Nelson In Space. And because nobody else really wants him to kill Honor off


Actually, the Andermani Empire held at least 6 star systems by the time of Gustav Anderman's death, and has continued to expand since. It's a good bet they had at least a dozen systems under their control by the time of War of Honor, not even counting the systems they've added since from the Silesian Confederacy. Altogether, I suspect the Andies now control about 3, maybe 4 dozen systems, with probably at least a dozen more in Silesia.I was explicitly leaving them out of the calculation because I addressed the Andermani question separately. I was referring to "Manticore/Grayson" for a reason.


The Manties, in addition to Manticore, Sphinx, Gryphon, Basilisk (not that there's much recruitable population there), and San Martin, have by now probably also added all 17 inhabited systems of the Talbott Cluster, as well as their Silesian holdings - we'll say at least a dozen there, since it seems the Manties and the Andies split it pretty evenly.From a military perspective, only the three worlds of the Manticore Binary, Grayson, and San Martin (the planet around Trevor's Star) really matter. The Talbott Cluster and Silesian worlds don't contribute to war industry, and their populations are likely not well educated enough to make good naval ratings, even assuming they get many enlistees from those regions.

Like the British Empire, the "Star Empire" of Manticore contains large stretches of territory that don't actually contribute much to their warfighting capabilities, which is what I was getting at.


The difference between Havenite and Alliance construction rates has been shrinking throughout the whole war. I believe the last estimate we got was that the Alliance could build an SD in 18 months, while a Havenite shipyard would take 24. This, however, is more than offset by the Havenite advantage in volume of construction.Actually, the closing gap in construction rates has worked to Haven's advantage, and so complements their advantage in volume rather than being offset by it. Haven used to take a lot longer to build ships than they do now, because they're making more use of better industrial automation and a larger educated workforce.


However, I don't think that it will take 6 months for Haven to figure out that they lost the Battle of Manticore - after all, if Tourville had been successful, he would've been able to use the Junction to send them the good news.Would he? Remember, Beatrice Bravo left the fortifications around Trevor's Star untouched, and those fortifications would have been quite capable of vaporizing any messengers Tourville sent through the Junction.


Seconded. Honor is a strong parody of Nelson, although I would say that the Napoleonic era comparisons have gotten much weaker as the series continues. I still think we are likely to end things with a heroic death in the midst of a smashing victory.I'm not sure I'd call her a "parody" since she doesn't really have quite the same personality as Nelson, let alone an exaggerated form of that personality.

Also, I think you're right about the setting becoming less Napoleonic. Personally, I think that it makes less sense for Honor to die heroically than it would have before the advent of MDMs. Nowadays, if an SD gets blown up in a fleet action it's either sheer chance (MDMs wandering into lock on a new target) or it's part of a general annihilation of the entire fleet. Neither produces the kind of "death in victory" that you're referring to. Either your fleet loses, or the death of your admiral was largely a matter of bad luck.

I suspect that Honor is going to live through the next few books, and then fade into "guest character" status.

[TheElfLord]

I'm not sure I'd call her a "parody" since she doesn't really have quite the same personality as Nelson, let alone an exaggerated form of that personality.

Also, I think you're right about the setting becoming less Napoleonic. Personally, I think that it makes less sense for Honor to die heroically than it would have before the advent of MDMs. Nowadays, if an SD gets blown up in a fleet action it's either sheer chance (MDMs wandering into lock on a new target) or it's part of a general annihilation of the entire fleet. Neither produces the kind of "death in victory" that you're referring to. Either your fleet loses, or the death of your admiral was largely a matter of bad luck.



True, I agree that parody was a poor choice of words on my part. I think Weber has broken away from the Napoleonic comparisons ever since Theisman's coup. Before that there were very strong connections but the "Napoleon" of the series choose to give up power and restore the republic. I've also been waiting for Manticore (or Manticore/Grayson) to stand alone against multiple enemies. I expected the Aldermani to join the war on Haven's side, becoming the Spain to their France. The fact that this hasn't happened, and that its looking like the focus may shift from Haven being the main enemy to Mesa/elements of the Solarian League demonstrates to me that he is growing out of the original comparisons of the book.

That being said, Honor is still Nelson in space and I don't think anything she, or Weber can do can chance that.

[Sundog]

From a military perspective, only the three worlds of the Manticore Binary, Grayson, and San Martin (the planet around Trevor's Star) really matter. The Talbott Cluster and Silesian worlds don't contribute to war industry, and their populations are likely not well educated enough to make good naval ratings, even assuming they get many enlistees from those regions.

Like the British Empire, the "Star Empire" of Manticore contains large stretches of territory that don't actually contribute much to their warfighting capabilities, which is what I was getting at.

You're right, but the same is true of Haven - perhaps worse. While I don't doubt that the Pritchart government has been a lot easier on them than any previous Havenite regime, there are a pretty big bunch of planets in the Republic that had NO real desire to be there. They might, reasonably, have adopted a wait-and-see attitude to the new government, particularly with the promise of peace with the Alliance; but with the destruction of half of the fleet, and the prospect of yet more of their young men and women being conscripted into another futile, long and bloody war, I can't help but believe more than a few of those fringe systems are seriously considering their chances of managing a breakaway.

Worse, Pritchart can't let them go. If she allows just one occupied system to kick the Havenites out, she'll be facing rebellions in a dozen. Plus, many of those systems are the very ones that suffered the least degradation under the People's Republic, and thus are among her strongest economies.

So she's going to have to divert naval and ground assets to maintaining the integrity of the Republic. Secesson, at least, is not something Manticore needs to consider a strong probability.

[Lord Iames Osari]

From a military perspective, only the three worlds of the Manticore Binary, Grayson, and San Martin (the planet around Trevor's Star) really matter. The Talbott Cluster and Silesian worlds don't contribute to war industry, and their populations are likely not well educated enough to make good naval ratings, even assuming they get many enlistees from those regions.

Like the British Empire, the "Star Empire" of Manticore contains large stretches of territory that don't actually contribute much to their warfighting capabilities, which is what I was getting at.

All right, fair enough. Although I'm willing to bet that Manticore will go about changing that as quickly as they can.

To be honest, I expect that a lot of what the Sillies and Talbotters are missing are details and such that could be filled in during basic training, or even on the job. After all, they must be at least passably familiar with relatively modern technology, or Manticore wouldn't be putting forth the effort to annex them.

[Eita]

Err... It was pretty clear that Manticore wanted Talbott and Silesian space for the economic benefits.

[Dervag]

True, I agree that parody was a poor choice of words on my part. I think Weber has broken away from the Napoleonic comparisons ever since Theisman's coup. Before that there were very strong connections but the "Napoleon" of the series choose to give up power and restore the republic. I've also been waiting for Manticore (or Manticore/Grayson) to stand alone against multiple enemies. I expected the Aldermani to join the war on Haven's side, becoming the Spain to their France. The fact that this hasn't happened, and that its looking like the focus may shift from Haven being the main enemy to Mesa/elements of the Solarian League demonstrates to me that he is growing out of the original comparisons of the book.

That being said, Honor is still Nelson in space and I don't think anything she, or Weber can do can chance that.I don't agree. You see, from my point of view you're defining Honor as "Nelson in Space" and the Star Kingdom of Manticore as "Napoleonic-era Britain in Space" and letting that control your perspective. Which is justified, but it limits one's ability to understand the situation.

There are some very important differences between the two situations:

Everywhere is an island- a raiding task force can potentially attack any star system, whereas only coastlines could see naval attacks during the Napoleonic Wars.

Haven has no allies- Napoleon had foreign powers that were large and closer to France than they were to Britain (like Spain). Haven does not.

Similarly, before the first Havenite War, Haven's expansion was making everyone nervous, so neutrals like the Andermani and Erewhonese nervous. They knew it was in their strategic interests not to let Manticore fall. So from the Andermanis' perspective, there was never any real reason to fight Manticore, even if they weren't willing to ally themselves with Manticore. And even if Manticore wasn't sure of that, the Andermani knew it.

There are a lot of other difference of detail, but what I'm getting at is that just saying "It's the Napoleonic Wars in Space" glosses over a lot of important information. Weber has made it quite clear from the beginning that he doesn't expect things to go exactly as in the Napoleonic Wars, and has never showed any tendency to do so. So even if a lot of the details of the setting evoke the Napoleonic Wars, saying "Nelson == Harrington" isn't a good way to predict what will happen to Harrington.


You're right, but the same is true of Haven - perhaps worse. While I don't doubt that the Pritchart government has been a lot easier on them than any previous Havenite regime, there are a pretty big bunch of planets in the Republic that had NO real desire to be there. They might, reasonably, have adopted a wait-and-see attitude to the new government, particularly with the promise of peace with the Alliance; but with the destruction of half of the fleet, and the prospect of yet more of their young men and women being conscripted into another futile, long and bloody war, I can't help but believe more than a few of those fringe systems are seriously considering their chances of managing a breakaway.

Worse, Pritchart can't let them go. If she allows just one occupied system to kick the Havenites out, she'll be facing rebellions in a dozen. Plus, many of those systems are the very ones that suffered the least degradation under the People's Republic, and thus are among her strongest economies.

So she's going to have to divert naval and ground assets to maintaining the integrity of the Republic. Secesson, at least, is not something Manticore needs to consider a strong probability.The situation doesn't quite work like that; this post (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Harrington/hh_havenite_stability_and_secession.htm) by Weber himself is applicable.

To summarize the infodump, a lot of the systems that didn't want to stay in the Republic (including many of the least economically productive ones) have already been allowed to leave the Republic. Many of the systems that remained in the Republic had to be recaptured from holdovers of the previous regime- in short, the Pritchart administration had to fight a war of liberation for those systems. Had they not done so, those systems would still be controlled by old PN admirals and SS commanders, and the situations would be far worse for the inhabitants. And they know it.

So Pritchart doesn't really have to worry about keeping internal security forces in restive star systems the way that Pierre and the Legislaturalists did.

To paraphrase the infodump further, the Republic has something like 70 star systems that are productive enough to be important to its war effort. None of them is nearly as as like Manticore, but that still gives them an enormous advantage in industrial potential. The only reason the old People's Republic couldn't roll right over Manticore was that their entire economy was centered on looting the provinces to support the lifestyle of the capital population. That's not good for industrial development in the provinces.

Given that Pierre's Committee government did a lot to revitalize the PRN's economy before Theisman's coup restored democracy, the new Republic of Haven is quickly evolving into an industrial powerhouse. To compete in the long term, Manticore would have to fully incorporate its "protectorates" in Talbott, Silesia, and in at least some of the other areas around the wormhole termini. As in, industrialize those systems so that they have dozens of productive systems of their own.

But Haven has a big head start on that process, because even its 'economic basket case' planets are better off than the worlds of the Talbott Cluster.


Err... It was pretty clear that Manticore wanted Talbott and Silesian space for the economic benefits.Actually, in the case of Silesia they wanted to get the political mess in the region off their backs, eliminate a potential headbutting match with the Andermani, finally be able to beat the pirates. Yes, the Silesian Confederacy was a huge source of income (mostly as a market for Manticoran goods), but that source wasn't likely to expand much because of the native wealth of the region.

The situation in Talbott is even worse; the Talbotters asked Manticore for annexation. Manticore would have been OK with just annexing Lynx; the reason they considered a more general annexation was more a desire to avoid having the Sollies' Office of Frontier Security operating so close to one of their wormhole termini.

[Swordguy]

Honestly, it seems the intelligent thing for the RMN to do right now is grab 3 months worth of production of Apollo missiles and go on the offensive to wipe out as much of the Peep naval production capacity as they can with as many ships as they think they can spare. Drop into the system, launch the missiles from light-seconds out, steer them in on their terminal attack run, and bug out. Wipe out as much as they can before the Peeps can concentrate their strength for another attack. If they can destroy large swaths of shipyards, they can even the playing field somewhat, because right now, they're going to be out-built something fierce and eventually swamped.

It's the large number of shipyards that are the key to Havenite superiority right now - they've got to go. Apollo allows the RMN to destroy those yards from ridiculous distances with perfect accuracy, so no need to fret about smacking a planet with a c-fractional projectile.

[Eita]

Actually, in the case of Silesia they wanted to get the political mess in the region off their backs, eliminate a potential headbutting match with the Andermani, finally be able to beat the pirates. Yes, the Silesian Confederacy was a huge source of income (mostly as a market for Manticoran goods), but that source wasn't likely to expand much because of the native wealth of the region.

The situation in Talbott is even worse; the Talbotters asked Manticore for annexation. Manticore would have been OK with just annexing Lynx; the reason they considered a more general annexation was more a desire to avoid having the Sollies' Office of Frontier Security operating so close to one of their wormhole termini.

Wasn't it stated that one of the main reason they took Silesia was so their merchants could go in and safely? Safety of the Merchant Marine = Economic benefit.

Potential enemy working near a major economic boom machine = bad for economy as you pretty much said. Potential enemy further away from junction = good.

Thus, it comes down to economics. It always comes down to economics.

[Dervag]

Honestly, it seems the intelligent thing for the RMN to do right now is grab 3 months worth of production of Apollo missiles and go on the offensive to wipe out as much of the Peep naval production capacity as they can with as many ships as they think they can spare. Drop into the system, launch the missiles from light-seconds out, steer them in on their terminal attack run, and bug out. Wipe out as much as they can before the Peeps can concentrate their strength for another attack. If they can destroy large swaths of shipyards, they can even the playing field somewhat, because right now, they're going to be out-built something fierce and eventually swamped.

It's the large number of shipyards that are the key to Havenite superiority right now - they've got to go. Apollo allows the RMN to destroy those yards from ridiculous distances with perfect accuracy, so no need to fret about smacking a planet with a c-fractional projectile.That would be the best solution except for a few major problems.

One is that the Manticoran wall of battle no longer contains enough ships capable of launching Apollo missiles to both defend Manticore and launch deep strikes against Havenite shipyards. To do these raids they have to uncover Manticore, send their modern wall through the Trevor's Star wormhole, and out on raids. Which means that if the Havenites still have any effective ships of the wall anywhere on their front, they could probably proceed to hit Manticore while Home Fleet was off blowing up shipyards. Even though the fixed defenses around Manticore could stop Havenite raiders from bombarding any planets or near-planet installations, that wouldn't be enough. Many of Manticore's key industrial facilities (including their dispersed construction yards, as well as their concentrated ones on Hephaestus and Vulcan) are in deep space and would make excellent targets for long-range MDM fire, even the much less accurate Havenite fire.

And if that happens, Manticore is screwed no matter how much Havenite shipbuilding capability they blow up. Without new capital ships to replenish their ranks, they simply will not have enough force to win the war, and Haven will be able to repair its construction yards faster than Manticore can because they are much larger.

To make matters worse, if the Alliance adopts a deep raid strategy, they face a problem of force concentration. The key Havenite shipyards are separated by tens of light-years. Transit times between systems are measured in weeks or days. If they try to act as a cohesive fleet, operating from Trevor's Star in the pattern of the Cutworm and Sanskrit raids, it would take them many months to seriously deplete Haven's shipbuilding capability. And that's ignoring the months it would take them to fly out to wherever Bolthole is, even assuming they can find it. That increases the window of vulnerability in the Manticore Binary System.

To counter this, Harrington could disperse her own forces and stage many raids in quick succession (not necessarily with precise timing, just having all her little task groups out on their respective raids at once). That would greatly reduce the time required to punch out all the Havenite shipyards, but it's dangerous.

Remember, Apollo doesn't actually make ships harder to kill, and Haven still has many squadrons of SDs left. If a group of two or three SDs armed with Apollo missiles try to attack a Haven-controlled system, they will still have to deal with the large number of system defense pods and warships in the Havenite systems. Manticoran missile defenses are tough, but there are limits, and the Manticorans will lose SDs if they go out in small numbers and pick fights with heavily defended star systems. After all, even if your own missiles are ten times more accurate than the enemy's, the Lanchester Square Law will bite you if they have ten times more missiles than you do.

And they can't just wait six light-hours out and lob the missiles in from effectively infinite range. As Weber mentions here (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Harrington/hh_ftl_comm_lag.htm), the communications range of Apollo control missiles is actually limited, and rather sharply. They don't actually have radically greater range than Havenite missiles do, they just have greater accuracy out to the limits of those range. Without communications relays (available around Manticore, but not around Havenite star systems), they are still vulnerable to counterattack while launching their Apollo birds.

Which means that if Harrington disperses her forces widely enough to deal with Havenite shipyards quickly, she risks taking heavy casualties among task groups that don't have enough antimissile defenses to deal with the combined firepower of an entire star system's fixed missile batteries. And if she concentrates her forces tightly so that they can reliably punch out individual Havenite system defense forces, she'll have to spend months running around trying to knock out all the Havenite yards because she won't have enough independent task groups to deal with all of them quickly.

Either way, she's in trouble.

Which is why I think the Manties are going to have to wait for enough reinforcing superdreadnoughts to cover Manticore before they can seriously contemplate trying to launch a counterattack. Otherwise, they have a very long period in which the Havenites are free to stage counterattacks- and they can't afford to take those counterattacks.


Wasn't it stated that one of the main reason they took Silesia was so their merchants could go in and safely? Safety of the Merchant Marine = Economic benefit.

Potential enemy working near a major economic boom machine = bad for economy as you pretty much said. Potential enemy further away from junction = good.

Thus, it comes down to economics. It always comes down to economics.Yes, but it's not the right kind of economics to help the Manties very much in the war against Haven. The Silesians can't manufacture warships, nor do they have enough high-tech industry to take much of the strain off of Manticore. That's why they were such a favored market for Manticoran shipping- their local economy was relatively primitive and weakened by constant internal conflict. But the same things that make them a lovely export market for Manticoran trade goods mean that they won't be making a lot of useful war materiel for Manticore in the next decade or two.

If Manticore wins the current Havenite War, or at least doesn't get trampled, then it will be in a position to profit greatly from its protectorate over Silesia. But for the next few years, the situation in Silesia doesn't matter much one way or the other.

[Eita]

Dervag, I never said it would. I just said that annexing Silesia and Talbott was thought to be a good economic move for the Star Empire (we left Star Kingdom when they annexed Medusa as far as I'm concerned)*.

*Not that I consider that a bad thing though.

[Timberwolf]

Firstly, I will say God bless the insane geeks at Forbidden Planet in Coventry for caring enough about their customers to order this on import. Yes, it's not out in the UK yet, officially anyway.

However, since I've read it now, my predictions go like this.

Both sides will have to recoup their losses and the Peeps will accept how screwed they are without Apollo and sue for peace.

Cachet and Zilwicki turn up enough evidence to implicate Mesa but Mesa has managed to manipulate Frontier Security into making an overt move, therefore meaning that Haven, the Andies and the Manties reluctantly join forces to blow the Sollies (who, lets face it, have been being set up as the real heavies for a while and haven't really had a mention so far) out of space.

However, Honor will have blown lumps out of Bolthole by this point to make the point that they really are screwed and Theisman will accept this as a fact.

Anyway, I reckon this'll be the (effectively) last book. He may be able to wring a few more books out of her fighting the Sollies but short of her deposing Elizabeth / Protector Benjamin, there's not actually any more titles he can give her.

[Eita]

You know, actually, his original plan would've given us another 10 books. That plan? Kill Honor, have the war stale-mate/carry on for 20 godd*mned years, and then have her son enlist in the navy. Presumably he'd be Space-Nimitz.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

My take on what will happen after At All Costs...

First off, Manticore is screwed. They just lost nearly every single Pod SD, except what Honor has (something like 30ish hulls?). True, they've got a couple hundred or so captured, but it will take TIME to refit them all. Hell, they may not be able to refit them at ALL, depending on how severe the retrofitting will have to be to make them all Apollo-capable. While the Queen will be all for sending Honor right to Haven and issuing demands, the entire parlimant will be screaming to keep her in system to defend them in case the Peeps (ahem.... excuse me... the Havenites) decide to try it a second time.

Haven is hurt, particularly because they lost such able commanders, but not out. They lost a lot of ships. Fine. They can build more. A LOT more. They've hit their building stride. It hurt their pocketbook, but their economy is still expanding, they can take that kind of hit.

Mesa is still out there, laughing up their sleeves at the war they just manufactured, because every single casualty is one less person THEY have to deal with. They've not only got their cake, they get to eat it too. What they don't know is that Zilwicki and Chachet are looking HARD for proof of who is behind those assassinations. And with Harrington in position to show the rock-hard proof to the Queen.

Now then...

How to defeat Apollo. First off, no one will be facing off against it any time soon unless they attack Manticore Prime, because you can bet your bottom dollar every last one of 'em is going to be stuck guarding the home system until they can get some of those Havenite hulls refitted. Second, this is no different than shortly after Buttercup and Project Ghost Rider. What did the Peeps do about it? Found ways around it. And they'll do it again. Also by figuring out how the manties did it and do it themselves. Maybe not as elegantly, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Mesa. This is going to be the next villian. And they are royally screwed when the superspies get solid proof. I can just see Harrington now...

"Pardon, Your Magesty? Here's proof, the Mesans were the ones responsible behind the assassinations. Including mine, Websters, and the one against your neice. They deliberately framed the Havenites because they knew you'd love the peeps to play the part of villian again. In short, they played you. What are your orders?"

"How many ships would you need to reduce Mesa to a molten slag?"

"Funny you should ask, I just so happen to have this report right here. I'll need ten of the wall and four LAC Carriers, plus a squad of the MkIII BC's and assorted escort, to ensure comple ahnilliation of the Mesan forces. All of them will have Apollo missile capability. I can dispatch them from Home Fleet today, if you like."

I can see the Solarian Leage shattering soon as well. Too much corruption rampant. All of the OFS guys are going to be scrambling to be the lords of their little fiefdoms. I'll bet it'll end up with the Core Worlds being a much smaller Solarian League, and the rest just kinda sitting out there. And once that happens, Mesa won't be able to hide behind Sol's skirts.

Then once Zilwicki and Cachet get proof, they're going to find a couple squadrons of SD(P)'s on their doorstep, both Havenite AND Manty. Well, to be honest, it's going to be the Torcheese fleet, they'll just activate the mutual defense portions of the treaties with both Haven and Manticore, who will both be MORE than delighted at this point to obliterate Mesa. Because if you may recall, Torch did officially declare war on Mesa, so it's perfectly reasonable for them to mount an attack, and call on their allies for help.

While all this is happening, Grayson is still growing in power. They may be called on to go send ships to Manticore's Home Fleet. They may even do it. But what they will be doing is refitting every single one of their ships with apollo capability as rapidly as possible. Including the Protector's Own.

The Andermanii will be busy consolidating their holdings in the Selesian areas under their control and working to grab as much tech from Manticore, including Apollo capability, as possible. They will be sitting and stewing somewhere in the background, not really all that active. Yet. Once the Solarian League shatters, however, Gustav may find some easy real estate to start snatching up.

[Eita]

Wait... Isn't the Mesan fleet made of BCs and below..?

[Lord Iames Osari]

Wait... Isn't the Mesan fleet made of BCs and below..?
I don't think it's ever been said, although my gut thinks you're probably right. I have no doubt they could "acquire" some if they thought they needed them though.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Wait... Isn't the Mesan fleet made of BCs and below..?

Depending on how the Solarian League breaks up, they may be able to have enough OFS bigwigs paid off to be able to swing a few capital ships. Heck, the Solarian League shatter may throw things into enough chaos that someone with as many connections, and a big enough bank account, and as many favors to call on, as Mesa could be able to obtain several SD's pretty easily.

However, OFS primarily has BC's and smaller, thus the units which Mesa normally has access to are going to be BC and smaller. However, one should never underestimate your opponent. About ten of the wall should... suffice. Just to make it abundantly clear Her Majesty's displeasure at being made a fool of, and to discourage dreary last-minute 'heroics' on the part of any Mesan. Specially if you toss in a couple of LAC Carriers. Load 'em up with Shrike IIb's (the ones with the bow buckler) and a few Ferrets. They'll be able to take care of anything short of a capital ship, and a couple hundred should be all you need to make sure no one escapes in something small and fast.

[Dervag]

Dervag, I never said it would. I just said that annexing Silesia and Talbott was thought to be a good economic move for the Star Empire (we left Star Kingdom when they annexed Medusa as far as I'm concerned)*.

*Not that I consider that a bad thing though.Eh, I'd say that annexing Medusa, and even San Martin, didn't make them an empire. I mean, both those planets are very close to Manticore (via the Junction); I imagine it doesn't take much longer to reach them from Manticore planet than it would to reach Gryphon. Moreover, the kingdom needed control over both those systems to deal with urgent security needs, rather than general long-term goals.

Annexing Silesia was definitely an imperial move, though.


My take on what will happen after At All Costs...

First off, Manticore is screwed. They just lost nearly every single Pod SD, except what Honor has (something like 30ish hulls?). True, they've got a couple hundred or so captured, but it will take TIME to refit them all. Hell, they may not be able to refit them at ALL, depending on how severe the retrofitting will have to be to make them all Apollo-capable.I don't think it's actually possible to refit 'standard' SDs for Apollo. Apollo relies on the Keyhole tethered control drones, remember? And Keyhole drones are big. So big that only ships designed from the keel up for the system can accomodate the even bigger drones required to support Apollo missile telemetry links.

I don't think it's actually possible for them to refit the Havenite hulls for Apollo, and most of the surviving Havenite hulls will be so battered that it won't be very cost-effective to refit them anyway. I mean, they might be cobbled up into something that can at least fire pre-Apollo missile pods for system defense, or that can launch pods and hand them off to other ships to control, but that would be bloody expensive. And by the time they could get those hulls into service in quantity, many months would have passed. By that time, they'll have finished many of the Invictus and Medusa-B class hulls that the High Ridge administration started building again after Theisman revealed that he'd been building SD(P)s.


While the Queen will be all for sending Honor right to Haven and issuing demands, the entire parlimant will be screaming to keep her in system to defend them in case the Peeps (ahem.... excuse me... the Havenites) decide to try it a second time. Queen Bess may be crazy about Haven, but she's smart enough to understand that she can't win the war with thirty of the wall, no matter how strong those thirty are.


Haven is hurt, particularly because they lost such able commanders, but not out. They lost a lot of ships. Fine. They can build more. A LOT more. They've hit their building stride. It hurt their pocketbook, but their economy is still expanding, they can take that kind of hit.But by the time they finish enough ships to resume large-scale offensives, the Manticorans will have a lot (not as many, but still a lot) of their latest SD(P) types in service. All of which will have Apollo. Since one Apollo SD(P)* is probably the equal of three or four Havenite SD(P)s, that's bad news for Haven.

*By the way, Apollo is such a radically new weapon system, and one so intrinsic to the design of the ships capable of using it, that I'm tempted to write it along with the name, as in "AEGIS cruiser."


Second, this is no different than shortly after Buttercup and Project Ghost Rider. What did the Peeps do about it? Found ways around it. And they'll do it again. Also by figuring out how the manties did it and do it themselves. Maybe not as elegantly, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.But the Havenites still haven't managed to reverse-engineer Ghost Rider fully, even after five or six years. The problem is that they flat out do not have the tech base to replicate some of Manticore's latest and greatest. Their new weapons (including Ghost Rider) are the product of being about ten to twenty years ahead of Haven in basic science, or at least in basic engineering. They have better computers, better fusion plants, better gravitics. That lets them do things that the Havenites simply cannot duplicate. The Havenites can come in shouting distance by a combination of reverse engineering the things they can duplicate and building bigger, bulkier, more expensive systems. But that only gets them so far. To make matters worse, they don't have any copies of Apollo missile pods and aren't likely to acquire any in the foreseeable future.

I don't think they'll be able to duplicate Apollo. However, I would make a guess at how they can at least reduce the advantage it gives them:

There's nothing actually stopping Haven from building something like the Apollo control missile. The problem is not that they can't build the control missile, but that they can't link it to their launch platforms in real time because they just plain cannot build an FTL comm that small (they're about five to ten years behind Manticore in FTL comm).

Now, if they build missile pods that are like Apollo pods, in that they carry X missiles plus a control missile (call them 'Helios' pods), the Helios pods will have some of Apollo's advantage. They won't have the full power of a superdreadnought's analysis software to steer them through ECM, but at least they'll have something better than a standard missile seeker.

Or they could try to push LACs and screen elements out on the flank facing the enemy wall to get more depth in their point defense zone. It would reduce their defensive density, but if the timing were right, the flank ships would get laser shots at the missiles as they passed and headed for their new targets. Among other things, they'd have a decent chance of killing the control missiles. Which probably wouldn't disable the missiles controlled entirely, because I don't doubt they're programmed to use their own less capable seekers in the event of loss of control, but it would sure help.


"Pardon, Your Magesty? Here's proof, the Mesans were the ones responsible behind the assassinations. Including mine, Websters, and the one against your neice. They deliberately framed the Havenites because they knew you'd love the peeps to play the part of villian again. In short, they played you. What are your orders?"Ooh. Lovely. Well, except for the detail that Ruth wasn't the target; Queen Berry was. And her Modesty isn't related to any royalty at all. She's a Chicago street urchin, remember?

But I really like this one. I just hope we don't get "the madness of Queen Bess" with Elizabeth refusing to believe the evidence.


While all this is happening, Grayson is still growing in power. They may be called on to go send ships to Manticore's Home Fleet. They may even do it. But what they will be doing is refitting every single one of their ships with apollo capability as rapidly as possible. Including the Protector's Own.

The Andermanii will be busy consolidating their holdings in the Selesian areas under their control and working to grab as much tech from Manticore, including Apollo capability, as possible. They will be sitting and stewing somewhere in the background, not really all that active. Yet. Once the Solarian League shatters, however, Gustav may find some easy real estate to start snatching up.Again, there are serious problems refitting a ship for Apollo if it didn't already have Keyhole capability, and Keyhole didn't exist until a few years ago. Even the early-generation SD(P)s won't be able to refit for Apollo. I mean, they might be able to launch Apollo birds and hand them off to some other ship's Keyholes, but that's a solution with very limited potential.

[Foeofthelance]

True, they've got a couple hundred or so captured, but it will take TIME to refit them all.

You know, the more I thought about this, the more I realized they don't have all that much work to do. When Tourville stood down he left his ship's systems intact, as per Honor's orders. Manticore doesn't need an offensive fleet, as Eighth survived. All they really need to do is upload Apollo and Mistletoe control programs to the captured ships, make sure the life support systems aren't going to conk out any time soon, and then use them as miniforts. Then all they need to do is build system defense pods, and drop them off with tugs or somesuch.

Remember, of the Manticore systems, the two prime, Sphinx and Manticore, revolve around the same stellar body. With Apollo, they could launch from orbit* with no problems, especially with their gravcoms assissting with the missile control. Any attacker would then face three bad choices: fire back, and risk the Edirani Edict violation if they miss, sit there and take it, or try and close to beam range while being hammered. The only other major target at this point is San Martin, because that's the only planet close enough to Haven to make for a quick target. Since it's got one end of the Junction, we know its going to be equally heavily defended,

Remember folks: you don't need to be perfect in war, just a little bit better and little bit luckier than the other guy.

[Dervag]

You know, the more I thought about this, the more I realized they don't have all that much work to do. When Tourville stood down he left his ship's systems intact, as per Honor's orders.Yes, but his ships had been shot full of missiles before this happened. Very few of his capital ships survived the battles with Home Fleet and Third Fleet anything like intact. Most of them would need months of drydock time in friendly drydocks to repair, and Manticore won't be able to refit captured Havenite warships as fast as Haven could refit its own warships.


Manticore doesn't need an offensive fleet, as Eighth survived. All they really need to do is upload Apollo and Mistletoe control programs to the captured ships, make sure the life support systems aren't going to conk out any time soon, and then use them as miniforts. Then all they need to do is build system defense pods, and drop them off with tugs or somesuch.Mistletoe is the stealthed recon drone for attacking system defense platforms, remember? It's not actually important in this situation. Manticore would be better off building dedicated control platforms (its own equivalent of Haven's Moriarty system) than refitting Havenite SD(P)s to serve as control platforms.

Plus, Apollo control links rely on the Keyhole II drones, remember? And you can't refit a ship with Keyhole II if it wasn't designed with Keyhole in mind.


Remember, of the Manticore systems, the two prime, Sphinx and Manticore, revolve around the same stellar body. With Apollo, they could launch from orbit* with no problems, especially with their gravcoms assissting with the missile control. Any attacker would then face three bad choices: fire back, and risk the Edirani Edict violation if they miss,I don't think the Eridani Edict actually prohibits a fleet from returning fire against targets that are shooting at it. Weber expands on the Eridani Edict here (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Harrington/hh_expanding_upon_the_eridani_edict.htm). My impression is that you're permitted to bombard planetary targets that are a direct threat (such as surface-to-orbit missile launchers). I suspect the same logic applies to orbital defenses. If the defenders deliberately place their weapon emplacements somewhere where any stray fire is likely to hit civilians, the Eridani Edict will not cover fire directed at those weapon emplacements.

Besides which, only a very crazy person would bet on the assumption that using the civilian population of their own capital world as human shields will make them safe against return fire by an attacking enemy fleet. I, for one, would be inclined to slap down anybody who suggested this in a fleet I commanded, because I don't want some lunatic commodore taking it into his head that firing while standing directly in front of the planet in close orbit is a good strategy. I don't want any stray shots hitting the planet, and I can't take the chance that my enemy won't return fire if I'm shooting at him.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Even if they can't convert a single one of the captured Havenite ships to using Apollo, they could still likely convert them to Keyhole I capability and make them able to use Ghost Rider technologies. They were doing this to equivelantly technologically advanced ships just after Ashes of Victory when Operation Buttercup hit the Peeps so hard.

So what, you say? Well, other than having a few hundred ships in reserve, even if they aren't Apollo capable, makes for a damn good start on replacing Home Fleet. Here's the kicker... Home Fleet won't need to use the Keyhole II Apollo Missiles. Instead, they can tie into the Hermes Boueys spaced all around Manticore to achieve the same effect, FTL lag on missile control. Instead of using an Apollo missile as a FTL relay probe, just use the ones you've already got in-system. With minimal changes, you can duplicate the effect of an Apollo missile, at least while in-system. As was said, it was almost, but not quite put into place when the Havenites attacked. Getting that online fastest while upgrading all the captured Havenite ships, pushing even modern Keyhole II equipped new ship production aside to get as many refitted as possible, will make system defense MUCH easier for the Manticorians.

However, that will still take TIME. Meanwhile, Harrington will be stuck with their thirty-something Apollo capable ships right in Manticore as the new Home Fleet until they can get that done. That'll take a while, even if they import some Grayson-style building procedures and just park a ship out in orbit somewhere with minimum scaffolding and start to work on it, if they can swallow their pride and do that rather than limiting themselves to slips, they can crank out the upgrades MUCH faster, and probably manage to keep most of the new ship production going as well, if they have the manpower.

Now then, Haven still has hundreds of ships of the wall available to them. Sure, they lost almost four hundred, but they had six to eight hundred to start with, plus the ships comming out of the queue on an almost daily basis. If they REALLY wanted to, they could probably take San Martin right now. They'd pay for it later when Harrington gets enough strategic reserve to go bring her Apollo ships in to kick them back out, but they could do it.

I still say that the majority of the Grayson ships are new enough to be Keyhole II upgradable. Most of them were built after Ashes of Victory, remember, and were all built with Ghost Rider and Keyhole I from the keel out. Upgrading from Keyhole I to Keyhole II would be quite a feat, but it will almost HAVE to be their number one priority. Getting the apollo-like defense network up will be happening over in Yeltsen as well. They won't advertise it, they'll just do it quietly and rapidly, in traditional Grayson fashion. Then, if there's a Battle of Yeltsen V... someone is going to find out what happens when you have real-time communications with super-stealthed multi-staged missiles and ECCM platforms. Not to mention the Courvoursier II BC(P)'s (and the Harrington's) cranking out Apollo pods as rapidly as possible. Good place for someone to stick a sausage into a meat grinder. Not that we've got anyone left who has any sausage worth mentioning who wants to attack in that direction. Haven is the only one with the ships of the wall capable of doing it, and they're not that stupid anymore.

I really want to see how the Solarian League is going to break down. Will it pull a 'Civil War' (since he was once following Napoleonic era in his books) with the Sollies fighting each other, or will it actually fracture and shrink, like when Great Britian lost the majority of their colonies? I could really see it going either way, really. On one hand, Core vs Mesa and allies in a North vs South thing.
On the other hand, every OFS Bigwig for himself, and devil take the hindmost. Dozens of 'pocket empires' popping up as the Solarian League itself recoils in horror, shrinking back to the core worlds (Sol, Beowulf...). That would have all kinds of adventures possible in the ensuing chaos, so it's my favored option, really. You could have any number of new people be up and comming stars of their own novels, as much ship to ship fighting as you like in the chaos while the pocket empires fight each other over who gets to be how big and who pays homage to whom.

And yes, the Eridani Edict only covers bombardment of 'helpless' planets. In other words, if you have launchers groundside, and launch them, they can bombard you pretty much at will. And considering the notorious inaccuracy of multiple-stage missiles on final run, that's a good way to loose millions of voters and get everyone really pissed off at you. Besides, who enforces the Edict? The Solarian League. Which is about to shatter. So this may not be such a problem in future books...

[Timberwolf]

And then, when Weber's exhausted all the possibilities (I hope this doesn't happen soon) and Honor's the God - Empress of the Universe, the Yuuzhan Vong'll invade...

Ahem...

Well, on a more serious note, from what I've been reading so far, the consensus appears to be that she'll be fighting the Sollies soon. I'll be interested to see what happens with the Peeps though. Not that I'll get to hear any time soon, even when he does write it.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

And then, when Weber's exhausted all the possibilities (I hope this doesn't happen soon) and Honor's the God - Empress of the Universe, the Yuuzhan Vong'll invade...Dude, that was a low blow... touche.


Well, on a more serious note, from what I've been reading so far, the consensus appears to be that she'll be fighting the Sollies soon. I'll be interested to see what happens with the Peeps though. Not that I'll get to hear any time soon, even when he does write it.

If it's Manties vs Sollies, it'll probably be because of Mesa, with Torch as the figurehead, so it'll likely be Manties + Peeps + Andies + Grayson + Torch vs Sollies.

[Timberwolf]

Dude, that was a low blow... touche.


*bows* filler filler filler.

[Foeofthelance]

Plus, Apollo control links rely on the Keyhole II drones, remember? And you can't refit a ship with Keyhole II if it wasn't designed with Keyhole in mind.

Yes, but we're also using these ships to defend a star system, not attack it. The Keyhole drones, as far as I could tell, were kept outside of the ship. Since the ships themselves are going to simply be sitting in space running a software program it shouldn't be all that difficult to just tag them to pods and platforms dropped off by tugs and freighters. Heck, with the Haven ability to swap missile controls between ships, this should be even easier.


Mistletoe is the stealthed recon drone for attacking system defense platforms, remember? It's not actually important in this situation. Manticore would be better off building dedicated control platforms (its own equivalent of Haven's Moriarty system) than refitting Havenite SD(P)s to serve as control platforms.

Yes and no. Moriarty worked because they had time to build the Moriarty platoforms. Manticore, if it wants to go back on the offensive quicly, doesn't have that time. By using the captured ships, which would require an equal or greater amount of time to refit for active duty, they save time, money, and resources. With the 100+ ships they captured they could stand thirty down for quick repairs, shuttle thirty to San Martin for defense there, and use thirty for Home Fleet. With the range advantage there's no reason for Moriarty's stealth, and they need the quick fix. Adaptation for the win!

Reply about the edict, spoilered for space :)

First, they may only be used by an attacker who controls near-planet space. That is, a raiding squadron which dashes in, passes within weapons range of the planet, and then lopes off again before a relief force can turn up and kick its butt, cannot pop off a few missiles at the planet as it passes without violating the Edict. Before it can fire at targets on the planetary surface, it must have established that the planet has no immediate prospect of relief, and that they (the attackers) are in a position to send down assault forces if they choose to do so. At that point, the attackers are entitled to summon the planet to surrender upon pain of bombardment from space. If the defenders choose not to surrender, then the attackers are justified in using bombardment to take out specific military targets rather than sending their assault forces down to be slaughtered trying to take them with infantry or armored units in an effort to prevent civilian casualties.

The "wanton" portion of the Edict's prohibition is intended to prevent people from saying "Oops!" after "accidentally" inflicting damage the Edict would otherwise have prevented. The Edict requires the attacker to take precautions to prevent "accidents," and assumes that if such an "accident" occurs anyway, then adequate precautions were not taken. In that case, the attacker assumes the guilt of having carried out the attack deliberately, and the Edict goes into effect. Which means that even if the attacker controls near-planet space, and has summoned the planet to surrender (exactly as required by the Edict), and elected to bombard specific, legitimate military targets, he had better make damned sure that his "legitimate" bombardment doesn't get out of hand and inflict additional civilian megadeaths. This is one reason everyone keeps sweating the use of MDMs around inhabited planets. If you screw up and hit a major population center on a populated planet, even accidentally, with a notoriously inaccurate "weapon of mass destruction," then you haven't taken "prudent precautions," and you, my friend, are in violation of the Edict

Since any Haven force would not have control of near space when launching an attack on orbital defenses, and it would be assumed that the capital system would have quick access to reinforcements, mainly via the junction and San Martin, then yes, any Haven force that launched from long range and hit the planet would be in violation of the Edict. It is quite clearly worded that if you kill people without having crushed the defenses first, then you violated the edict. An attempt to suppress those same defenses, if it would cause wanton civilian casualties, would trigger the Edict. It is a nasty Catch-22, but it is there.

Granted, hiding a fleet there for protection is a bad idea, but if the same ships that are controlling the system defenses happen to be in spacedocks for repair, it becomes a trickier proposition. Also, it could be argued that as long as the pods aren't in orbit, then the Haven ships have no legitimate reason to fire on the ships in orbit, at least not until superiority has been achieved. Tis legalese, and I know it, but so? In war the only thing more dangerous then the other side's guns is their lawyers!

Also, can someone please explain to me when Honor supposedly became a Mary Sue? The only thing I can think of that would qualify her is her extraoridnary link with Nimitz, which has only been marginally useful in protecting herself. Yes she's won most of her battles; she's now also mostly plastic to make up for it. Yes she's now involved with Hamish; but this isn't the first time he's strayed, and the only difference is that Emily became involved, making it a permanent arrangement. Yes she's popular with everyone, but that's been earned. By the same token, that would make any major league sport's team a group of mary sues. So wha...?

[Eita]

She's not a Mary-Sue. She just always wins.

If Honor becomes God-Empress of the universe, it's because she started working for someone who became that with her help. Then, in a massive naval battle, he will be killed. Then, Honor will take control of the fleet in his stead and everyone will clamor for her to take his place on the throne.

Weber is one of the few authors I've read who can write something like that and make me completely buy it.

[Swordguy]

Also, can someone please explain to me when Honor supposedly became a Mary Sue? The only thing I can think of that would qualify her is her extraoridnary link with Nimitz, which has only been marginally useful in protecting herself. Yes she's won most of her battles; she's now also mostly plastic to make up for it. Yes she's now involved with Hamish; but this isn't the first time he's strayed, and the only difference is that Emily became involved, making it a permanent arrangement. Yes she's popular with everyone, but that's been earned. By the same token, that would make any major league sport's team a group of mary sues. So wha...?

People think any hero(ine) is a MS any more - it comes from them being failures at their own lives, so they think up any excuse to bring a successful person down to their level.

That said, defeating Burdette was improbable, but I'm willing to let it pass because I know exactly what Weber meant between the dojo and the real world when it comes to fighting. The one that really bothered me was her plotting by eye the intercept course of a c-fractional projectile with her own ship and surviving. It was "justified" - she'd done something similar before with Fearless at Basilisk - but it still felt like "too much" to me. Other than that, I'm good her. Weber goes out of his way to justify her capabilities, and those capabilities are usually what's needed in a given situation. If they weren't justified, but merely assumed, then people would have a legitimate MS complaint.

[Swordguy]

Also, can someone please explain to me when Honor supposedly became a Mary Sue? The only thing I can think of that would qualify her is her extraoridnary link with Nimitz, which has only been marginally useful in protecting herself. Yes she's won most of her battles; she's now also mostly plastic to make up for it. Yes she's now involved with Hamish; but this isn't the first time he's strayed, and the only difference is that Emily became involved, making it a permanent arrangement. Yes she's popular with everyone, but that's been earned. By the same token, that would make any major league sport's team a group of mary sues. So wha...?

People think any hero(ine) is a MS any more - it comes from them being failures at their own lives, so they think up any excuse to bring a successful person down to their level.

That said, defeating Burdette was improbable, but I'm willing to let it pass because I know exactly what Weber meant between the dojo and the real world when it comes to fighting. The one that really bothered me was her plotting by eye the intercept course of a c-fractional projectile with her own ship and surviving. It was "justified" - she'd done something similar before with Fearless at Basilisk - but it still felt like "too much" to me. Other than that, I'm good her. Weber goes out of his way to justify her capabilities, and those capabilities are usually what's needed in a given situation. If they weren't justified, but merely assumed, then people would have a legitimate MS complaint.

[Deadmeat.GW]

Actually the calculations done on the fly I can see, I have had kids in classes who could tell me exactly what the result of a computation would be but when I asked how they did it they would be stumped and not be able to get it correct without spending hours on it.

It depends, sometimes humans tend to skip the how for the result in questions, it is one of those things we have on current computers that makes us superior in combat situations where simple speed of reactions is not everything.

As such given that Honor instinctively works out maths due to a extremely well-developed sense of spatial awareness but fails often and badly so when she tries to reason her way through the calculations I would guess she has a similar pre-disposition.

[Dervag]

Even if they can't convert a single one of the captured Havenite ships to using Apollo, they could still likely convert them to Keyhole I capability and make them able to use Ghost Rider technologies. They were doing this to equivelantly technologically advanced ships just after Ashes of Victory when Operation Buttercup hit the Peeps so hard.Thing is, it's not clear that they could refit all those ships faster than they could build their own ships, which would be stronger and more effective. Remember, it takes yard space and resources to refit a ship. The Manties are already building new SDs as fast as they can. A lot of them (the ones the High Ridge administration mothballed that were not at Grendelsbane) are actually pretty close to construction.

So where, pray tell, are they going to find the manpower and resources and capacity to refit a hundred Havenite SDs? They can't just slap on a new coat of paint- those ships have big holes blasted in them by kiloton-range energy weapons. Many of their systems would have to be replaced. They require large crews, larger than those of new-build Manticoran SDs, and Manticore would have to train those crews.

What's the point? Maybe, eventually, the Manticorans will try to refit some of those hulls, but it isn't a solution to their immediate problem, because by the time they can get any of the Havenite ships into useful service they'll already have their own, much more capable, SDs coming off the building slips.


So what, you say? Well, other than having a few hundred ships in reserve, even if they aren't Apollo capable, makes for a damn good start on replacing Home Fleet. Here's the kicker... Home Fleet won't need to use the Keyhole II Apollo Missiles. Instead, they can tie into the Hermes Boueys spaced all around Manticore to achieve the same effect, FTL lag on missile control.Umm... no. That's not how Apollo works.

Each Apollo pod launches a clutch of conventional missiles and one Apollo control missile. The Apollo control missile is larger than a standard missile, which is itself about the size of an ICBM. The Apollo missile has nothing but its drives, a grav pulse comm and a big computer- no warhead. It controls the tightly clustered group of normal missiles launched from the same pod, and sends back data gathered from them to the mother ship for processing.

The only ship in the cluster with FTL comm capability is the control missile. The other missiles have to rely on radio or laser communications, just like in Saganami's day.

Now, a Hermes buoy could take missile telemetry data via FTL comm and relay it to the mother ship, or vice versa. But Hermes buoys aren't going to be where you need them, and they can't chase a salvo of missiles that are accelerating at 90000 gravities. Therefore, the Hermes buoys are not capable of controlling a missile salvo unless there are Apollo birds in place to listen to the FTL comm signals coming from the buoys.

So no, you cannot control a salvo of normal missiles using FTL comm without the Apollo control missiles. The Apollo control missiles are to the missile cluster what an AWACS is to a squadron of aircraft, and it's the only missile in the cluster that can actually hear FTL comm signals.

Not even the Manties have gotten FTL comm units small enough to fit them into individual standard missiles yet, which is why they have to rely on those big fat control missiles in the first place. The control missiles have to be close enough to the 'real' missiles that the comm lag between the control missile and the 'real' missile is short. Hermes buoys can't do that, because they won't be able to chase after the missiles and can't possibly be seeded densely enough for the entire star system to be carpeted with the things every hundred thousand kilometers or so apart.

Honor used the Hermes buoys to relay gravity pulses from her ships to her Apollo control missiles. She could not have used them to transmit those pulses to conventional missiles that did not have Apollo control missiles listening for them, mixed into the salvo.

Now, I could be wrong about all this. I may have misunderstood the system. I have a copy of the book; can you provide me with a page citation to prove me wrong?


Getting that online fastest while upgrading all the captured Havenite ships, pushing even modern Keyhole II equipped new ship production aside to get as many refitted as possible, will make system defense MUCH easier for the Manticorians.What, exactly, would these refitted ships be able to do that system defense pods (preferably Apollo pods linked to orbital fortifications and such) could not do?


That'll take a while, even if they import some Grayson-style building procedures and just park a ship out in orbit somewhere with minimum scaffolding and start to work on it, if they can swallow their pride and do that rather than limiting themselves to slips, they can crank out the upgrades MUCH faster, and probably manage to keep most of the new ship production going as well, if they have the manpower.Actually, they're already doing that as it is. They "swallowed their pride" as soon as they figured out how big the Havenite force coming at them would be; there are already dispersed orbital construction yards in the Manticore Binary System.


I still say that the majority of the Grayson ships are new enough to be Keyhole II upgradable. Most of them were built after Ashes of Victory, remember, and were all built with Ghost Rider and Keyhole I from the keel out. Upgrading from Keyhole I to Keyhole II would be quite a feat, but it will almost HAVE to be their number one priority.Absolutely. And I'm betting they're already working on that, just as they're scrambling to refit the Andermani SD's with Keyhole II.


On the other hand, every OFS Bigwig for himself, and devil take the hindmost. Dozens of 'pocket empires' popping up as the Solarian League itself recoils in horror, shrinking back to the core worlds (Sol, Beowulf...). That would have all kinds of adventures possible in the ensuing chaos, so it's my favored option, really. You could have any number of new people be up and comming stars of their own novels, as much ship to ship fighting as you like in the chaos while the pocket empires fight each other over who gets to be how big and who pays homage to whom.That would be something to see and no mistake.


And yes, the Eridani Edict only covers bombardment of 'helpless' planets. In other words, if you have launchers groundside, and launch them, they can bombard you pretty much at will. And considering the notorious inaccuracy of multiple-stage missiles on final run, that's a good way to loose millions of voters and get everyone really pissed off at you. Besides, who enforces the Edict? The Solarian League. Which is about to shatter. So this may not be such a problem in future books...The theory goes something like this.

The Edict was originally intended to stop a fleet from assuming a parking orbit around an inhabited planet and systematically slaughtering its population with nukes, bioweapons, or kinetic strikes from orbit. It was not intended to play a major role in mobile fleet battles, although it still applies to mobile fleet battles.

Back before the advent of interplanetary-range MDMs, the prevailing assumption went something like this:

The invading fleet came into your system, duked it out with your mobile forces, and then duked it out with your orbital fortifications, if there were any. This is more or less what Thurston tried to do at Fourth Yeltsin, for instance.

After smashing your ships and forts, the fleet could then move in close around the planet. If you had ground-based weapons, this was usually when you would be firing them, and it was in this stage of the battle that the Eridani Edict became important. After all, it would be trivially easy for an attacking fleet to lob dozens of nuclear missiles per second down at your planet and hammer everything in the general vicinity of any defense batteries. Or, for that matter, to just hit the planet from beyond the powered range of its own defense missiles with (inaccurate) kinetic strikes that could do a dinosaur-killer on the whole planet.

The Eridani Edict lets a fleet bombard any ground installations that are actively firing on the fleet in orbit, or that would be part of a purely ground defense (such as an airbase for atmospheric combat aircraft, or the barracks of an armored division). However, it requires that the fleet be extremely careful to use minimal force necessary to destroy those targets without causing large scale civilian damage in the process.

Thing is, the flip side of that is that the defenders are obliged to avoid using their own population as human shields for their defense batteries. So if, for instance, imagine that the Martians are attacking Earth, and that the Eridani Edict actually applies, for the sake of argument. We're shooting at them from ICBM silos in North Dakota, and they're shooting back with nukes that take out a few square kilometers of land with each shot. So far, so good as far as the Edict is concerned. For that matter, it's at least more or less OK for them to take out the White House or the Pentagon with such a weapon, although that's pushing it a little given how destructive their bombs are.

Now, imagine that we have an ICBM silo in Central Park in Manhattan. If we start firing that at them, and they return fire and blow up half of the city of New York, is that illegal by the Eridani Edict? Whose fault is it under the Edict?

As far as I can tell from reading Weber, the fault is ours, for putting an installation that we knew would draw nuclear fire in the middle of a major urban center.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Now, a Hermes buoy could take missile telemetry data via FTL comm and relay it to the mother ship, or vice versa. But Hermes buoys aren't going to be where you need them, and they can't chase a salvo of missiles that are accelerating at 90000 gravities. Therefore, the Hermes buoys are not capable of controlling a missile salvo unless there are Apollo birds in place to listen to the FTL comm signals coming from the buoys.

I'm talking Defense, not Offense. In other words, you CAN have Hermes buoys seeded throughout the system to be able to allow non-Keyhole II ships who have at least the basics of Ghost Rider upgrades (which are a hell of a lot easier to upgrade) to be able to 'control' Apollo missiles. There'd be some degredation of signal since the ship itself doesn't have Keyhole II, but they can at least give out orders to be able to use the Apollo missile system to about 90% of it's fullest offensive capacity when used defensively (i.e. about like what Harrington did when she blew Giscard to hell). They won't be able to pull the trick Harrington pulled at the end of the final battle, since they're not Keyhole II equipped, but they should be able to at least send and recieve near real time fire control from the Apollo missiles in all those pods spaced around, using the Hermes buoys much like the Morarity stations to control all those Apollo pods. That alone would be more than enough to pound any havenite attack force into scrap.

I can also see the Manties farming these Havenite SD's over to some of their allies and let their ALLIES refit 'em up as much as they like, which relieves them of the strain of having to watch all their allies backs while they take on whomever. Give a few dozen to the Graysons, who could likely refit them the fastest, a few dozen to the Andies, give some outright to the San Martinans... give themselves some major PR after the previous government kept pissing everyone off. You'd be surprised how quickly grudges are forgiven when you give 'em about an entire year's worth of local GNP of capital ships for free. Hell, I could see almost half of 'em being given to Torch. "Here ya go, kids. Have fun with your new toys." Also send a good fourty or fifty over to the Talbot Cluster. That ought to keep OFS from wanting to stick their noses in, Mesan bribes or not.

Like you said, it'd take a lot of resources to upgrade 'em to Keyhole II, but they're still all SD(P)'s, which is a hell of a lot better than the Sollies have at the moment. Upgrading them with Project Ghost Rider should be easy enough, not even bothering with Keyhole I or II. They'd still be able to beat off anything short of another Havenite Zerg Swarm. So farm 'em out to their allies to beef up defenses all over the place. Better yet, farm out the SD(P)'s, then give the allies the Ghost Rider capabilities to upgrade the ships themselves. Saves time on the Manty builders, who are busy cranking out Keyhole II equipped ships as fast as they can. And it gives their allies tangable defenses immediately useful to them. And seriously discourages OFS from sniffing around the Manty's allies, since OFS generally doesn't use wallers.

[Eita]

Manticore has annexed San Martin...

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Manticore has annexed San Martin...

Doesn't mean they can't give them a couple dozen ships of the wall. San Martin is much like Scottland. They're scottish first and brittish second. Kinda like how people from Texas are Texans first and Americans second. So they give San Martin some wallers, and the San Martin construction guys get to work on 'em, with the caveat that they will be stationed at San Martin and crewed primarily by San Martinans. Can even call it something like 'The Queen's Regiment' or something.

[Dervag]

I'm talking Defense, not Offense. In other words, you CAN have Hermes buoys seeded throughout the system to be able to allow non-Keyhole II ships who have at least the basics of Ghost Rider upgrades (which are a hell of a lot easier to upgrade) to be able to 'control' Apollo missiles.Not gonna work without the control missiles launched along with the conventional Apollo missiles- the Hermes buoys can't control the missiles directly.

And if you do have the control missiles, and you have an adequate Hermes network, why bother refitting mobile platforms to control system defense missiles? You'd have to rip out most of the Havenite SDs' computers and reinstall new ones anyway; why not just expand the capabilities of the existing system defense platforms?

Which, if you recall, were almost already refitted for Apollo missiles at the Battle of Manticore. The Manticorans can simply complete the refit programs they already have underway, and they'll have enough Apollo missile capability around Manticore to blow apart anything this side of the Grand Fleet of Civilization in a few months.

Which would be much faster than figuring out how to refit all those Havenite SD(P)s. Refits always take time, especially when the refit is being performed on an unfamiliar ship class, such as the Havenite SD(P) designs.


I can also see the Manties farming these Havenite SD's over to some of their allies and let their ALLIES refit 'em up as much as they like, which relieves them of the strain of having to watch all their allies backs while they take on whomever.That I can see- but the Graysons and Andermani (their main allies) already have plenty of defensive weapons of their own. I expect that Grayson is only slightly less tough a target than Manticore, and the Andermanis are quite capable of looking out for themselves.

Now, transferring the captured SDs to minor Alliance partners, that I can see. But refitting ships for a role like that is very much a second priority compared to getting more Apollo-capable modern Manticoran SD(P)s into service.


People think any hero(ine) is a MS any more - it comes from them being failures at their own lives, so they think up any excuse to bring a successful person down to their level.True to a point. On the other hand, some characters are simply so improbably successful, with such hypertrophied talents, that it gets annoying even to people who are not failures.


The one that really bothered me was her plotting by eye the intercept course of a c-fractional projectile with her own ship and surviving. It was "justified" - she'd done something similar before with Fearless at Basilisk - but it still felt like "too much" to me.In fairness, it was barreling more or less straight for her, and her ship had impeller bands like everyone else's, remember? Impeller wedges are tens or hundreds of kilometers across; she had a large margin of error.

Also, she really didn't expect to survive that one; I suspect that Weber thought very hard about whether or not to kill her off in that scene.

The fact that she didn't die wasn't because of improbable OMG skill in the manner of a Mary Sue. And if it involved a lot of luck, she's also had some catastrophic bad luck in her career. Like the incident in Adler. Or that second missile strike on Wayfarer's cargo bay doors in the Selker Rift.

So I let it pass with no complaints. She's escaped death by incredible luck on several occasions, but she's also come extremely close to death by incredibly bad luck on several occasions.


Yes, but we're also using these ships to defend a star system, not attack it. The Keyhole drones, as far as I could tell, were kept outside of the ship. Since the ships themselves are going to simply be sitting in space running a software program it shouldn't be all that difficult to just tag them to pods and platforms dropped off by tugs and freighters. Heck, with the Haven ability to swap missile controls between ships, this should be even easier.The Keyhole drones are tethered to their mother ships and maintained on board them between battles. You can't leave them floating around in space.

If you could, then there would be no need for all these system defense ships, because you could just have Keyhole drones floating in space without the ships. which brings me back to my argument in summary form:

It will take a long time to refit and repair the captured Havenite ships. By the time the refits are ready, Manticore will already have many more Apollo-capable ships ready for battle, making said captured Havenite ships useless. Refitting the captured Havenite ships is a waste of resources.

Moreover, if Manticore wants to build dedicated defensive platforms, they can. Faster than they can build ships, and most likely faster than they can refit ships.


Yes and no. Moriarty worked because they had time to build the Moriarty platoforms. Manticore, if it wants to go back on the offensive quicly, doesn't have that time. By using the captured ships, which would require an equal or greater amount of time to refit for active duty, they save time, money, and resources.It would not take less time to refit the captured ships than to put in links to the existing, intact orbital defense platforms around Manticore. Manticore is not so desperately short on control links for system defense missiles that they need to refit captured warships specifically to provide those control links. It would be absurdly wasteful to refit ships for that purpose, and much cheaper to simply build defensive platforms of the type Manticore already has in large numbers.


With the 100+ ships they captured they could stand thirty down for quick repairs, shuttle thirty to San Martin for defense there, and use thirty for Home Fleet. With the range advantage there's no reason for Moriarty's stealth, and they need the quick fix. Adaptation for the win!But most of those ships can't fly without repairs, remember?


Since any Haven force would not have control of near space when launching an attack on orbital defenses, and it would be assumed that the capital system would have quick access to reinforcements, mainly via the junction and San Martin, then yes, any Haven force that launched from long range and hit the planet would be in violation of the Edict.Not if the planet is shooting at them. I think you're missing Weber's idea with the Edict. It does not prohibit a fleet from returning fire against defensive weapons or platforms that are currently shooting at them. This is similar to current laws of war. Certain targets are off limits (schools, hospitals), unless an enemy is shooting at you from them.

Moreover, what kind of lunatic defense planner relies on the assumption that their enemy won't shoot back at them if they use their own homeworld population as human shields?


It is quite clearly worded that if you kill people without having crushed the defenses first, then you violated the edict. An attempt to suppress those same defenses, if it would cause wanton civilian casualties, would trigger the Edict. It is a nasty Catch-22, but it is there.Nope. Not gonna fly. Again, that is only valid if the civilians in question aren't clustered around the defenses. If somebody decides to put their defenses in the middle of their civilians and start shooting, and civilians get killed by (reasonably discriminate) return fire, it's not the attacker's fault.

See here (http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Harrington/hh_expanding_upon_the_eridani_edict.htm) for reference. Weber's example uses ground-based missile batteries. If I fire missiles at an enemy fleet, they can shoot back. If they fire indiscriminately, then they can trigger the Eridani Edict. But I can't use my own population as a human shield for my own defense batteries and then complain about how the enemy's fire killed my civilians. If I wanted to make sure my civilian population didn't get hit by stray fire, I should not placed my defensive systems somewhere they would draw fire onto civilians.


Granted, hiding a fleet there for protection is a bad idea, but if the same ships that are controlling the system defenses happen to be in spacedocks for repair, it becomes a trickier proposition. Also, it could be argued that as long as the pods aren't in orbit, then the Haven ships have no legitimate reason to fire on the ships in orbit, at least not until superiority has been achieved. Tis legalese, and I know it, but so? In war the only thing more dangerous then the other side's guns is their lawyers!I'm telling you, this isn't going to fly. Defensive installations actively involved in the defense of a position are legitimate military targets.

And, again, it's really really foolhardy to rely on the enemy being not just nice, but nicer than the usages of war require. Because if this strategy fails, tens of millions, or even more, people on Manticore will die. That's the planet you're trying to defend here. The whole point of having all these space defenses, remember?

And this plan can only succeed if the enemy does exactly what you want while knowing very well that it is what you want. Colossally bad idea. On par with "Hey, if we put all our ICBM silos in the middle of New York and Los Angeles, maybe the Russians won't be willing to blow up our cities to destroy the silos!"

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Actually, you seem to seriously overestimate the damage the captured havenite fleet sustained. They showed up and blew the other female admiral out of the sky. Then Honor showed up, gave them ONE warning shot, and told them to stand down. The vast majority of the captured Havenite ships have zero battle damage whatsoever.

Sending them to the minor Alliance places like Talbot makes perfect sense. Sure, they're second-rate bordering on obsolescence for mainstream Manticore, but compared to what OFS can come up with, they're impossibly huge and modern. Hell, compared to anyone BUT a Manty (or Grayson or Andie), they're going to be more modern than anything else they'll run up against (once they upgrade the software packages with Ghost Rider technology), which makes them ideal for picket defense. The fact that they could blow any significant fleet of pre-pod ships out of the sky without breaking a sweat is still undeniable. Hell, park a couple of CLAC's in Talbot with a bunch of Katanas and Shrike B's, and you've solved your 'pirate' problem. Six shrikes can eat three Sollie BC's any day of the week, what with that monumental Graser, bow buckler as strong as an SD's sidewall, and modern stealth systems. And I can't see the OFS being able to field much more than that. And if they do, I can flat guarentee OFS isn't going to be bringing up enough to deal with a hundred or so of the li'll buggers. That's ignoring the fact that you're gonna have a few dozen SD(P)'s running about as well, each one capable of taking on as many BC's as you like.

[Emperor Tippy]

I've only skimmed the thread but a key point your forgetting:

All of manticores new construction is set to come online inside of like 2 months, 4 at the outside.

Remember that they layed down new hulls in the Manticore system after the Grendel's Bane disaster.

Your looking at 50-100 new, Apollo capable, Medusa-B's and Invictus class SD(P)'s.

[Eita]

You know, they'll probably just cut the ships down for scrap. Those obsolete SD(P)s equal how many defense platforms?

[Foeofthelance]

The Edict requires the attacker to take precautions to prevent "accidents," and assumes that if such an "accident" occurs anyway, then adequate precautions were not taken. In that case, the attacker assumes the guilt of having carried out the attack deliberately, and the Edict goes into effect. (Emphasis mine)

I think that says it pretty clearly. Even if they are legitimate targets, any attacking Havenite fleet would still have to crawl to close range before targeting anything in orbit if Manticore decided to keep their fleets sitting there. Third and Home didn't move to defend the planets, they moved to defened the orbital industries. This is also why most of Cutworm I&II consisted of Honor's units showing up, going, "We're bigger, tougher, and have you outgunned, so surrender." That way they wouldn't have to get too far into the system, thus possibly trapping them if reinforcements came in, and why it was preferable to let the enemy scuttle or to send it her LACs to take out infrastructure. The Edict has been a major concern for both sides, through out most of the novels.

If it came down to it, I could see the Manticore fleet hiding in close to its planets for defensive purposes. Maybe not parking orbits, but they would do all they could to draw the attackers in as deep as possible, giving them the maximum time to fire out. I understand what you're saying about the ships being legitimate targets as well, and why it might be foolish to stay that close in the first place; but if the situation is that desperate in the first place, I don't think it would matter to them. In light of the battle of Manticore, they very well could claim that they could refuse a demand to surrender, even in light of four or five to one odds. The way the Edict is worded, the only way Haven could defend themselves if a missile hit one of the planets would be if Honor scuttled her ships and charged them in pinnaces.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You know, they'll probably just cut the ships down for scrap. Those obsolete SD(P)s equal how many defense platforms?

You keep saying Obsolete, but really they aren't. Sure, they're not Keyhole II capable, but so frellin' what? No one else in the galaxy is either. Far from it, these things are better than anything anyone outside the Alliance has their hands on.

From a Manty point of view, they're not able to use Apollo, so they're not as useful as Apollo-capable ships. But to the rest of the galaxy, they're the biggest and nastiest ships out there. And there's a LOT of them. They're worth a HELL of a lot more than just scrap.

[Dervag]

(Emphasis mine)

I think that says it pretty clearly. Even if they are legitimate targets, any attacking Havenite fleet would still have to crawl to close range before targeting anything in orbit if Manticore decided to keep their fleets sitting there. Third and Home didn't move to defend the planets, they moved to defened the orbital industries. This is also why most of Cutworm I&II consisted of Honor's units showing up, going, "We're bigger, tougher, and have you outgunned, so surrender." That way they wouldn't have to get too far into the system, thus possibly trapping them if reinforcements came in, and why it was preferable to let the enemy scuttle or to send it her LACs to take out infrastructure. The Edict has been a major concern for both sides, through out most of the novels.Yes, but that's in situations where the planets aren't being used as cover for a defense force that is actively firing on the attackers. None of the system defense forces Honor punched out in Cutworm were trying to shoot from behind cover of the planet in hopes that Harrington wouldn't shoot back because of the fear of hitting the planet. In one case, a defense force did hide behind the planet, but they weren't opening fire while doing so.


If it came down to it, I could see the Manticore fleet hiding in close to its planets for defensive purposes. Maybe not parking orbits, but they would do all they could to draw the attackers in as deep as possible, giving them the maximum time to fire out.Well, if you just mean that a Manticoran strategy might want to draw the enemy into the inner system, that makes more sense. But it's really stupid to put your fleets anywhere close enough to your planet that the planet might get hit by stray shots. First of all, there's always the possibility that the enemy will violate the Edict. You can't rule that out. And you don't want to get your planet wrecked because of a surprise like that.

Second, if you're shooting at them, the temptation on the attacker to return fire is almost irresistible. This is why Kuzak ordered the Sphinx planetary defenses not to fire on Tourville's fleet unless Tourville fired on them first- because firing on the enemy draws return fire, and return fire aimed at planetary defenses might hit the planet.

And it's not clear that the Edict protects you if your planet was hit because forces in close orbit around it fired on an enemy fleet.

To make matters worse, the strategy of drawing the enemy into the inner system is also questionable, because that puts them in missile range of the space industry (including shipyards) in the Manticore system. Which would be a very bad thing. Even if the RMN destroyed the entire raiding force, Manticore still loses the war if the orbital shipbuilding facilities in its home system.


I understand what you're saying about the ships being legitimate targets as well, and why it might be foolish to stay that close in the first place; but if the situation is that desperate in the first place, I don't think it would matter to them. In light of the battle of Manticore, they very well could claim that they could refuse a demand to surrender, even in light of four or five to one odds. The way the Edict is worded, the only way Haven could defend themselves if a missile hit one of the planets would be if Honor scuttled her ships and charged them in pinnaces.Actually, you have to remember that except where they can take advantage of Hermes buoys (and even there, only for small missile salvos), Apollo doesn't confer a very large range advantage. What it really gives you is an advantage in accuracy- your missiles will be as accurate at the limits of their range as the enemy's would be at a few million kilometers. Remember back in the beginning of the series, when most missiles 'hit' their targets in that they had to be stopped by the target's active or passive defenses? Like that. And Apollo gives Manticore an extra edge because the superiority of their EW and computer technology makes it easier for them to see through Havenite jamming when their missiles are free to coordinate with the control missiles and the mother ship.

But a large fleet of Havenite ships without Apollo could still destroy a small fleet with Apollo, especially if they are clever and they concentrate their defenses right.

Moreover, Apollo does not make ships faster or capable of operating farther from their home bases. So if Honor tried to launch a counteroffensive against Haven with only a few dozen Apollo SD(P)s, she'd get bogged down quickly because she couldn't capture and control systems fast enough to stop the Havenites from building a fleet around her and taking out her individual strike forces. And she knows that.


Actually, you seem to seriously overestimate the damage the captured havenite fleet sustained. They showed up and blew the other female admiral out of the sky. Then Honor showed up, gave them ONE warning shot, and told them to stand down. The vast majority of the captured Havenite ships have zero battle damage whatsoever.No.

Here's how the battle goes.

Tourville brings the Havenite Second Fleet out of hyperspace at the edge of the system and starts angling in towards the planet Sphinx.

Admiral D'Orville brings Home Fleet straight out to meet him, because he doesn't have any other way to intercept the Havenites short of Sphinx.
When the two fleets get into MDM range of each other, they launch a very large salvo at each other. D'Orville's wall is wiped out, but the missiles he launch seriously damage Tourville's fleet. Then, the LACs launched from Home Fleet and from the system defenses attack Tourville's fleet. They are too elusive to be destroyed by MDM fire, but are just about annihilated fighting Tourville's screen (DDs, cruisers, and battlecruisers). They inflict very heavy damage on the screen, and a little more damage on Tourville's wall.

Then Kuzak's Third Fleet arrives, and start tossing MDMs at Tourville's fleet, inflicting further damage. Kuzak is caught in a trap by Havenite admiral Chin's Fifth Fleet. Kuzak continues to attack Second Fleet, ordering Rear Admiral McKeon's Apollo-armed division to fire at Chin in hopes of whittling down her capital ship strength. McKeon's division punches out several Havenite SD(P)s, but Chin's less accurate missiles start hitting Third Fleet and cripple McKeon's division- along with the entire fleet. Very little of Third Fleet survives until...

Harrington's Eighth Fleet arrives, just about completely annihilates Fifth Fleet with Apollo missiles, and launches a demonstration strike on Tourville's Second Fleet.

When one reads the parts of the battle from Tourville's point of view, and there are several, it is made very clear that Tourville's ships are very badly damaged. Many of them were destroyed outright. Remember, the Havenites take over one million casualties in this battle. That is not the kind of thing that happens when your ships are taken intact.

Now, the computer cores on Tourville's surviving ships are intact. But the drives, weapon systems, and defenses of those ships have been shot full of holes- as have the hulls themselves. Most of those ships could fight again given time and work, but it isn't worth the Manties' effort to put in that work. For the same amount of work, they could construct a smaller but more effective fleet of Apollo SD(P)s that, among other things, can actually attack. For that matter, they already have quite a few Apollo SD(P)s in the pipeline; it's just that none of them will be available for several more months. Which is the minimum time it's likely to take for Manticore to refit any of the heavily damaged Havenite ships.


Sending them to the minor Alliance places like Talbot makes perfect sense. Sure, they're second-rate bordering on obsolescence for mainstream Manticore, but compared to what OFS can come up with, they're impossibly huge and modern.That's absolutely right, if the Manticorans can afford to patch the Havenite ships up. Given how desperate their naval construction situation is, they may simply not have the spare capacity. They may well face a choice between, say, refitting 2X Havenite ships or building X new Manticoran ships. In which case the Manticoran ships win, because they will be the new-builds that are designed with Apollo and the new defense technologies in mind.


Hell, compared to anyone BUT a Manty (or Grayson or Andie), they're going to be more modern than anything else they'll run up against (once they upgrade the software packages with Ghost Rider technology),A lot of Ghost Rider is hardware, remember? Look at what the Graysons had to do to refit eleven captured Havenite SDs back in Flag in Exile. It took them over a year to do the refits (and that's working on all the ships in parallel), not least because they had to rip out so much of the computers and weapon systems.


Hell, park a couple of CLAC's in Talbot with a bunch of Katanas and Shrike B's, and you've solved your 'pirate' problem.They already did that.

Six shrikes can eat three Sollie BC's any day of the week, what with that monumental Graser, bow buckler as strong as an SD's sidewall, and modern stealth systems.Umm... I wouldn't actually bet on that. That's a very large disparity of firepower- the Shrikes would need to get in a lot of graser hits to disable the BCs, while the BCs only need to score half a dozen hits to wipe out the LACs entirely.

I'd want about two squadrons, to be on the safe side. Remember, the Sollies have been upgrading their EW capability. And unlike the Peeps, their basic scientific and engineering background is very close to Manticoran tech levels. Which means they aren't going to have that much trouble duplicating a lot of what the Manticorans can do.


And I can't see the OFS being able to field much more than that.Remember those eleven battlecruisers Monica got in Shadow of Saganami? That was not a large fleet by OFS standards. OFS may not have much in the way of ships of the wall, but they sure have a lot of light warships. Of course, many of those ships are old. But I would be nervous taking only, say, a squadron of LACs up against two or three of the newer-design Solarian battlecruisers.


You keep saying Obsolete, but really they aren't. Sure, they're not Keyhole II capable, but so frellin' what? No one else in the galaxy is either. Far from it, these things are better than anything anyone outside the Alliance has their hands on.

From a Manty point of view, they're not able to use Apollo, so they're not as useful as Apollo-capable ships. But to the rest of the galaxy, they're the biggest and nastiest ships out there. And there's a LOT of them. They're worth a HELL of a lot more than just scrap.Or they would be, if they hadn't been hammered to the edge of scrap already by Manticoran missiles, and if the effort of fixing them weren't bigger than the effort of building new Manticoran ships that are vastly more capable. And much more useful in the desperate war for survival that Manticore is currently waging against Haven, as opposed to the might-happen-in-a-decade war against the Solarian League.

Remember, Manticore thinks there might be war with the League, but doesn't really expect it thanks to the actions of Terekhov. And since they don't know that Mesa is actively meddling to stir up Galaxy War I, they don't think such a war is certain, the way so many of us fans do.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Umm... no. There were still significant survivors.

Starting with Chapter 65, D'Orville took out ninty seven Havenite SD's, with 19 more casualties, leaving a total of 124 SD(P)'s undamaged.

Then in the next chapter, Kuzak micro-jumps with her fleet, which Tourville had anticipated perfectly. Another 90-100 of the wall show up to pincer Kuzak.

By chapter 68, Second Fleet was down to 56 effectives out of the original 240. 5th fleet, on the other hand, only lost 11 of the wall, so they still have 85 left.

Then Harrington shows up and blows 5th fleet to hell.

That still leaves 75 captures, with 56 effectives.

With 56 wallers which can imediately be used and another 19 which can probably be repaired, there's quite a bit they can do with them. Just sending about twenty or so undamaged SD(P)'s over to Talbot will ensure nothing OFS has is going to be able to stick it's nose in without getting it smacked. Hell, that gives you a perfect reason to start up a shipyard in the Talbot cluster, with obvious economic advantages for the entire cluster, and send ALL of the SD(P)'s there for refitting. Start on the damaged ones, and work your way over to the undamaged ones to refit up to Ghost Rider tech. And not a bit of Apollo capable ship construction is hampered.

Also, keep in mind that Haven is cranking out SD(P)'s WAY faster than Manticore is. Like 3-4 times as many. If they really wanted to, they could simply build up a Beatrice II in a few months. Haven is huge compared to Manticore. They could literally Zerg Manticore Prime until there's simply no one left to defend it because all naval officers are dead. They won't, because Prichart isn't a stone-cold heartless so-and-so like the previous regime, but they probably could.

[Eita]

I just thought about this, but how do you propose they get those ships there? To get through the Manticore wormhole, they'd need working Warshaki (how on Earth do you spell that?) engines. If the nodes are damaged, well, it may not be worth it.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I just thought about this, but how do you propose they get those ships there? To get through the Manticore wormhole, they'd need working Warshaki (how on Earth do you spell that?) engines. If the nodes are damaged, well, it may not be worth it.

They still have 56 effectives, which means mostly undamaged, which means most certainly has all their Alpha nodes. Those alone you can run to Talbot immediately. The rest of them, depends on the type of damage. Besides, how hard is it to slap in a few Alpha nodes and send it on it's merry way? If it's too damaged, send it to the breakers. Otherwise, it just makes good sense.

[Dervag]

Umm... no. There were still significant survivors.

...By chapter 68, Second Fleet was down to 56 effectives out of the original 240. 5th fleet, on the other hand, only lost 11 of the wall, so they still have 85 left.

Then Harrington shows up and blows 5th fleet to hell.

That still leaves 75 captures, with 56 effectives.In a military context like that, "effectives" do not mean "undamaged warships." They mean "ships that can still fight and maneuver. Sort of. The holes don't run through anything really important."

Do you really expect that when 240 ships go in and only 75 come out that the 56 of those ships still 'effective' aren't damaged? I mean, those missile salvoes were sweeping all across the fleets engaged. It's not likely that one ship would be completely disintegrated while the next ship got away untouched.

For an example of what 'effective' means in this context, think back to 'Honor of the Queen'. After the Battle of Blackbird, HMS Troubador is heavily damaged. It's lost a lot of the weapons on one broadside, and some of its other systems are knocked out. But it can still fight, because it still has all its weapons on one broadside, and its drive and fire control still work. If you have to fight another battle immediately thereafter, a ship like that will be useful. Whereas a ship in the same position HMS Apollo was in would not be, because Apollo had lost so many weapons, sensors, and crew that it could not fight effectively.

However, if an enemy fleet captured Troubador and decided to take it into service, they would pretty much have to spend weeks or months patching the ship up. Trying to keep it on active duty while there are so many holes in it is asking for trouble. You can do it, in theory, but even then that relies on your own people being able to keep the ship running despite all the jury-rigs you need to use. Which is not going to be the case for ships crammed full of unfamiliar hardware, such as the Havenite SD(P)s.

Remember, this is the first time Manticore has been able to capture large amounts of first-rate Havenite weapons intact in this round of fighting. Until now, they only ever saw stuff after the crews bailed out and set the scuttling charges. So they aren't just going to be able to drop crews into these ships and use them effectively. Especially not when almost all of those ships are damaged to some degree.


With 56 wallers which can imediately be used and another 19 which can probably be repaired, there's quite a bit they can do with them.Except they can't be immediately used, any more than the SDs that Manticore captured at the Third Battle of Yeltsin could be. Those ships weren't undamaged either, and neither will these 56 'effectives'.


Hell, that gives you a perfect reason to start up a shipyard in the Talbot cluster, with obvious economic advantages for the entire cluster, and send ALL of the SD(P)'s there for refitting. Start on the damaged ones, and work your way over to the undamaged ones to refit up to Ghost Rider tech. And not a bit of Apollo capable ship construction is hampered.Actually, that is going to interfere with Manticore's home system shipbuilding, because the Talbott Cluster can't produce things like Ghost Rider EW platforms on its own. The yard may be physically located in another star system, and most of the personnel may come from there, but that doesn't mean the yard can manufacture all the stuff it needs.

Besides, setting up major shipyards takes years- look at places like Grendelsbane and Bolthole. It's not something you can do in a matter of months.


Also, keep in mind that Haven is cranking out SD(P)'s WAY faster than Manticore is. Like 3-4 times as many. If they really wanted to, they could simply build up a Beatrice II in a few months. Haven is huge compared to Manticore. They could literally Zerg Manticore Prime until there's simply no one left to defend it because all naval officers are dead. They won't, because Prichart isn't a stone-cold heartless so-and-so like the previous regime, but they probably could.If Manticore gets enough Apollo-armed ships into service, they can more or less offset Haven's numerical advantage.

Besides, a big part of the reason Haven is building ships so much faster is that their war mobilization got ahead of Manticore's.

During the cease fire, High Ridge suspended construction of the Manticoran new-generation warships. Those construction projects could be resumed at any time, but it would still take 12-18 months after resumption to start producing new ships. The Manties are still caught in that window where none of their 'new' ships are ready to come out of the yards yet. Once they actually start seeing new construction from the yards, their numerical disadvantage is going to narrow a bit.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Since it seems obvious we are not going to be able to agree, allow me to change the topic slightly...

How do you think it's all gonna break down in the next book?

1) The unholy duo Zilwiki and Cachet find solid PROOF (That Queen Elizabeth may or may not accept) of Mesan involvement with the various assassinations. Think this will happen in the next book, or not?

2) Solarian Leage Fracture. Is it gonna happen? What is the breakdown gonna be like? How is Mesa/Manpower going to handle it? How will this affect the situation around Torch and the Talbot Cluster?

3) Selesia space. Manticore and Adermani basically split it up. But it's not honest yet by any stretch of the imagination. Think anything will stir itself up here?

4) War between Manties and Havenites is still going on. Think they'll still be going at it hammer and tongs?

5) What about the other characters developed, how are they going to play in the new books? Specifically, Miss Hearns, who is shaping up to be the next Salamander. Think she's gonna end up in the crapper (a.k.a. On Basilisk Station), or you think she's gonna 'just happen' to be on her first captaincy where and when it all starts breaking down, or what?

Personally, I don't think Harrington is going to be the main character anymore. It's gotta shift, there's just no more reasonable problems for her anymore. I think it's gonna shift to Hearns and her first captaincy. Harrington is still out there, maybe as her fleet commander, maybe just somewhere out there, but other than possibly being the one issuing the orders or being somewhere in the background, not involved with the plot.

He's almost going to HAVE to write the book wherin Zilwiki and Cachet go find proof of Mesan involvement in the assassins. Okay, he doesn't have to, but damn, that's going to be the book a LOT of fans will be clamoring for. Going on simultaniously with Beatrice.

Anything else about the Honorverse you think will come up that I haven't mentioned yet? Come on, let's keep the thread alive!

[Eita]

I've just realized something. I really don't care so long as we have another book with the cover being Honor in an eye patch brooding over a tactical display.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I've just realized something. I really don't care so long as we have another book with the cover being Honor in an eye patch brooding over a tactical display.

Considering she hasn't worn an eyepatch since she got back from Hell and got her cybernetic eye replaced, probably not gonna happen.

How about Miss Hearnes on the mats with her armsman, tossing him around?

[Eita]

Just wouldn't be the same.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Just wouldn't be the same.

How about Zilwiki and Cachet 'asking a few questions' of someone in a dark alley?

[Eita]

Hmm... That's close, but it still wouldn't be as good as Ashes of Victory.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n4/n22679.jpg

[Dervag]

Since it seems obvious we are not going to be able to agree, allow me to change the topic slightly...

How do you think it's all gonna break down in the next book?

1) The unholy duo Zilwiki and Cachet find solid PROOF (That Queen Elizabeth may or may not accept) of Mesan involvement with the various assassinations. Think this will happen in the next book, or not?Absolutely.


2) Solarian Leage Fracture. Is it gonna happen? What is the breakdown gonna be like? How is Mesa/Manpower going to handle it? How will this affect the situation around Torch and the Talbot Cluster?I think the breakup of the League will not occur until after the next 'Torch' book (i.e. after Zilwicki and Cachat discover the evidence in question on Mesa). That's the next 'big' historical event we'll see in the series, but the pieces aren't in place yet to the best of my knowledge. Unless, of course, the Mesan Secret Plan has even deeper and better established roots than I thought.


3) Selesia space. Manticore and Adermani basically split it up. But it's not honest yet by any stretch of the imagination. Think anything will stir itself up here?No. This is an area where we're going to see a lot of "nation building" and not much else. Haven is too far from Silesia to be able to influence it effectively. The Mesans might try something, but Silesia is a poor base of operations for them too.


4) War between Manties and Havenites is still going on. Think they'll still be going at it hammer and tongs?Certainly until Zilwicki and Cachat get back. That said, I suspect the war will not be resolved decisively any time soon.


Personally, I don't think Harrington is going to be the main character anymore. It's gotta shift, there's just no more reasonable problems for her anymore. I think it's gonna shift to Hearns and her first captaincy. Harrington is still out there, maybe as her fleet commander, maybe just somewhere out there, but other than possibly being the one issuing the orders or being somewhere in the background, not involved with the plot.Hearns, Helen Zilwicki, some of Honor's 'supporting cast' (like Rafe Cardones); those are going to be the people we see in major roles in the near future, I think.


He's almost going to HAVE to write the book wherin Zilwiki and Cachet go find proof of Mesan involvement in the assassins. Okay, he doesn't have to, but damn, that's going to be the book a LOT of fans will be clamoring for. Going on simultaniously with Beatrice.He will write it; he's been fairly explicit about that.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Selesia space has a lot more plot hooks available if you think about it.

Piracy, while somewhat reduced, has managed an upswing since Manticore was pulling everything they could for reinforcing their allies after the Havenites blow the hell out of Zanzibar... again. So Silly space is still under-staffed, and ripe for piratical business as usual. Also, lots and lots of graft and corruption since the planetary governors are figuring 'business as usual' since the Manticorian takeover. Just the place Helen Zilwicki and Abigail Hearns would be likely sent off to go police and remind the good planetary governors that this sort of thing is not acceptable anymore.

[Dervag]

Selesia space has a lot more plot hooks available if you think about it.

Piracy, while somewhat reduced, has managed an upswing since Manticore was pulling everything they could for reinforcing their allies after the Havenites blow the hell out of Zanzibar... again. So Silly space is still under-staffed, and ripe for piratical business as usual. Also, lots and lots of graft and corruption since the planetary governors are figuring 'business as usual' since the Manticorian takeover. Just the place Helen Zilwicki and Abigail Hearns would be likely sent off to go police and remind the good planetary governors that this sort of thing is not acceptable anymore.Oh, I can definitely see that happening. It's just not a place where strategically important events are likely to happen.

Cool stuff and relevant stuff will still be going on. The next book in the Shadow of Saganami series might very well go there- giving Hearns a cruiser command with Ms. Zilwicki as JTO or something, like you've suggested. But it's not going to be the place where the fate of the Solarian League is decided, or where the tide of the Second Havenite War is going to turn.

I may be eating those words in the future, but I will stand by them until such time as I must eat them.

[Marradin]

I think two major points have been consistently forgotten in page 3 of this thread.

1) Silesia is in many ways what is driving Manpower/mesa into action - there and Torch. This is where alot of slave plantations and "pleasure resorts" have existed historically, and it threatens their profits if these places become enforced zones- Piracy is one of their tools, but they have others, like assaination, and they are arrogant in the extreme - Hopefully Zilwiki and Cachet will come back with 'samples' of the nanotech so that does not become overused.

2) The Mesa board seems to be a large group of overconfident, backstabbing, self-interested, oversmart people who continually underestimate the other people in the universe (Especially in relation to their slaves). I also suspect that their longievity has made the older members of the board insane in different ways ( a little parinoid and meglomanic perhaps). They aren't bunglers in the traditional comedy sense, but they are bunglers because

a) they never take into consideration what the other sides are doing to stop them
B) the never take murphy into account in long ranging ops, or at least they don't give it enough credence.

Finally, I do see the League navy having factions in it with secret, Mesa funded shipyards " With pod designs "

Also I do wonder where the "midgard Federation" and "Aesgard" will pop up again - And i wonder if their people go a-Viking, and if different "a-Viking" Explains their millitary, merchant and intelligence arms.

(Does anyone else remember the Midgardians and that at least on the early maps it looks like they have a wormhole junction)