Honorverse ramblings and musings

For the League to take back any of the termini already captured in Lacoon II, they are going to have to send significant forces to each side of any given wormhole. That is going to give them perhaps a victory in that they push the blocking force off the wormhole but at what cost?

Remember that to claim a victory they are going to have to tell people what they were fighting to recover- having lost the access in the first place. Those wormhole losses might not have made big a splash as the losses the SLN is going to suffer taking them back.

When they attempt his, what are they going to use? Their BCs and smaller ships are going to get shreaded going up against RMN BC with supporting CA, DD, and one or more CLACs with deployed LAC squadrons not to mention the ammunition ships ready to provide more missile weapons. SLN SDs are able to take more punishment but for evey one heaveily damaged, there are going to be a lot of crew loss. Either way, the active and experienced SLN units engaged are going to be cut down and there is -as yet- nothing building in the SL that can replace them with better weapons.

When the League gets both ends of a wormhole back, they will have shortened the length of the chain they have to fight back up so as to improve their tactical position against Manticore. Then they have to keep them. Not actually such an easy task since now the SLN will have to post more warships at both ends of the recovered wormhole and that pulls more ships out of other duties.
What do you suppose happens if a major SLN group is camped on one end of a wormhole and four RMN (or RHN) SDs show up to engage? It's a wormhole, the ships can come in really really close in hyper. I would expect that the GA would run scouting passes (in addition to having left at least a DD hanging around out in the dark when the RMN blocking group had to leave) and would have a good read on where the SLN ships were. Since the RMN/RHN missile powered flight engagement ranges are still way above what the SLN has, it is POSSIBLE for 4 SDs to drop in, vomit a few volleys of missiles and just keep killing SLN ships untill their drives spool back up and they can just leave before the SLN ships can try and swarm one or more of them. It is possible that the Alignment might park a couple of Sharks almost on-top of a wormhole the SLN had retaken to create an ambush but not only does the word of the recapture have to get back to the Alignment planners, they would have to dispatch the ships and guess correctly where (and if) the GA would use this tactic.

The SL strategic position is massively improved by denying use of the wormholes to the RMN. Which you can do with mines.

kzt wrote:The SL strategic position is massively improved by denying use of the wormholes to the RMN. Which you can do with mines.

But can't mines be destroyed by a barrage of missile explosions, especially nukes?

Mines strike me as being too much of a passive defense to be anything other than a temporary deterrent. Which is why the mines at Cerberus included an accompanying fleet, I thought.

cthia wrote:But can't mines be destroyed by a barrage of missile explosions, especially nukes?

Possibly, but the suggestions was to mine a wormhole terminius; you can't fire missiles ahead of yourself through a wormhole. Mining a wormhole terminus means you have to absorb the mines with a hyper capable ship before sending another ship through

-- OR --

You have to go the long way 'round to kill the mines (and any other defenders) before you can start using the Wormhole again.

cthia wrote:Mines strike me as being too much of a passive defense to be anything other than a temporary deterrent. Which is why the mines at Cerberus included an accompanying fleet, I thought.

Cerberus had no fleet, just a minefield and surface-based system defense missiles.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:But can't mines be destroyed by a barrage of missile explosions, especially nukes?

Possibly, but the suggestions was to mine a wormhole terminius; you can't fire missiles ahead of yourself through a wormhole. Mining a wormhole terminus means you have to absorb the mines with a hyper capable ship before sending another ship through

-- OR --

You have to go the long way 'round to kill the mines (and any other defenders) before you can start using the Wormhole again.

cthia wrote:Mines strike me as being too much of a passive defense to be anything other than a temporary deterrent. Which is why the mines at Cerberus included an accompanying fleet, I thought.

Cerberus had no fleet, just a minefield and surface-based system defense missiles.

But I thought that a regular fleet went by to check on them ever so often, such as the one Honor...commandeered.

I may have misremembered that. Sorry.

Edit:
I must, embarrassingly remind everyone that I had to ask eons of posts ago about the difference between a fleet, task force and squadron. Discerning the line of demarcation between the three doesn't come easily for me. Still.

Not saying that Cerberus had either, I am sure I probably misremembered that. Just saying.

Prior to Lacoon II, we have little evidence of massive military presence at most wormhiles. Now, the SL (and probably many Independent Systems) are going to start posting strong guard forces at their end(s) of wormholes. Places like Zunker relied on ancient LACs and the threat of both FF and RMN available forces to keep off trouble (including the RNM keeping FF's hands actualy off the planet and terminus).

I would imagine that the SLN officers would have to go look up what the "standard" doctrine of securing a wormhole against attack is in the manuals and discover that it is sadly out of date based on new weaponry capabilities and tactical changes from the Haven Wars. Oops.

Once SLN retakes any of the Lacoon II termini, they are going to have to park their own defending force there, further diluting the pool of ships available for other duties. Recall that the SLN is in an actual war/serious shooting situation for the first time in many centuries, they are really busy and also seriously worried that they are going to be facing internal problems with places like the Verge and the Protectorates.

Can you imagine some SLN ship or group showing up at a terminus and 1) finding the Drake SDF (local independt system owner) sitting guard and 2) being told that their assistance is NOT required and 3) since Drake is a) not a SL member, b) not at war with Manticure, that the price per ton of warship for passage through the wormhole is X ?
And that Drake, like Mannheim, actualy has a modern (by SLN standards) SDF of several ships up to the BC range?

Somebody is going to be unhappy and the SLN is going to take a big public relations hit no matter what it does. Do they drive off the Indpepent System's SDF and seize the terminus? Do they withdraw? Do they "post a ship as an observer and to "help" the SDF? None of that will sound really good and you know that the word will be passed as news.

cthia wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Cerberus had no fleet, just a minefield and surface-based system defense missiles.

But I thought that a regular fleet went by to check on them ever so often, such as the one Honor...commandeered.

I may have misremembered that. Sorry.

Edit:
I must, embarrassingly remind everyone that I had to ask eons of posts ago about the difference between a fleet, task force and squadron. Discerning the line of demarcation between the three doesn't come easily for me. Still.

Not saying that Cerberus had either, I am sure I probably misremembered that. Just saying.

Cerberus had no mobile forces stationed there; this was the chief problem with the lavish, expensive defenses. StateSec units came calling there to drop off prisoners, pick up prisoners, deliver mail, or get beach-side R&R with some occasional rape fun added in. (StateSec was great for hanging, in case it needed saying.) But none of those forces were there to play a role in the defense of it - secrecy and the fixed defenses were deemed entirely sufficient for that - and their comings and goings were erratic and rarely in much force.

cthia wrote:But I thought that a regular fleet went by to check on them ever so often, such as the one Honor...commandeered.

The task force Honor defeated/captured at Cerberus was scraped together to investigate why a chess-by-mail chess move wasn't sent; it was in no way "regular." You have to remember that even the coordinates of Cerberus were a state secret and no ships ever visited except to deliver or pick up prisoners.

cthia wrote:Not saying that Cerberus had either, I am sure I probably misremembered that. Just saying.

Cerberus should be easy to remember because it had neither; they had NO mobile defenses and were paranoid about anything bigger than their standby dispatch boat being in orbit over Hades.

cthia wrote:But I thought that a regular fleet went by to check on them ever so often, such as the one Honor...commandeered.

I may have misremembered that. Sorry.

Edit:
I must, embarrassingly remind everyone that I had to ask eons of posts ago about the difference between a fleet, task force and squadron. Discerning the line of demarcation between the three doesn't come easily for me. Still.

Not saying that Cerberus had either, I am sure I probably misremembered that. Just saying.

The only ships that regularly went to Cerberus were the courier boats and the ships carrying new prisoners. They did not have a fleet or task force or other offensive forces regularly checking in. The fleet that Honor commandeered was an unusual case. The only reason it went to Cerberus was to collect prisoners to work on a construction project in another system. That was an unusual situation, which hardly ever happened.

Hate to switch directions here, but my niece keeps referencing something--as a result of her being irritated with a certain brother of mine.

The relevant plot

Here's the thing. A brother of mine has always been into dating a twin. Which is the complete opposite of me, because I have always been too vain to handle another guy loving and kissing on an identical physical carbon copy of my girl. Uh uh! Rubs me the wrong way. My brother would always joke (I think it was a joke) that the benefit of dating a twin is that your gf always has the perfect understudy. I know, right!

The latest twin that he dated, a very sweet and beautiful young lady has a twin that she was alienated from. (family business) She lives in Fuerteventura, in the Canaries. My brother and his gf broke up. He took it rather badly. First time he's ever really been in love and it ended up breaking his heart.

My sister owns a flat in Fuerteventura. It is where she met her husband and where Tierney was conceived. (My niece)

Yep, you guessed it. He ran into his gfs identical twin while trying to escape his heartache. He was shocked when he saw her. His recap of their first meeting is straight out of a movie. He thought she was his gf coming out to patch things up. This girl had no idea who he was or what the hell he was talking about.

Long story short, they fell in love over those three months.

Return to the states, his original gf has a change of heart and wants to get back together. He can't make a decision. He claims to be in love with both. Accident. My sisters and nieces are upset with him because we all really like the original twin.

Do forgive the setting of the stage.

So. Tierney asks me what would happen if something similar happens to a treecat. She even rang Andreea, my Romanian MD. friend and her mother, also an MD., to corroborate her research about death. Seems people can truly die for minutes, even much longer under certain rare circumstances, and be later revived.

What if a bonded cat dies, temporarily, and the other treecat truly goes through the normal hell of almost dying, but lives. Then the cat thought to be dead, is revived, and the two cats are again reunited after the remaining cat has rebonded. Then what? Can a cat be bonded to two?