Honorverse ramblings and musings

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:A question.
It came as a very recent surprise to me that the SLN had erased Manticore's missile range advantage. When the hell did that happen? What really surprises me is the speed at which the range advantage was eliminated. Why is Technodyne still standing? And how quickly will other advantages be neutralized?

Uh, no. If you're referring to Filareta being in range at 2nd Manticore, that's because he attacked a position close to the hyper limit which the RMN could not afford to abandon.

The SLN's cataphract has a powered range of 15.5 million km. This is barely a quarter that of the original MDMs used by Manticore in Operation Buttercup, which had a range of 65~ million km. Ballistic phases can extend those ranges substantially, of course.

Cataphract, from what I understand it, is a brute force solution to not having MDMs. They took a regular single drive missile and attached a countermissile on one end. Unfortunately for them, doing so required a step down in missile size for shipboard launchers - SD-scale missiles could only be fired from pods, SDs could only fire BC-scaled missiles and BCs could only fire DD/CL-scaled missiles. Compared to the RMN's MK16, it's a very feeble weapon system, all the more hindered by the SLN not being set up for fire control at such ranges.

crewdude48 wrote:As for your question; I don't think "erased" is quite the right term, however the range advantage has definitely been mitigated. With the Cataphract missile, the SLN can include at least a small ballistic component before activating the sprint drive, allowing them to get more range. However, several things still give the GA the advantage.

1) Even the Mk 16 has a longer powered range than the Cataphract, allowing for continuously running strikes from outside of the SLN's powered range.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:
A question.
It came as a very recent surprise to me that the SLN had erased Manticore's missile range advantage. When the hell did that happen? What really surprises me is the speed at which the range advantage was eliminated. Why is Technodyne still standing? And how quickly will other advantages be neutralized?

Uh, no. If you're referring to Filareta being in range at 2nd Manticore, that's because he attacked a position close to the hyper limit which the RMN could not afford to abandon.

The SLN's cataphract has a powered range of 15.5 million km. This is barely a quarter that of the original MDMs used by Manticore in Operation Buttercup, which had a range of 65~ million km. Ballistic phases can extend those ranges substantially, of course.

Cataphract, from what I understand it, is a brute force solution to not having MDMs. They took a regular single drive missile and attached a countermissile on one end. Unfortunately for them, doing so required a step down in missile size for shipboard launchers - SD-scale missiles could only be fired from pods, SDs could only fire BC-scaled missiles and BCs could only fire DD/CL-scaled missiles. Compared to the RMN's MK16, it's a very feeble weapon system, all the more hindered by the SLN not being set up for fire control at such ranges.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote: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?

It probably depends. 'Cats don't always know if their bonded half dies. Sure, often they're within mindglow range of each other, so they'd feel the death and know. But we've seen situation (Nimitz's supposed death at Honor's "execution" comes to mind) where the surviving 'cat only finds out about their bondmate's death when another human or 'cat comes back to tell them.

Sure in that case the report was wrong, but Samantha didn't know that. Nimitz was way outside of mindlink/mindglow range and she had to rely on human news reports to discover he (supposedly) wasn't coming back. There wasn't a transgalatic "breaking" of their mindlink.

Conversely I imagine if 'cat died temporarily (but without major brain injury) that upon reviving the 'link' wouldn't be broken. Both halves would feel it when reunited. (With major brain injury, enough to significantly alter their mindglow and personality, probably all bets are off)


But a 'cat lost and presumed dead for years, beyond mindlink range of his clan, could potentially come back to find his former mate bonded with a new 'cat (assuming she didn't die of grief). But I don't know if both links would be present, or if the grief and subsequent relinking would have altered the her mindglow sufficiently to effectively "delete" the original link.

SWM wrote:I think the discussion of treecat bonds is working under a mistaken assumption. Treecat mating bonds are not the same as bonds with humans. As far as I can recall, the death of a treecat's mate does not result in the death of the surviving mate. Mating bonds are not as close as treecat-human bonds, and breaking the bond is not quite as psychically crippling.

I don't think the scenarios are nearly as bad as your niece fears, Cthia.

SWM wrote:The missile range advantage was erased when Technodyne produced the Cataphract. This happened even before the confrontation between the League and Manticore. Technodyne started developing the Cataphract because the Mesan Alignment pushed them into it. The Alignment didn't have Manticore's MDM technology, so they got Technodyne to develop something as close to it as possible.

cthia wrote:Damn! Then originally, she was right and I was wrong. Originally, sitting at the dinner table upset with my brother, she began the discussion of what would have happened if Ransom had temporarily killed Nimitz just to irk Honor. Honor survives. Rebonds, then Nimitz finds out the bond is broken.

Anyways, I thought it was the same and therefore steered the discussion in that direction. So I misled her. I should have known she was right.

Thanks. I think she'll be pleased. Although she'd probably just default to the former.

I kind of steered her in another direction because she was so upset with my brother at the time, and was adamant that Honor shouldn't quickly rebond. Then an equally intense conversation ensued about adequate grace periods of the heart, etc. etc. etc.

Weird Harold wrote:I'm pretty sure that Technodyne did NOT develop the Cataphracts. The pods shipped to Filareta were tagged as coming from Technodyne, but they were shipped from Mesa. The Cataphracts provided the PNE for the attack on Torch also came from Mesa, not from Technodyne. Filareta noted the oddity of the missiles' shipping origin.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:A question.
It came as a very recent surprise to me that the SLN had erased Manticore's missile range advantage. When the hell did that happen? What really surprises me is the speed at which the range advantage was eliminated. Why is Technodyne still standing? And how quickly will other advantages be neutralized?

Uh, no. If you're referring to Filareta being in range at 2nd Manticore, that's because he attacked a position close to the hyper limit which the RMN could not afford to abandon.

The SLN's cataphract has a powered range of 15.5 million km. This is barely a quarter that of the original MDMs used by Manticore in Operation Buttercup, which had a range of 65~ million km. Ballistic phases can extend those ranges substantially, of course.

Cataphract, from what I understand it, is a brute force solution to not having MDMs. They took a regular single drive missile and attached a countermissile on one end. Unfortunately for them, doing so required a step down in missile size for shipboard launchers - SD-scale missiles could only be fired from pods, SDs could only fire BC-scaled missiles and BCs could only fire DD/CL-scaled missiles. Compared to the RMN's MK16, it's a very feeble weapon system, all the more hindered by the SLN not being set up for fire control at such ranges.

SWM wrote:In technical terms, the Cataphract has a range just as long as Manticore's MDM. David has stated this several times, pointing it out several times when forum posters tried to say that MDMs outrange cataphracts. It may not have very good accuracy at those ranges, but it does have the range. So technically, Cthia is absolutely correct, and David wants us to remember that. (Makes me wonder why. )