Honorverse ramblings and musings

IIRC, Grayson was a secondary target. The objective was not so much to damage Grayson as to destroy Grayson's ability to help Manticore rebuild in the aftermath of OB.
That made the shipyards and research facilities at Blackbird the primary concern.

Don

cthia wrote:Tactically, how hard could it have been to include the farms in the attack? Detection before targeting?

Not terrible hard, IF they had the assets in train for "Oyster Harbor."

With the scratch force of Sharks and Ghosts they rushed to "Oyster Bay" they just didn't have the resources to to go after Orbital Industry or asteroid mining in addition to hitting all of the dispersed, "free standing" construction locations that made up the "Blackbird Yards."

As devastating as it was, Oyster Bay was every bit of the "Shoestring Operation" Hamish suspected.

Oyster Bay was a rushed mission done with the essentialy the training and test-bed ships. The actual plan seems to have been to strike many more targets including Haven's yards. When it became clear to the Alignment that Manticore was really going to take down Haven instead of the other way around, the decision was made to advance the date (by years) and hit the most powerfull and most tech advanced side first. The idea being that by destroying all of the building, primary space based manufacturing (essentialy related to military logistics and equiment plus R&D), Manticore -and Grayson- would be crippled enough that two things would happen. The first was that Haven would be able to capture both systems and take that those major allied naval powers out of the mix for the RF and Alignment to latere deal with. The other was that the attrition on both sides would effectivly destroy most of the RMN and GSM including the crews AND drasticly cut down the numbers of ships that Haven would have (and the most experienced crews).

If the Alignment had more ships that it could have used, it would have struck at more things in both the Manticore and Grayson systems. They DIDNT strike at any actual manuvering warships, thought they did catch some at dock. They had to take out as much of the capability to build war fighting equipment and ships as possible. Otherwise they would also have struck at the extracting industry (at least the major pieces) in the Manticore Belts and gone after the orbital farms which had both the trained spacers and local if small manufacturing capability.

Too many targets, not enough ships and weapons. They HAD to limit the strike to Spider Drive ships to avoid detection and other than the Graser Trops, everything else came in ballistic in both systems. The Alignment felt it HAD to take the Manticore and Grayson tech/industrail capasity off the table because that would have still been a game-changer in dealing with the SL falling apart.

Look at what happens if Haven then taken Manticore after Oyster Bay. Have will have also been cut back in naval units but still have building capasity (and Bolt Hole is still a secret location. Haven would still have been able to inflict massive amounts of damage on any SLN forces sent out to "pacify" the quadrant and push along the fall of the League by draining off SLN ships by destroying them but Haven was not going to remain the major powerhouse while it and the SLN shreaded each other.

. What was Albrect thinking of doing with the 8th Fleet if it had been in the Manticore System at the point of Oyster Bay? Nobody -in the books- even gives a thought about all that RMN top of the line Captial Ships with support manuvering around instead of having gone off to Haven. And why didn't the Sharks etc throw some weapons at - oh, I don't know- Manticore Astro Control for the Junction.

Brigade XO wrote:
Oyster Bay was a rushed mission done with the essentialy the training and test-bed ships. The actual plan seems to have been to strike many more targets including Haven's yards.
...


Too many targets, not enough ships and weapons. They HAD to limit the strike to Spider Drive ships to avoid detection and other than the Graser Trops, everything else came in ballistic in both systems. The Alignment felt it HAD to take the Manticore and Grayson tech/industrail capasity off the table because that would have still been a game-changer in dealing with the SL falling apart.

...

. What was Albrect thinking of doing with the 8th Fleet if it had been in the Manticore System at the point of Oyster Bay? Nobody -in the books- even gives a thought about all that RMN top of the line Captial Ships with support manuvering around instead of having gone off to Haven. And why didn't the Sharks etc throw some weapons at - oh, I don't know- Manticore Astro Control for the Junction.

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I think we can agree (with textev -- discussion between Albrect, Benjamin and Colin -- that OB was "moved up".
scheduled prior to the intended tools being available, they had to settle on fewer targets with fewer resources.

The "cat" is out of the bag now on several points
(1) mode of arrival and translation fingerprints are recognized
(2) mode of data communication recognized
(3) The alliance now has Simoles who has let them know the drive mode is possible (half the R&D battle)

The Alliance and its unofficial associated parties (Erehwon, Maya, Andermann, Torch, Meyers) are aware of the threat and likely will soon have a distributed counter.

-- Stewart

Something is always occurring to me. I know, right?!

I forget which book, but the Havenites were toying with towing LACs. It was a jury-rigged job on a spur of the moment. But would it be feasible/worthwhile to look into the practice in general. I know there are CLACs for that. But, if every SD could tow a single LAC that would offer up some interesting tactical possibilities and augment a limited amount of CLACs.

cthia wrote:Something is always occurring to me. I know, right?!

I forget which book, but the Havenites were toying with towing LACs. It was a jury-rigged job on a spur of the moment. But would it be feasible/worthwhile to look into the practice in general. I know there are CLACs for that. But, if every SD could tow a single LAC that would offer up some interesting tactical possibilities and augment a limited amount of CLACs.

I don't know about a LAC but maybe a dispatch boat as it would be fast and hyper capable. Remember news is only as fast as the ship carrying it.

cthia wrote:Something is always occurring to me. I know, right?!

I forget which book, but the Havenites were toying with towing LACs. It was a jury-rigged job on a spur of the moment. But would it be feasible/worthwhile to look into the practice in general. I know there are CLACs for that. But, if every SD could tow a single LAC that would offer up some interesting tactical possibilities and augment a limited amount of CLACs.

The Honor of the Queen. Also An Act of War in the In Fire Forged anthology with the IAN using two LACs to screen an SD.

Vince wrote:

cthia wrote:Something is always occurring to me. I know, right?!

I forget which book, but the Havenites were toying with towing LACs. It was a jury-rigged job on a spur of the moment. But would it be feasible/worthwhile to look into the practice in general. I know there are CLACs for that. But, if every SD could tow a single LAC that would offer up some interesting tactical possibilities and augment a limited amount of CLACs.

The Honor of the Queen. Also An Act of War in the In Fire Forged anthology with the IAN using two LACs to screen an SD.

Thanks Vince. Haven't read An Act of War yet. Apologies.

Was it another jury/jerry rigging or a successful formal implementation?

In the case of SDs, would towing a LAC hinder pod towing capacity/ability?

cthia wrote:Something is always occurring to me. I know, right?!

I forget which book, but the Havenites were toying with towing LACs. It was a jury-rigged job on a spur of the moment. But would it be feasible/worthwhile to look into the practice in general. I know there are CLACs for that. But, if every SD could tow a single LAC that would offer up some interesting tactical possibilities and augment a limited amount of CLACs.

...In the case of SDs, would towing a LAC hinder pod towing capacity/ability?

Not sure, the only case I know of is HotQ's with the PNS Saladin. The LAC usage In Fire Forged was defensive in nature, not mentioning it specifically because it would be a spoiler for ya. Though I don't remember the IAN LACs being a "towed in" arrangement.

The thing is, Haven has CLACs, and even ONE can carry 200 LACs, where towing a LAC may or may not work and degrades the performance of the big ship. So you could have 50 SD(P)s provided with 4 each to achieve a slightly higher number, and Haven would have to have something like 8-10,000 SD(p)s before you would run out of known CLACs for that level of LAC coverage.

Meanwhile you wouldn't be using a singld SD(p) independently, so you'd probably have a couple scouting DDs with it.

I don't think it's happened yet, therefore I think it an oversight that Elizabeth hasn't invited Miss Hearns to have lunch. Since Elizabeth's Star Kingdom was single-handedly responsible for Abigail's present military status. In fact, Elizabeth should invite Honor to accompany Abigail. That promises to be an interesting luncheon of a royal regal regale.

Can we say déjà vu regarding Honor's first visit to Mount Royal? Although, I expect Abigail would handle it internally with a bit more aplomb. After all, iirc, Honor was still just a Yeoman on her first visit. Abigail is intimately familiar with social hardware - dinner fork, salad fork, dessert fork, napkin placement ...

Honor was only intimately familiar with food placement.

And Miss Hearns' quite graceful bow shall rival Elizabeth's, but *warm the cockles of her heart. Time for Elizabeth to take baby Sally under her wing. Never know when she'll need her for some sort of political leverage. Probably more sooner than later.

*Been using that phrase like, forever. But what exactly is a cockle, I wonder.

http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-co ... -heart.htm