Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:Thanks for the numbers. Now that you've posted it, it jogs my memory. The RHN never did achieve any level of automation.

But I wonder if they even knew of the Manty level of automation? Now that I think of it, IIRC, didn't Honor hide the fact once from POWs aboard ship so they wouldn't get any ideas? Or am I misremembering this due to series bleed?

For that matter, after each battle readers are treated to the butcher's bills. I always assumed the bills were public knowledge. Do you think? Because if Haven actually saw the disparaging gulf in perspective butcher's bills per ship, seems someone would ask questions.

Henke was hiding her lack of manpower from the Sollies, who knew she had very few anyway with only one SD and a few squadrons of battlecruisers and cruisers.

At some point, probably. We've got wikipedia telling us how many people, tanks, aircraft, ships, etc. were lost on each side for battles and wars. In the immediate aftermath, information may be classified or altered for propaganda reasons.

Cordelia Ransom wasn't letting Haven's populations know about their real bills and was exaggerating Manticore's. The practice continued to some extent until Theisman's Coup.

cthia wrote:

Thanks for the numbers. Now that you've posted it, it jogs my memory. The RHN never did achieve any level of automation.

But I wonder if they even knew of the Manty level of automation? Now that I think of it, IIRC, didn't Honor hide the fact once from POWs aboard ship so they wouldn't get any ideas? Or am I misremembering this due to series bleed?

For that matter, after each battle readers are treated to the butcher's bills. I always assumed the bills were public knowledge. Do you think? Because if Haven actually saw the disparaging gulf in perspective butcher's bills per ship, seems someone would ask questions.

about the only time honor had peep pows onboard would have been when she was in command of wayfarrer (Q-ship) and while it no doubt had some automation, it did start as a freighter after all, more likely she didn't want them getting anywhere near the pod core.

Dauntless wrote:

cthia wrote:Thanks for the numbers. Now that you've posted it, it jogs my memory. The RHN never did achieve any level of automation.

But I wonder if they even knew of the Manty level of automation? Now that I think of it, IIRC, didn't Honor hide the fact once from POWs aboard ship so they wouldn't get any ideas? Or am I misremembering this due to series bleed?

For that matter, after each battle readers are treated to the butcher's bills. I always assumed the bills were public knowledge. Do you think? Because if Haven actually saw the disparaging gulf in perspective butcher's bills per ship, seems someone would ask questions.

about the only time honor had peep pows onboard would have been when she was in command of wayfarrer (Q-ship) and while it no doubt had some automation, it did start as a freighter after all, more likely she didn't want them getting anywhere near the pod core.

My memories on it are rather dim. Munroburton probably pinned it down in the previous post.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:Thanks for the numbers. Now that you've posted it, it jogs my memory. The RHN never did achieve any level of automation.

But I wonder if they even knew of the Manty level of automation? Now that I think of it, IIRC, didn't Honor hide the fact once from POWs aboard ship so they wouldn't get any ideas? Or am I misremembering this due to series bleed?

For that matter, after each battle readers are treated to the butcher's bills. I always assumed the bills were public knowledge. Do you think? Because if Haven actually saw the disparaging gulf in perspective butcher's bills per ship, seems someone would ask questions.

Henke was hiding her lack of manpower from the Sollies, who knew she had very few anyway with only one SD and a few squadrons of battlecruisers and cruisers.

At some point, probably. We've got wikipedia telling us how many people, tanks, aircraft, ships, etc. were lost on each side for battles and wars. In the immediate aftermath, information may be classified or altered for propaganda reasons.

Cordelia Ransom wasn't letting Haven's populations know about their real bills and was exaggerating Manticore's. The practice continued to some extent until Theisman's Coup.

Apart from what they distorted to the general public, did Haven genuinely know the actual numbers, to prompt the question "what's going on on those Manty ships?" And in retrospect, it probably wouldn't be something the RMN would want the enemy to know -- for situations like Henke's. Although, it very well may be within the level of security cracked by the enemy. I wonder if the RMN knew the appalling crewing requirements of an SLN ship before capturing one?

Throughout history though, armies would often distort the truth in casualties.

cthia wrote:Apart from what they distorted to the general public, did Haven genuinely know the actual numbers, to prompt the question "what's going on on those Manty ships?" And in retrospect, it probably wouldn't be something the RMN would want the enemy to know -- for situations like Henke's. Although, it very well may be within the level of security cracked by the enemy. I wonder if the RMN knew the appalling crewing requirements of an SLN ship before capturing one?

Throughout history though, armies would often distort the truth in casualties.

Depends on what point in time you're talking about. I think it's pretty much a given that pre-Buttercup the RMN and BuShips did everything in their power to prevent hits of radical new designs or even radical manning reductions from leaking out. So Haven was probably unaware of the automation in the new top secret designs.

But during the ceasefire I doubt it was seen as as critical to keep the general manpower advantages of automation totally secret. I, personally, assume that it would have come up as one more point in the endless sparing in Lords about the naval budget and the halting of construction that interrupted the replacement of the legacy SDs with new 2nd get SD(P)s.
The exact manning levels would probably have remained confidential, but the fact that an SD(P) has a lower total cost of ownership than the older, less effective, SDs is too good to keep out of those arguments. And that cost savings is primarily through reduced direct and indirect personnel costs costs.
Manticore would have saved money, long term, to swap out every remaining SD one-for-one with a new SD(P); releasing the excess crew back into the civilian sector.

So not only was the High Ridge government's refusal to do that for very short term economic reasons militarily stupid (as the SD(P)s were far more capably and survivable) but ultimately economically stupid as well. I can't imaging Honor and White Haven would have let that go unmentioned in the naval budget arguments.

Besides, once you got a reasonable number of the reduced manpower ships in operation, especially during the prolonged ceasefire, it would be very hard to keep the drastically reduced manning levels secret. Every single crewman serving on one, at a minimum, would know about it and it would be way to easy for that general information to slip in casual bar bitch sessions. During the relatively short buildup to Buttercup you could keep those new ships isolated and hammer into their crews that everything about them was totally secret; but that's kind of isolation and secrecy just isn't going to hold up once their the new normal design.

Given that both Haven and Manticore (and we persume Grayson and Erwhon etc) are going to continue to build and design warships to deal with the current and presumeably long term to deal with fighting the SL, I don't see Manticore reducing the levels of automation and do see Haven using Manticorian tech to reduce the crew needs on its next mods and new designes.

The problems noted with lack of both Marines and larger regular crew that were traditionaly used for boarding and prize work by Manticore will continue as the GA is going to be faced with full-up war fighting for quite some time. Sure, they are going to also have to deal with commerce protection (and the potential prize and boarding needs) but what they have to focus on is maintianing the ability to defend the GA combined space and deal with 1st the SLN and then anyone else that would rather fight than trade.

The old commerce protection routines will just have to wait until things settle down in the Post League Era after the worst of the sucession wars get thought. It might be that future classes will be built with more crew capacity but it will still be the acutal warfighting ability rather than the anti-piracy cruising and convoy protection missions. Remember that the missions for DD-BC size ships was scouting, fleet screen AND long range/duation cruising in commerce protection. The shit in design during the war was to reduce crew size/ increase the number of ships and to pack in more (and better and longer ranged) missiles.

It is possible that some of the older ships -that survive- such as those now working in Silesia, may get tasked as anti-piracy units in areas where the relativly larger crew sizes (and potential to put on prize crews) will get used in commerce protection where they will be expected to deal with normal pirates rather than former warships turned pirate. It is unlikely that Manticore will build crew heavy ships in the new growing tonnage classes purely for commerce protection unless those ships will also be equally survivable in the purely military engagement venue.

Brigade XO wrote:Given that both Haven and Manticore (and we persume Grayson and Erwhon etc) are going to continue to build and design warships to deal with the current and presumeably long term to deal with fighting the SL, I don't see Manticore reducing the levels of automation and do see Haven using Manticorian tech to reduce the crew needs on its next mods and new designes.

The problems noted with lack of both Marines and larger regular crew that were traditionaly used for boarding and prize work by Manticore will continue as the GA is going to be faced with full-up war fighting for quite some time. Sure, they are going to also have to deal with commerce protection (and the potential prize and boarding needs) but what they have to focus on is maintianing the ability to defend the GA combined space and deal with 1st the SLN and then anyone else that would rather fight than trade.

The old commerce protection routines will just have to wait until things settle down in the Post League Era after the worst of the sucession wars get thought. It might be that future classes will be built with more crew capacity but it will still be the acutal warfighting ability rather than the anti-piracy cruising and convoy protection missions. Remember that the missions for DD-BC size ships was scouting, fleet screen AND long range/duation cruising in commerce protection. The shit in design during the war was to reduce crew size/ increase the number of ships and to pack in more (and better and longer ranged) missiles.

It is possible that some of the older ships -that survive- such as those now working in Silesia, may get tasked as anti-piracy units in areas where the relativly larger crew sizes (and potential to put on prize crews) will get used in commerce protection where they will be expected to deal with normal pirates rather than former warships turned pirate. It is unlikely that Manticore will build crew heavy ships in the new growing tonnage classes purely for commerce protection unless those ships will also be equally survivable in the purely military engagement venue.

That's the kicker isn't it? The ships dispatched for piracy are going to have to come from your overall OOB and you don't want to build niche ships that ill-fit being detached and sent to strengthen someone else's order of battle.

And I'm afraid the reverse must be true - if reducing crewing requirements increases mass and increases combat power then increasing crewing requirements should lower combat power. Against the SLN or anything else currently poking its head out in space, it doesn't matter, but if the MAlign shows up and you've significantly reduced your collective firepower, well, it may be more interesting than you'd want.

Oh darn, my playtime has ended. My wife says I must come to bed. She's enticing me with a late night snack -- fruit of the loins.

I'm out!

Brigade XO wrote:It is possible that some of the older ships -that survive- such as those now working in Silesia, may get tasked as anti-piracy units in areas where the relativly larger crew sizes (and potential to put on prize crews) will get used in commerce protection where they will be expected to deal with normal pirates rather than former warships turned pirate. It is unlikely that Manticore will build crew heavy ships in the new growing tonnage classes purely for commerce protection unless those ships will also be equally survivable in the purely military engagement venue.

Right. And former Frontier Fleet prizes may be good for that kind of second-tier usage, doubling as training vessels for the massive new crews coming out of Silesia and Talbott soon and former League systems down the road. Existing crew intensive shipping can do that job for a long, long time.

There may well still be a time when staffing warships without DDM/MDM capability just won't be tolerable any more and those get phased out, while piracy suppression remains an important mission. I too doubt they'll be building manpower-intensive units then just to have prize crews, generous boarding parties, and lots of people for SAR on hand. There simply is too much time when you have too much need for those people crewing more ships instead. And specialist ships for it would offend the generalist warship preference too much to be the standard solution.

A few tacks that may help:
1 - Semi-specialist ships that share a whole lot of design elements. Effectively, you'd build CL's and DD's on the same size hull, using the same slips, and almost identical so as to use a huge overlap in parts. The CL would have a generous crew complement and large stores for piracy suppression and long-term operations where the larger number of warm, skilled bodies would be expected to find work. The DD would be built for sheer fighting and short- to medium-term scouting power. Neither would be at all hopeless for the other role, but they would be optimized for different niches while sharing all the production/maintenance elements practically consistent with that.

2 - A modular design. A module would fit in - perhaps in a hugely extended boat bay - to provide additional Marines, stores, drones, missiles, or naval crew as needed for the operations area and profile.

3 - Force multipliers for manpower-intensive operations: much more and better in the way of drones for SAR, inspections, boarding operations, and supporting very small prize crews (or, alternatively, filling in for missing prize crews aboard the origin ship). In effect, take the improved automation and build more of it for use away from the ship as needed.

4 - Marine-ize more naval ratings: tap more naval ratings and officers on a more regular basis to assume more Marine-style duties off-ship as necessary. Take the Hearns/Gutierrez expedients and prepare to do that sort of thing. Or going from the other direction (and both are possible): make sure the Marines that are traditionally an integral part of a RMN crew are still an integral part of the smaller RMN crews. The crucial thing here is doubling up on active, not-at-all-rusty skill sets to make fewer crew go further.

Prior to the Haven War, RMN had a very well developed tradition and system of spreading it's Ensigns and other junior officers out amoung the portion of the fleet that was dealing with commerce protection. It is presumed that the same would be done with enlisted as soon as they compleated a certain basic level of training in their assigned specialties. That is a very practical thing which gives a lot or education and experience relatively quickly. As the war moved on for years.
This has been war. They are and have been suffering losses in ships and people the whole time. They lost the entire training cadre and classes assigned to the two major stations at Manticor and Griffon. They have now spread the areas requiring protection (in many senses of the mission) wider to include the Manticorian half of Silesia and the Talbot Quadrant. While no longer fighting Haven, they now have to redeploy ships to at least guard against strikes from the SL. Where are they going to get the crews and how long is it going to take to train them up- even intermingled with existing experinced crews- to staff the ships and logistics chains to maintain this?

Treecats and the Deneb Accords

Should Elizabeth push for an updated "Deneb Accords" on behalf of treecats to protect their rights under the umbrella of a sentient species, to prevent this from happening to any future treecats captured in space during a war?...

POWs who assaulted their captors other than in escape attempts, or in self-defense, forfeited the protections of the Accords, though the punishment for such actions could not be capital, even for murder.

Provoked incident was an excuse to explain, why senior personnel of Allied Cruiser Squadron 18 weren't transferred into regular POW camp, but taken into custody by the Havenite Office of State Security. It seems it was a case without precedent however:

⦁it wasn't mentioned that any combatant bonded treecat was captured earlier,
Nimitz' unique status was not claimed before captors and recognized by them, like:
⦁a minor child, protected by the Constitution of the Star Kingdom of Manticore,
⦁a bonded person, recognized and recorded by the Royal Manticoran Navy,
⦁the Havenite government did not recognize Nimitz as a sentient creature; Cordelia Ransom of the Committee of Public Safety issued orders to shoot him immediately with the excuse that POWs should not possess pets,
⦁self-defense issue: the only person entitled to act in direct self-defense was Nimitz, because of their bonding, Commodore Harrington was forced to defend Nimitz,
⦁Grayson law obliged members of the Harrington Guard to defend their steadholder,
⦁not all present CruRon 18 personnel made an assault on StateSec functionaries.

The Geneva Protocol, associated with the Geneva Convention, dealt specifically with weapons of war, such as banning the use of bio-chemical, Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.

Perhaps the galaxy at large now, or at a later date would, or should, include a ban on any nano agents used by the MAlign. Recent advances in technology has significantly altered the threat vector, as has proved to be a pointed lesson learned by the SLN.

But also has the threat vector changed significantly in these previously mentioned biological areas of warfare and time for the galaxy at large to take a stance on it as well.

Also, IIRC, Elizabeth absolved Eloise and her Republic from having to pay reparations to the Star Empire. I don't think any reparations were due Grayson, therefore the question of whether she had a right to speak for Grayson is moot.

OTOH, the management of Hades under StateSec completely transgressed on everything the Deneb Accords stood for. And since there were prisoners from several governments, reparations were owed these POWs, and it seems Elizabeth did not have the right to speak for what was owed to them.