Honorverse Top Ten Tacticians, Strategists

cthia wrote:Oh wow, you guys have been busy. Sorry for my absence, fiancee's family weekend. It is my loss!

Latest approved email snippets. A different guy enters the pic. One of the other's brother...

[huge snip]
But Napoleon only strategy was, and I quote "To get there first with the most men." You sound as if you are disputing that and it belonged to Napoleon. Yet earlier you said it was sound. I know I'm just a guy but that sounds contradictory.
[snip]

Napoleon? I thought that was Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Bill Woods wrote:

Napoleon? I thought that was Nathan Bedford Forrest.

It was! I'm screwing up her emails. Ever tried to copy and paste from embedded emails, loooong embedded emails? My apology. I will correct it, snipping, trying not to post private info. I think I should leave his be. He had it incorrect. My niece corrected but I am screwing it all up. I need to be able to post it all. But can't. My apologies. And this copying pasting crap out of email is for the birds. So I type copy it, some of it, losing my place. Looong emails, but good stuff.

Oh and thanks for bringing that to my attention. Hope I didn't screw up more. There are pages and pages of embedded stuff tacked onto each other!

.

cthia wrote:A few of them suggest that she's only pretending to be twelve as a front to refuse their advances. They met her at her last piano recital where she was dressed in a gown with makeup that made her look much older with her already grownup mannerisms. She doesn't act like your average twelve year old and her height doesn't help.

TheMonster wrote:
This explains a lot. If she's going to look and act like an adult, she has to expect people to assume she is one, and not be surprised when they freak out when they hear the truth. Part of what bothers them is the realization that those advances could have landed them in jail or worse, had they been accepted.

It also explains why you have expressed such ... concern over the ramifications of the situation. She can't even show them her driver's license to prove her age, because she's too young to have one.

I remember being able to walk into a bar and order a drink without being asked for ID when I was 16. I was 6'6", 250# with a full beard. Everyone thought I was 25. I could have gotten a job with the state ABC bureau busting bars for selling liquor to underage drinkers.

You're absolutely correct, about looking the part of an adult. It's her height. Her hair is really long as well, which lends itself to elaborate hairstyles...French twists, curls, buns and the like. To me she always appears to be a little princess. She wears the elaborate styles for fashion and because her hair is so long it aids in manageability. Just like all of my sisters and nieces before her they don't wish to constantly brush hair away from their face all day. It's the native american heritage.

As far as acting like an adult Monster, please don't say that. She objects to it. She says that it isn't fair or correct to say that she is acting like an adult simply because she acts...classy, composed, confident. Poised. People improperly attribute her high IQ to maturity. Now I know what you mean and I know that you don't intend offense. She's just...sensitive in that area because some people use it as a defense when losing discussions to her.

She has never actually had a chance to be surprised when people freak out about her age since it began long before her second birthday. What bothers her is the inability of people to separate 'who' she is from how old she is. She likes engaging conversation. Invariably people immediately underestimate her which usually leads to them sticking their foot in their mouth. It's difficult to sound intelligent with a mouth full of foot. It's like talking with food in your mouth. At formal dinner parties my sister and I can always see it coming. We formerly tried to sway conversation away from her, which we soon realized wasn't fair. Besides it isn't easy when you've got the older adults showing normal interest in her. "Well tell us a little about yourself young lady," or "What are you interested in?" Even if I'm not looking at her I can feel my sister bristling in her seat. Me too. The problem is we're not sure if it's the people we're trying to protect or my niece. Why did we once try to control conversation? The incident...

A formal dinner party at my sister's home. My sister has a PhD in both biology and chemistry, and is involved in research. She works in RTP (Research Triangle Park) which employs one of the highest concentrations of PhD's and M.D.'s in the world. My niece and I jokingly refer to the entire RTP hub as Hephaestus (after the RMN shipyard). So obviously her colleagues are all going to be quite knowledgeable, and her dinner parties are sometimes samples of these people. My niece sees these parties as a chance for engaging conversation. She's a brilliant twelve year old with no one to talk to but adults.

Admittedly, my niece may have been a bit rude as she began to scribble chess notations on a cotton napkin, which drew the attention of my sister because these were some of her favorite table wear, which drew the attention of her guests. My niece had just gotten bored over the shop talk.

"Are those chess notations?"
"Yes sir, they are."
"You a good chess player?"
"I don't get beat often. Hardly ever. Many people don't respect openings."
Right away, trouble. My niece was scribbling notations dealing with the Queens Gambit. It's one of her favorite openings on a 2D board, certainly against an inexperienced player. Not very popular because modern players just use the Indian defense or the Slav defense against it. But on a 3D board possibilities make it not so straightforward. In fact my niece says the Indian defense is a losing proposition on a 3D board, and the Slav defense is quite tricky, meaning, against her you'll lose.

Off of the breakfast nook is a small room whose floor is a chess board. The pieces are over 3 ft. high. Two stools. First game the guy was pushing pieces like they were hot. My niece asked him to slow down. He thought she was asking for her own benefit. Huge mistake. If she had to play, she just wanted a good game. In less than one whirlwind of a minute, the guy was facing either losing his queen, or a rook and a developed knight and possibly two pawns. Now he slows the pace, recognizing his predicament. He chooses to save his queen and offer up his rook and knight. She ignores. Mate in three. Two more games in two more minutes.

Back at the table. "Well a student should know more than just chess. What else are you interested in?"

Oh no!

"I want to study physics at Uni."
"Ah, physics. Well you have to be good in many school subjects, like mathematics, if you want to tackle physics young lady."

Within the next five minutes my niece had left him a blubbering idiot. The poor guy has a bachelors in physics but his forte is medicine, where he holds a Ph.D. And it showed. My niece had him so beet red that everyone felt sorry for him. His wife finally stopped the conversation by pouring champagne on his head. "Dear, stop. You lost this conversation before we even arrived. This is the brilliant ten year old," my niece was a few days away from turning eleven, "the one I have been communicating back and forth with about applied physics to cosmology. It is her work that you read and said she was brilliant. Since I have a PhD., in physics, I'll take it from here." Afterwards we tried to prevent similar repeats of that embarassing dinner party, but it just makes it awkward.

He had thought that my ten year old niece was my sister's older eighteen year old who was about to attend college. However she was upstairs in bed sick.

When introducing her we try to give her age beforehand. But certain situations doesn't always afford the chance to do so before impressions are already formed. In cases involving older boys my sister normally allows me to take the lead. It's easier for me and more natural and expected from a father figure. I usually just introduce her, acknowledge her beauty, you have to acknowledge her beauty, it shines like a spot light and older boys stare at her like comatose robots, and add, "She's only twelve so behave." It prevents them from later awkward situations and prevents, usually, my niece from fending off the advances of much older students. Usually works.

Funny about you never getting carded for ID Monster. I still get carded sometimes and I'm twice the age of many carding me!

Tenshinai wrote:
Oh dear no i most certainly am not taking her lightly, i´m rather impressed.

I was trying to provide more distinct and clear definitions for her(as she seems to get it right in examples while the definition posted was questionable). That way anyone trying to oppose her will have less handholds to grab for so she can pound them to dust even better.

Honor Con, sorry zero chance of that. "Location: Sweden" and i´m seriously not much for travelling nowadays.

Damn. She would really enjoy talking to you. And I am not saying you can't knock her on her ass. I think it would be good for her. She needs to learn that side of it. I was simply warning you not to take her lightly. I hate feeling sorry for people. You can give her a run for it if you dismiss her age, in that respect.

cthia wrote:Everything you said about strategy indeed happens in the War Room or aboard ship before the battle.

Everything you said about tactics indeed happens in the heat of battle.

If strategy happens just before the battle, then something went wrong and you´re trying to adjust to circumstances. Well, or you have your higher leadership with you on a ship into battle, totally NOT recommended in my opinion. Sometimes tactical and strategical command coincides, like when Hamish got a lot of independence in his command when knocking over Haven. That tends to be exceptions rather than the rule though.

Strategy rarely has anything to do with planning for BATTLES. Strategy is for planning when and where battles might, or should, happen.

There may or may not be strategy involved before a battle, but most likely it does not affect the outcome of the battle in any way(the basic exception is if the commander in a battle is trying to achieve something strategically important and looses the battle because of focusing on that, which can still end up as "loose the battle but win the war" if it´s important enough(essentially this is the idea behind suicidal attacks, if it breaks something important enough, loosing the battle can still be plenty well worth it)).

A strategic decision in a battle might be, if you have one "free shot", wether to turn left and destroy a bunch of shipyards, turn right and destroy orbital industry and support vessels or go right ahead and hit the SDs caught with their pants down.

If the enemy has no other shipyards, then destroying them would make a longterm victory much more likely, destroying industry and navy support ships would make it hard for the enemy to operate away from their bases and make resupply harder.

While destroying one of their fleets could just as well be a great victory as completely irrelevant (if they have a 9 to 1 advantage in numbers afterwards instead of 10 to 1, that´s not going to matter very much(in that case, good strategy would likely be to strike at the support infrastructure to make it hard for them to use their numerical advantage against you)).

A tactical decision is how do i form up my ships, from where and against what targets do i attack, what vectors will my ships use, where should they enter the area at and where should they exit back to hyper, when do i fire what against which target, do i roll ships in response to enemy fire and only show the wedge and if so at which moment...

Strategy tells you where to fight and why, to win the war, tactics tells you how to win a battle.

cthia wrote:She said the exact same thing you said, just a bit more...succinctly. Perhaps too succinctly?

See her at Honor Con. You're in for a rough ride.

Reminds me of an Aivars Terekhov quote, and it happens to her all of the time..."Why do grownups like you, automatically assume you are intellectually superior to a 12 year-old like her?"

Tenshinai wrote:
Oh dear no you are seriously mistaken, i would never assume such a thing.
I remember myself at the same age after all.

Frankly i wish there were more people around that were on her level.
If anything, i´m just hoping to contribute slightly to her education.

Oh and it would be interesting what she says about me placing Hemphill on my list.

(And FYI, Caparelli only just barely got bumped off of the strategical list for me)

She explained much of this in her very first email. It wasn't well received. Her short funny version was after several exasperated and failed attempts to state what you and many others have stated. I'll pass on the Caparelli thing to her and I am assuming I can share everyone's posts with her, since it's public anyway.

runsforcelery wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:
That´s decent enough if you add the "why" to the when and where.

KNick wrote:
Sorry to disagree with you on this one. The "why" had better be decided before you ever start planning strategy. It defines the strategy you are going to use.

Tenshinai wrote:
Uhm... That´s a VERY strange point of view.

Any attack or defense that does not have a strategic "why" is effectively a waste of resources.

If your strategy is based on destroying the enemies ability to build and service ships, then the "why" for as many attacks as possible should be "to destroy shipyards".

I have a feeling you´re mistaking "why go to war" with "why should a specific battle happen".

I’m finding this a very interesting discussion, whenever I have a chance to drop in on it. People are raising very cogent points, and the different way in which people parse the difference between strategy and tactics is fascinating. Obviously, I’m not going to tell you who falls where on my lists in these various categories.

For myself, I tend to divide the “art of war” into:

Grand Strategy: this is where national objectives are set and where all of the resources — military, diplomatic, economic, industrial, information, etc. — are utilized. The object of grand strategy is to determine what needs to be accomplished and how best to orchestrate all of those resources to the achievement of that/those objective(s). The grand strategists are supposed to be the ones to know what they have to work with, know what needs to be done, decide who to assign to do the doing, and prioritize competing theaters and goals at the highest level.

Theater Strategy: this might also be called “Campaign Strategy.” This is where people assigned by the grand strategists to accomplish specific goals go about accomplishing them. The sorts of issues they need to deal with might be “how do we win the war against the U-boats in the Atlantic” or “how do we deploy strategic air power against Germany” or “how do we invade France” or “how do we take the war to Japan through the Central Pacific.” Planning for those sorts of campaigns/operations takes place at this level, but so does execution and coordination.

Operational: this is the level where individual commanders within a theater or campaign strategy have to accomplish the tasks they are assigned. This would be the point at which a corps commander or a divisional commander or a fleet commander looks at his assigned mission and his resources and whatever support might be available from assets not under his direct command and decides how he’s going to apply them.

Tactical: this is the level where the battles are actually fought. This is the point at which unit movements decide the outcome of the engagement. For an army, this would traditionally involve units below the regimental level; for a fleet commander things are going to be a little different (usually) because individual warships (which would be the equivalent of the “regimental level or below”) don’t usually maneuver as individuals, but rather as components of a task force or a squadron.

This is horribly simplified, of course, and I’m sure people could pick all sorts of holes in it because it contains certain assumptions on my part that are so fundamental I don’t see any need to explicate them more fully.

As far as Honor’s abilities at the tactical, operational, strategic, and grand strategic levels (as I’ve defined them above) are concerned, I think it should be borne in mind that just as we haven’t had a chance to see Caparelli perform at the tactical level, we haven’t seen Honor have a chance to perform equally at all levels. She’s only really been admitted to the strategy/grand strategy level in the last two or three “Honor” books, and I sometimes think when someone’s performed outstandingly at a lower level in my hierarchy, people tend to consider them failures at a higher level unless they perform at least equally or even more spectacularly.

Thanks RFC for this post. Tierney will probably have it framed and on her wall! And like it or no, you are going to be followed home by a twelve year old. I'll try to keep her from pestering you at HonorCon. But no promises!

Thanks much, for her as well. Please tell me you will be at HonorCon. Someone has to be there to talk with her. She leaves me in the dark. I'm going to have to tie her to me to keep her away from David!

Renegade13 wrote:cthia, Please let me echo the others in saying that your niece sounds like a very interesting and precocious young lady!

This is a very interesting discussion - one of the more interesting and thought-provoking ones that I have seen in a while.

I actually see room for THREE categories; Tactical (specific battlefield actions and reacting to the flow of a battle), Strategic (overall battle and campaign planning), and Administrative (coordinating all the bits and pieces that an overall war effort requires). You could even make a 4th for Training (the ability to pass on what you have learned to others and make them the best that they can be). Another point is that both tactics and strategy can be subdivided even further, but that would make this way too complicated.

I know that some people won't agree with this, but on my lists only those who have a) had a significant, long lasting, and DIRECT impact on the books/story, and b) have had ship command responsibilities (or greater) will be included. No disrespect intended, but Saganami, Ellen D'Orville, and even Raoul Courvosier don't meet that requirement (strictly my own parameters - don't have a cow!). I don't put Abigail Hearns, Helen Zilwicki, or several others on the list because they either haven't commanded a ship yet, or they just haven't been in the books enough.

These listings are based on the overall bodies of work by those people during the series. Again, some people who might be as good or better than those on the lists have been left off because they just haven't been seen enough yet.

Tactical Commanders (Battlefield Command and Control of single ships up through Fleet Commands):
10. Michelle Henke
9. Judah Yanakov
8. Javier Giscard
7. Michael Oversteegen
6. Hamish Alexander
5. Alfredo Yu
4. Lester Tourville
3. Aivars Terehkov
2. Thomas Theisman
1. Honor Harrington

Strategic Commanders (Battle, Campaign, and overall War planning):
10. Michael Oversteegen
9. Michelle Henke
8. Judah Yanakov
7. Javier Giscard
6. Lester Tourville
5. Ester McQueen
4. Thomas Theisman
3. Honor Harrington
2. Hamish Alexander
1. Thomas Caparelli

Administrative Leadership:
10. Lester Tourville
9. Alice Truman
8. Ester McQueen
7. Augustus Khumalo
6. Shannon Foraker
5. Honor Harrington
4. Hamish Alexander
3. Thomas Theisman
2. Sonja Hemphill
1. Thomas Caparelli


OVERALL Ranking:
10. Javier Giscard
9. Mark Sarnow
8. Michelle Henke
7. Michael Oversteegen
6. Aivars Terehkov
5. Lester Tourville
4. Thomas Caparelli
3. Hamish Alexander
2. Thomas Theisman
1. Honor Harrington

Icarium wrote:

cthia wrote:The passage that seals the deal for me is when everyone was sitting around brainstorming. Elizabeth, Caparelli, Honor, Hamish...and Honor was the only one who saw how to defeat the League.

I don't really agree, though I see your point. I don't think she's wired for strategy the same way she is tactics, and you don't just 'get better' at something to the point you're the best ever without hugely innate talent.

I more see that as Honor being the only one not phased by the immensity of what they're facing. She's 'like a treecat' in that she cuts to the point, which again doesn't leave so much for long-term strategic planning.

Like I have said. She's good! But I can't see her doing what Hamish and McQueen did, hugely-long-term feints and movements, or Caparelli as well, over years and years to trick the enemy just so one can destroy logistics maybe five years later, and so on.

But opinions do vary. Not saying she's not /good/, just that she's not the best or near-best.

Even after Cerberus you don't think she's wired for strategy? She made some tough strategic calls then. Perhaps she should have sent the first ship captured back to Manticore, but her strategic objectives included taking everyone home. She simply has raw strategic talent. There's much to be said about raw talent. You can still cook it to proper doneness.

They are now using ART to discuss strategy and tactics. Well three of the originals and the newcomer. What is strategy and what is tactics in Honor's decisions in ART...sending ships ahead, her micro jumps, her actions after battle engaged.

Not really, no. I think people who are highly talented for tactics tend to not be as talented in long-strategy. In general, they use very different skill sets. Note 'in general'.

Like I said, she's good. But from a meta standpoint, why does Honor have to be the very best at everything?

I frankly don't think she should be for that reason alone, but then I find Michelle far more interesting to me, she has more obvious flaws than Honor and is more well-rounded as a character IMO. And if we don't have absolute proof, I tend to lean towards 'Honor is the best at enough stuff that making her the best at this too is kind of stretching it'.

cthia wrote:Damn. She would really enjoy talking to you. And I am not saying you can't knock her on her ass.

Maaaybe on a lucky day, but she probably can knock ME more often than not.

Especially since she seems to excel where plans and memory makes a difference.
I tend to excel in regards to improvisation and optimising the here and now.

So, she would probably trounce me severely in chess most of the time. Still, i have managed to defeat my uncle and grandfather maybe 1 out of 4 or 5 games, despite them having competed nationally, sometimes they miss what i´m up to simply because i´m looking at it and playing differently.
That thing about slav defense or Indian defense and all? *pfffttt* I couldn´t memorise something like that no matter how i tried, much more fun to improvise.

How about finding someone good to teach her Shogi?
It´s magnitudes more complex than chess, thanks to how captured pieces can be brought back into play almost anywhere on the board, might give her better opposition.

I think it would be good for her. She needs to learn that side of it.

As long as she understands the difference between reckless and confidence, she should be ok. Of course the surrounding people might like a bit toning down but hey, that´s their loss.

You can give her a run for it if you dismiss her age, in that respect.

People are people, age, gender or whatever doesn´t matter to me.

She explained much of this in her very first email. It wasn't well received. Her short funny version was after several exasperated and failed attempts to state what you and many others have stated.

Ok.

I'll pass on the Caparelli thing to her and I am assuming I can share everyone's posts with her, since it's public anyway.

If it´s on the internet, assume that anyone and everyone can read it. Anything i write, go ahead and have fun with it.

phillies wrote:The innocent reader trying to decide who is the greatest strategist/tactician in the mind of the author might, of course, invoke the metainformation. This is the *Honor Harrington* series, not the *Glorious Triumphs of Invincible Solarian League Navy Admiral of the Starry Seas Crandall* series, and there is a clue there somehow.

Being main character does not have to mean being the singularly BEST character.

Being the main character is about being the best character where it counts in the story.