Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:I guess I'm shocked that control of one (of the League's so few) terminii can be so easily obtained.

And what is the undercurrent referenced in "...Pang replied, choosing to let the rather thornier question of the Solly traffic controllers lie."

What thorny question is that?

I guess when you've got an unarmed traffic control station and some hostile warships show up there isn't a whole lot you can do except surrender or get yourselves messily killed. I doubt Astro Control has marines or power armor, so it's probably officer's sidearms, and maybe a few rifles for an MP or police detachment against the weapons of a hostile boarding party.

Now Manticore also fortifies it's terminii, so the warships would probably get blown out of space by the defending forts leaving the civilian Astro Control free to continue it's operations uncoerced.


As for the thorny question, I'm guessing that it's around effectively detaining foreign military and civilian personnel, without criminal charges, during what's technically peacetime.
It's one thing if those people broke the local law, then they could be arrested as criminal and held for trial (or for evidence of their diplomatic immunity, in which case they'd just be PNG'd and kicked out). And if there was a declared war then they'd fall under PoW rules. But neither of those are the case; so arguably holding them is an illegal detention and a violation of their civil rights.

cthia wrote:How was Commander Pang Yau-pau able to gain control of ACS without a fight? A navy can't just have control of its terminii handed over so easily for the asking. Now I know that ACS is a civilian agency in the RMN and you can't expect them to resist force. Yet I don't imagine that control of a Manty ACS is going down like that.

I am not sure what sort of ships Yau-Pau was commanding at the time, but I am pretty sure that he is more than capable of overpowering any picket force. I think it's like tellers at a bank being ordered to comply with robber's demands; it's easier to give in to their demands now and wait for proper relief forces than it is to throw away ships and lives in a pointless attempt at resistance.

The other thing to keep in mind is that while a normal wormhole terminus is a very important strategic concern for the system it is in, none of the other termini or junctions come close to being as important for their systems as the MWJ is for Manticore. The only reason Laocoon could work is because the wormholes in SLN space aren't picketed or fortified heavily, after all.

I assume that since OFS hand-picked the staff, that they were not civilian in nature in the League, or at least in this instance - which suggests that ACS would not have been so easily handed over to neobarbs by arrogant OFS officers who detest everything Manticoran without a fight. Which would have forced the Manty commander to fire on a civilian platform.

If the choice is between getting killed in a hail of pulser fire or by contact nuke and complying until relief forces can arrive, what do you think a solarian officer is going to do? Especially one described as being more than a little corrupt?

Do you honestly expect any SLN officer in such a position to go all "for the honor of the flag!"?

I guess I'm shocked that control of one (of the League's so few) terminii can be so easily obtained.

Why? The SL didn't have any wars inside its territory for close to a millennium, as anyone knows that Ýou Do Not Mess With The League. As an analogy, consider a busy highway crossing. Sure, if some gang decided to take it over and impose tariffs, they could do that, but only for as long as it takes to mobilize a sufficiently large police force. There's no need to post armed guards at the crossing, because everyone knows that trying something stupid like taking it over is a quick trip to the morgue.

What thorny question is that?

I'm guessing he doesn't want to be yelled at by the SLN idiots for whatever he had to do. Maybe he just handcuffed them all in a cargo hold, maybe he ordered them to get to the escape pods and get off that way, it doesn't really matter. If the SLN commander doesn't care about their safety, well, that probably says more about the SLN and how much it cares about its people than it does about Yau-Pau's conduct.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I guess I'm shocked that control of one (of the League's so few) terminii can be so easily obtained.

And what is the undercurrent referenced in "...Pang replied, choosing to let the rather thornier question of the Solly traffic controllers lie."

What thorny question is that?

I guess when you've got an unarmed traffic control station and some hostile warships show up there isn't a whole lot you can do except surrender or get yourselves messily killed. I doubt Astro Control has marines or power armor, so it's probably officer's sidearms, and maybe a few rifles for an MP or police detachment against the weapons of a hostile boarding party.

Now Manticore also fortifies it's terminii, so the warships would probably get blown out of space by the defending forts leaving the civilian Astro Control free to continue it's operations uncoerced.


As for the thorny question, I'm guessing that it's around effectively detaining foreign military and civilian personnel, without criminal charges, during what's technically peacetime.
It's one thing if those people broke the local law, then they could be arrested as criminal and held for trial (or for evidence of their diplomatic immunity, in which case they'd just be PNG'd and kicked out). And if there was a declared war then they'd fall under PoW rules. But neither of those are the case; so arguably holding them is an illegal detention and a violation of their civil rights.

Thanks and thanks twice Jonathan. I was struggling trying to connect those two disconnects.

Regarding the former, I erroneously assumed that the SLN, any navy for that matter, would fortify their ACS as does Manticore. But I suppose that if you don't fortify the terminus you don't fortify ACS. What is the purpose of having a terminus if it isn't going to be protected - so it will remain available for military use - being that it's a strategic military objective?

Can you imagine the emergency movement of tonnage orchestrated by ACS with Honor and Theisman being a no go because ACS has fallen to the enemy?

Why would the League not protect its terminus for emergency military maneuvers?

On Duckk's post (thanks Duckk), wasn't Beowulf's terminus fortified and ACS and platforms armed which would have caused Tsang to fire on a civilian platform destroying it?

Also, if ACS is completely destroyed (all platforms) then is terminus use unavailable from that end without ACS assistance?

cthia wrote:Regarding the former, I erroneously assumed that the SLN, any navy for that matter, would fortify their ACS as does Manticore. But I suppose that if you don't fortify the terminus you don't fortify ACS. What is the purpose of having a terminus if it isn't going to be protected - so it will remain available for military use - being that it's a strategic military objective?

What is the purpose of fortifying a highway crossing if the nearest border (and therefore the nearest potential hostile military) is several hundred kilometers away?

Why would the League not protect its terminus for emergency military maneuvers?

Name two "Emergency military maneuvers" in the past 500 years that the SLN had to do.

On Duckk's post (thanks Duckk), wasn't Beowulf's terminus fortified and ACS and platforms armed which would have caused Tsang to fire on a civilian platform destroying it?

Maybe that's because Manticore was a very high priority target for 30 years, not to mention a foreign star nation. The Termini taken over by the RMN during Laocoon are ones that, for the most part, connect two SL systems.

Also, if ACS is completely destroyed (all platforms) then is terminus use unavailable from that end without ACS assistance?

We've seen that most wormholes operate on a lane system, where the precise entry point at each end is enforced by ACS; I would imagine that these are stable enough that they are listed in the appropriate navigational charts available to the astrogators flying those routes.
ACS' role seems to be more about making sure that minimum safe distances are held between ships and to have a transshipment point in convenient distance to the terminus as well as a customs checkpoint; they're not exactly needed to fly through the wormhole, but they do make it much easier, in other words.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I guess when you've got an unarmed traffic control station and some hostile warships show up there isn't a whole lot you can do except surrender or get yourselves messily killed. I doubt Astro Control has marines or power armor, so it's probably officer's sidearms, and maybe a few rifles for an MP or police detachment against the weapons of a hostile boarding party.

Now Manticore also fortifies it's terminii, so the warships would probably get blown out of space by the defending forts leaving the civilian Astro Control free to continue it's operations uncoerced.


As for the thorny question, I'm guessing that it's around effectively detaining foreign military and civilian personnel, without criminal charges, during what's technically peacetime.
It's one thing if those people broke the local law, then they could be arrested as criminal and held for trial (or for evidence of their diplomatic immunity, in which case they'd just be PNG'd and kicked out). And if there was a declared war then they'd fall under PoW rules. But neither of those are the case; so arguably holding them is an illegal detention and a violation of their civil rights.

Thanks and thanks twice Jonathan. I was struggling trying to connect those two disconnects.

Regarding the former, I erroneously assumed that the SLN, any navy for that matter, would fortify their ACS as does Manticore. But I suppose that if you don't fortify the terminus you don't fortify ACS. What is the purpose of having a terminus if it isn't going to be protected - so it will remain available for military use - being that it's a strategic military objective?

Can you imagine the emergency movement of tonnage orchestrated by ACS with Honor and Theisman being a no go because ACS has fallen to the enemy?

Why would the League not protect its terminus for emergency military maneuvers?

On Duckk's post (thanks Duckk), wasn't Beowulf's terminus fortified and ACS and platforms armed which would have caused Tsang to fire on a civilian platform destroying it?

Also, if ACS is completely destroyed (all platforms) then is terminus use unavailable from that end without ACS assistance?

I don't believe the Beowulf terminus is fortified. Tsang was going to attack the Beowulf SDF SD's to transit the junction, no indication of forts at the Beowulf termini.

The ACS at a wormhole junction or termini has highly accurate up to date charts and "oodles" of experience assisting ships transit a wormhole. It is easier to make the transit with ACS than without, but possible as long as you have accurate information, as several book passages ilistrate.

The E wrote:

cthia wrote:How was Commander Pang Yau-pau able to gain control of ACS without a fight? A navy can't just have control of its terminii handed over so easily for the asking. Now I know that ACS is a civilian agency in the RMN and you can't expect them to resist force. Yet I don't imagine that control of a Manty ACS is going down like that.

I am not sure what sort of ships Yau-Pau was commanding at the time, but I am pretty sure that he is more than capable of overpowering any picket force. I think it's like tellers at a bank being ordered to comply with robber's demands; it's easier to give in to their demands now and wait for proper relief forces than it is to throw away ships and lives in a pointless attempt at resistance.

The other thing to keep in mind is that while a normal wormhole terminus is a very important strategic concern for the system it is in, none of the other termini or junctions come close to being as important for their systems as the MWJ is for Manticore. The only reason Laocoon could work is because the wormholes in SLN space aren't picketed or fortified heavily, after all.

I assume that since OFS hand-picked the staff, that they were not civilian in nature in the League, or at least in this instance - which suggests that ACS would not have been so easily handed over to neobarbs by arrogant OFS officers who detest everything Manticoran without a fight. Which would have forced the Manty commander to fire on a civilian platform.

If the choice is between getting killed in a hail of pulser fire or by contact nuke and complying until relief forces can arrive, what do you think a solarian officer is going to do? Especially one described as being more than a little corrupt?

Do you honestly expect any SLN officer in such a position to go all "for the honor of the flag!"?

I guess I'm shocked that control of one (of the League's so few) terminii can be so easily obtained.

Why? The SL didn't have any wars inside its territory for close to a millennium, as anyone knows that Ýou Do Not Mess With The League. As an analogy, consider a busy highway crossing. Sure, if some gang decided to take it over and impose tariffs, they could do that, but only for as long as it takes to mobilize a sufficiently large police force. There's no need to post armed guards at the crossing, because everyone knows that trying something stupid like taking it over is a quick trip to the morgue.

What thorny question is that?

I'm guessing he doesn't want to be yelled at by the SLN idiots for whatever he had to do. Maybe he just handcuffed them all in a cargo hold, maybe he ordered them to get to the escape pods and get off that way, it doesn't really matter. If the SLN commander doesn't care about their safety, well, that probably says more about the SLN and how much it cares about its people than it does about Yau-Pau's conduct.

Thanks E. My disconnect, as stated in my last post, is that I assumed that they were armed, as is the RMN's. I have a hard time assimilating that any part of America has become so complacent. I'll have to work on that.

What is this imagined lack of loyalty and pride of SLN officers? Surely that mindset can't run rampant throughout every League officer?

cthia wrote:What is this imagined lack of loyalty and pride of SLN officers? Surely that mindset can't run rampant throughout every League officer?

The vast majority of SLN officers we've seen so far have been characterized as ranging from sloppy to outright criminal. The very few diligent ones have all been forced to play along with the incompetent ones lest they be marked as troublemakers or have been shown to be in bed with Mesa.

So, of course there will be some out there that are willing and able to actually perform in a manner we would consider fitting for an officer, but they're (broadly speaking) not running the show right now. That may or may not change once the SLN realizes it actually has to fight a war that it can't win based on numbers alone, whether or not they have enough time to make that realization and pivot towards giving the warfighters a run at the steering wheel is anyone's guess, of course.

EDIT:
But even so, even if the people in command there are truly good officers, once your options boil down to either surrendering or being killed in a meaningless defensive action against a crushingly superior foe, both the good heroic and the bad corrupt officers will likely choose to surrender. It's only the utter idiots who would try to enter combat at that point.

darrell wrote:
I don't believe the Beowulf terminus is fortified. Tsang was going to attack the Beowulf SDF SD's to transit the junction, no indication of forts at the Beowulf termini.

The ACS at a wormhole junction or termini has highly accurate up to date charts and "oodles" of experience assisting ships transit a wormhole. It is easier to make the transit with ACS than without, but possible as long as you have accurate information, as several book passages ilistrate.

Fortified as in actual forts? no it wasn't (though it probably will be once BW officially secedes, if it hasn't been already. Mycroft will likely be a separate system defence network, and not junction protection platform) but I suspect that they had marines aboard the ACS platforms on the off chance Tsang did try to take them via boarding parties.

or at least I suspect there were marines until Truman's SDs turned up and the plan changed to scare them away with ships.

Don't know where you're not getting the lack of pride in the SLN from. This whole confrontation is rooted in the SLN's hubris. But there's a difference between pride in what you do, and making a rational decision to not get shot over an issue you have no control over or affect the resolution of. As The E brought up, it's no different than a bank teller surrendering to a robber's demands.

cthia wrote:Regarding the former, I erroneously assumed that the SLN, any navy for that matter, would fortify their ACS as does Manticore. But I suppose that if you don't fortify the terminus you don't fortify ACS. What is the purpose of having a terminus if it isn't going to be protected - so it will remain available for military use - being that it's a strategic military objective?

Can you imagine the emergency movement of tonnage orchestrated by ACS with Honor and Theisman being a no go because ACS has fallen to the enemy?

Why would the League not protect its terminus for emergency military maneuvers?

On Duckk's post (thanks Duckk), wasn't Beowulf's terminus fortified and ACS and platforms armed which would have caused Tsang to fire on a civilian platform destroying it?

Also, if ACS is completely destroyed (all platforms) then is terminus use unavailable from that end without ACS assistance?

I don't think the League views those Termini as militarily useful. The League isn't well supplied with internal wormhole connections, so the termini that are in their territory really only lead you out into the Verge.

In fact, IIRC, one of the dispatch ships bringing news of the earlier conflicts in the Talbott Quadrant took longer than necessary to get the news back to Sol because of a routing naval policy to avoid using wormholes (IIRC because the Navy didn't control them - though that was the Mesa wormhole; so possibly a bit of a special case as it's under a neutral power's control not even an OFS protectorate)

The League government is interested in them as an economic revenue stream, but you don't need fortified termini to extract tolls.


If Astro Control got blown up most freighters probably wouldn't risk taking the wormhole; they wouldn't trust that their charts were up to date. My understanding is that Astro Control does two basic jobs:
1) traffic control - they dictate the order in which ships use the wormhole and the interval between transits; keep inbound and outbound lanes clear from each other so there's no risk of collision; enforce speed limits.
2) Provide current survey and chart data to make the transit as low risk as possible. (And in support of that they take data from ships arriving and run sensors and possibly survey drones to update those charts)

Many of the wormholes Manticore seized are low enough traffic that there's usually no great need for the 1st job; and anyway any nearby warship could play traffic controller trivially.
But the second will become more critical as time goes on. Short term, the Manties pulled fairly recent charts before they set out (benefit of a wide-ranging merchant marine) but if they blew up Astro Control somebody would need to keep an eye on the wormhole and update those charts to keep up with it's changes - otherwise the transits will tend to get rougher and more dangerous as time goes on.