Attacking Darius:

How big were Galton's forts? I only remember vague descriptions of their size. And what was the size and purpose of the smaller forts? Why build smaller forts?

penny wrote:How big were Galton's forts? I only remember vague descriptions of their size. And what was the size and purpose of the smaller forts? Why build smaller forts?

Hmm - "Crick, Irving Fischer, and Zhou Jianren are a third again the size of any of the other forts" [These appears to be the one's Honor's fleet identified as Alpha, Beta, and Gamma -- spaced equidistant 120 degree apart around the planet's orbit] These are confirmed to be command forts; with Frances Crick being the primary command fort.

The at one point Karoline Adebayo refers to "secondary forts" - which I presume is all the non-command forts; though that designation could, potentially, apply to only some of them...



But I don't see anything in a quick re-skimming of the Galton battle that provides the tonnage or size of any of their forts. Not even anybody in the GA force comparing their size to GA or SLN forts. So it doesn't seem that we know how large they were

As for why build forts of different sizes; I'm not sure.

You shouldn't need 30% more tonnage just to add control facilities. And it seems, suboptimal, to make your command forts stand out like that -- it makes them natural targets.

You'd be better off building forts that were externally indistinguishable from each other - to reduce of chance of having your command forts be the initial targets of an attack. (Even if that meant that your non-command forts were bigger than they had to be for their firepower -- though you could presumably use that extra volume for deeper magazines, if nothing else)

Or if you really did want to build a few larger forts it seems to me that it might be smarter to have them be quasi decoys. Sure the extra firepower and defenses are nice; but a major purpose would be to draw fire away from your actually command forts, which still would be externally indistinguishable from the bulk of your forts.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for why build forts of different sizes; I'm not sure.

You shouldn't need 30% more tonnage just to add control facilities. And it seems, suboptimal, to make your command forts stand out like that -- it makes them natural targets.

You'd be better off building forts that were externally indistinguishable from each other - to reduce of chance of having your command forts be the initial targets of an attack. (Even if that meant that your non-command forts were bigger than they had to be for their firepower -- though you could presumably use that extra volume for deeper magazines, if nothing else)

Or if you really did want to build a few larger forts it seems to me that it might be smarter to have them be quasi decoys. Sure the extra firepower and defenses are nice; but a major purpose would be to draw fire away from your actually command forts, which still would be externally indistinguishable from the bulk of your forts.

I have so many questions and concerns that I do not know where to start.

Let's start with your remark about the insanity of making the command forts stand out by size. I agree, and that is one of the reasons I asked why Galton would build smaller forts. I assumed the smaller forts had something to do with having more tactical mobility. Actually, I thought the smaller forts were designed to assume some sort of a mutual defense role for the larger command forts. Protect the command forts at all costs!

One thing that confused me is why the Orbital Platforms tipped their hand that, instead, they were Orbital Weapons Platforms. There was no need for the command forts not to remain silent, no communication; which prevents the GA from determining that they were indeed military communication platforms. Honor couldn't have fired on non military communication platforms. Theoretically, those platforms could have had a solely civilian purpose in the form of robust communication satellites serving the planet. Yet Honor wanted to adopt a strategy of hypering in-system with pre-rolled pods and immediately launching on the platforms.

BTW, I have been planning a reread to determine certain things among which is determining how the GA received prior knowledge of Galton's defenses before attacking. And why Galton's command platforms didn't remain silent until they were ready to launch. Theoretically, the smaller forts could have been the command platforms.

I wanted to know the size of the vaguely large command platforms, because I expected huge platforms to be able to control much larger salvos. But if Galton didn't have FTL (except for short ranges?) how were the platforms supposed to be effective, except for specifically protecting the planet? Much like Sphinx's orbital platforms. As I gather, Manticore has orbital platforms as well, even though they never or rarely came into play. However, in every battle I recall, the defender never wants to bring the OWPs into play for fear of reprisals by the enemy that would bring missiles toward the planet. There always seemed to be an unspoken rule of war of 'do not fire unless fired upon' As far as OWPs. So, why did Honor feel like she could immediately fire upon the OWPs? I think the answer to that is the part about the Alignment having forfeited that consideration because of the Yawata Strike. But if Galton is the Benign Alignment, then does the GA owe Galton reparations?

Of course, Montalvan was expecting a traditional missile battle. I find myself wondering how the battle would have went if Honor had complied. And of course, I expect Darius to somehow manage to force a traditional missile battle.

But back to those command platforms. I certainly expect Darius to have stealthy forts that would run silent after a certain point allowing time for systems checks; which should be faster than the GA can vector GR drones in place to detect/ identify communication platforms.

I better stop here, but there are so many more concerns.

.

penny wrote:But that was not their fault. It was plot driven.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But I agree with the main point: even when they had sufficient data, they made mistakes.
[...]
There's no going around the fact that RFC wrote them to be fallible. We could argue that they shouldn't have made those mistakes if they're true Alphas, but that moving the goalpost. That's changing what an Alpha is to something no one is. Even the Alphas and the Inner Onion in the HV are fallible people who make mistakes, and so spake RFC.

And I've argued that their mistake ratio appears to be higher than the GA leadership.

The Malignment Alphas wish they were infallible. And they aim to be, trying to improve their genome even further (and failing). But they clearly are not (which is proved by the fact that they're still experimenting on improving intelligence.)

They should have waited for their genetic experiments to create real "true alphas" (rendering themselves obsolete on that way) before trying to aim for the the universal leadership.

Not to forget the fact that there are several "lost" alpha lines (not only HH) and other gentically improved humans (e. G. the Wintons) which are on the other. And as they're "genetically superior", they're naturally destined to stumble into leadership roles within their society - so the Malignment is not fighting against "average dump subhumans", but against societies lead by some of the smartest and strongest individuals amongst humanity.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for why build forts of different sizes; I'm not sure.

You shouldn't need 30% more tonnage just to add control facilities. And it seems, suboptimal, to make your command forts stand out like that -- it makes them natural targets.

You'd be better off building forts that were externally indistinguishable from each other - to reduce of chance of having your command forts be the initial targets of an attack. (Even if that meant that your non-command forts were bigger than they had to be for their firepower -- though you could presumably use that extra volume for deeper magazines, if nothing else)

Or if you really did want to build a few larger forts it seems to me that it might be smarter to have them be quasi decoys. Sure the extra firepower and defenses are nice; but a major purpose would be to draw fire away from your actually command forts, which still would be externally indistinguishable from the bulk of your forts.

That is why the GA deployed Bloodhound, to analyze the traffic and find the one giving orders. The tentative identification of Beta as the command fort was based on that.

I don't think there is a hurry. They will need the same fleet they needed for Galton. The issue is that they think they have completed the job. Why it didn't occur to them that those ships that Ruth used to detect Galton had to have come from somewhere is something to wonder about...

Don

n7axw wrote:I don't think there is a hurry. They will need the same fleet they needed for Galton. The issue is that they think they have completed the job. Why it didn't occur to them that those ships that Ruth used to detect Galton had to have come from somewhere is something to wonder about...

Why should anyone think that the ships used to triangulation Galton, did not come from anywhere but Galton? What are we supposed to wonder about?

penny wrote:How big were Galton's forts? I only remember vague descriptions of their size. And what was the size and purpose of the smaller forts? Why build smaller forts?

The GSNSS Francis Crick was described as "somewhere north of 48,000,000 tons" (during Benjamin Detweiler's visit there in the March 1923 PD section of _To End in Fire_).