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The Two General's Problem

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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by tlb   » Wed Jul 02, 2025 10:45 pm

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penny wrote:Each member of the GA did the same thing and had large navies. The MAN would only need to build the LD and the Ghosts. And the Ghosts would probably be a lot fewer.
Jonathan_S wrote:Actually I'd think the other way around. Sure the Ghosts aren't escorts, so you don't need them for that reason. But they're still your scouts -- the less irreplaceable ships that are as stealthy as possible to sneak in close, ferret out all the targets, and leave behind guidance platform communication relays to provide final strike targeting.

Oyster Bay (admittedly about as big an attack on any system that the MAlign should every need to pull off) used basically everything they had and seems to have had about 18 or so Ghosts to about 28 Sharks. That's fewer, but not a lot fewer.

And I'm actually surprised it's that low.
However a LD seems like it'll carry the firepower of at least a couple Sharks; but won't require any less scouting and advanced targeting.
So might it be more economical to send a Shark class ship or two on some of these raids, instead of a Leonard Detweiler class ship? The Shark is in a weight class where it might have a compensator making hyperspace travel much faster (even considering that the LD has the streak drive), so much quicker turnaround.

The LD is big enough to carry the graser torpedoes internally, whereas the Sharks carried them externally.
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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Jul 02, 2025 11:02 pm

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tlb wrote:So might it be more economical to send a Shark class ship or two on some of these raids, instead of a Leonard Detweiler class ship? The Shark is in a weight class where it might have a compensator making hyperspace travel much faster (even considering that the LD has the streak drive), so much quicker turnaround.

The LD is big enough to carry the graser torpedoes internally, whereas the Sharks carried them externally.

Might be. Short term I doubt they're going to immediately retire their Sharks; longer term I doubt they'll want to keep such testbeds around -- even if they eventually end up building more spider ships around that weight class.

But they'd have to be feeling pretty confident of their military situation to retire a Shark as soon as (or even before) an LD is ready to commission to replace it.

On the one hand you might like to move that whole experienced crew over to the new ship as a mega-cadre to build the (presumably) larger LD crew around. (Though presuming they're going to build more than 28 LDs they'll eventually want to start breaking the crews up to leaven the later units)

But on the other hand, they know they have the whole GA (at least) searching hard for them. It'd be tempting to keep the Shark in commission until you get closer to the limit on naval expenditures you want your economy to bear before retiring them to allow you to build and operate a few more newer ships.

But while they have them there might well be missions that don't call for a LD, or where they have a few Sharks free but no LDs. And in that case I don't see a reason not to use those good old testbeds one more time.
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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by penny   » Wed Jul 02, 2025 11:26 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Edit - I spent way too long on this; in part because the Wiki was plenty drunken so I was deeply scouring the two relevant books in an attempt to verify numbers.
penny wrote:Each member of the GA did the same thing and had large navies. The MAN would only need to build the LD and the Ghosts. And the Ghosts would probably be a lot fewer.

Actually I'd think the other way around. Sure the Ghosts aren't escorts, so you don't need them for that reason. But they're still your scouts -- the less irreplaceable ships that are as stealthy as possible to sneak in close, ferret out all the targets, and leave behind guidance platform communication relays to provide final strike targeting.

Oyster Bay (admittedly about as big an attack on any system that the MAlign should every need to pull off) used basically everything they had and seems to have had about 18 or so Ghosts to about 28 Sharks. (see below) That's fewer, but not a lot fewer.

And I'm actually surprised it's that low.
However a LD seems like it'll carriy the firepower of at least a couple Sharks; but won't require any less scouting and advanced targeting.

A couple of LDs can likely kill the orbital infrastructure of most any system -- but it'll still take 6 or so ships stealthily poking around to put together the fire plan. Of course (if you don't mind risking them) you could use LDs for that kind of sneak in close, manage short ranged RDs, meet up to exchange sensor takes and consolidate a unified target list. But it'd be a total waste to send 6 LDs to scout a system when you only need 1 or 2's worth of weapons. Better to use the cheaper more specialized Ghosts for that and allocate LDs based on much firepower you need to deliver.

(Plus you could even use freighters to deliver Silver Bullets or even normal graser torps as long as Ghosts have locked in the targeting lists -- letting you economize even further)

So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the MAlign built and deployed anywhere from 3 to 6 Ghosts for every LD.


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The gritty details of the ship counts:

We have a hard count on the Sharks, Albrechts watched all 28 leave; and were later told 20 of those went to Manticore
where after emergence from hyper they split up into the separate 14[1] ship Task Group 1.1 Manticore-A strike, and 6 ship Task Group 1.2 Manticore-B strikes; leaving 8 to hit the Blackbird yards in Yeltsin as Task Group 2.1.

Ghosts are a bit harder to count. We know that "freighters" "all of them of at least four million tons" [SftS] carried the Ghosts. I'm assuming 3 freighters; based on circumstantial evidence.

We know there were 3 scouting groups:
Task Group 1.3 - At least 3 ships[2], commanded by Commodore Karol Østby aboard his flagship MANS Chameleon, scouting Manticore-A
Task Group 1.4 - unknown size, commanded by Commodore Milena Omelchenko aboard her flagship (unknown name), scouting Manticore-B
Task Group 2.2 - 6 ships, commanded by Commodore Roderick Sung aboard his flagship MANS Apparition, scouting Yeltsin/Grayson.

I doubt the scouting groups assigned to the more important two targets were smaller than the one assigned to Yeltsin; but we aren't given an overall count. We have a minimum floor of 10 Ghosts. If we assumed the scouts were weighted the same way the strike was (50%/21%/29%) we'd get an 11/4/6 split for 21 total -- but Manticore-A seemed to get all their from the same freighter and I don't know you could cram 11 frigate sized ships into the holds of a pretty regular freighter. So, maybe a more plausible split is to say 18; making for three equal groups of 6. But I wouldn't be surprised to find Manticore-A did get a larger group.


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[1]There's actually an off by one error between MoH and SftS.

MoH [pg 104/369 of the .rtf ebook]
- Task Group 1.1 is MANS Mako plus "fourteen more ships of Task Force One" [total 15] - hitting Manticore-A.
- Task Group 1.2 is "six units" - hitting Manticore-B.
- Task Group 2.1 is "eight additional Shark-class ships" - hitting Yeltsin
[So that's a total of 29 Sharks]

SftS [pg 371/520 of the .doc ebook] Has Albrecht watching the Shark's head off to initiate Oyster Bay and says there are "only twenty-eight of them, divided between Admiral Topolev's Task Force One and Admiral Colenso's much smaller Task Force Two"

SftS [pg 498/520 of the .doc ebook] Gives Task Force One's size as "The twenty Shark-class ships" (by implication leaving Task Force Two with the other 8)

SftS [pg 504/520 of the .doc ebook] Has, beyond Make's "hull, fourteen more ships of Task Force One kept perfect formation upon her" [15 total]

I think RFC messed up and counted TG 1.1 as 14 total, since "fourteen" was written; and so added up to 28 instead of 29 and wrote the rest of SftS from that mistaken number. But since SftS gives us the hard count I went with it even though I think it's more likely the book in error.

FWIW SftS also messed up the task group designations; its glossary marking Østby as commanding Task Group 1.1 even though MoH clearly said that group was the Sharks; and MoH's glossary lists him in command of TG 1.3.

[2] Because 3 are referred to by name: Chameleon, Ghost, Wraith.


A lot of work Jonathan. Kudos.

Let’s say you are correct. The MA needs 6 Ghosts for every LD. But that would only be a maximum of 18 Ghosts total to cover all the major systems if 3 LDs are used per major system. Grayson. Manticore. Haven. Beowulf. Bolthole? An LD can scout for itself if it is interested in attacking small systems. Besides, the Ghost is the smallest “warship” they produce. Like the Pinto made in the 70’s, it might be produced in very large numbers on the assembly line. The MAN is not interested in a long protracted war.

At any rate, I was attempting to incorporate my theory that an LD itself has varying mission profiles. So, I don’t think Sharks will be needed in large numbers. They would be perfect in a specific mission parameter; to throw at the MWJ to wreck or weaken it.

The MAN might not be interested in attacking smaller systems. If they are, the LD can handle the destruction of those systems on their own. Isn’t that the way it is anyway after a navy arrives in enemy territory and find out that all of the information the scout provided is no longer valid?

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Last edited by penny on Wed Jul 02, 2025 11:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by penny   » Wed Jul 02, 2025 11:35 pm

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penny wrote:Why were the first two developed so differently from each other? Purpose and compartmentalization is the MA way.
ThinksMarkedly wrote:They weren’t developed so differently. Both had the same root development principles: societies bases on genetic slavery controlled by the higher tiers of Malign genetic lines. Both had control of media and information. The difference lay on one being blatantly militaristic and the other not.

That is the only difference that matters. The build rate is important only to a system’s militaristic needs.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Where would the third be different? Why would the Malign create a society that is not filled with genetic clones? Why would they not control it like they want to control the rest of humanity?

Why would they not have clones? I’d think the system has even more clones since its building capacity might dwarf Darius and Galton combined. Besides, it might mainly be different in purpose.

penny wrote:Travelling? Where would they go? To other cities on the planet? Because they certainly aren’t leaving the system. That means even less ships overall that the system as a whole needs to produce.
ThinksMarkedly wrote:Exactly. That’s why they can’t match Manticore efficiency and innovation. Note I was responding to the third system being potentially able to match those qualities.

Again, why would they even need to come close? The MAN builds less types of ships. No wall of battle. No screening elements. And they have no other planets or allies to protect. No rear areas to strategically worry about. There is much less production needed overall.

As far as their innovation, that seems to be doing quite well in the books I’ve read.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:]If it isn’t going to, then I don’t see why it would need to be different than Darius and Galton in the first place. Just do more of the same, only further out.

Different in purpose. Consider that the Alignment has a population large enough to throw an entire system under the bus. But there can’t be more of the same. Galton was intended to be thrown under the bus so its development would be handicapped. Darius, if some of you are correct, is a beautiful system where only great thinkers think, then they mine their theories out.

My question would be if there is another system, which one will the GA find? Darius, the beautiful planet and possibly home to the Alphas and Inner Onion might never be found.
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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by tlb   » Thu Jul 03, 2025 8:17 am

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penny wrote:Galton was intended to be thrown under the bus so its development would be handicapped. Darius, if some of you are correct, is a beautiful system where only great thinkers think, then they mine their theories out.

My question would be if there is another system, which one will the GA find? Darius, the beautiful planet and possibly home to the Alphas and Inner Onion might never be found.

If Darius is to be found, then it seems that it would have to be by way of Mannerheim and the Renaissance Factor. Already we know that the GA has knowledge of slave freighters passing through Mannerheim. Is this a foreshadowing of Darius being the next to fall?

PS: Galton turned out to be a major weapons manufacturing center for the Malign. It was only missing a couple of technologies, but it was NOT expected to be "thrown under the bus". That was a contingency plan which was hoped would not happen.
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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Jul 03, 2025 4:56 pm

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penny wrote:A lot of work Jonathan. Kudos.

Let’s say you are correct. The MA needs 6 Ghosts for every LD. But that would only be a maximum of 18 Ghosts total to cover all the major systems if 3 LDs are used per major system. Grayson. Manticore. Haven. Beowulf. Bolthole? An LD can scout for itself if it is interested in attacking small systems. Besides, the Ghost is the smallest “warship” they produce. Like the Pinto made in the 70’s, it might be produced in very large numbers on the assembly line. The MAN is not interested in a long protracted war.

At any rate, I was attempting to incorporate my theory that an LD itself has varying mission profiles. So, I don’t think Sharks will be needed in large numbers. They would be perfect in a specific mission parameter; to throw at the MWJ to wreck or weaken it.

The MAN might not be interested in attacking smaller systems. If they are, the LD can handle the destruction of those systems on their own. Isn’t that the way it is anyway after a navy arrives in enemy territory and find out that all of the information the scout provided is no longer valid?

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I'd point out that 18 Ghosts is almost certainly more than the used to scout Manticore-A; and triple the 6 we know they used to scout all of Grayson. As as a single-system goes Manticore-A is going to be about as big as they get short of Sol itself (pre-Honor Harrington's attack) or maybe Bolthole). Twi inhabited and industrialized first-world planets both with cutting edge naval yards that had been augmented for war emergency production.

So 18 Ghosts to scout other top tier systems actually sounds pretty good.

And you're right that the LD can do its own scouting. But if nothing else there's an opportunity cost to doing so -- all the time it's spending poking around making sure its found all the juicy targets (and the defenses that might try to protect them) is time it can't spend hitting more targets. Also, there's probably some scouting advantage from having multiple simultaneous views from widely separated angles -- when the Ghosts periodically met up to share their findings the cross comparisons likely turned up things that weren't so obvious in any one Ghost's dataset. Using just one LD limits the number of widely dispersed angles you can look from. Plus if you've got 3 Ghosts poking around they should be able to complete the scouting in about 1/3rd the time a single ship could -- another way they can speed things up over sending a single LD.

Still, a self-scouting LD is possible, it just doesn't seem the most militarily efficient to use your strategic heavy hitter to do something your (comparatively) cheap and cheerful scouts could do for it, and (in aggregate) do faster.
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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Thu Jul 03, 2025 5:45 pm

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penny wrote:Why would they not have clones? I’d think the system has even more clones since its building capacity might dwarf Darius and Galton combined. Besides, it might mainly be different in purpose.


I don't see any reason why they wouldn't have clones, which is my whole argument: I don't see the MAlign making a third system follow any different base principles. It would only diverge in details, like what the system specialises in.

I'd be extremely surprised if it had building capacity dwarfing that of either Darius or Galton, let alone combined. I don't think it reasonable to have even a significant fraction of that of Darius. This hypothetical third system would have been started much more recently than either of the other two, so even if they put the pedal to the metal, they'd be starting from much further behind. And I think the principles of the HV also limit just how much "pedal to the metal" can push it: things move fairly slow in it. No one with von Neumann probes, for example. Given it would be the same controlling power behind the system with the same base principles, it wouldn't diverge too much.

Again, why would they even need to come close? The MAN builds less types of ships. No wall of battle. No screening elements. And they have no other planets or allies to protect. No rear areas to strategically worry about. There is much less production needed overall.


See the other posts, but: cost of opportunity.

And they are trying to take over the Galaxy. They can't do it with a couple dozen ships, however powerful they are. The MAlign isn't stupid to think it'll lose none of them or that its advantages will hold forever: they're arrogant, not stupid. A lucky shot can cripple an LD, given what we know of how dependent it is on stealth. And a lucky break leading the enemy to Darius or the third system would be a disaster.

You've argued that Darius would be flooded with stealth vessels for its defence (though I disagree). They would need to build such ships in such quantity and keep most of them at home in case someone did chance upon the system.

But you're moving the goalpost of the discussion here. We were discussing whether the MAlign could have a third system with a different implementation basis that could challenge the Manticore efficiency. I was arguing that they couldn't because they wouldn't allow it to different enough development. You've seemed to agree that they wouldn't. You probably agree on my reason why, though you've added a new one: they don't need to. I think they wouldn't pass up the opportunity to have a much more efficient build if they could, so I don't think this is correct. Moreover, given that TheGoodGuysWillWin™, it will be shown that they did need more.

As far as their innovation, that seems to be doing quite well in the books I’ve read.


Somewhat. They don't seem to be any more innovative than anyone else, though. They have some innovations, but so do the Manties, the Havenites, the Graysons, and even the SLN/TIY (think the Hastas).

My question would be if there is another system, which one will the GA find? Darius, the beautiful planet and possibly home to the Alphas and Inner Onion might never be found.


There's no question that if the third system exists, it's a fallback to Darius. Therefore, it needs to be much more difficult to find than Darius, and is pretty well hidden with a wormhole transit.

I've said before and I'll repeat: the third system is not relevant to the story. It either does not exist or is not going to be in any position to influence the unfolding of the events for the next 50 T-years or so.
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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by Daryl   » Fri Jul 04, 2025 2:42 am

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Asimov's Foundation series was even more of an onion (or Chinese dolls) with layer upon layer. Going back further Smith's Lensman series also seemed to have many levels, each manipulating the last one.
For me, I've always said that if I had been setting up the Alignment, I'd have had a situation like Safehold, with ships travelling in hyper for months (maybe years), to a destination known only to them. Wait there for centuries, refining the new homo superiors. Before returning in a millenia or so to rule humanity.
David's webpage inspires this, when you see the myriad of stars to hide in.
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Re: The Two General's Problem
Post by tlb   » Fri Jul 04, 2025 8:53 am

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Daryl wrote:For me, I've always said that if I had been setting up the Alignment, I'd have had a situation like Safehold, with ships travelling in hyper for months (maybe years), to a destination known only to them. Wait there for centuries, refining the new homo superiors. Before returning in a millenia or so to rule humanity.
I believe that the Malign's viewpoint (and the author's) is that it might take less effort to burrow to power from within than to attempt to conquer as aliens from outside. If anything they did not burrow widely enough. Why weren't they setting up to control entire sectors of the League and guide them to break away? Look at the Maya Sector as a model. All they needed was to have their people in the SLN and OFS work their way into sector commands like Luiz Rozsak and Oravil Barregos did and then run them as well as Maya was.
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