Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington III

[Darth Nostril]

I think it's the Manties miniaturised fusion plants that are the key here.

[VhenRa]

Might be more miniaturized electronics as well. They got better baseline micro-electronics then the Havenites, IIRC.

[Simon_Jester]

Unless they couldn't miniaturize sufficient computer power into the control missile to justify it. It could have enough of a power demand that they can't make it work in a missile body, for example. Moriarty is the Havenite answer to MDM control problems, and it's the size of a cruiser.

Moriarty is designed to control at least 10-20 thousand missiles and (built to cruiser scale) weighs, say, 100-400 thousand tons. A hypothetical "Apolloski" control missile would be designed to control at most ten, so its communication hardware need not weigh more than 100 tons... which is about the total mass of a single MDM. Since Apollo/Apolloski is already bigger than an MDM anyway by a factor of two to four, I don't think that's the problem.

I think it's the Manties miniaturised fusion plants that are the key here.

Most likely- but that doesn't stop missiles from receiving telemetry downlinks or transmitting telemetry to other platforms within a few million kilometers or Haven wouldn't have been able to launch single drive missiles in the first place. It's a bigger issue for building a viable (miniaturized) FTL communications of platform, or an EW transmitter with enough broadcast power to fool shipboard sensor suites.

Might be more miniaturized electronics as well. They got better baseline micro-electronics then the Havenites, IIRC.

The margin of superiority isn't that great, though. For one, they've gotten enough technology transfers from the League that they should have been able to design something at least within shouting distance of the same density. Second, normal-sized MDMs are already equipped to receive data from a missile telemetry links, and presumably to transmit some information back to the launch platform. All you have to add is transmitters by which the STL-only "Apolloski" control missile can transmit signals to the 8-10 missiles slaved to it. Given that we're already proposing to make the control missile bigger than any other missile in the pod salvo that shouldn't be such a huge problem.

The more logical conclusion is that they don't do this because it doesn't help- that using ONE sublight control link to control ONE control missile and the eight or so MDMs slaved to it isn't useful. That it does not confer a significant advantage over, say, just launching twelve MDMs, controlling one of them, and letting the other eleven home on the target independently.

Sure, you get better accuracy with eight missiles slaved to one that's getting telemetry than you would with no telemetry. But without the real-time advantage of using FTL comms for the control missile, you don't get enough better accuracy to justify the opportunity cost of cutting out 2-4 conventional missiles from the pod launch.

[Ahriman238]

"We're calling the new operation 'Sanskrit,'" Andrea Jaruwalski told the assembled admirals, commodores, and captains in HMS Second Yeltsin's flag briefing room. "'Cutworm,' unfortunately, got leaked to the newsies, and it's been bandied about quite a bit over the last several weeks. Besides, we're going to be adopting an entirely new operational approach, so a new designation makes sense from a lot of perspectives."

Cutworm is leaked to the press, between that and the new strategy, they're calling their next op Sanskrit.

Despite the fact that there was nothing left, really, to defend in the Zanzibar System, it had been politically impossible to refuse to station a powerful defensive force to keep an eye on the ruins. And Alizon, in particular, had been vociferous about the need to bolster its defenses. It was fortunate that over forty Andermani superdreadnoughts had finally completed their refits to handle Manticoran missile pods and reported for duty. But even with that reinforcement, finding the sheer number of hulls required had been extraordinarily difficult.

Zanzibar and Alizon clambering for reinforcements, and the Andermani podnoughts are finished with their refits to handle Manty MDM pods.

Now, though, things were beginning to look up. An entire division of Invictuses, with all the latest system updates, had arrived just yesterday, and two more superdreadnought divisions, all pod types, were anticipated before the end of the week. If things stayed on schedule, Eighth Fleet would have three entire squadrons of SD(P)s—eighteen ships—on its order of battle within the next two weeks. Additional battlecruisers, including the next five Agamemnons, had also come in, and Admiralty House was promising her three more Saganami-Cs, as well. And while all that had been going on, Alice Truman and Samuel Miklós had been reorganizing their carriers' LAC wings, incorporating twice as many Katanas into their orders of battle.

With reinforcements they're looking at having 18 SD(P), 12 CLAC, 11 BC(P) and an unknown number of regular BCs and smaller screen, including 9 MDM-capable Saganami-Cs. Still a ways short of what Eighth Fleet had during Buttercup; 37 SDs, many of them podlayers and 17 carriers, but a ways ahead of where they started.

"The problem is that we don't have a lot more time. Intelligence reports indicate the Havenites have been doing a lot of the same things we've been doing. They've been analyzing and considering what happened at Solon and Zanzibar, and they've also been adding new construction to their fleets. Those same reports strongly suggest they're getting ready to uncork a new offensive of their own. It's imperative that we get our punch in first and force them to worry about their rear areas again. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to do any definitive planning of our own because we simply haven't known what we'd have available at the time. And, frankly, because the operational change Captain Jaruwalski has already referred to required a substantial reinforcement of our wall of battle.

"The ships we need are finally becoming available, and the instant I have sufficient hulls to launch Sanskrit, it goes. I want that clearly understood. This operation must proceed as expeditiously as possible. ONI's latest estimate gives the Havenites over five hundred SD(P)s; the Alliance at this moment has less than three hundred. It's quite possible," her brown eyes were very level, "that the fate of the Star Kingdom may depend on our ability to make the Havenites anxious—anxious enough about their rear areas to divert heavy forces to protect them, and anxious enough about our new weapons capabilities to rethink the price they'll pay for any offensives of their own."

The strategic situation, Haven definitely outnumbers the Alliance in podlaying hulls, by roughly a 5:3 ratio. Also shows what I was saying earlier about how defensive-minded Honorverse navies tend to be, they have almost three hundred podnoughts and can spare less than twenty for offensive operations.

Jaruwalski also surveyed the officers around the huge conference table, then keyed a holographic star map. It appeared above the conference table, and she tapped keys on her control pad, dropping a cursor into the map. It singled out a star, and Honor felt a fresh stir of surprise.

"Lovat, Ladies and Gentlemen," Jaruwalski said. "The system Admiral White Haven would have taken if High Ridge hadn't swallowed Saint-Just's bait hook, line, and sinker. We're going back there."

Lovat, the last star between Tequila and Haven, a major military base and significant shipyard. Where Tourville and Giscard were mustering for a last stand before peace broke out? Yeah, if they can pull this off they'll definitely have Haven's attention.

"This isn't going to be like Cutworm," Honor continued. "We're going to do to Lovat what Tourville did to Zanzibar. We're going to strike directly at one of the nodes they strengthened heavily post-Buttercup, and we're going to do it in a way which makes a declaration. Were going to tell them that they really, really don't want to screw around with us."

No more scattering to raid backwaters, this is a major fortified system and they're going to hit it with everything they've got.

"We know from our operations over the last sixty days that they've been reacting vigorously to our scouting operations. It's pretty obvious they've been trying to identify the systems we're likely to hit and stationing forces in hyper to cover them.

"As you know, we planned and executed a feint attack on the Suarez System three weeks ago. We sent in scouting destroyers, then, after a couple of days, sent in Admiral Truman's carrier squadron, escorted by a single squadron of battlecruisers and one of heavy cruisers. Admiral Truman launched half her LACs and sent them in-system, accompanied by a dozen Ghost Rider EW platforms simulating the emissions signatures of battle-cruisers and superdreadnoughts, then translated back out with her hyper-capable units. Given the endurance on the Ghost Rider micro fusion plants, we estimated that they'd be able to continue their deception long enough to draw a response.

"We got one. It was a virtual repeat of what they did to me at Solon. This time, though, we'd expected what we got, and they'd planned their interception based on the maximum acceleration rates of the wallers they thought we'd sent in, not LACs. In addition, three-quarters of our LACs were Katanas, which made them extraordinarily difficult missile targets. Our LACs were able to avoid interception and break back out across the limit before any of the defenders could follow them. Admiral Truman recovered them at the prearranged rendezvous, and translated back out.

"The operation did several things. First, it confirmed that, at that time, at least, they were sticking with a doctrine which had worked. Second, it gave us an opportunity to evaluate how quickly this covering force, as compared to the one we encountered at Solon, responded. Third, we hope it made them even more confident that we've been essentially running a bluff, without the wherewithal—or the will—to mount a serious raid. And, fourth, while they were busy bringing up their defenses, and before they realized we were using drones on them, they activated the same sort of control network they must have used at Solon. We'd hoped they would, and Admiral Truman had sensor arrays deep enough in-system to see them do it, so now we know what to look for in our next op."

Moriarty is getting generally deployed, as they've seen with a few probes like at Suarez.

"We ran a few other ops, similar in nature but without the electronic warfare platforms. In two cases, we drew no response at all, which leads us to suspect that in those two cases there were picket forces hiding in hyper which never got called in because they never saw a threat. In most of the others, the arrival of our scout units was the signal for courier boats to translate out, and fairly hefty response forces turned up within anywhere from two to four days. So, it looks like they've adopted a nodal strategy, in addition to staking out the systems they believe we're most likely to attack.

"By picking Lovat, we believe we'll be striking directly at one of those nodal forces. If we can punch it out when we hit, there shouldn't be anything else close enough to be called in on us for at least seventy-two hours, if our analysis of their previous operations is accurate. In addition, since we'll be scouting a heavily defended system, and we've established a pattern of sending diversionary scouts into systems we have no intention of attacking, we believe they'll be skeptical about our intentions. Even if they aren't, there's no reason for them to call in additional reinforcements before we actually hit them.

Haven has also adopted the nodal defense strategy that almost blew up in Manticore's face when the war started, a few centrally placed reaction forces able to reach multiple systems within a day or two.

"And this time around, especially since we know what to look for in their system defense control net, we ought to be able to neutralize it with Mistletoe before they ever get a chance to use it. In which case, it will be our wallers and our LACs against theirs, in a standup fight without the sort of missile launch which hammered us at Solon."

Mistletoe is Manticore's version of the stealthy missile that killed the last PM, basically their stealthiest recon platform with a laser head or nuke bolted on. It does everything the normal platforms do, with a secondary mission of search and destroy for Moriarty stations, LAC hangers, dense clusters of pods and other crucial system defenses.

"So you're confident you can neutralize their system defense command and control systems?" Givens asked, but her attention was more than half on Hemphill, and Honor smiled.

"Admiral Hemphill and I haven't always been on the same page," she began, and Hemphill actually chuckled.

"You might say that, Your Grace," she said, "if you're given to understatement. I seem to recall a rather passionate debriefing you gave the Weapons Development Board after that little affair in Basilisk."

"I was younger then, Admiral," Honor said almost demurely. "And I was mildly irritated, at the time."

"And rightly so," Hemphill said with a nod. She shook her head. "I don't believe I've ever had the opportunity to actually tell you this, Your Grace, but I always envisioned Fearless as a testbed. I never expected her to be committed to combat, especially not totally unsupported. The fact that you managed to win was an impressive testimony to your tactical ability. And the fact that you were—'mildly irritated,' I believe you said—was certainly understandable. Besides," she chuckled again, "having watched your track record over the last few years, I'm inclined to doubt you've mellowed all that much since."

"Not mellowed," Honor said with another smile. "Just gained a greater sense of . . . diplomacy."

At this point, I no longer even care about the WDB debrief after Basilisk. Honor sort of patches up with Admiral Hemphill.

"What I was about to say, Pat, is that this time around, I'm convinced Admiral Hemphill's new wrinkles will do the job. I'd hoped to keep her new toys tucked away against a rainy day, without letting the Havenites know they exist until we really, really needed them. Unfortunately, 'really, really need them' is a pretty good description of where we are right now. At any rate, we've quietly tested the new hardware in exercises at Trevor's Star, and it's performed to specs. Obviously, that's not the same as using it operationally, but the exercise results look very good. In fact, they look much better than the original projections. We're really still just beginning to appreciate all the tactical possibilities, but even what we've already worked out is going to give whoever gets in our way at Lovat fits."

They also have Hemphill's latest wunderwaffen, several years in the making, to even the odds this time.

"Your Grace," Brigham said wistfully, watching Honor dig in, "there are times when I positively hate you and that metabolism of yours."

She patted her own reasonably flat stomach and shook her head sadly.

"You should try the downside of it sometime, Mercedes," Honor told her. "You may envy the way it lets me pander to my sweet tooth, but try waking up with the sort of middle-of-the-night munchies I got as, say, a twelve-year-old." She shuddered. "Trust me, as an adolescent, I seemed to spend all my time shoveling in food, not just half of it."

Or try being a prisoner on the starvation diet. Honor spent a lot of her childhood and adolescence piling on food for her boosted metabolism along with normal growth.

"Under the circumstances, Admiral Khumalo felt he had no option but to request immediate reinforcement. Since it's possible Terekhov, or Khumalo, or both of them may find themselves in a shooting incident with Solarian units, the Admiralty felt it had no option but to dispatch a significant reinforcement from Home Fleet. Those units are already on their way to Monica.

"Obviously, all of these moves have implications for us. The most immediate one is that Home Fleet is now going to be understrength, and one of the functions of Eighth Fleet, like Third Fleet, is to serve as a ready reserve for Home Fleet. There's also the possibility that the Star Kingdom is about to find itself engaged against Solarian units, and no one is prepared to predict the possible ramifications of that.

"Because the entire strategic situation's suddenly been thrown into such a state of flux, Admiralty House has ordered the temporary stand down of Operation Sanskrit. For now, we're postponing the execution date by three weeks. That should give us time to receive dispatches from Terekhov or Khumalo from Monica. Hopefully, those dispatches will confirm that Terekhov was either wrong or that he and Khumalo have managed to defuse the situation. In either of those cases, Sanskrit will be reactivated, although we'll probably face some delay because of our need to factor in intelligence on any changes which may occur in the meantime."

Standing down Operation Sanskrit until they get word from Talbott that they haven't just gotten into a shooting war with the largest, most powerful star nation there is.

"Which means I'm about to tell you something you don't want to hear," Usher agreed. "Actually, Senior Inspector Abrioux is about to tell you."

"Senior Inspector?" the President turned to the petite FIA officer, and Danielle Abrioux returned her look with an unhappy expression.

"Madam President," she said, "I'm sorry, but the Director and I both feel we've hit a stone wall. We've tried everything we can think of, and we can't give you the smoking gun you need."

Not really unexpected, all you witnesses/suspects are dead.

"You think the same people who killed Grosclaude—or, at least, gave Arnold whatever he used to do the job—also tried to kill Harrington?"

"Let's just say I strongly suspect that whatever technique is being used came from the same source. Now, as the nasty and suspicious sort I am, it occurs to me that if it came from the same source, it's very possibly being used in support of some unified strategy. It's possible, I suppose, that it's simply a case of someone marketing the technology to whoever needs it and can afford it, but I'm beginning to doubt that's the case." Usher shook his head. "No, Eloise. There's a pattern here, I just haven't been able to figure out what it is yet. But what I have seen of it suggests that whoever is behind it doesn't much care for either us or the Manties."

"So now you're saying Arnold may have been actively working for someone else to provoke fresh hostilities between us and the Manties?" Pritchart wished she'd been able to sound more incredulous than she did.

Feeling their way towards the truth.

"According to Wilhelm and NavInt," Pritchart said, nodding towards Trajan, "the Manties are having serious problems in the Talbott Cluster. We don't have anything like complete information, you understand, but what we do have suggests they're looking at at least the possibility of a shooting confrontation with the League."

Someone inhaled audibly, and Pritchart gave a very thin smile.

The Solarian League was the galaxy's eight-kiloton gorilla. Although she strongly suspected that the League Navy had no idea what sort of vibro blade it would be reaching its fingers into if and when it tangled with the Royal Manticoran Navy, the possibility of the Star Kingdom's successfully standing up against such a towering monolith in the long term was remote, to say the least. No one wanted to take on the Sollies.

"This presents us with two separate possible opportunities," she continued. "On the one hand, if they do get into a war with the Solarian League, our problems, militarily speaking, are solved. They'd have to accept whatever peace terms we chose to offer if they were going to have any hope at all of resisting the League.

"On the other hand, if we offer to negotiate with them now, and let them know we're aware of the pressures they're under in Talbott, then they'll also be aware we aren't actively moving to take advantage of this diversion . . . but that we could, if we wanted to.

"So my idea is to propose a direct summit meeting, to be held at some mutually acceptable neutral site, between myself and Queen Elizabeth.

"

Prichart proposes peace now, while possible war with the League looms. For this purpose she has read her cabinet in to what they think happened to start the war.

"One of the perimeter patrol battlecruisers just relayed a transmission to us. It's from an unscheduled courier boat." She paused again. "A Peep courier boat."

"A Havenite courier?" Honor repeated carefully. "Here?"

"That's correct, Your Grace." There was a very strange note in Brigham's voice, Honor noticed. But before she could probe, the chief of staff continued, "I think you should probably view the transmission we received from it, Your Grace. May I patch it through?"

"Of course," Honor said, feeling just a bit mystified, and pressed the button to accept a visual feed, as well. The display blinked alive with Imperator's communications system's wallpaper, and then Honor twitched as a most familiar face appeared.

"I suppose this is all a bit irregular," Rear Admiral Michelle Henke said, "but I have a message for Her Majesty from the President of the Republic of Haven.

And Mike Henke is released after giving her parole as an officer not to take part in further actions against Haven, to carry the offer for a face-to-face summit meeting.

"What sort of agenda did she propose?"

"That's one of the odd parts about the offer," Henke said. "Basically, she left it wide open. Obviously, she wants a peace treaty, but she didn't list any specific set of terms. Apparently, she's willing to throw everything into the melting pot if Beth will agree to negotiate with her one-on-one."

"That's a significant change from their previous stance, at least as I understood it," Honor observed.

She really wants this to work.

"Because one specific element of Pritchart's proposal is a request that you also attend the conference she wants to set up."

"Me?" Honor blinked in astonishment, and Henke nodded.

"You. I got the impression the original suggestion to include you may have come from Thomas Theisman, but I'm not sure about that. Pritchart did assure me, however, that neither she nor anyone in her administration had anything to do with your attempted assassination. And you can believe however much of that you want to."

"She'd almost have to say that, I suppose," Honor said thoughtfully, her mind racing as she considered Pritchart's proposal. Then she cocked her head. "Did she say anything about Ariel or Nimitz?"

"No, she didn't . . . and I thought that was probably significant," Henke said. "They know both you and Beth have been adopted, of course, and it was obvious that they have extensive dossiers on both of you. I'm sure they've been following the articles and other presentations on the 'cats capabilities since they decided to come out of the closet."

That and the treecats can confirm she's serious if things go well enough for Prichart to admit what she thinks happened with the diplomatic correspondence.

"You're thinking about the way Saint-Just derailed Buttercup by suggesting a cease-fire to High Ridge."

"Actually, I'm thinking about the fact that Elizabeth is going to remember it," Honor replied, shaking her head. "Unless they've got a lot more penetration of our security than I believe they do, they can't know what our operational schedule is. Oh, they've probably surmised that Eighth Fleet was just about ready to resume offensive operations, assuming we were going to do that at all, when Khumalo's dispatch arrived. And if they've done the math, they probably know we're about due to hear back from him. But they must have packed you off home almost the same day word of our diversions from Home Fleet could have reached them. To me, that sounds like they moved as quickly as possible to take advantage of an opportunity to negotiate seriously. I'm just afraid it's going to resonate with Buttercup in Elizabeth's thoughts."

This is a problem, Haven has a track record for duplicity, including proposing a cease-fire to hold off Eighth Fleet.

"That's the same point Tony and I have been trying to make ever since Mike got home. Elizabeth," there was raw appeal in his eyes, "we're in serious trouble. The Peeps alone outnumber us two-to-one in ships of the wall. We all hope Terekhov and Khumalo have managed to nip whatever was happening in the Cluster in the bud, and that Admiral O'Malley's task force will be enough to keep a lid on things if they did. But we don't know that, and we won't know it until we know absolutely that OFS is going to back down. And don't forget the Mesan element in all this. We know they've got a cozy deal with a lot of Frontier Security commissioners, but we don't really know how much pressure they're going to be able to bring to bear to try to salvage whatever they were up to if Terekhov and Khumalo have spoked their wheel."

A lot of X factor, they really only have two balls in the air at the moment, Haven and the League, but they're big and heavy balls.

"And whether you trust them or not, and whether or not Pritchart really intends from the outset to negotiate in good faith, there's always the possibility a peace treaty would emerge, anyway," Hamish Alexander-Harrington pointed out in a neutral tone.

Elizabeth's eyes flashed at him, and he looked back steadily.

"She's the one who's told the newsies about the proposed summit," he said. "That means the onus to make some sort of progress is at least largely on her if you do agree to meet with her. Unless the two of you are going to sit down somewhere, all alone, in a smoke-filled room and negotiate some sort of private deal, the whole thing's going to go forward in a positive glare of publicity. So if you make a reasonable offer, she may find herself hoist by her own petard and forced to entertain it seriously."

Prichart is, of course, quite serious about building a real peace, but they really need some cold-blooded logical reasons to convince Elizabeth to go through with this.

"Beth," Prince Justin said quietly. His wife looked at him, and he reached out to rest one hand lightly on hers where it lay on the tabletop. "Beth, think about it. Every single one of your advisers disagrees with you. Even," he smiled, "your husband. I think you need to factor that into your decision, don't you?"
She gazed into his eyes for several seconds, then sighed.

"Yes." She obviously hated making that admission, but Honor tasted her unwilling sincerity. The Queen looked around the council chamber, then shrugged her shoulders. "Very well. I'm sure you've all made valid points. I can even appreciate most of them, intellectually, at least. That doesn't mean I like it, because I don't. I hate it. But that doesn't make you wrong, however much I'd like it to. So I'll meet with Pritchart."

The Queen gives in. Peace with honor. At last, peace in our time.

"Pritchart did invite you to name the site."

"Yes, and she suggested a 'neutral' one," Grantville agreed. "Although just exactly where she thinks we can find one is a bit of a puzzle."

"Nonsense," Elizabeth said with a hard little laugh. "That's the easiest part of all! If she wants a neutral meeting site, where better than Torch?"

-snip-

"And," Elizabeth pointed out, "it would be an opportunity to draw Erewhon into the process. I know we've all been pissed off with the Erewhonese for the technology they transferred to the Peeps, but let's be honest. High Ridge did everything humanly possible to push them into doing it. If we ask them to dispatch units of their fleet to provide a neutral security umbrella in Congo for both sides, without either of us bringing in our own battle squadrons, it would be a demonstration that this Government—and the House of Winton—both trusts them and desires to patch up our differences."

So that's that. They'll meet at Torch, which is still allied to both sides, with Erewhon providing security. Nice way of mending their relationship with Erewhon while giving Haven a lot of motivation not to start any trouble.

[Simon_Jester]

Now, though, things were beginning to look up. An entire division of Invictuses, with all the latest system updates, had arrived just yesterday...

With reinforcements they're looking at having 18 SD(P), 12 CLAC, 11 BC(P) and an unknown number of regular BCs and smaller screen, including 9 MDM-capable Saganami-Cs. Still a ways short of what Eighth Fleet had during Buttercup; 37 SDs, many of them podlayers and 17 carriers, but a ways ahead of where they started.

Amusingly, "an entire division of Invictuses" is all of two ships, which makes the tone set by "an entire..." a bit misleading.

Anyway, these eighteen of the wall are probably a lot more dangerous by objective measures than Eighth Fleet was in 1913 PD, because of the major refinements in use of the Ghost Rider hardware and MDM tactics. Of course, they're up against tougher opposition too, so they still might not be decisive were it not for Apollo.

The strategic situation, Haven definitely outnumbers the Alliance in podlaying hulls, by roughly a 5:3 ratio. Also shows what I was saying earlier about how defensive-minded Honorverse navies tend to be, they have almost three hundred podnoughts and can spare less than twenty for offensive operations.

Hm. Note that this tends to indicate that Manticore is commissioning new SD(P)s, because otherwise they probably wouldn't have new Invictuses to spare. Also, I'm a bit mixed up about where those 300 podlayers are coming from by national origin. I didn't think Grayson had anywhere near 100. The Andermani might have had that many but I'm not sure. And Manticore, even if more construction is being rushed to completion as the tail end of the 'frantic reboot' program at the end of the Janacek Admiralty, shouldn't be much over 100 either.

Moriarty is getting generally deployed, as they've seen with a few probes like at Suarez.

On the other hand, the RMN's little sherlock-bots have a good many clues about Moriarty's nature collected

Haven has also adopted the nodal defense strategy that almost blew up in Manticore's face when the war started, a few centrally placed reaction forces able to reach multiple systems within a day or two.

...Almost? Thunderbolt was a pretty big blowup.

Also, note that the Havenite nodal defense is different because it consists largely of ships capable of surviving combat against modern enemy units. As of Thunderbolt the RMN podlayer force was too weak to do this and most of their ships were in a few specific locations, widely separated.

It reminds me of an observation from Churchill's history of the Second World War. He was reflecting on how the transportation infrastructure of Europe made it easy for Hitler to shift troops from one front to another, even if they were a thousand miles apart... but that at the same time, Hitler no longer had any significant reserves left to deploy to any one of those fronts in a quick response. Thus, his ability to move troops around was irrelevant as there was no one left to move. In other words:

"Hitler had, in fact, made himself a spider's web and forgotten the spider."

This is one of the dangers of resorting to nodal defense of a large area; you have to provide a big, nasty enough spider at each 'node' of the defense in order to respond effectively to any threat that might intrude on that spider's 'web.'

At this point, I no longer even care about the WDB debrief after Basilisk. Honor sort of patches up with Admiral Hemphill.

Well, it's been an ongoing mark on Hemphill's reputation with the fanbase ever since. In this very sequence of threads we've had people making some quite unreasonable assumptions about what happened in that debrief, or about the decisions Hemphill made that resulted in Fearless being put in harm's way in the first place.

Prichart proposes peace now, while possible war with the League looms. For this purpose she has read her cabinet in to what they think happened to start the war.

Note also the great esteem and respect in which Pritchart and her staff hold the League military, even though given a realistic appreciation of their capabilities, the RHN could give the Sollies a very rough handling in their own right, especially in a mobile defensive campaign with sharp counterattacks against League logistics centers.

The only analogy I can think of is the kind of towering reputation the Roman legions built up over the five or six centuries or so that they were the roughest, toughest thing to be found in Europe and the Mediterranean. Some of the foreign armies and tribes that dismantled the Empire have to have started out going "wait, we're going to be fighting Rome?" It turned out easier than they might have expected, but still.

[Terralthra]

Haven has also adopted the nodal defense strategy that almost blew up in Manticore's face when the war started, a few centrally placed reaction forces able to reach multiple systems within a day or two.

...Almost? Thunderbolt was a pretty big blowup.

Also, note that the Havenite nodal defense is different because it consists largely of ships capable of surviving combat against modern enemy units. As of Thunderbolt the RMN podlayer force was too weak to do this and most of their ships were in a few specific locations, widely separated.

I think Ahriman238 was referring to the beginning of the war the first time around, when the war started at Hancock and Yeltsin. The nodal defense force at Hancock split up and went to various other stations instead of staying nodal, with nearly very bad results, if not for the discovery of the Argus net and a heroic death ride by our heroine.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah.

Well yes, although the nodal defense seems to have worked very well everywhere else along the frontier, and only backfired at Hancock because Parks screwed up by the numbers and divided his command in the face of a united (and powerful) opposition force.

...

If you ask me, what it comes down to is that there are three ways to defend in the Honorverse, in light of the long transit times between populated systems.

You can distribute defenses evenly throughout the volume to be defended, prioritizing in favor of the most precious individual targets but basically putting some kind of noticeable garrison everywhere. This invites defeat in detail a la Thunderbolt.

You can go all-out in defending only the most essential locations- this works for the Manticoran Alliance post-Thunderbolt because they have about three truly critical star systems (Manticore, Grayson, Trevor's Star) that are realistically in attack range of the Havenite fleet. All other targets are non-essential can can be neglected without losing the war or even putting a serious dent in overall military strength. This has the disadvantage that it only works if you have a very small, very isolated polity to defend, as opposed to being a broader coalition or occupying a whole volume.

The intermediate strategy of nodal defense actually works rather well, except under circumstances where:
1) The nodal defense force commander screws up by dividing his command too soon, see above with Parks at Hancock.
2) The enemy has a force so powerful it can casually punch out your nodal defense forces, see White Haven during Buttercup.

(1) is the kind of thing that screws over any defensive strategy, because you can always render yourself vulnerable by spreading forces too widely. (2) likewise always results in a defeat no matter what you try because it requires that the enemy have you badly outgunned.

[Ahriman238]

Now, though, things were beginning to look up. An entire division of Invictuses, with all the latest system updates, had arrived just yesterday...

With reinforcements they're looking at having 18 SD(P), 12 CLAC, 11 BC(P) and an unknown number of regular BCs and smaller screen, including 9 MDM-capable Saganami-Cs. Still a ways short of what Eighth Fleet had during Buttercup; 37 SDs, many of them podlayers and 17 carriers, but a ways ahead of where they started.

Amusingly, "an entire division of Invictuses" is all of two ships, which makes the tone set by "an entire..." a bit misleading.

Anyway, these eighteen of the wall are probably a lot more dangerous by objective measures than Eighth Fleet was in 1913 PD, because of the major refinements in use of the Ghost Rider hardware and MDM tactics. Of course, they're up against tougher opposition too, so they still might not be decisive were it not for Apollo.

Yes, everyone's gotten a lot more dangerous in the last six or seven years. Except the Solarian League.

The strategic situation, Haven definitely outnumbers the Alliance in podlaying hulls, by roughly a 5:3 ratio. Also shows what I was saying earlier about how defensive-minded Honorverse navies tend to be, they have almost three hundred podnoughts and can spare less than twenty for offensive operations.

Hm. Note that this tends to indicate that Manticore is commissioning new SD(P)s, because otherwise they probably wouldn't have new Invictuses to spare. Also, I'm a bit mixed up about where those 300 podlayers are coming from by national origin. I didn't think Grayson had anywhere near 100. The Andermani might have had that many but I'm not sure. And Manticore, even if more construction is being rushed to completion as the tail end of the 'frantic reboot' program at the end of the Janacek Admiralty, shouldn't be much over 100 either.[/quote]

They have less than 300 (which suggests more than 250 to me) as for numbers, Manticore started out post-Thunderbolt with 75, 64 from before the end of the last war and 11 finished as part of Janacek's "almost ready" reserve. The Andermani had just over 40, because they built their modern forces as a counterweight to Manticore, and what the Janacek Admiralty had in service and would be willing to throw at them. Grayson had almost 120 (115, to be precise) podnoughts in service with more in construction but were definitely getting close to a ceiling in their ability to pay for, build and man the things, so they've likely been contributing less to the new construction efforts.

Moriarty is getting generally deployed, as they've seen with a few probes like at Suarez.

On the other hand, the RMN's little sherlock-bots have a good many clues about Moriarty's nature collected

Yes, seeing where they've put the things and getting a good look at how the system operates was worth the price of admission.

Haven has also adopted the nodal defense strategy that almost blew up in Manticore's face when the war started, a few centrally placed reaction forces able to reach multiple systems within a day or two.

...Almost? Thunderbolt was a pretty big blowup.

Also, note that the Havenite nodal defense is different because it consists largely of ships capable of surviving combat against modern enemy units. As of Thunderbolt the RMN podlayer force was too weak to do this and most of their ships were in a few specific locations, widely separated.

Terralthra already got here, but I meant Sir Yancey Parks' nodal defense where he decided Hancock Station couldn't adequately cover all their responsibilities, and so broke up into smaller nodal forces. My main complaint with Haven's nodal defense strategy is in all the Cutworm missions Honor got in, wrecked some stuff and was gone within a day, which seems to be about the response time for these nodal fleets, sometimes longer.

Prichart proposes peace now, while possible war with the League looms. For this purpose she has read her cabinet in to what they think happened to start the war.

Note also the great esteem and respect in which Pritchart and her staff hold the League military, even though given a realistic appreciation of their capabilities, the RHN could give the Sollies a very rough handling in their own right, especially in a mobile defensive campaign with sharp counterattacks against League logistics centers.

The only analogy I can think of is the kind of towering reputation the Roman legions built up over the five or six centuries or so that they were the roughest, toughest thing to be found in Europe and the Mediterranean. Some of the foreign armies and tribes that dismantled the Empire have to have started out going "wait, we're going to be fighting Rome?" It turned out easier than they might have expected, but still.

I plan on covering this in more detail with Storm from the Shadows, but the Solarian League was conceived as a mix of the worse traits of the contemporary US and 17th/18th Century China. They're very content in their own rectitude and adequacy for everything, isolationist, yet quietly expansionist etc. Fighting the US or China is rarely a picnic either.

[Simon_Jester]

Well yes, but what I'm talking about here is specific, not so much an attempt to draw an analogy for the whole League as to capture that single aspect about it that causes everyone to view fighting it with a certain dread that is wholly separate from its actual military strength (which is, granted, substantial, what with two thousand of the wall active and eleven thousand in reserve,

At the moment, attitudes toward fighting the US are still pretty much based on a rational assessment of US military capabilities, which are extremely powerful and utterly overwhelming from the point of view of basically any country that lacks a substantial nuclear deterrent.

Likewise China; reading the history of China there is little sense that it was held in that almost superstitious dread. Plenty of nations went to war with China when they thought they could get away with it, expecting their own armies to be able to handle whatever China could throw at them. A significant fraction of the time, they were right.

So the reason I invoke Rome in its latter days is that I'm trying to come up with an example of a nation that doubles as a name to conjure with, one that everyone has long known you do not trifle with, and which has a uniform record of overwhelmingly defeating all adversaries across a period of many long years.

China's record was not particularly uniform, the US's isn't particularly long.

[Batman]

Don't forget that the Havenites, the Manticoran Alliance and the Andermani being able to kill Solarian ships with impunity is a relatively recent development. What everybody's used to, and has been for hundreds of years, is the League's ships being as good as your own or better (and at the beginning of the first war they apparently were better than what Haven had) and they out-everything you by a margin that defies comprehension.
There's bound to be a lot of emotional inertia even if you know intellectually that at least for the time being, their fleet can't touch yours.

[VhenRa]

Eh, maybe in terms of tech but the Solarian Scientist-class (and it's Vega sub-class) SD is actually smaller then the last generation of Manty DNs, with a comparable weapons fit. I suspect thats another case of tonnage creep, with (more then likely) the DNs of it's era being around the size of Manty Ad Astra-class vessels. The oldest Manty SDs (Manticore-class) are smaller then last gen Manty DNs and the Scientist-class.

[Batman]

And before the war (and probably for the first few years of it in most aspects), they outnumber you so badly it hurts. Frontier Fleet alone probably has more BC and below ships than Haven and Manticore combined.

[Mr Bean]

And before the war (and probably for the first few years of it in most aspects), they outnumber you so badly it hurts. Frontier Fleet alone probably has more BC and below ships than Haven and Manticore combined.

In 1901 PD the Sollies have more Super-dreadnaughts than Haven and Manticore have ships. Granted a great deal of these are in mothballs and don't have active crews but they still have enough to throw 500 capital ships at a problem and still have 4000 in reserve.

Side question, do we have any idea when the stagnation hit? As in when technology started slowing down? It suddenly occures to me that one of the many fringe benefits of Prolong is the simple fact your scientists have enough time to spend twenty years in education which is now 5% of their life instead of 17% if we assume pre-Prolong that 120 was the average cap while post Prolong life expectancy is between 300-500 years... funny thing we've not hit the first point in the serious when Prolong wears off and natural aging re-asserts itself. Even the first generation Prolong recipients on Beowulf are no more than 160-190 years old by rough calculation. I'm assuming a twenty year lead time from development to mass deployment to mass galactic adoption.

Found it, King Roger Winton III was born 1809 PD and received prolong which add in treatment at 20 means 1829 as the first possible recipients in manticore. Assuming my theoretical lead time of twenty years that mean Prolong is at most created around 1790 PD which means even a self experimenting scientist would be no more than 130 years old far off my calculation.

[Mr Bean]

Found another one on my side issue, Rajampet Rajani the Solarian Fleet Admiral from later in the serious got 1st Generation Prolong when he was 24, per wiki he was born 1798 PD which means 1822 Prolong was available and Rajani is noted as one of the very first non-Beowulf citizens to receive it so again we are pointing to a 1790-1800 creation time for Prolong.

[VhenRa]

And before the war (and probably for the first few years of it in most aspects), they outnumber you so badly it hurts. Frontier Fleet alone probably has more BC and below ships than Haven and Manticore combined.

In 1901 PD the Sollies have more Super-dreadnaughts than Haven and Manticore have ships. Granted a great deal of these are in mothballs and don't have active crews but they still have enough to throw 500 capital ships at a problem and still have 4000 in reserve.

Hell, that's just what the SLN has, let alone individual system defense forces. We know Beowulf's own SDF has another 36 SDs in commission circa 1922. I wonder how many wallers the various core League SDFs can put together between them.

[Terralthra]

The Beowulf SDF is noted to be one of the larger ones, even for a Core world. It's doubtful the rest of the SDFs combined come to even ten percent of the Battle Fleet.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm rereading Shadow of Freedom right now, its funny to read Rajani suggest that they might be able to deplete the Manticoran missile supplies by simply throwing thousands of SDs at Manticore. Very Zap Brannigan-esque.

[Batman]

And if they were willing to accept the losses (both manpower and material) it probably would work too. The League is that much bigger and has that much more resources than everybody else (chances are, everybody else combined). Hence the dread even for people who can, at least for the time being, essentially ignore the SLN.

[Ahriman238]

And more ships.


Talisman-class Light Cruiser

Mass: 124,250 tons
Dimensions: 438x46x35 meters
Max Accel: 517.9 G
80% Accel: 414.3 G
Broadside: 5 missile tubes, 2 lasers, 4 counter missile tubes, 4 point defense
Chase: 2 missile tubes, 1 laser, 3 counter missile tubes, 3 point defense
Number Built: 16

The Talismans are modified Apollo cruisers meant as, more or less, spy ships. The idea in the years leading up to the First Haven War was to shadow Haven ships in neutral space, studying their technical capabilities (remember until the shooting started Manticore had no idea just how much better their hardware was) and to scout out enemy systems. Internal Manticoran politics made their primary mission infeasible before the outbreak of hostilities, but they had always planned for the ships to be able to fight, and as screen to relay detailed information to their comrades.

To make a Talisman, they gutted the energy broadside to make room for more sensor emitters, and more computers and CIC space to analyze every bit of data brought in. Half of each boat bay was devoted to carrying recon platforms, giving one ship more platforms than some small squadrons.

The Talismans did pretty well in the early offensives led by White Haven, a few found their way into the hands of ONI special operations teams and never left. Recently, there's been talk of refitting the others as dedicated drone handlers, able to carry, launch and manage huge amounts of recon platforms, or to have two ships set up an adequate sensor security net around a newly occupied system in a day or two.



Kamerling-class System Control Cruiser

Mass: 276,250 tons
Dimensions: 569x59x46 meters
Max Accel: 741 G
80% Accel: 593 G
Broadside: 8 missile tubes, 4 grasers, 12 counter missile tubes, 12 point defense
Chase: 2 grasers, 6 point defense
Number Built: 48

By mass, a light cruiser, the 'system control' role is admittedly new. During the Janacek Admiralty some bright fellow realized that while they had embraced automation to build and man the hulls they needed, such small ships can hardly absorb casualties, detach prize crews or other detachments as needed, and certainly don't have the Marine complement of pre-war ships. Which sort of hinders them in the occasional ground warfare, or boarding actions. The Kamerling is meant to fix that, a ship with the same tiny crew, but carrying three full companies of Marines with extensive support gear and enough small craft to land them all in one wave. The weakness being that it has kind of a weak antiship punch for a cruiser it's size, though it has excellent missile defenses, and can fire both regular and counter missiles off-bore.

Four dozen were built by the Janacek Admiralty, no new ones have been laid since the war's resumption, because every slip building one of these isn't building a Saganami-C, which is considered infinitely more needed at present. Pretty much all the existing ones are in Silesia under Mark Sarnow.



Agamemnon-class Battlecruiser

Mass: 1,750,750 tons
Dimensions: 815x118x110 meters
Max Accel: 693 G
80% Accel: 554 G
Broadside 10 grasers, 30 counter missile tubes, 30 point defense
Fore: 4 grasers, 12 point defense
Aft: 4 grasers, 12 point defense, pod bay (4 pods to a pattern, 360 total)
Number Built: 12 (by this point in the story) 85 (as of 3 books from now)

And here she is, Manticore's first venture into the land of pod-laying BCs. Still pretty fragile for a BC, and it runs through it's pods awfully fast, but still pretty much death to any Navy that doesn't use MDM missile pods. Also one of the first classes modified for Keyhole. Manticore, unlike Grayson, prefers a pod design with Mk 16 dual drive MDMs, 14 to a pod, prioritizing salvo size and firepower over range. Also no conventional missile tubes.

Just as an aside, the new royal yacht Duke of Cromarty is a modified Agamemnon. They pretty much sealed and armored-over the pod-bay doors, and converted the pod core into a palatial suite of apartments and offices, so they can carry Her Majesty in a BC with the most lavish missile defense of nay similar sized ship. Creates a bit of a timeline snag, as the High Ridge Government and Janacek Admiralty apparently rolled this out post-haste to replace the Queen's previous yacht, but the design was so new five years later that hardly anyone had heard of it save Honor.



Raoul Courvosier II-class Battlecruiser

Mass: 1,763,500 tons
Dimensions: 817x118x110 meters.
Max Accel: 678 G
80% Accel: 543 G
Broadside: 6 missile tubes, 6 grasers, 26 counter missile tubes, 24 point defense
Fore: 4 missile tubes, 3 grasers, 8 counter missile tubes, 12 point defense
Aft: 4 counter missiles, 12 point defense, pod bay (4 to a pattern, 360 total)
Number Built: 42

Grayson's BC(P) is in a lot of ways similar to the Manticoran version, though it was Grayson's idea first. The major differences is that Grayson generally accepts smaller salvos for more range, thus their pods retain 10 MDMs with 3 drives apiece. That and the retention of internal missile launchers. Grayson designers are afraid a 'golden BB' shot could mess up the rails or rear doors and with one lucky hit mission-kill a podlayer, so they insist on their ships retaining some internal MDM capacity so they won't be totally out of the fight if that happens. Indeed, something similar happened to Honor on Wayfarer though it only cost her half her pods.

And, of course, doctrine. Manticore uses podlaying battlecruisers the way they've always used battlecruisers, as fast independent raiders that can maybe pull down a capital ship in squadron sized groups. Grayson doctrine is to use the Courvosier-IIs to seed that first, crucial volley of pod combat with as many missiles as their side's fire control can handle, then scoot to a position of relative safety and focus on missile defense for the bigger ships and hunting scouts or command vessels in the other side's screen.

Heavy automation reduces crew size to 300 souls.



Nike-class Battlecruiser

Mass: 2,519,750 tons
Dimensions: 1012x129x114 meters
Max Accel: 674 G
80% Accel: 539 G
Broadside: 25 missile tubes, 12 grasers, 32 counter missile tubes, 30 point defense
Chase: 4 grasers, 12 point defense
Number Built: 1 (in At All Costs) 12+ (as of book 14, Shadow of Freedom)

The BC(L) is, in a lot of ways, a Saganami-C writ large. Dual-drive MDMs with off-bore launchers, albeit able to launch 50 bird salvos instead of 40. That's only half the story though, because a Nike has far more power and mass to play with, and most of that has gone into passive and active missile defense. It has better and more redundant sidewalls, better jamming, larger, more powerful and faster-firing PD clusters, plus really thick external and internal armor. Pretty much the only way an SD is more survivable than a Nike is that the former still has more and thicker armor. A Nike also has 4 times the magazine space per tube and carries a large Marine complement and is fully equipped as a squadron flagship, unlike a Saganami-C. Nikes are also fully Keyhole capable, and in theory are perfectly able to hide behind their wedge while peeking with Keyhole and sniping with their full missile complement. Basically, these htings are stupidly tough targets for missiles, as proven a few times by the class namer and her captain, Michael Oversteegen.

Perhaps this really is the future of battlecruisers.

[VhenRa]

In many ways the Nike remarkably resembles an old Havenite style Battleship, if admittedly smaller.

[Simon_Jester]

Someone pointed this out to Weber who, as I recall, avidly waved his hands and denied it because, um, something or other. Yeah.

Anyway, there is a doctrinal difference, but it really amounts to "Manticore is building light battleships and using them along with their compensator advantage as super-raider units." Aside from that they have all the hallmarks of a 'battleship:'

Nominally capable of surviving attack by capital ships on a ton-for-ton basis? Check. Equipped with weapons capable of threatening a capital ship? Check. Large mass and heavy weapon broadsides? Check...

[Crazedwraith]

So I'm reading through War Of Honor at the moment. And the relevant bits of this thread at the same time. And does anyone else get annoyed that it seems like Weber keeps skipping the interesting bits? We keep seeing people make the decisions and then the chapter ends and we pick up with someone learning about the results. Or thinking back to when they first heard the results. It's like not seeing Paul's Duel again. Specifically I'm thinking Jessica Epps' final fight and the Havenite Destroyer tackling Pirate's Bane.

[Simon_Jester]

I KNOW, RIGHT?

I mean heck, it's not like Weber didn't know people were reading his novels in large part for his ability to write space battles.

[Ahriman238]

So I'm reading through War Of Honor at the moment. And the relevant bits of this thread at the same time. And does anyone else get annoyed that it seems like Weber keeps skipping the interesting bits? We keep seeing people make the decisions and then the chapter ends and we pick up with someone learning about the results. Or thinking back to when they first heard the results. It's like not seeing Paul's Duel again. Specifically I'm thinking Jessica Epps' final fight and the Havenite Destroyer tackling Pirate's Bane.

No more egregious than having McQueen's coup and the resulting political changes off-screen, though he did at least put it in a short story.


Ok, last in my "stalling for the other threads, but still trying to keep an interesting conversation going" posts. This time it's the big boys, CLACs and podnoughts.


Minotaur-class Carrier

Mass: 6,178,500 tons
Dimensions: 1131x189x175 meters
Max Accel: 428 G
80% Accel: 343 G
Broadside: 30 counter missile tubes, 28 point defense
Chase: 9 missile tubes, 4 grasers, 10 counter missile tubes, 10 point defense
LACs: 100
Number Built: 18

The original LAC carrier, and testbed for Ghost Rider. Still kicks ass.


Hydra-class Carrier

Mass: 6,145, 750 tons
Dimensions: 1129x188x174 meters
Max Accel: 429 G
80% Accel: 343 G
Broadside: 36 counter missile tubes, 36 point defense
Chase: 12 missile tubes (for the new ones) 12 counter missile tubes, 12 point defense
LACs: 112
Number Built: 94+

Officially the Minotaur-B, but everyone including most of the Admiralty call them Hydras, these were the slightly newer second flight carriers that took part in Buttercup. The carrier is actually a bit smaller, but they found room for another dozen LACs (or one squadron) by removing all energy weapons and halving the missile magazines. They also upgraded missile defense some, adding more counter missile and PD clusters to reflect the increasingly hostile missile environment.

Ships built after 1920 carry the significantly smaller Mk 23 MDM, which has far more modest needs for launchers and so they’ve been able to add 3, making 12 tubes. The smaller missiles help some with the magazine space issues, but they can still shoot themselves dry awfully quick.



Covington-class carrier

Mass: 6,244,250 tons
Dimensions: 1135x189x175 meters
Max Accel: 477 G
80% Accel: 381 G
Broadside: 30 counter missile tubes, 28 point defense
Chase: 12 counter missile tubes, 10 point defense
Number Built: 30

The Graysons when building a carrier began from the idea that a carrier has no business in the wall of battle or exposing itself to any risk. Its mission is to deliver large numbers of LACs and pick them up again after the fighting. So they decided not to waste any space on offensive weaponry, and thus found space for 124 LACs.

In the inter-war period, Grayson developed the Katana LAC and refit their carriers to accommodate it, which largely meant tweaks for more efficient storage of LAC missiles and rapid reload for their LACs. All subsequent carriers have included this system from the beginning.



Medusa/Harrington-class Superdreadnought

Mass: 8,554,750 tons
Dimensions: 1383x201x187 meters
Max Accel: 503 G
80% Accel: 402 G
Broadside: 26 missile tubes, 15 grasers, 13 lasers, 54 counter missile tubes, 52 point defense
Fore: 9 missile tubes, 5 grasers, 4 lasers, 18 counter missile tubes, 22 point defense
Aft: 5 grasers, 4 lasers, 14 counter missile tubes, 20 point defense, pod bay (6 pods to a pattern)
Number Built: 167 (63 Manticoran, 104 Grayson)

And the original SD(P). There’s a reason people talk about the strength of navies mostly in terms of SD(P) numbers these days, and it’s because they’ll mess you up. If you’ve skipped the last four books, the after third of the ship is hollow, and filled with missile pods on six rails that it kicks out an armored rear hatch. One pattern every 12 seconds, so a minute of rolling gives you 30 pods, or 300 missiles. They have an insane number of fire-control links and can stack up massive missile swarms that make the old towed-pod ones seem pitiful. And they’ll all be MDMs. Also began the tradition of vastly increased missile defense. This is the ship that made Buttercup the terror it was.

The pod capacity is, a bit complicated. As originally conceived they would have carried the Mk 10 missile pod, same as Wayfarer and carry 564. With MDM pods, that number gets cut down to just under 500 (492, if you need to be pedantic), but starting in 1920 we have new, smaller Mk 23 MDMs in Mk 17 pods, and you can cram just about 800 (798) of them into the back of a Medusa/Harrington

The Grayson Honor Harrington class is different from the Manticoran Medusa in only one small way, they didn’t give it lasers, preferring an extra chase graser and three more for the broadside.



Invictus-class Superdreadnought

Mass: 8,768,500 tons
Dimensions: 1394x202x188 meters
Max Accel: 563 G
80% Accel: 450 G
Broadside: 18 grasers, 84 counter missile tubes, 62 point defense
Fore: 10 grasers, 24 counter missile tubes, 22 point defense
Aft: 10 grasers, 14 counter missile tubes, 24 point defense, pod bay (6 to a pattern)
Pods: 1074 (old school MDM pods, not sure how many with Mk 17 pods)
Number Built: 12 (as of War of Honor) 53 (as of Shadow of Freedom)

It’s been called the most powerful ship in space an awful lot, but so far it’s living up to it. A few major changes to the Medusas. First and foremost, they removed all internal missile capacity to make space for a much bigger pod core. Second, the pod core is armored as heavily as the exterior hull, to try and minimize the risk of a golden BB taking out all podlaying capacity, though this takes up a huge amount of space. Third, seriously upgraded missile defenses, more than half again as many counter missiles and laser clusters. Fourth, it can carry Keyhole platforms, radically upgrading missile defense while providing even more EW, fire-control links and preventing the ship’s sensors from being blinded by its own missile launches. Even among podnoughts, it’s in a class by itself.

As of the cease-fire, construction had just begun on this design. The Janacek Admiralty allowed a dozen to be finished before halting all construction, arbitrarily declaring victory, while denying that the war was over. Over 60 in-progress hulls were wrecked at Grendelsbane, but Manticore is running a crash program to get as many of these as possible into space as quickly as they can.



Honor Harrington II-class Superdreadnought

Mass: 8,779,250 tons
Dimensions: 1395x202x188 meters
Max Accel: 562 G
80% Accel: 450 G
Broadside: 24 missile tubes, 24 grasers, 64 counter missile tubes, 62 point defense
Fore: 12 missile tubes, 6 grasers, 16 counter missile tubes, 24 point defense
Aft: 6 grasers, 16 counter missile tubes, 24 point defense, pod bay (6 pods in a pattern)
Pods: 984
Number Built: 11 (by Mission of Honor) 53 (by Shadow of Freedom)

Seeing how the Invictus was designed and laid during a time when Manticore and Grayson shared everything especially relating to starship design, it should come as no surprise that Grayson has their own interpretation of an Invictus. They also have the armored pod core, and Keyhole, but have somewhat smaller pod cores and less counter missiles. This is because, like with the podlaying battlecruisers, Grayson designers are concerned enough about a lucky hit disabling podlaying capability that they insist on retaining internal MDMs. In the short term this actually gives them a higher rate of fire (less of an issue when they can stack huge pod salvos) but it remains to be seen if that’s worth the sacrifices in pod numbers and missile defense.


Medusa-B class Superdreadnought

So far just a blueprint, but some bright designers during the Janacek Admiralty pitched a modified Medusa (much like the Saganami-B and C, starting to feel skeptical that Janacek didn’t know what his people were doing with these) that was pretty much a blank slate redesign starting only with biggest SD(P) hull they could manage. Then reducing crew size to 1,025, reducing EW space a bit and fitting all the miniaturized components and smaller missiles, pods and counter missiles while ballooning the armored pod core to consume 70% of the ship’s internal space, they managed to find room for over 2,000 pods. While retaining 20 off-bore MDM launchers in each broadside, with fairly generous magazines.

We haven’t seen this ship so far, early on Honor estimates at least 6-10 months added to construction of the first one with the problems that inevitably come up, but Weber’s been hinting at it and Simon (who unlike myself has read the three books after AAC) is acting smug, so confidence is high they do roll this out at some point in the near future.

[Simon_Jester]

...Since when have I acted smug about the Medusa-B?

[blinks]

Anyway, more seriously, I suspect Janacek knew exactly what his design teams were doing with these "B" and "C" variants and approved. He may not have felt he could pry loose the money to build newer, more powerful ships, and remember that his mandate was in essence to preside over the demobilization of the fleet. But that doesn't mean he would have disapproved of the idea of someone at least designing improved ship designs that make full and proper use of modern equipment.