The Decline of Baen Books as a Respectable SF Publisher

[Simon_Jester]

Speaking as a fencer (sabre, specifically), even if Harrington's foe was only trained in sport fencing, he should have extensive experience in "point control"-making sure his blade lands exactly where he wants it. This would allow him to nick Honor's forearm, tear open her throat, or puncture any number of vital organs and plenty in between those two extremes. "Knowing how to kill" absolutely requires point control, not a Mary Sue's populistic triumph over the tradition-bound aristocracy

Grayson swordfighting is most similar to Japanese styles- think kendo, from a sport standpoint.

In Honor's defense she is not entirely untrained, but she is certainly undertrained, to the point where her victory can reasonably be seen as the turning point of the series in the direction of Sue-dom.

[MKSheppard]

I think what made the Honorverse so wildly popular was that it was essentially the first mass media science fiction franchise that had multi-state actors and somewhat realistic politico-diplomatic byplay for each race.

E.g; we had humanity divided into multiple state actor factions each with their own objectives, etc; rather than all of humanity united under the GOD EMPEROR OF MAN WHO SITS ON THE GOLDEN THRONE IN TERRA in a pan-terran government.

This was....quite something for the average SF consumer; who was starving for something like this, so they snapped it up.

[MKSheppard]

It would have been highly amusing in my opinion; for the Honorverse series to be all about Manticore and Haven fighting with 75-150 ship Navies on each side, and running their economies at TOTAL WAR MOBILIZATION for years on end to support their SIR WE HAVE FIRED 200% OF OUR MASS IN MISSILES space battles.

(In the fluff for HH1/2 it basically says that a modern heavy missile is enormously expensive; and that's even before all of the advances in tech that get made by Book 10 or whatever.)

Then all of a sudden the Sollies show up with a mere task force of 500 ships and tell both sides to "play nice"; and it turns out that the whole book series was about SPACE NORTH KOREA versus SPACE SOUTH KOREA; while the SINO-RUSSO-AMERICAN-INDO-EUROPEAN FEDERATION was doing something else.

[Mr Bean]

The fight is presented as such as Burdette squaring off like this is another duel while Harrington is looking to kill him. She waits on his attack and the instant before he strikes she steps inside and cuts him half.

Assuming Webber knows his swords, the Honor saw Burdette's hands tighten, then stepped into measure and delivered a rising cut with the false edge that opened his torso. Making Burdette such a chump he hardly deserves mention, which is the point, as he is so far beneath "Honor" in all things his death is perfunctory. Her "Will to Kill" has precisely dick to do with it, other than to bloat the nauseating righteousness of all of her causes, and to demonstrate that she could have killed him with a golf club.

The point is it should have been a risky gamble and were Weber less Sue for here she should have ended up with a sword in her lung coughing blood and requiring intensive medical attention with Burdette dead at her feet. Where she less of a Sue that's how a less Sue based writer could have written it.

Yeah she won but she got fucked up doing so and a second less quicker she would have been dead at his feet instead of vice versa.

But no I disagree with you, her Sue-dom broke out the book before when she blew Denver Summervale in half on the dueling field in book 4. I considered her fine until Book 4.

[Simon_Jester]

It would have been highly amusing in my opinion; for the Honorverse series to be all about Manticore and Haven fighting with 75-150 ship Navies on each side, and running their economies at TOTAL WAR MOBILIZATION for years on end to support their SIR WE HAVE FIRED 200% OF OUR MASS IN MISSILES space battles.

(In the fluff for HH1/2 it basically says that a modern heavy missile is enormously expensive; and that's even before all of the advances in tech that get made by Book 10 or whatever.)

Then all of a sudden the Sollies show up with a mere task force of 500 ships and tell both sides to "play nice"; and it turns out that the whole book series was about SPACE NORTH KOREA versus SPACE SOUTH KOREA; while the SINO-RUSSO-AMERICAN-INDO-EUROPEAN FEDERATION was doing something else.

That would indeed be hilarious. In terms of numbers, that's more or less what the Sollies are in a position to do; their active fleet outnumbers the combined forces of both Manticore and Haven by about that ratio (2000 Sollie ships to, say, five or six hundred tops for Manticore and Haven).

The problem is that the Sollies are on the wrong end of a revolution in military affairs, what with drastic advances in missile capability since their last round of major fleet upgrades- comparable to the difference in capability between a modern guided cruise missile and a 16" shell from a battleship gun.

By the way... where are you getting "we have fired 200% of our mass in missiles" from?

But no I disagree with you, her Sue-dom broke out the book before when she blew Denver Summervale in half on the dueling field in book 4. I considered her fine until Book 4.

In hindsight, you have a very good point- I could have bought her victory over Summervale if her skill as a pistolera had been laid down in earlier books (or even set up well in advance in this book). But for it to suddenly emerge like that... yeah, that was pretty much over the line from "highly talented protagonist" and into "protagonist gains powers as the plot demands."

[Thanas]

The fight is presented as such as Burdette squaring off like this is another duel while Harrington is looking to kill him. She waits on his attack and the instant before he strikes she steps inside and cuts him half.

I am sorry, but this sounds completely stupid. No accomplished swordsmen is going to just let his opponent step inside. Especially not when he knows the other is faster and this is a duel to the death. In that case, he would most likely play it safe and adopt a defensive stance, playing on his experience and instinct to take advantage.

If she took his head of, I assume they used some type of longsword. Video of longsword fencing. As you can see, stepping inside is very hard to do, even more so without deflecting an attack first.

[Darth Hoth]

I made the mistake of paying money for the sequel to Freehold, whose title escapes me, and it's possibly the worst book I've ever read.

The Weapon. Which lowered my already low opinion of Williamson. (Yes, I too was unfortunate/stupid enough to read it.)

Basically, the first book is half lame characterisation and half wankery over how AWESOME!!! the Freehold is because of its lolbertarian politics. Everyone walks around with guns all the time because the private citizen is so much better at defending himself from criminals than a police force is, being a hooker is a high-status celebrity job that every girl aspires to, and even the street gangs are nice to people because . . . Well, just because, basically.

But The Weapon is worse. It has somewhat less of the overt preaching, but instead we get 600+ pages of first-person narrative by an insufferably smug and sociopathic Mary Sue special forces trooper who totally approves of how awesome the system is in every way, and anyone who does not like it is either a subhuman idiot or a dog-raping, child-kicking villain.

The Legacy of the Aldenata series might have been a thinly disguised continuity-reboot fanfic of Starship Troopers written by someone who actually liked the original, but at least Ringo has the decency not to make the alleged good guys of the book commit terrorist atrocities that kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and claim it's perfectly justified by the fact that they're governed by straw liberals.

It was more like billions.

The really hilarious thing, though, is that a couple of hundred pages earlier in the book, when he is dealing with militant Islam on some Third World planet, Mr.Super Commando has a minor author tract soliloquy where he specifically denounces terrorists who strike at civilians as weak, unmanly (these are the worst things you can be, of course) and generally loathsome and abominable filth. As I said, not only is Williamson crazy politically, he is a huge hypocrite also.

I think the problem came when Ringo's work (which is right on the ragged edge of how crappy you can make military SF before the crappiness starts to overrun the entertainment value) drew in other people who were even less good than Ringo, and even nuttier politically (Kratman being the prime example).

I object to that. Kratman is objectively a better author than Ringo, both in being better at writing and in being, overall, more reasonable with his tech and tactics.

Of course, it is true that politically, he is insane, and arguably worse than Ringo.

[MKSheppard]

Hoth, yeah, the more I think about it. Kratman did make a book that made more sense technologically -- with the EuroNazis building Tiger III tanks instead of asking the Indowy for ACS suits or building LOL!Shevas.

But yeah. Politically insane.

[Thanas]

Hoth, yeah, the more I think about it. Kratman did make a book that made more sense technologically -- with the EuroNazis building Tiger III tanks instead of asking the Indowy for ACS suits or building LOL!Shevas.

But yeah. Politically insane.

The problem is while the technology might make more sense, everything else militarily did not make any sense, especially not the training.

Brave SS-men are needed to save the day while the regular German Army, the one actually trained to fight against overwhelming enemy superiority, just cuts and runs and suddenly gets qualms like "we cannot blow up that bridge with civilians on it who are dead anyway".

Furthermore, apparently the German Staff has just turned into idiots. Heck, I was going "I could do better than these idiots" at times. Which is a bad thing, because I got no training at all and should not be able to say so.

Anyway, if you need WWII veterans at all, why not turn to the members of the elite Heer divisions like Panzer-Lehr or Großdeutschland, who were a great deal more disciplined than the SS and the recruiting of them actually does not equal political suicide.

Add to that the shoddy research on the names and places and everything else said in German...we had a thread dedicated to that idiocy.

It is not just politically insane, it is bad fiction from start to finish.

[Simon_Jester]

I object to that. Kratman is objectively a better author than Ringo, both in being better at writing and in being, overall, more reasonable with his tech and tactics.

Of course, it is true that politically, he is insane, and arguably worse than Ringo.

I will not contest the point, since I am entirely unwilling to do a systematic review of Kratman's skill as a writer and compare him to Ringo. That would involve reading books I know Kratman was primary author for, something I hope to never do (again)... and for that matter reading books I know Ringo was primary author for, which I am (mostly) willing to do but am not really interested in doing much of.

So, again, I won't contest the point, because that would involve diving head-first into a garbage heap for evidence.

Shep, I agree that you have a point about the tech and tactics, at least in that one novel. However, there are other factors besides "makes sense technologically" in play. Kratman building 'reasonable' tanks does not make him a better writer than some guy who uses power armor or ludicrous giant self-propelled gun crawlers. I won't argue Kratman's merits as a writer (his ability to make convincing characters and plots, to evoke the right feelings in the reader, and so on).

[Darth Hoth]

Brave SS-men are needed to save the day while the regular German Army, the one actually trained to fight against overwhelming enemy superiority, just cuts and runs and suddenly gets qualms like "we cannot blow up that bridge with civilians on it who are dead anyway".

The guy who did that was a fresh recruit who, if I recall the scene correctly, had not seen combat before. Is it so unreasonable that he might flinch at it? People do screw up, especially when under tremendous pressure.

Furthermore, apparently the German Staff has just turned into idiots. Heck, I was going "I could do better than these idiots" at times. Which is a bad thing, because I got no training at all and should not be able to say so.

The series made a point of the entire human war effort being sabotage by the Space Jews Darhel and their fellow-travellers. The military commanders and politicians were in on the international superconspiracy and aiming to lose. That is certainly stupid and poor writing, but not really Kratman's fault.

Anyway, if you need WWII veterans at all, why not turn to the members of the elite Heer divisions like Panzer-Lehr or Großdeutschland, who were a great deal more disciplined than the SS and the recruiting of them actually does not equal political suicide.

They did use them, but they needed the SS men, too. For . . . some reason.

Add to that the shoddy research on the names and places and everything else said in German...we had a thread dedicated to that idiocy.

I still maintain that it is not quite as bad as lot of other alternate history/techno-thriller writing. Just look at Steve Stirling, for instance. Liebstandarte, anyone? But yes, given that he supposedly had input from German friends writing it, that kind of sloppinness is pretty much inexcusable.

[Thanas]

Brave SS-men are needed to save the day while the regular German Army, the one actually trained to fight against overwhelming enemy superiority, just cuts and runs and suddenly gets qualms like "we cannot blow up that bridge with civilians on it who are dead anyway".

The guy who did that was a fresh recruit who, if I recall the scene correctly, had not seen combat before. Is it so unreasonable that he might flinch at it? People do screw up, especially when under tremendous pressure.

The guy in question was a pionier. These are neither fresh recruits nor are they the kind of people who flinch at building bridges. They are the grunts.

And nobody would give a fresh recruit that kind of responsibility anyway.

The series made a point of the entire human war effort being sabotage by the Space Jews Darhel and their fellow-travellers. The military commanders and politicians were in on the international superconspiracy and aiming to lose. That is certainly stupid and poor writing, but not really Kratman's fault.

It is if he continues to do the same.

They did use them, but they needed the SS men, too. For . . . some reason.

Right...the SS men are given carte blanche to do what they want. They "needed" them...when they got as many as 20-30 reservists at hand already.

[Darth Hoth]

The guy in question was a pionier. These are neither fresh recruits nor are they the kind of people who flinch at building bridges. They are the grunts.

And nobody would give a fresh recruit that kind of responsibility anyway.

I will have to re-read the passage to check, then.

It is if he continues to do the same.

I thought that Ringo had established the backstory already? And from what I got, it was a typical collaboration - basically Ringo wrote the plot, and then Kratman wrote the book, using that template.

Right...the SS men are given carte blanche to do what they want. They "needed" them...when they got as many as 20-30 reservists at hand already.

Well, I will not try to argue that it made sense in the context of real-life politics. In the insane politics of the Posleenverse, where open neo-Nazis apparently made up a significant portion of the Bundestag, things might be a little different.

Basically, however, my impression was that Ringo/Kratman handwaved the SS in because they wanted them as their focus for their story.

Edit: Tidied up the text a little.

[MKSheppard]

The problem is that the Sollies are on the wrong end of a revolution in military affairs, what with drastic advances in missile capability since their last round of major fleet upgrades- comparable to the difference in capability between a modern guided cruise missile and a 16" shell from a battleship gun.

That makes no sense.

There are many countries around the world that individually have BETTER weapons than the US Military -- for example, the Germans field PzH2000s which are head and shoulders above our tired old M109 SPHs, and they are going to introduce into service the Puma IFV which is significantly better than the Bradley.

The Swedes have long had their whole CV-35/40 series of IFVs which are on paper better armed than the Bradley, etc.

And in the good old days of imperalism; many countries actually bought better weapons systems from the British Empire than the Brits had in service -- warships were a fine example of this.

But none of these other countries could match what the US Military in 2000+ has or what the Royal Navy in 1910 had -- an overall integrated command structure, and a uniform quality of weapons systems -- for example, while South American countries might have a battleship that was technically better than the RN had; they only had single digit examples, and the rest of their military was not up to that standard.

So I'm not seeing how the basic equivalents of SPACE NORTH/SOUTH KOREA can somehow manage to field overall more advanced forces and push bleeding edge weapons tech than the SINO-RUSSO-AMERICAN-INDO-EUROPEAN FEDERATION; especially since the SINO-RUSSO-AMERICAN-INDO-EUROPEAN FEDERATION can afford to spend more money on overall military R&D than both SPACE NORTH/SOUTH KOREA spend for their military budgets total.

But of course we have Authorial Fiat from Weber; but that's bullshit in the same way Authorial Fiat from Ringo is in his Allendata series.

Weber just wants his NAPOLEONIC WAR IN SPAAAAAACE, and damn logic or reason to get it.

By the way... where are you getting "we have fired 200% of our mass in missiles" from?

It's a joke I first saw at Spacebattles of all places -- someone's sig had "Manticorean DILDODREADS FIRE 102% of their mass in missiles" -- and I simply upped it to 200% because it amuses me.

[Mr Bean]

By the way... where are you getting "we have fired 200% of our mass in missiles" from?

It's a joke I first saw at Spacebattles of all places -- someone's sig had "Manticorean DILDODREADS FIRE 102% of their mass in missiles" -- and I simply upped it to 200% because it amuses me.

This is older than you know because Weber way back when posted technical specs for his super dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers and he did the volume/weight/area calculations himself and ended up with some really fucked up numbers like Star-ships that were supposed to be made of ultra dense/ultra heavy materials but by weber numbers had the density of fog since he fucked up his basic calculations.

[Simon_Jester]

That makes no sense.

There are many countries around the world that individually have BETTER weapons than the US Military -- for example, the Germans field PzH2000s which are head and shoulders above our tired old M109 SPHs, and they are going to introduce into service the Puma IFV which is significantly better than the Bradley.

The Swedes have long had their whole CV-35/40 series of IFVs which are on paper better armed than the Bradley, etc.

And in the good old days of imperalism; many countries actually bought better weapons systems from the British Empire than the Brits had in service -- warships were a fine example of this.

But none of these other countries could match what the US Military in 2000+ has or what the Royal Navy in 1910 had -- an overall integrated command structure, and a uniform quality of weapons systems -- for example, while South American countries might have a battleship that was technically better than the RN had; they only had single digit examples, and the rest of their military was not up to that standard.

So I'm not seeing how the basic equivalents of SPACE NORTH/SOUTH KOREA can somehow manage to field overall more advanced forces and push bleeding edge weapons tech than the SINO-RUSSO-AMERICAN-INDO-EUROPEAN FEDERATION; especially since the SINO-RUSSO-AMERICAN-INDO-EUROPEAN FEDERATION can afford to spend more money on overall military R&D than both SPACE NORTH/SOUTH KOREA spend for their military budgets total.

But of course we have Authorial Fiat from Weber; but that's bullshit in the same way Authorial Fiat from Ringo is in his Allendata series.

Eh, yeah.

The handwave is that unlike the US in 2000 or the Brits in 1910, the Sollies had no credible opposition for centuries. The Brits had their "two power standard," under which they needed to keep their navy fit to fight any other two fleets in the world combined. The US had to keep pushing the bleeding edge technologically to make up for the fact that most of its missions involved deploying small volunteer armies at the end of a long logistics pipeline to deal with enemies fighting on their home turf: we can't count on quantitative superiority, hence the need for quality.

The Sollies don't have that. They outnumber any plausible combination of powers by a huge margin, and until quite recently they were at least as sophisticated as anyone else in the galaxy technologically. That didn't give them much of an incentive to do military R&D, especially since the state of the art had changed only in tiny little increments over the past few centuries.

Under those circumstances, I can honestly see a military hyperpower stagnating. Edwardian Britain or the Bush-era US aren't the right analogy. Edwardian Britain had France, Russia, Germany, and the US to stare down. The Bush-era US did obsessive military R&D because we were trying to figure out how to fight equal or larger armies of people who knew the neighborhood like their own backyard by sheer overwhelming quality.

The right analogy for the Sollies is Qing China: huge, mediocre armies that degenerate over the course of centuries of relative peace and security, as bureaucratic rot attacks the organs of government and makes them unable to respond to new developments quickly and efficiently. At least, without an overwhelming and painful incentive to modernize.

By the way... where are you getting "we have fired 200% of our mass in missiles" from?

It's a joke I first saw at Spacebattles of all places -- someone's sig had "Manticorean DILDODREADS FIRE 102% of their mass in missiles" -- and I simply upped it to 200% because it amuses me.

OK. When I sit down and try to do a back-of-the-envelope check for that, unless we assume the missiles weigh a thousand tons or more each it doesn't come out anywhere near that, so I was wondering.

With the density calcs, yeah Weber fucked up. He corrected that later once someone pointed it out to him.

[thegreatpl]

Not to mention that in the latest book, the Sollies have turned out to have auto-cannon point defense when everyone else was using lasers.

You are talking about a force that has 11,000 Superdreadnoughts. That is the number Weber has given for the entire Solarian SD force including reserves. There are perhaps 5 other nations with more than 100 SDs: Manitcore, Haven, Andermani, Grayson and possibly Midgard. Erewhon has perhaps 50, although i doubt it has even that, and perhaps so does Phoenix. Matapan and Asgard we have no idea of. That is all the named major governments.

It has been said in the books that the Solarians have no real wish to conduct R&D, because to do so might give a force multiplier like the massive missile launches that Haven and Manticore are firing, and thus mean that those 11,000 SDs they have so carefully built up are worthless scrap metal.

[Thanas]

11.000 SD vs ~200 while one side cannot produce new units....really, this should be a curbstomp even if the Manticorean units are so powerful (especially since the Solarians could easily steal/replicate the technology, which is what happens when you have comparable industry bases).

[Batman]

It should be noted that the Manticorans themselves realise that while the League may not have what by in-universe now is first-rate naval technology DEPLOYED, them having the largest tech, industrial, and financial base in known space that doesn't mean they don't HAVE it or won't on short notice DEVELOP it.
It is stated pretty clearly in Storm from the Shadows that unless Manticore can use its, for the time being, massive tech advantage to keep the League at bay long enough for it to break apart and cease to exist as a coherent political unit, they're screwed.

[MKSheppard]

It has been said in the books that the Solarians have no real wish to conduct R&D, because to do so might give a force multiplier like the massive missile launches that Haven and Manticore are firing, and thus mean that those 11,000 SDs they have so carefully built up are worthless scrap metal.

And once again it proves why Baen's authorship stable is crap.

By that argument; the British should never have built HMS Dreadnought; since it revolutionized naval warfare and instantly rendered all ships built before obsolete to varying forms -- and the British had the most to lose by doing this, as they had the most predreadnoughts.

Also; that's another thing -- Weber makes the Sollies into fucking idiots who don't even have Military attaches or whatnot going around and making notes of what other people are doing and mailing back the notes.

"Hmm; by jove; you say that the SPACE KOREANS are firing at each other and blowing each other into bits with innovative tactics? Jeeves; set up FLEETEX 2314 to examine these new tactics and how they would impact our military status. Can we use existing equipment with these new tactics; or do we need to build all new ships?"

"Right, jolly-o old chap. We should have the results back by Q4 of this year."

All the more so that you can simply do "paper" exercises in naval war colleges or academies with holographic tanks now, with no real investment other than the time of the personnel involved.

[Batman]

Yeah. I mean governments being hopelessy overconfident (and the Solarian League actually has REASON to be confident for a change, they pretty much DO outgun everybody else combined) or people ignoring information that doesn't fit into their worldview is something that NEVER happened in the real world.
Is that arrogant of the Solarians? Yes. Is it stupid of the Solarians? YES.
Guess what? THAT'S WHAT THE SOLARIANS ARE DESCRIBED AS THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SERIES.

[thegreatpl]

short notice developing it is still several months to a year. It will be at least a year for them to get it into front line deployment, and something like 3 years to build any SD(P)s, during which time they can be tearing into that reserve of 11,000 ships.

And yes, they have to rely on the fact that the Sollies will break apart. But Maya will be withdrawing pretty soon, and it has been said there will be rebellions throughout the rim. So yeah, the war should not last all that long.

Sure, it would be a curbstomp war, if not for the Haven's Allying to Manticore. Haven has the capability to build new ships, adds at least 300SDs to the game, and has a nice, secret shipyard that cannot be destroyed like in Oyster bay.

Britain had several major rivals; France, Germany, ect. All of these nations were close by, and close in technological advancement and industrialization. HMS Dreadnought was as much a political statement as an actual need for it.

The Solarian League has a massive widespread "not invented here" syndrome. They think everyone outside their borders is a "neobarb". They literally dont think that any of them has anything to offer the Solarian League.

Why should they build an impressive new Battleship to impress the neighbors? they are not worth impressing.

Besides, who is going to attack the Solarian League? There are military intel departments, but with the exception of 2 people, they are staffed by people who have that not invented here syndrome.

Oh, and didnt the US think it could win the Vietnam war easily because it was the most advanced nation and was taking on a bunch of barely industrialized rebels?

[MKSheppard]

Is that arrogant of the Solarians? Yes. Is it stupid of the Solarians? YES.
Guess what? THAT'S WHAT THE SOLARIANS ARE DESCRIBED AS THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SERIES.

So basically, authorial fiat makes the Solarians ignore the last 20 years of increasingly larger scale military conflict between two mid-level powers...

-- hint --
The Sollies might have to intervene to enforce the Eridani Edict in case one power goes crazy; so they'd be paying attention
--hint--

...so that for the next book in the Honorverse; the Sollies get danced around and destroyed in the Manticore system by the Combined Havenite/Manticore fleet, which scores an astounding 20 to 1 kill ratio.

Come on.

Admit it.

You see this coming a mile away.

[thegreatpl]

Actually, the Havenite-Manticoran fleet in the Manticore system probably is about equal in numbers to the Solarian Attack. Solarians are supposed to be ~400 SDs, Haven has pumped in ~300, and Manticore probably has at least 100 lying around in their home system. But the Solarians are probably going to get destroyed without inflicting any casualties since their point defense is so poor.

And some Sollies have been keeping an eye on the war, and been warning the Solly military, who ignored them because they were from the system defense forces.

Sure, they would be looking out for Eridani Edict violations, but you dont need agents there to do that. There are likely to be plenty of neutral witnesses in the form of Freighters in the system who will run for the League if one of them fires on the planet. Hell, the person who had it done to them will probably be making lots of noise, and it is kinda hard to hide evidence of orbital bombardment to any Solly investigators that came along. Who would want to see com logs to check if a call to surrender had come through first.

[Batman]

Is that arrogant of the Solarians? Yes. Is it stupid of the Solarians? YES.
Guess what? THAT'S WHAT THE SOLARIANS ARE DESCRIBED AS THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SERIES.

So basically, authorial fiat makes the Solarians ignore the last 20 years of increasingly larger scale military conflict between two mid-level powers...

Except from the PoV of the League it WASN'T a large scale conflict.

-- hint --
The Sollies might have to intervene to enforce the Eridani Edict in case one power goes crazy; so they'd be paying attention

Because-you say so. They're so freaking powerful they don't expect to HAVE to enforce the Eridani Edict because they expect everybody to remember what happened to the people who made them come UP with the Eridani Edict. But of course the US routinely goes out of its way to prevent human rights violations in third world countries. Have you actually READ the series?

...so that for the next book in the Honorverse; the Sollies get danced around and destroyed in the Manticore system by the Combined Havenite/Manticore fleet, which scores an astounding 20 to 1 kill ratio.

I haven't read Mission of Honor (hell Torch of Freedom doesn't come out in paperback until december) but assuming Haven and Manticore have a reasonable number of ships left, YES, at least for the first year or three. That's what happens when you massively outrange your opponent and have the acceleration advantage to see to it you STAY out of his engagement range.