A bit of analysis: Posleen War

[Raxmei]

Leopard V tanks. 9mm railgun for primary armament, 5mm as a commander’s pintle weapon and 3mm as additional secondaries, ground effect drive and sights that see through the cloaking technology the Hedren all use on the battlefield.

Seems to indicate that they've forsaken HE capability on their tanks. That's a range of armor piercing plus machine gun equivalent but if they want to reduce structures or kill dispersed soft targets they'll have to hose them down or ask someone else to do it.

"So we see the good news and the bad," Cutprice said to the subdued company. As with any company of infantry, the mortarmen had been rooting for the artillery and the gun bunnies had been rooting for the anti-artillery system. Both groups had reasons to be happy and chastized. "The good news is that the system works. The better news is that, en masse, it will probably work even better. The bad news is that even mortars can overcome it if there's enough incoming. The answer, gentlemen, is to make sure that all your M84 track-commander guns remain up, that commanders relinquish control to automatic at any incoming and that we maintain enough coverage that we can interlock fires. The system should also work against incoming anti-armor rockets. Keep it on auto unless you have an important target, commanders. Mortars, keep up your exercise. And keep in mind that the Hedren have a similar system."

No doubt he left out the bit about how their stuff's all mobile so if they come under concentrated accurate fire they might want to consider moving because that's just common sense.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The battle ghestalts aren't just on the new 'Daisy Mae' class cruisers, Lexington was an old supermonitor and they were able to generate an AI/construct for that one as well.

[Simon_Jester]

Leopard V tanks. 9mm railgun for primary armament, 5mm as a commander’s pintle weapon and 3mm as additional secondaries, ground effect drive and sights that see through the cloaking technology the Hedren all use on the battlefield.

Seems to indicate that they've forsaken HE capability on their tanks. That's a range of armor piercing plus machine gun equivalent but if they want to reduce structures or kill dispersed soft targets they'll have to hose them down or ask someone else to do it.

They'd probably just try to saw through the building with sustained bursts of fire from the main gun, since it seems to be one of those super-machine gun rates of fire. Sawing a structure in half, or at least riddling it with so many holes all the load-bearing members give way, is somewhat practical with that kind of volume of fire.

[Connor MacLeod]

It's also they're "explosive" in the sense a hypervelocity asteorid impact is explosive. The projectile strikes so fast it vaporizes on impact, as well as teh ground it hits. That could create a sort of proximity effect (although not as good as a nuke does, I think.) Considering that Ringo is still going with "incredibly high rates of fire" as well as ammo use, they probably can compensate for lack of effect with sheer numbers.

Penetration is going to be an... interesting consideration given that even the small arms are at 4+ km/s (the lower end threshhold for hypervelocity impacts as I recall.)

That might have even explaned SHEVA velocity differences.. maybe the 10 km/s rounds were meant to be deliberately "explosive"

[CaptainChewbacca]

Has it been announced when the next Hedren War book is coming?

[Ahriman238]

Yeah, these passages don't give a very coherent sense of the mass of the ships involved. Although- "Des Moines before her upgrade..." does that mean the wet-navy ship they hoisted off the bottom of the Caribbean, or a spacegoing warship of an earlier generation built after they hoisted the wet-navy ship off the bottom of the Caribbean?

In the latter case, the description of Bristol as being about the same as Des Moines's old mass and hullform makes perfect sense, since the two ships would have been built by similar equipment with similar capabilities and missions in mind.

pre-upgrade here refers to before her transformation into a spacecraft.

Rate of fire and sustained rate of fire may be the key issue, if you want an aspirin. The PDF guns are designed to fire a single round at a single target, track onto a new target, and fire another round at it. One round will kill any target they're actually intended to fire at, and the PDF guns won't be firing new shots more than, oh... once or twice a second? So the rate of fire is comparable to a semiautomatic rifle.

Whereas the supermonitor secondaries (the grav cannon; I would call the laser and plasma weapons "tertiaries" myself)... you want those to be able to fire really fast- to engage huge numbers of targets in a very short time (with the gun mount spinning to fire on each new target quickly). You want it to be able to dump a boatload of fire into a single target, as well- remember, if something goes wrong with the supermonitor's main gun, it's probably supposed to engage a Posleen globe with that secondary battery.

On the other hand, the sheer number of targets also means that your ability to inflict casualties is statistical: it's always going to be better to disable 90% of your targets with shots fired at a rate of ten rounds per second than to disable 100% of your targets with shots fired at a rate of five rounds per second. So a quicker-firing weapon that throws lighter rounds, but tracks faster and can keep up the fire indefinitely, has a lot going for it. And that might well make the weapon big.

Maybe.

I think you mean 7 light seconds.

Yes I did, sorry.

I'm trying to think of a way of using antimatter as a propellant for frag rounds. Unless that's super dooper metal (and if its using notched wire... not likely?) and the frag only partly vaporizes for propulsion.. or involves antimatter powered magic forcefields to do the propelling.. i see problems.

Perhaps the wire isn't the matter that gets contacted, but is just around the shell of matter around the antimatter so it becomes shrapnel?

[Vejut]

On the vehicle stuff...gods, the things Ringo doesn't know he can get with a little googling...

lets start with "it all runs on diesel now". Correct me if I and wiki are wrong, but...that marder? it already runs on diesel. That's like converting your Camry to gasoline. And hey, putting T-62 running gear on it? Too bad the T-62 has one less road wheel, no return rollers, and is 1.5X as long, so you know, you're pretty much rebuilding the whole damn thing anyways. And the really funny thing? They're only turning about 65mph after all that. It increases the speed by all of ~25%.

Shell space. We have 66 m3 of volume to work with, or thereabouts (6.8mx3.25mx3m, yes I'm rounding) assuming we treat it as a pure box at the marder size. 1440 rounds. We assume they're still 155s, as they don't seem to have mentioned shrinking them for the mortars either. 43kg mass, which is less important right now, than its 800mm length. (.155m/2)2*.8m, treating it as a cyclinder, *1440 rounds. Actually fits, oddly, at 21 m3, though it takes up 1/3 the tank, and 1440 rounds is only a little less than two hours firing (the actual 24 hour number is 16*60*24, or 23,040). That said, rate of fire wise, naval guns like say, this gun have been meeting or beating it since the 60s.

To Connor on the grenades--much as I hate to try and salvage it, depending on how much power was in the round, you could basically use the wire along the inside the grenade as a gas source if you pour enough energy into it, I guess, and there is stuff like casaba howitzer. Doesn't sound very efficient though, and if they stick with the 11 tons TNT thing, probably won't work anyways. Heck, which thing was listed as 11 tons TNT yeild? given they were talking like 150 foot blast radius, wouldn't that much boom have a bigger area just in cratering? The MOAB, IIRC/wiki is about 8.5 tons of slightly more powerful explosive (according to wiki, about 11.5 tons TNT yeild), and does about 130m of blast...

[BinaryRaiders]

Very interesting commentary and analysis.

Something I wanted to ask, in this thread;

Given the original conditions, of the books, how much better off would Earth be if the stated 5 year warning was dropped on Earth now in 2011?
On the possible negative side, we dont have as many world war 2 to rejuv, but on the plus side there are more people now and technology has advanced. Enough to make a difference?

As to the Hedren War, the time for the next book is to the best of my information not known. Id suspect given the author's politics, another copy could be expected if the Republicans win the presidential election, but I wouldnt count on it.

Is there a list somewhere of the fanfiction's that became canon, and where they might be found, like that new Hadrian wall thing?

[CaptainChewbacca]

America would have a much larger reserve force in 2011, with its' national guard troops having much more combat experience. You might not see the large collapses and desertions which happened during Fredricksburg and the 2nd wave.

[Ahriman238]

The battle ghestalts aren't just on the new 'Daisy Mae' class cruisers, Lexington was an old supermonitor and they were able to generate an AI/construct for that one as well.

Yes, all the ships get ship AIs, which are called Daisies, after Daisy Mae.

To Connor on the grenades--much as I hate to try and salvage it, depending on how much power was in the round, you could basically use the wire along the inside the grenade as a gas source if you pour enough energy into it, I guess, and there is stuff like casaba howitzer. Doesn't sound very efficient though, and if they stick with the 11 tons TNT thing, probably won't work anyways. Heck, which thing was listed as 11 tons TNT yeild? given they were talking like 150 foot blast radius, wouldn't that much boom have a bigger area just in cratering? The MOAB, IIRC/wiki is about 8.5 tons of slightly more powerful explosive (according to wiki, about 11.5 tons TNT yeild), and does about 130m of blast...

Ok, the notched wire is for the mortar rounds. The suicide bars (11 ton ACS grenades) are a different thing entirely.

Has it been announced when the next Hedren War book is coming?

Not to my knowledge. It's been two years now. I'd love to do a vs. scenario with the Hedren sometime, but we basically know jack shit about them.

[Ahriman238]

Finished Cally's War a while ago, but I've having computer problems so no wall of text this time.

Post-war earth is almost an alien world. There are fortified cities with big concrete walls and the Sub-Urbs are still around but are at least twice the grimdark ghettos they were before. Outside the cities, people mostly get by "bounty farming" supplementing the profits from their crops with the lavish bounties on Posleen heads. Even so, most seem only barely ahead of the abat and grat, interstellar pests brought to earth by the Posleen, and just as impossible to exterminate. On bounty-farmer's daughter we meet despairs of ever going to college.

There is a Bureau of Reclamation, which shells out the bounties and incinerates the bodies. Humans can eat Posleen without being posioned, but will get virtually no nutrition from it, and they taste horrible. There are periodic military expeditions to depopulate the Posleen a bit, and try and keep any God-kings from being born, in the fear that they will once again unite the Posleen as a great horde. Mind you, the invader has been reduced to fire-hardened spears. At least one bounty farmer cut a deal with a young God-king, taking members of his oolt for the bounty and splitting the profits.

Human security forces are kept in some comfort, if without a lot of company, on every reclaimed planet, since the Posleen are a constant menace anywhere they have ever set foot.

There is apparently a 'humanist' anti-alien movement that runs some protests and is popular on college campuses. They are considered as a possible terrorist threat by the government, but a lot about the situation is unclear. There is considerable prejudice against rejuvs, which seems bound up in the Darhel's refusal to make Galactic medicine generally available. Instead they only pay for it in the case of Fleet, Strike and other 'valued employees.' Thus, a rejuv is assumed to have sold their soul to the Darhel. How accurate this may be is unclear. The majority of the population doesn;t seem to see any difference between the Darhel and the Wall Street 'suits' of yesteryear.

Fleet headquarters is built over the ruins of Fredericksburg. A shuttle flight from Earth to Titan (primary shipyards) takes 4 days at closest approach, and a bit over a month when the two bodies are opposite the sun. This at least gives us a ballpark figure for Galactic sublight speeds.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The attitude towards the Darhel on postwar earth changes as we move from Cally's War to 'Sister time' and 'Honor of the Clan' when people start to realize the Darhel are disappearing human colony ships to inflict brutal tax penalties on earth governments and permanently hobble human development.

Its so bad that on offworld colonies humans do everything they can to avoid having human babies be born in Galactic hospitals, because the debt incurred from the medical expenses of childbirth is almost impossible to pay off, and the child is virtually enslaved by the Darhel from day one.

[Simon_Jester]

Fleet headquarters is built over the ruins of Fredericksburg. A shuttle flight from Earth to Titan (primary shipyards) takes 4 days at closest approach, and a bit over a month when the two bodies are opposite the sun. This at least gives us a ballpark figure for Galactic sublight speeds.

...Those numbers don't add up.

Saturn is only about 20% farther from Earth at conjunction (other side of the Sun) than it is at conjunction. While I accept that the shuttles can't fly extremely close to the Sun and that this forces a funny-shaped trajectory on their flight path, they should still take less than, oh, twice as long to get to Saturn when Saturn is in conjunction. More like eight days, less like thirty.

[MKSheppard]

The attitude towards the Darhel on postwar earth changes as we move from Cally's War to 'Sister time' and 'Honor of the Clan' when people start to realize the Darhel are disappearing human colony ships to inflict brutal tax penalties on earth governments and permanently hobble human development.

Wait wait. Don't the Galactics still need us to reclaim the 70~ worlds they've lost?

[Raxmei]

Wait wait. Don't the Galactics still need us to reclaim the 70~ worlds they've lost?

Not particularly, iirc. Most of their losses were Indowy worlds of little importance. The Darhel could write them all off if they really had to and I believe they already had in the first series. Militarily speaking the worlds whose Posleen populations hadn't already undergone their self destruction phase could have been cleaned up by Fleet shortly after saving Earth.

[Ahriman238]

The attitude towards the Darhel on postwar earth changes as we move from Cally's War to 'Sister time' and 'Honor of the Clan' when people start to realize the Darhel are disappearing human colony ships to inflict brutal tax penalties on earth governments and permanently hobble human development.

Wait wait. Don't the Galactics still need us to reclaim the 70~ worlds they've lost?

Sort of. It is still an ongoing campaign, run by Fleet, Strike, the ACS and even a Penal Legion. However, killing off 80+% of humanity is still not enough depopulation for the Darhel to be confidant in their control of humanity, so they kill off thousands of space colonists, letting just enough ships actually reach the colony worlds to keep filling the ships.

[CaptainChewbacca]

The way the posleen work is like a swarm of locusts. When one world is used up, the swarm moves on. Earth was able to stop the main swarm and end the cycle, as well as destroying the majority of the posleen war machine. What is left after Earth is probably 10% of the Host, which the galactics then exterminate with the Fleet and Mike O'Neil plus the ACS.

I think the postie fortress Mike hits at the beginning of 'Eye of the Storm' was characterized as the only significant stronghold he'd seen in years.

[Simon_Jester]

The attitude towards the Darhel on postwar earth changes as we move from Cally's War to 'Sister time' and 'Honor of the Clan' when people start to realize the Darhel are disappearing human colony ships to inflict brutal tax penalties on earth governments and permanently hobble human development.

Wait wait. Don't the Galactics still need us to reclaim the 70~ worlds they've lost?

Yes, but they really only need a few billion people on Earth sustaining some tens of millions of human troops at modern tech levels to do that.

What they do NOT need is humans spreading out, colonizing dozens of worlds, building their own starships, and getting a population that runs up into the tens or hundreds of billions... because they're not confident of their ability to maintain social control over that many humans.

[CaptainChewbacca]

That was the whole reason why the siege of earth was only lifted when various fleet captains conspired to conduct simultaneous 'reconaissance in force' missions of Sol, to sneak enough firepower in to guarantee a successful assault. Humans were to be the pet warrior race of the Darhel, to be deployed as needed and chained when not.

[PeZook]

What they do NOT need is humans spreading out, colonizing dozens of worlds, building their own starships, and getting a population that runs up into the tens or hundreds of billions... because they're not confident of their ability to maintain social control over that many humans.

It's understandable they're scared shitless, because their only way of controlling humanity is social/economical. Since humans have all the guns and the ability to use them without going violently psychotic and all that

Of course, it also means that they set themselves at risk of creating a very pissed off warrior race with a grudge some time in the future, but hey...

[Simon_Jester]

Of course, it also means that they set themselves at risk of creating a very pissed off warrior race with a grudge some time in the future, but hey...

That's exactly what happened, according to some versions of the (muddled, canon-tangled) 'future' of Ringo's setting. Several times we see allusions to a war in which humanity mauls the shit out of the Darhel.

[PeZook]

Of course, it also means that they set themselves at risk of creating a very pissed off warrior race with a grudge some time in the future, but hey...

That's exactly what happened, according to some versions of the (muddled, canon-tangled) 'future' of Ringo's setting. Several times we see allusions to a war in which humanity mauls the shit out of the Darhel.

Hmm, never saw that.

You know, it would be interesting and sort of poetic if humanity came full circle, replacing the Posleen as the huge threat to the galaxy. Fulfilling all Galactic scare-mongering imagery due to the very actions the Galactics took to prevent this sort of scenario...

[Ahriman238]

Seems to indicate that they've forsaken HE capability on their tanks. That's a range of armor piercing plus machine gun equivalent but if they want to reduce structures or kill dispersed soft targets they'll have to hose them down or ask someone else to do it.

They have made exloding railgun rounds before, using antimatter.

Hmm, never saw that.

You know, it would be interesting and sort of poetic if humanity came full circle, replacing the Posleen as the huge threat to the galaxy. Fulfilling all Galactic scare-mongering imagery due to the very actions the Galactics took to prevent this sort of scenario...

And the human assasins they hire in a most indirect manner.

It is implied and sort of stated that within the lifetime of most characters humanity will overthrow the Darhel in a few months of blood and fire and reform the Galactic Federation into a more egalitarian society.

It is also implied that humanity will very much take the lead of this society, perhaps more as a "first among equals" and that the indowy at least will welcome this change.

There is another spin-off book 'the Hero' taking place a thousand years after the Posleen War and following a Darhel who is now a second-class citizen (contrary to earlier statements that the Darhel would be completly genocided) but it's just about the last book I'm planning on getting to.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the Darhel might not be exterminated to the last being. Once their power structure is permanently broken and they know longer have the rest of the galactic community in a headlock, there's no need to kill them. A government that doesn't contain them can prevent the Darhel race from ever setting up that sort of tyranny again. So the threat is removed.

At which point it is (I hope) plausible that they wouldn't be wiped out if they were willing to surrender and accept the end of their rule.

[Ahriman238]

Reading Sister Time. There is a mntion of how a human colony on the planet Dulain works. The humans were set down in a seperate area form the Indowy and Darhel colonists, in a remote and arid land. Whenever Posleen activity is reported, a shuttle flys out to the human areas and rustles up a hunting party. Almost everyone there is kept in indentured servitude, just like the Indowy, and are forbidden from owning or bearing arms, which usually comeo n the shuttle.

When the fighting is done, the humans meekly surrender their weapons and pile into the hsuttle. If not, ankle and wrist bracelets deliver a preprogrammed series of escalating electric shocks. If that doesn't work, the bracelets inject them with Hiberzine and activate a pickup beacon.

The Darhel planned to control all food and medicine, but when the humans requested to build a hyrdoponics facility, they decided it was harmless enough. And a chance to sell expensive equipment and drvie everybody deeper into debt. The tongs exploit the Darhel's lack of intercooperation by buying some land, with all parties involved believing it was a Darhel on the other side of the conversation, and Earth Tech provides for hydroponics, allowing them to undercut the Darhel's food prices. They also buy up the debts for 100 people using the same shell game, and start running a lottery. The drawings only start when the ticket sales are great enough to cover a man's freedom.

There are many accidents, until the tongs start icing human assasins and filling the greenhouses with staff. Indowy and Darhel can blow up a building only so long as no one is inside.