Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington

[Mr Bean]

Okay rather than respond point to point to Vehrec since several people have I'll step back and go broad scale.

The three questions break down as such from reading the first post

1. Why do the Manties use prize crews

2. Why do the Manties have Marine crews?

3. Why are there prize rules to begin with.


I'll take this in order.

1. Why do the Manties use prize crews?
Up until Operation Buttercup any and all captured Haven ships even some Pirate ships were taken both for intel reason and because they could be refitted into something useful if not stripped for parts of which there are plenty of common use parts on any captured ship not kept in utter disrepair. Also prize crews are used because you don't want to let the former ships crew within a hundred feet of an engine room or a control center. This applies even more fully to a space ship than to a surface ship, anything with a fusion reactor and the ability to at least accelerate to .5c is a pretty nasty makeshift weapon just based on simple kinetic energy alone. A prize crew goes a long way to prevent even the slightest possibility of mischance.

As for the ships themselves it's not until Buttercup in 1915 PD that older ships become nothing more than targets for Manty firepower, and by the time of 1920 PD Haven ships are once again useful if cruder and if impressed into service make good station defense ships freeing up Manty ships for frontline service.

2. Why do the Manties have Marine crews?
First because someone has to make up the muscle of a boarding party, of which in the series we see boarding parties visiting merchant ships for inspections tours. We see boarding parties visiting formerly captured ships to check for traps. We see boarding parties visiting the wrecks of battle damaged friendly and enemy ships to search for survivors. Having people who specialize in working in zero G in tight small unit formations is incredibly useful. Add onto that we know the Marine crews when not being a boarding party group help maintain and man the grasers and other energy weapons in addition to providing internal damage control parties in addition to the naval ratings. We see Marines using the heavy equipment to get into wrecked compartments on their own ships to pull out people trapped when battle damage compromises the normal integrity of their own ship. They are not army units as is pointed out several times they like the traditional idea of Marines designed for continuous operations of less than seventy two hours.

3. Why there are prize rules to begin with
Because if your Captain has a choice between blowing up the two billion dollar freighter and capturing her for a possible 50,000$ payment to himself and 500$-2000$ per crewman (Assuming a smaller destroyer) it's a hell of a deal. At least that must have been the original thinking way back in the day. Space ships are expensive and if they (The Admiralty) have that 5% cut of the total value of the vessel to the crew who takes her it's a nice (And cheap all concerned) incentive. Note that minus a few special times the Navy almost never has to pay out because capturing a ship is not enough to trigger prize rules (Unlike contraband, where the payment comes out of fines from the smuggler) .. The only way to trigger prize rules is if the captured ship is brought on board as a new Navy ship or sold to civilian hands.

[eyl]

And if they capture a pirate/slaver ship with prisoners aboard intact? Scuttle it and put the prisoners/freed slaves down on the nearest planet and hope for the best? Prize crews aren't just for warships. And even if they do take a warship, and don't put it into service with the RMN, it's still their practice to send at least the first couple of any new class of ships they capture back to Manticore for thorough analysis by BuShips and BuWeaps. Even a technologically outmatched opponent has details of their systems that can more useful to know than to blow up, and that kind of analysis can't be effectively done in situ.

And how many slavers and pirate ships have more prisoners than you can find room for with sleeping bags/zip ties on the gunnery decks? This is made out to be a major issue by Batman, but I suspect it's a very incidental thing If you've captured a ship to send it home, can't you stash it somewhere in the Oort cloud of a system powered down until a prize crew can arrive if it's so important?

Pirates usually don't have very many prisoners, although I think you're overestimating how much space the gun decks have - they're described as cramped bubbles (which I doubt you could sleep in), not wide open spaces*, and placing people in them will hamper the ship's combat readiness.

Slavers, OTOH, may be carrying several thousand slaves; there's no way you're carryin all of them on the capturing warship.

The same applies, for that matter, if you get a large enemy ship to surrender - unless you've killed most of its crew, you'renot going to be able to stuff them all on board your own

*Even on modern-day naval vessels, empty space is at a premium.

Bear also in mind that if you just stash the ship somewhere, it can take months for you to get word that the ship is there and for a prize crew to arrive.

[Vehrec]

...I do question where all these space pirates are coming from, since I don't think that just stripping a cargo ship and fitting her with more guns like they did in the age of sail would work. But since my case hasn't been made clearly apparently, I'll state it plainly.

1.) In every age, people complain about things and say that things aren't being done right. This does not mean they are right. There can be genuine complaints about lack of prize crews and Marines, that may or may not have a point. I do not doubt the utility of having dudes in power armor or spare crew-I simply think that the problem of having fewer of them is overblown.

2.) The fact that the Manticore fleet isn't ripping out missile tubes to add bunks says a bit about how seriously they take these complaints in universe-I.E. Not Very. Now perhaps that is a bit unfair, but I have no doubt that if this was a Very Serious Problem, a solution could be found, even if it meant a temporary reduction in fighting strength. The fact that it just results in grumbling suggests to me that this isn't a serious problem, and that it may be compared to the chances of 'inertial dampener failure' that never materialized no matter how hard Honor pushed her ship.

3.) The mission to police space and patrol regions seems to be to have been shouldered almost entirely by Manticore, operating very far from it's 'coaling stations'. This does not seem to be to be a logical or sustainable system, but whatever. Complaining that single ships, which may be months from home, cannot capture and deal with multiple pirates or outlaws simultaneously seems disingenuous and missing the point. Manticore's self-appointed patrol mission seems to be overambitious.

4.) Given the complexity and the need for trained crews aboard these ships, I doubt that there should be much if any part commonality. A simple change in convention like a seven-sided bolt makes at one stroke a whole swath of spares and salvage nigh-useless except for refitting more salvage. Different voltages for electronic components would be another 'more trouble than they are worth fixing' problem. And as Manticore is strapped for trained crews, how many captured ships can they expect to put into service anyways? Ten, twenty at the most? And five percent of the value of a ship can add up quickly-especially if you suddenly find yourself with 68 captured dreadnaughts and thousands of LACs as they did in the aftermath of the Battle of Manticore. Paying out to take those into service as a block probably didn't exist in the navy budget for that year, so where would the money come from?

[Simon_Jester]

Pirates usually don't have very many prisoners...

It varies. Somalian pirates routinely kidnap and ransom people. It's a cheap revenue stream for them. Although to be fair, in the Honorverse it's more profitable to resell ships than to ransom people, unless the ransom you can get for a given person is WAY more than I'd expect.

...I do question where all these space pirates are coming from, since I don't think that just stripping a cargo ship and fitting her with more guns like they did in the age of sail would work.

The main piracy problem Manticore has comes from the Silesian Confederacy, which is more or less a "failed state" on the interstellar level. In other words, it's a big region full of corrupt, single-planet or fractional-planet polities that are theoretically affiliated with a single central government that in practice has about as much power as that of Somalia.

In that context, it's easier for people to get their hands on warships. Many of them are theoretically privateers from polities that can't be arsed to govern privateers responsibly. Others have more covert ties to a planetary government. That helps explain where the legal and financial backing to get these big complex ships comes from.

As to where the ships themselves come from- the Solarian League produces vast numbers of light ships to patrol its space, as do the many smaller polities outside it. Many of these ships are sold off instead of being scrapped, and over time this results in a "black market" for (very obsolete) ships, and weapon systems and such taken off the old ships.

1.) In every age, people complain about things and say that things aren't being done right. This does not mean they are right. There can be genuine complaints about lack of prize crews and Marines, that may or may not have a point. I do not doubt the utility of having dudes in power armor or spare crew-I simply think that the problem of having fewer of them is overblown.

For ship to ship combat with missile duels, the problem is not serious. For other missions (especially peacetime ones) it's a serious issue. Right now Manticore is in a desperate war for survival, fought by missiles and not by troop detachments. So the 'problem' with the design is real, it just isn't critical.

2.) The fact that the Manticore fleet isn't ripping out missile tubes to add bunks says a bit about how seriously they take these complaints in universe-I.E. Not Very. Now perhaps that is a bit unfair, but I have no doubt that if this was a Very Serious Problem, a solution could be found, even if it meant a temporary reduction in fighting strength. The fact that it just results in grumbling suggests to me that this isn't a serious problem, and that it may be compared to the chances of 'inertial dampener failure' that never materialized no matter how hard Honor pushed her ship.

It actually does come up in Shadow of Saganami. And in my opinion the characters are right to point out that it will come up again, should the wars ever stop and life for Manticore ever go 'back to normal.'

3.) The mission to police space and patrol regions seems to be to have been shouldered almost entirely by Manticore, operating very far from it's 'coaling stations'. This does not seem to be to be a logical or sustainable system, but whatever.

Manticore mostly did it in a single nearby volume of space, with ship cruises through that region of no more than a few months. The only other people who did it were the Andermani- the Manticorans' own rivals for influence in the region. So no wonder they didn't want to shuffle off the patrol duties onto the Andermani.

Complaining that single ships, which may be months from home, cannot capture and deal with multiple pirates or outlaws simultaneously seems disingenuous and missing the point. Manticore's self-appointed patrol mission seems to be overambitious.

I don't think you can say that without detailed knowledge of the tactical and strategic picture... which you don't have because you don't read the books.

4.) Given the complexity and the need for trained crews aboard these ships, I doubt that there should be much if any part commonality. A simple change in convention like a seven-sided bolt makes at one stroke a whole swath of spares and salvage nigh-useless except for refitting more salvage. Different voltages for electronic components would be another 'more trouble than they are worth fixing' problem.

Yes. The biggest case of captured ships seeing reuse is after the Third Battle of Yeltsin, where eleven PN heavy capital ships are taken in repairable condition and refurbished (over a period of about two years). They are extensively refitted and modified... but this is still cheaper than building new ones. And since all existing yards capable of building new ones are already working to do so, whereas the repairs and refits can be made in less developed facilities... yeah. It pays off to be capable of capturing the ships, and those ships see very real use as the war rolls on.

In this case, the ships are handed off to Grayson and Grayson supplies the crews.

And as Manticore is strapped for trained crews, how many captured ships can they expect to put into service anyways? Ten, twenty at the most? And five percent of the value of a ship can add up quickly-especially if you suddenly find yourself with 68 captured dreadnaughts and thousands of LACs as they did in the aftermath of the Battle of Manticore. Paying out to take those into service as a block probably didn't exist in the navy budget for that year, so where would the money come from?

Take out an emergency loan? Sell war bonds?

I mean hell, the budget to fix the damaged Mantie ships probably wasn't budgeted in advance. You seem to be confusing peacetime conditions (where if your budget doesn't allow something it doesn't happen) with wartime conditions (where if your budget conflicts with military necessity, so much the worse for your budget, you're going to take out another loan because it's that or die).

[eyl]

Pirates usually don't have very many prisoners...

It varies. Somalian pirates routinely kidnap and ransom people. It's a cheap revenue stream for them. Although to be fair, in the Honorverse it's more profitable to resell ships than to ransom people, unless the ransom you can get for a given person is WAY more than I'd expect.

I was thinking specifically of Honerverse pirates, who we've seen keeping priosners for ransom and/or slave crew.

And as Manticore is strapped for trained crews, how many captured ships can they expect to put into service anyways? Ten, twenty at the most? And five percent of the value of a ship can add up quickly-especially if you suddenly find yourself with 68 captured dreadnaughts and thousands of LACs as they did in the aftermath of the Battle of Manticore. Paying out to take those into service as a block probably didn't exist in the navy budget for that year, so where would the money come from?

Take out an emergency loan? Sell war bonds?

I mean hell, the budget to fix the damaged Mantie ships probably wasn't budgeted in advance. You seem to be confusing peacetime conditions (where if your budget doesn't allow something it doesn't happen) with wartime conditions (where if your budget conflicts with military necessity, so much the worse for your budget, you're going to take out another loan because it's that or die).

Actually, have there been any references to prize money in the later books? The last instance I remember was in book four or five. If not, it's possible the practise was discontinued to avoid breaking the budget, since Manticore is capturing a lot more ships, and is possibly putting less prizes into service as the war continues.

[andrewgpaul]

IIRC, it gets mentioned once or twice by Admiral Henke in the Saganami books, but only in a negative sense - no-one bothers trying to take Solarian ships as prizes, becasue there's no point; they're so old and useless that the Admiralty wouldn't buy them. By this point, the only enemy ships worth trying to capture would be Mesan Alignment ships, and they barely know they exist.

[Simon_Jester]

I would think that the 'prize' money for even scrap value would be worth something.

[Terralthra]

At some point, the cost of manning a ship from wherever the hell you captured it back to the shipyards in order to break it for scrap is more than just buying ore from the local asteroid extractor, I'd guess. Plus, especially for modern warships, their main hull isn't made of "just metal," as described many times, it's a complex alloy and composite material of nano-scale ceramics, metals, etc. Probably not easy to break for scrap and reuse.

[Batman]

'A Short Victorious War' emphasizes this. When 'Nike' needs one of her fusion plants fixed, they decide to come up from 'below' despite the fact that this means a fuckton of ripping out and later replacing internal conducts like wiring etc because it's still easier than going through her flank armour.

Also, when Mike captures Byng's task force at New Tuscany essentially untouched minus Byng's flagship, she decides not to scuttle the lot (other than the two she sent home for tech eval) mainly because she doesn't want to piss off the League even more, with no mention of that being a serious waste of reusable resources.
While refitting ships that are at or slightly below your tech level is apparently worthwhile, sending antiquated ones home for scrapping doesn't seem to be. And that makes sense to me-while 8 million tons of warship are a lot of resources from our POV, it's a drop in the ocean when you have an entire star system's resources (leave alone several) to play with. Especially when trying to recycle the damned thing ends up costing more than just throwing it away and building a new one out of local resources because it's too damned difficult to break apart.

[tim31]

So I'm up to book ten and here's a question you lot might have discussed already. Does anyone read characters in an accent? For instance, I tend to read most Manticorans in a Mid-Atlantic accent, though people like High Ridge et al tend to get an insufferable upper-class twit bent. Havenites are non descript(much of the same). Andies are obviously teutonic, and Graysons I tend to read with a hint of Texas/Georgia to them.

[Marko Dash]

Manties as varying degrees of british with some (ex. houseman) having the really posh nasally voice

[phongn]

Manties as varying degrees of british with some (ex. houseman) having the really posh nasally voice

Received pronunciation!

So I'm up to book ten and here's a question you lot might have discussed already. Does anyone read characters in an accent? For instance, I tend to read most Manticorans in a Mid-Atlantic accent, though people like High Ridge et al tend to get an insufferable upper-class twit bent. Havenites are non descript(much of the same). Andies are obviously teutonic, and Graysons I tend to read with a hint of Texas/Georgia to them.

Not really, but if I did...

Gryphon: Scottish
Manticore: English (with those in Landing (London) having a particularly polished accent)
Grayson: American West (aka Japan by way of Idaho)
Haven: French (aka France by way of North America)

[Ahriman238]

If anyone speaks a lot, with the exception of Honor, I tend to assign them a New England accent. But that's pure parochialism on my part. Otherwise I just assume a subdued French accent for Haven, British for Manticore, never really thought about Grayson.

[Batman]

Never thought about how accents sound much really even when they were explicitly mentioned. If I weren't Batman I wouldn't be a native speaker so the various comments on the accents (soft, harsh, guttural etc) don't really mean much to me. I think the closest I've come to assigning an accent to anybody is expecting the Andermani to have that terrible Hollywood fake german accent when speaking standard english given Weber didn't exactly go out of his way to make Andermani german adhere to current world german rules.

[Terralthra]

In the later books, Weber actually writes the Manticoran aristo accent when he writes Michael Oversteegan's dialogue.

[Mr Bean]

In the later books, Weber actually writes the Manticoran aristo accent when he writes Michael Oversteegan's dialogue.

And it's a southern drawl, a very Southern Gentlemen drawl.

[andrewgpaul]

It's also implied that it's a recent fad. I can't remember if it's simply that people are beginning to over-emphasise an existing accent, though, or if it's a completely new thing.

"Haven French" is apparently a thing - Victor Cachat apparently has a strong working-class accent, and I tended to assume the other Havenite characters, especially those with ethnically French names (Pierre and Saint-Just, for example) had similarly French accents. Andermanis to me tend to sound like someone from China speaking English having learned it from a German, and the others, nothing much.

[Esquire]

someone from China speaking English having learned it from a German

One of my friends from university was, in fact, a Chinese guy who'd learned English from a German friend of his, and I will now be unable to avoid reading all Andermani characters in his voice.

There's never a mention of some standard Solarian accent, is there? Because that would be clearly ridiculous.

[Ahriman238]

someone from China speaking English having learned it from a German

One of my friends from university was, in fact, a Chinese guy who'd learned English from a German friend of his, and I will now be unable to avoid reading all Andermani characters in his voice.

There's never a mention of some standard Solarian accent, is there? Because that would be clearly ridiculous.

Clearly all the Sollies sound like they come from Chicago. Or the American Midwest.

[andrewgpaul]

I was just lazy and assumed they had the sort of accent implied by their name; Innokentiy Kolokoltsov is Russian, Admiral Rajampet is Indian, etc.

On another note, I've been obviously reading too much old Asimov and John Scalzi; I sort of want Earth to secede from the Solarian League.

[Batman]

What part of their name do you base the accent on? For the Andermani alone we have a good load of combinations of chinese first and german (sort of) last names. And what about the ambiguous ones? Victor Caslet could be an english name as well as a french one. Alfredo Yu? Yu is pretty much asian, but Alfredo could be anything spanish/italian/south-american. 'Thomas Theisman' is english (or possibly dutch) thanks to the spelling, but turn it into 'Thomas Theissmann' and guess what, it looks german.
He did say he was just being lazy, Master Bruce.
And I never said he wasn't entitled to be,did I? I'm just pointing out that name=nationality=accent associations are very dubious even today, leave alone 2,000 years in the future.

[andrewgpaul]

Eh, it's all fictional, and the voices are only inside my head. The less-obvious ones are generically mid-Atlantic, I suppose. As you say, it's 2,000 years in the future, so they almost certainly won't "really" have recognisable accents anyway.

[Irbis]

Recruit guest workers...from where? It's clear from the very beginning that a large part of why the RMN is superior to the PN/RHN is that the crews are better educated and trained from birth. The educational system of the SKM/SEM is simply leagues better than the PRH/RH. Recruiting guest workers and mercenary naval/marine personnel would dilute that advantage, assuming they even measured up to begin with. Silesians have a shit educational system, the Talbott "Cluster" is too far away, also practically neobarb. Andermani are at best a neutral power until quite late in the series (and has its own navy to man), the PRH/RH is an enemy (and has lower educational standards)(and they take some defectors anyway), the core Solarian League is so powerful and peaceful it's doubtful many would want to leave...where are these magical mercenaries who are up to the RMN's standards for technology (of the ships and equipment) and education (of the people)?

From where? Ooh boy, where to start there are so many possibilities. One: that little thing called 'Manticoran Alliance'. You know, all these dozens of systems you can find on the map from book 3 onwards? I am sure their tech base is worse than Manticore, but their top 5-10% workers should be easily as good as your average Manty. Two: Erewhon. Also allied, very rich due to having their own wormhole terminal, formerly part of Solarian League, so should have good technology, too. Three: Beowulf. You know, that ridiculously friendly, very high tech world right on the other side of terminal? Solarian League leader in many technology categories? You're not going to tell me they're neobarbs, too? Four: Haven. You know, the state from where all the best, brightest workers were running from, according to early books? That wanted more money? Well, guess who has the most money in neighbourhood

Take WW II Ireland for instance - it had cold relationship with UK, yet many thousands of Irish soldiers and sailors choose to 'desert' to fight for Queen and co. Why Beowulf can't arrange for a few thousands of their navy personnel to 'defect' clandestinely along with a lot of their shipyard guys to help their best buds in need? Or hell, why Manticore simply won't pay to establish shipyard subcontractors (no need to move workers) manufacturing less critical tech in Beowulf space, free from all attacks, to concentrate on critical tech? They were supposed to have more money than manpower, no?

Also, to respond (waaaay) back to Irbis's point about the "retcon" of Second Hancock. Oliver Diamato doesn't have a touching scene where he gets the mangled fleet out of the LAC/MDM/superdreadnought trap. He has a touching scene after Admiral Kellet is killed and Captain Hall is mortally wounded in which she makes him promise to get her people out, and then he gets to satisfactorily blow LAC-001 Harpy, Capt. Harmon's LAC, out of space, before it cuts away to the other attacks.

It's foreshadowed throughout the entire attack that the second in command of the fleet, Admiral Porter, is a complete dumbass, and Captain Hall specifically lies about Admiral Kellet's death in order to keep from passing command to him as long as she can (echoing Honor's actions in First Hancock in SVW). Once she (and her commissioner) are killed in the hit on the bridge, Diamato has no option to avoid passing command, even if he didn't get injured himself shortly thereafter (he does). That Porter would order a scatter (and in effect toss away Kellet and Hall's efforts to get as much of their command out as possible) is easily foreseeable from the foreshadowing earlier in the book.

To sum up, I don't see the off-page order to scatter from the incompetent Admiral and subsequent nearly-complete destruction of that task force as a retcon at all, more as (predictable) extra information not given in that set of scenes.

No option? He just got direct order from his superior - somehow, Honor in the same situation peed all over her superiors to get results. Ok, Diamato might not be Mary Sue so he might not have such callous indifference for command structure, but my point was that somehow Manty LAC were armed with hard-drive erasing magnets as Diamato's fleet turns out to have no useful info on them despite dozens of repeated attacks (I guess that scene where Diamato has good enough sensor lock to kill the LAC with manual fire didn't happen then, much less how his by hand targeting was somehow better than computer-controlled one despite LAC speed).

That in the same book where identical ships attacking fort/fleet group under extremely heavy ECM can still pick ship/class signatures at far greater distance. The point McQueen gets to discuss in following book with St Just is especially laughable - they argue how strong energy weapons LAC had were, as if there was no full fleet of shot ships in port to simply measure holes and establish how strong the weapons were with 99% certainty

Also, there is the fact that just a single small carrier wing of LACs did damage far greater than they did in any of the following books where much greater more advanced LAC forces do much less to proportionally not that much stronger ships

[Terralthra]

Recruit guest workers...from where? It's clear from the very beginning that a large part of why the RMN is superior to the PN/RHN is that the crews are better educated and trained from birth. The educational system of the SKM/SEM is simply leagues better than the PRH/RH. Recruiting guest workers and mercenary naval/marine personnel would dilute that advantage, assuming they even measured up to begin with. Silesians have a shit educational system, the Talbott "Cluster" is too far away, also practically neobarb. Andermani are at best a neutral power until quite late in the series (and has its own navy to man), the PRH/RH is an enemy (and has lower educational standards)(and they take some defectors anyway), the core Solarian League is so powerful and peaceful it's doubtful many would want to leave...where are these magical mercenaries who are up to the RMN's standards for technology (of the ships and equipment) and education (of the people)?

From where? Ooh boy, where to start there are so many possibilities. One: that little thing called 'Manticoran Alliance'. You know, all these dozens of systems you can find on the map from book 3 onwards? I am sure their tech base is worse than Manticore, but their top 5-10% workers should be easily as good as your average Manty. Two: Erewhon. Also allied, very rich due to having their own wormhole terminal, formerly part of Solarian League, so should have good technology, too. Three: Beowulf. You know, that ridiculously friendly, very high tech world right on the other side of terminal? Solarian League leader in many technology categories? You're not going to tell me they're neobarbs, too? Four: Haven. You know, the state from where all the best, brightest workers were running from, according to early books? That wanted more money? Well, guess who has the most money in neighbourhood

In reverse order:
Beowulf: The most productive economy per capita does not equal the most money. It's mentioned (repeatedly) that while the SKM/SEM has a bigger economy per capita, it vanishes against the sheer size of the League's economy. It's doubtful the standard of living is any different between the two. More to the point, people do emigrate from Beowulf to Manticore, like, you know, Allison Chou Harrington? But not all that many, and "recruiting incentives" to leave what is widely regarded as the pinnacle of civilization would have to be massive.

Erewhon: not as highly-teched as Manticore (as shown when they flip alliances), and recruiting from your own allies is robbing peter to pay paul. They have some guest naval officers, and I'm sure there's migration back and forth between the star nations, but a recruiting drive from your ally's civilian population is going to weaken them to strengthen you, and that's not really a net gain.

Other allies: Most of them are even more marginal economies, as strapped or more for educated people as Manticore. Taking the top 5-10% would cripple their economy, and not make things that much better for Manticore. Most don't have a dedicated navy beyond orbital patrol ships; Manticore gave them system defense old-style LACs when they joined, and that was an upgrade! Plus, there's the "robbing peter to pay paul" element, as mentioned above.

Take WW II Ireland for instance - it had cold relationship with UK, yet many thousands of Irish soldiers and sailors choose to 'desert' to fight for Queen and co. Why Beowulf can't arrange for a few thousands of their navy personnel to 'defect' clandestinely along with a lot of their shipyard guys to help their best buds in need? Or hell, why Manticore simply won't pay to establish shipyard subcontractors (no need to move workers) manufacturing less critical tech in Beowulf space, free from all attacks, to concentrate on critical tech? They were supposed to have more money than manpower, no?

No doubt a few thousands do, but that's a drop in the bucket. A few thousand navy personnel are enough for 1, maybe 2 non-automation SDs.

Also, to respond (waaaay) back to Irbis's point about the "retcon" of Second Hancock. Oliver Diamato doesn't have a touching scene where he gets the mangled fleet out of the LAC/MDM/superdreadnought trap. He has a touching scene after Admiral Kellet is killed and Captain Hall is mortally wounded in which she makes him promise to get her people out, and then he gets to satisfactorily blow LAC-001 Harpy, Capt. Harmon's LAC, out of space, before it cuts away to the other attacks.

It's foreshadowed throughout the entire attack that the second in command of the fleet, Admiral Porter, is a complete dumbass, and Captain Hall specifically lies about Admiral Kellet's death in order to keep from passing command to him as long as she can (echoing Honor's actions in First Hancock in SVW). Once she (and her commissioner) are killed in the hit on the bridge, Diamato has no option to avoid passing command, even if he didn't get injured himself shortly thereafter (he does). That Porter would order a scatter (and in effect toss away Kellet and Hall's efforts to get as much of their command out as possible) is easily foreseeable from the foreshadowing earlier in the book.

To sum up, I don't see the off-page order to scatter from the incompetent Admiral and subsequent nearly-complete destruction of that task force as a retcon at all, more as (predictable) extra information not given in that set of scenes.

No option? He just got direct order from his superior - somehow, Honor in the same situation peed all over her superiors to get results. Ok, Diamato might not be Mary Sue so he might not have such callous indifference for command structure, but my point was that somehow Manty LAC were armed with hard-drive erasing magnets as Diamato's fleet turns out to have no useful info on them despite dozens of repeated attacks (I guess that scene where Diamato has good enough sensor lock to kill the LAC with manual fire didn't happen then, much less how his by hand targeting was somehow better than computer-controlled one despite LAC speed).

A direct order to "get my people out" from a ship's captain does not overrule an order a minute later from the Admiral in command of the fleet to scatter. Also, Kellet's battleship gets blown up. Did you miss that? A heavy cruiser (if I recall correctly) docks for a few minutes to take on wounded (since the CA has had its armament gutted, but still has all its alpha nodes), while Schaumberg has lost an alpha node and can't flee. It's never said that they don't have sensor data, it's said that it's fragmented and incomplete. The board was more concerned with whitewashing Porter's reputation than accurate info, and Saint-Just is attacking McQueen's conclusions about the LACs because he doesn't trust her, more than because he doesn't trust the data.

That in the same book where identical ships attacking fort/fleet group under extremely heavy ECM can still pick ship/class signatures at far greater distance. The point McQueen gets to discuss in following book with St Just is especially laughable - they argue how strong energy weapons LAC had were, as if there was no full fleet of shot ships in port to simply measure holes and establish how strong the weapons were with 99% certainty

Energy weapons don't leave neat holes. They vaporize what they hit and blow ginormous holes. And no one argues that they were hit with powerful energy weapons. The argument is that there's no way that an LAC can be armed with such a powerful weapon, after squeezing a fusion plant and beta nodes and so on into it. The argument, by the way, was correct - there is no way to squeeze both in.

Also, there is the fact that just a single small carrier wing of LACs did damage far greater than they did in any of the following books where much greater more advanced LAC forces do much less to proportionally not that much stronger ships

Man, it would be so brutal if that was true. Unfortunately, it isn't. The wing does great because its opponents don't know what's hitting them. There's no doctrine for LAC defense. Against similarly unprepared forces, the wings of LACs at MacGregor pot a full squadron of SDs, BBs, and BCs with minimal losses.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Theisman even thinks in that same book (Ashes of Victory) that while the LACs seem like superweapons, it's likely that their success so far has been largely a matter of surprise and unconventional tactics, and that properly formed walls will be able to negate their advantages, just like Truman said to her staff during the working up of Project Anzio. Everyone involved, from flag staff on down, knows that LACs won't be able to overturn the wall of battle, once they know what's coming and how to defend against it. 2nd Hancock, the Peeps didn't know what was coming, let alone know how to defend against it.

[Batman]

The situation after Second Hancock for the Peeps was rather similar to what the current situation is for the League-it's not like they didn't have the data, the Powers That Unfortunately Were just didn't want to believe it and rather than admit that yep, we screwed up by the numbers, tried to bury and discredit those numbers rather than admit that yes, they're that outclassed, and yes, their proteges acted that abysmally stupid.