Now that you mention it, yes. They're treated as people who can meaningfully contribute to a plan and give advice that humans will take seriously, rather than as "talking pets who are smarter than you think!"
I think Weber has a hard time picturing the treecats as more than a type of 'noble savage.'
The very fact that there are another sapient species of tool users which are capable of communication and cooperation with humans should have caused a massive impact on the collective psyche of humanity. Even if it was dismissed by Haven, the Solarians, and other nations, how come manticore isn't that affected by the news?
The very fact that there are another sapient species of tool users which are capable of communication and cooperation with humans should have caused a massive impact on the collective psyche of humanity. Even if it was dismissed by Haven, the Solarians, and other nations, how come manticore isn't that affected by the news?
He drops the ball on that a lot. The most interesting part of the Dahak series was the civilization being built by the Earth-Humans, the few surviving ancient Imperial-Humans, the free Achuultani, and the uplifted dogs, with different humans various degrees of ambivalent-to-hostile about those latter two groups. He just didn't dig into it much, beyond the eeeeeevil bad guys wanting to kill the free Achuultani because.
The very fact that there are another sapient species of tool users which are capable of communication and cooperation with humans should have caused a massive impact on the collective psyche of humanity. Even if it was dismissed by Haven, the Solarians, and other nations, how come manticore isn't that affected by the news?
Well yes, but I think the point is more along the lines of why would the Manticorians have a "MIND=BLOWN" moment over the treecats when there are clearly other examples of non-human sophont life out there in known space?
Honestly, I think Weber just has kind of a mind-block with the idea of the "primitive natives" having independent agency either as individuals or as a collective people. That doesn't mean the natives are bad or deserve bad treatment in his mind, but he tends to think of them as part of the scenery except when he's specifically focusing on them.
I think it would have been mildly hilarious if one of the novel naval technologies Manticore (read: Honor) supported ended up being a dud while the Havenites ended up creating a winner.
I think it would have been mildly hilarious if one of the novel naval technologies Manticore (read: Honor) supported ended up being a dud while the Havenites ended up creating a winner.
At the risk of stretching the point rather badly, one could claim that the antiship LAC ends up becoming this. While the graser-armed Shrikes are very effective during the end of the First Manticore-Haven War when Haven has no doctrinal preparation against them, and remain effective against light screening combatants, by a few books later we're finding that they just don't do well against enemy fleets that are well prepared to shoot them down.
The LAC concept that, so to speak, survives to have descendants is the LAC as a supporting fleet defense platform and supplement to screening combatant forces. Which arguably owes as much to the Havenite Cimeterre as it does to the Grayson Katana, and a little to the Manticoran Ferret.
So this is a bit different, I want to post what an actual reasonable fleet combat could have been if Weber was a bit smarter.
So instead of every fleet just building SDs and such then broadsiding the enemy. Lighter fleet units are actually crucial. Because lighter units have faster acceleration they can sprint ahead and cross the T of the enemy wall. (Side note how does the wall communicate? Like the top and bottom is covered with wedges so each ship can only communicate with the front and back of each formation, much simpler to just do a line of battle IMO)
The lighter units BC and down will hide on the other side of the wall, then when the Wallers engage to pin down the enemy wall. The lighter units detach and sprint ahead while leaving a reserve, this detachment is only as fast as its slowest ship so uniform ship composition is preferable, but larger ships can tip the balance so a wise composition is necessary.
The enemy sees this and deploys their own light units to intercept. Each detachment is grouped together to avoid defeat in detail, but it is possible for a savvy commander to hide a reserve to overcome the enemy wall's reserve and have them decelerate to cross the T while the enemy is distracted.
The light unit detachment engages and the victor that comes out can determine the course of the battle. If you win and the remaining units can easily defeat the enemy's reserve of light units then you've won, at this point the enemy will likely disengage and run while using their reserve to protect their T. And then you can do another engagement to take out their reserve and then force their surrender by crossing their T. This is a tough choice because then you're engaging light units who can broadside you as well as Waller sized supporting missiles that can probably one shot a light unit.
But if you win and the survivors can't overwhelm the enemy's reserves then it falls back to the wall to screen while each wall engages each other in battle.
I call this the outrider strategy like ancient cavalry outriders.
So what do you think, this could have been so much more interesting than what Weber gave us. Honor could have been forced to make hard choices by ordering her reserve to commit or ordering surviving outrider light units to engage a retreating wall. It also gives a good reason for why BC and down ships exists instead of just Wallers everywhere.
Lucky? I dunno know about that, I just proposed my outrider plan so that light units of the fleet aren't useless and doesn't make every captain/CO other than Honor bots that just follows the formation and does nothing other than trade missiles again and again.
So this is a bit different, I want to post what an actual reasonable fleet combat could have been if Weber was a bit smarter.
So instead of every fleet just building SDs and such then broadsiding the enemy. Lighter fleet units are actually crucial. Because lighter units have faster acceleration they can sprint ahead and cross the T of the enemy wall. (Side note how does the wall communicate? Like the top and bottom is covered with wedges so each ship can only communicate with the front and back of each formation, much simpler to just do a line of battle IMO)
The lighter units BC and down will hide on the other side of the wall, then when the Wallers engage to pin down the enemy wall. The lighter units detach and sprint ahead while leaving a reserve, this detachment is only as fast as its slowest ship so uniform ship composition is preferable, but larger ships can tip the balance so a wise composition is necessary.
The enemy sees this and deploys their own light units to intercept. Each detachment is grouped together to avoid defeat in detail, but it is possible for a savvy commander to hide a reserve to overcome the enemy wall's reserve and have them decelerate to cross the T while the enemy is distracted.
The light unit detachment engages and the victor that comes out can determine the course of the battle. If you win and the remaining units can easily defeat the enemy's reserve of light units then you've won, at this point the enemy will likely disengage and run while using their reserve to protect their T. And then you can do another engagement to take out their reserve and then force their surrender by crossing their T. This is a tough choice because then you're engaging light units who can broadside you as well as Waller sized supporting missiles that can probably one shot a light unit.
But if you win and the survivors can't overwhelm the enemy's reserves then it falls back to the wall to screen while each wall engages each other in battle.
I call this the outrider strategy like ancient cavalry outriders.
So what do you think, this could have been so much more interesting than what Weber gave us. Honor could have been forced to make hard choices by ordering her reserve to commit or ordering surviving outrider light units to engage a retreating wall. It also gives a good reason for why BC and down ships exists instead of just Wallers everywhere.
1) This isn't precedented from the historic Age of Sail; real fleets didn't normally do this during the era when the line of battle dominated. There were good reasons for that which I could go into if you're interested, but they're technical and not specific to the Honorverse, so I'm leaving them off for now.
2) From a geometric perspective this kind of maneuver wouldn't necessarily work. It would depend on the relative closing speeds of the two fleets, and the combat ranges are long enough that ships would have to make this type of maneuver well in advance. Sending a group of lighter combatants around to get a better firing angle on the enemy means that they can see your lighter elements and fire on them with their own capital ship weapons. Well, that, or you need to do this far in advance, which means that the enemy is in a position to trap your lighter units or pound on them. For an example of how badly this kind of thing can go in real naval warfare when ship speeds are low enough that it takes double-digit minutes to pass through the enemy's gun range and the enemy can see out to the horizon, look at how badly both sides' battlecruisers got chewed up at Jutland. Due to one thing and another, both sides wound up exposing their maneuverable (but roughly battleship-sized) battlecruisers to the full fire of the enemy main line of battle, and both sides lost ships in the process.
There may be more problems with this idea; dunno. Suffice to say that you seem to be imagining Honorverse fleet formations as semi-static "castles" that a faster fleet can maneuver around the way a horseman can maneuver around a foot soldier on the open plains. It's not that simple when both sides have significant relative velocities and just have different accelerations.
Lucky? I dunno know about that, I just proposed my outrider plan so that light units of the fleet aren't useless and doesn't make every captain/CO other than Honor bots that just follows the formation and does nothing other than trade missiles again and again.
Light units are already not useless in the setting, because they do nearly everything that isn't closing with the enemy and slamming into their own main battlefleet in a decisive naval battle. Escort and raiding, scouting and picketing, operations outside of full-scale formal warfare...
Sending a group of lighter combatants around to get a better firing angle on the enemy means that they can see your lighter elements and fire on them with their own capital ship weapons.
Yes they can see them but they're being fired on by the enemy wall. Which is why wallers are still needed to pin down the enemy Wall. As for relative velocity those do exist but with enough acceleration velocity can be changed and unless a SD can match the acceleration of a destroyer the enemy will also need light units to escort.
I should be more clear, there is a role for light units, but my main grip is the number of light units like there exists destroyers, light cruisers and heavy cruisers. Any one of the roles you mentioned could have been filled with one of those roles. And apparently raiding is out of the question because a lighter ship can't handle a heavier ship, I don't remember exactly where but Weber mentioned that a DN could have easily wiped out 3 peep BCs.
The outrider battle doctrine provides a reason for those classes to exist.
At the end of the day, I'm no space battle tactician so this is just fiction and opinion of what could have been a more interesting naval combat system that Weber could have implemented.
Well yes, but it's not a point in the doctrine's favor. I wouldn't consider that relevant except that it also doesn't work that well within the context of the setting's physics.
Yes they can see them but they're being fired on by the enemy wall. Which is why wallers are still needed to pin down the enemy Wall. As for relative velocity those do exist but with enough acceleration velocity can be changed and unless a SD can match the acceleration of a destroyer the enemy will also need light units to escort.
Remember that the enemy wall of battle can turn and even bend, potentially. The ships can maneuver to engage, and unless you have highly specific relative positions between your wall of battle, your flanking formation, and the enemy wall of battle, guaranteeing favorable firing angles for one or either of your fleets while avoiding getting your flanking formation pounded into scrap metal by the enemy wall's massed fire is going to be... tricky.
Complex three-dimensional movement in a setting where ships have a maximum acceleration but not a maximum speed does not lend itself to being able to freely reposition yourself with respect to the enemy as though their feet were nailed to the floor. Not always.
I should be more clear, there is a role for light units, but my main grip is the number of light units like there exists destroyers, light cruisers and heavy cruisers. Any one of the roles you mentioned could have been filled with one of those roles. And apparently raiding is out of the question because a lighter ship can't handle a heavier ship, I don't remember exactly where but Weber mentioned that a DN could have easily wiped out 3 peep BCs.
Destroyers exist, doctrinally, as the smallest reasonably practical combat-capable unit with a hyperdrive. Subject to the constraint that it needs to be big enough that it is virtually certain not to lose a shootout with a LAC, which is the smallest practical ship without a hyperdrive but large enough to credibly carry ship-killing weapons.
Light cruisers tend to occupy a high/low mix with destroyers, being of broadly comparable tonnage. They ARE to some extent interchangeable, but there are missions that suit one better than the other- for example, the risk of encountering heavier enemy fleet combatants makes the light cruiser more desirable, but if this risk is low, the destroyer is a much more practical choice. Any given fleet may also differentiate destroyers and light cruisers in other ways. For instance, a light cruiser has more internal volume for small craft and a marine detachment, both of which are valuable in certain missions it may be called upon to perform, and with which a destroyer might struggle.
Heavy cruisers seem to generally be slotted in as "the minimum practical combatant that is nearly impossible for a destroyer or light cruiser to kill." This requires a major step up in tonnage from the light cruiser, and a significant increase in defenses and protection scheme.
Battlecruisers occupy the "biggest ship we can give an acceptably high acceleration to, such that we consider it impractical for enemy capital ships to catch up and get the thing into missile range unless they are very lucky with initial position or ambush us or something."
...
Notably, the reason why "minimum practical combatant" shows up twice on this list is that heavier ships are more expensive, both to build and to maintain. A ship cannot be in two places at the same time. One ship that costs X to build and Y to maintain is sometimes much less useful than ten ships that all, put together, cost 1.2X to built and 1.2Y to maintain. Even if the big single ship would win in a cage match against the ten lighter ships.
If the RMN built Only Battlecruisers for all its screening and light combatant missions, it would find its screen combatant budget to be unreasonably high. If the RMN built Only Destroyers, it would find itself routinely having to lose destroyers in situations where a force with heavier units (but still much lighter than capital ships) would have survived.
The issue with lighter ships in HH is that they get thrown next to the wall of battle to act as point defense thickening and expensively crewed ablative decoys for the ships that matter there. They do their actual job just fine(or at least reasonable adequately) but every Admiral in the setting uses them to avoid scuffed paint or at most a .5% decrease in combat effectiveness from the missile that just blew up up to a thousand critical specialists.
I think it would have been mildly hilarious if one of the novel naval technologies Manticore (read: Honor) supported ended up being a dud while the Havenites ended up creating a winner.
I've maintained for *years* that CLACs and that entire branch of doctrines should have been a *Havenite* innovation. They've done it before with Masadan LACs, and they prove to be able to match Manticorean LACs later with a change in design doctrine instead of radical new technologies.
It doesn't *require* radical new technologies, and it provides a counter to Manticore's missile advantage that stems from things they've already done and gives them a more even engagement field instead of... Manticore simply being always superior while the Havenite navy' main strategy in the war is to scream "That's impossible!" and then explode.
Complex three-dimensional movement in a setting where ships have a maximum acceleration but not a maximum speed does not lend itself to being able to freely reposition yourself with respect to the enemy as though their feet were nailed to the floor. Not always.
They do have a maximum speed, actually. You still can't actually exceed c in a given reference frame; hyperspace dodges the issue by giving you a nested series of reference frame where things are successively closer together. And as a practical matter, the radiation shielding Honorverse ships use can't adequately protect computers and/or people traveling above 0.8c, so they treat that as their maximum speed.
They do have a maximum speed, actually. You still can't actually exceed c in a given reference frame; hyperspace dodges the issue by giving you a nested series of reference frame where things are successively closer together. And as a practical matter, the radiation shielding Honorverse ships use can't adequately protect computers and/or people traveling above 0.8c, so they treat that as their maximum speed.
From a tactical standpoint, real world land and sea military units reach their maximum speed very quickly. A WWI dreadnought or a cavalry squadron can move at any speed they are capable of moving at, on a few minutes' notice, if they are already active and ready for combat.
Honorverse starships have a notional maximum speed of ~240,000 km/s or so, and accelerations in the range of single digit kilometers per second squared. As such, they take several hours to reach 'maximum speed' and by the time they have done so, they're already on the other side of the solar system and out of the immediately relevant battlespace.
This makes the problem of maneuvering for positional advantage much more complicated. A tactician must be conscious at all times that being "faster" is a matter of having both a velocity advantage (whatever that means in a 3D vector space, as it may not just mean "I am moving faster relative to the star than you") and an acceleration advantage. Depending on the enemy's existing velocity vector, and your own, you may not be able to use superior acceleration to reposition in an advantageous manner, or you may not be able to gain enough advantage to offset disadvantages such as "your ships are flimsy compared to his and will get blown to pieces in a missile exchange with his wall of battle."
The concept we're discussing, I would argue, breaks down because it oversimplifies what it means to say that a lighter Honorverse ship is "faster and more maneuverable" and posits advantages these lighter ships don't actually possess, by projecting onto "faster and more maneuverable" Honorverse warships traits that a "faster and more maneuverable" fighting unit in real life land or sea warfare might possess.
1) This isn't precedented from the historic Age of Sail; real fleets didn't normally do this during the era when the line of battle dominated. There were good reasons for that which I could go into if you're interested, but they're technical and not specific to the Honorverse, so I'm leaving them off for now.
This is incorrect. While no one necessarily managed it (sort of, more on that later) as a fleet-scale formation in the Age of Sail, it was actually reasonably common for single ship and small squadron actions. It was also the focus of significant tactical thought to achieve through the following Steam and Steel period and was successfully executed in open water at a fleet level at both Yellow Sea and Tsushima. Japan would demand a slight speed advantage clean to Yamato because of that and it would remain a part of battleship design through to the Iowa-class, the "fast wing" meant to prevent Japan's own fast but relatively weak Kongos from shaping a battle line engagement by obtaining superior positioning. (Yet with only minimal improvements in guns and none in armor over South Dakota.) This was a major part of Japan's reason for keeping torpedoes on their heavy cruisers as well; their 34-knot heavy cruisers could maneuver before the enemy line of battle to obtain optimal firing position and either break it up or force it to absorb torpedo fire.
But also it's kind of Nelson's thing, and thus the RMN as the Royal Navy In Space should be all over it.
Of Nelson's greatest victories, both the Nile and Trafalgar turned on the superior mobility of his fleet units rather than material advantage. At the Nile, this was no great feat, because his opponents were anchored, but it still has to be noted that by giving up the mobility advantage they let Nelson destroy them piecemeal with arguably inferior vessels ganging up on their apparent betters being a recurrent feature. At Trafalgar, Nelson relied on the superior seamanship of his crews and the superior sailing characteristics of his ships (Victory, his flagship, was noted to have on occasion run down frigates on the open sea) to break into the Franco-Spanish line and allow his ships, many of them weaker in absolute terms of guns and weight of broadside but because of the skills of their crews much stronger in prolonged action by their rate of fire, to initiate the sort of close action that would favor their individual skills and prevent easy escape by the Franco-Spanish fleet.
Well, the cat adventures continue. Just the other day I go out of my car at work only to hear a loud SCREEEEEECH!!!! I look around and see a black cat and a tabby staring each other down, and then suddenly a calico darts out from under one of the bushes. A territorial dispute? Two tomcats fighting over a queen? Who knows!
Anyway, chapter 2 begins with HH feeling a bit nervous before getting back into the groove:
She brought her mental babbling to a stern halt and admitted the truth. She didn't feel just "strange"; she felt worried, and under her joy at getting back into space, butterflies mated in her midsection. She'd put in all the simulation hours she'd been allowed between bouts of surgery and therapy, but that wasn't as many as she would have liked. Unfortunately, it was hard to argue with your physician when he was also your father, and even if Doctor Harrington had allowed all the sim time she wanted, simulators weren't the same as reality.
Indeed, simulators certainly aren't reality. In mean, in flight sims like DCS, you can freely turn your head while pulling nine Gs, and according to a real fighter pilot that sort of thing would likely snap your neck. And there's no CO to bust your balls when you do stupid stuff.
They're gonna laugh SO HARD when we drop in here unannounced!
Also, "butterflies mated in her midsection" is a REALLY odd way to phrase it.
The Nike is being refitted at Haphaestus, the Royal Manticoran Navy's largest shipyard, and at this point the dockworkers are simply putting on the finishing touches. Rather ominously, the book mentions that there is "no time" for any sort of space trials or evaluation before putting it into service.
"Permission to come aboard, Ma'am?" Honor asked very formally as she lowered her hand from the salute.
"Permission granted, Milady," the commander replied in a soft, furry contralto, and stepped back to clear the entry port.
It was an oddly gracious gesture on a subordinate's part. Not consciously so, but on an almost instinctive level, and Honor hid another smile. She stood a good fourteen centimeters taller than the other woman, but she'd never had the same presence, the same easy ability to dominate the space about her, and she doubted she ever would.
I've heard voices described as "gravelly" or "chocolatey" before, but never "furry."
The Manticore Colony, Ltd., had drawn its original settlers primarily from Old Earth's western hemisphere, and five hundred T-years had gone far towards pureeing the original colonists' genetic heritages. There were exceptions—such as Honor herself, whose emigrant mother was of almost pure Old Earth Asian extraction by way of the ancient colony world of Beowulf—but by and large it was difficult to estimate anyone's ancestry at a glance.
Her new exec was an exception, however. Through whatever trick of genetics, Commander The Honorable Michelle Henke was a throwback to her first Manticoran ancestor's genotype. Her skin was barely a shade lighter than her space-black uniform, her hair was even curlier than Honor's . . . and there was no mistaking the clean-cut, distinctive features of the House of Winton.
The second paragraph makes me feel oddly uncomfortable. Like, couldn't you just remark that this woman is black without referring to her genetic heritage? Maybe it's just me, but seeing someone who looks different from you and thinking, "Hmm, I wonder what their genetics are like?" is a really weird way to think. It's like my boomer dad asking every non-white person with an accent, "So, where are you from?" It's not necessarily racist, just weird.
He was tall, even for an American, this despite his father's very average height and his mother's petite build. Some had suggested – in hushed tones and never to his face, of course – that it was because his mother had long ago taken an … interest in the very tall mailman who'd graced their neighborhood mail delivery route for so many years.
She takes her seat in the captain's chair, sounds the all-hands chime, and reads aloud their orders.
She pushed the thought aside and unfolded her orders, the sound of the paper loud in the stillness, and began to read in a calm, clear voice.
"'From Admiral Sir Lucien Cortez, Fifth Space Lord, Royal Manticoran Navy, to Captain Dame Honor Harrington, Countess Harrington, KCR, MC, SG, DSO, CGM, Royal Manticoran Navy, Twenty-First Day, Sixth Month, Year Two Hundred and Eighty-Two After Landing. Madam: You are hereby directed and required to proceed aboard Her Majesty's Starship Nike, BC-Four-One-Three, there to take upon yourself the duties and responsibilities of commanding officer in the service of the Crown. Fail not in this charge at your peril. By order of Lady Francine Maurier, Baroness Morncreek, First Lord of Admiralty, Royal Manticoran Navy, for Her Majesty the Queen.'"
I must admit, I do like how the ships' captains still read their orders from a parchment scroll despite the presence of advanced technology. It feels like one of things a real navy would keep around simply for the sake of tradition, like how many navies will scold people for putting their elbows on the messroom table...unless they gone around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.
We're then introduced to the senior officers: Engineer Ravicz, Tac Officer Chandler, Surgeon Commander Montoya, Lt. Colonel Klein, commander of the Nike's marine detachment, Comm Officer Monet, Astrogator Oselli, and Logistics Officer Jasper.
With that out of the way, we learn that Honor and Henke know each other from their Saganami days:
They'd been roommates at Saganami Island for over three T-years, and Henke had spent hours trying to beat the fundamentals of multi-dimensional math into her shy, towering roommate, and even more hours unveiling the mysteries of etiquette and social interaction. Honor's yeoman ancestry hadn't prepared her for interaction with the nobility, and she'd often wondered if that was one reason the Academy adjutant had paired her with Henke, but whether it had been intentional or not, she knew how much Michelle's easy, breezy confidence had helped her.
I always find it amusing when writers zero in on mathematics as a subject their characters struggle with. I can empathise; I struggled a lot with math in school, and a think a lot of it had to do with how it was taught. We spent seven years learning to do arithmetic by rote, then we covered a smidgeon of algebra in eighth grade, and then suddenly you get thrown into high school math, where rote learning will no longer suffice. And the thing about math is that it builds upon itself, perhaps more so than any other subject. To understand a derivative, for example, you must understand the concept of a limit. To understand a limit, you have to understand a function. To understand a function, you need to have a solid grasp on algebra. And so on and so on.
As a privilege of captaining a battlecruiser, Honor's accomodations are likewise luxurious:
Her personal gear had filled her last set of quarters to the point of crowding; here, it looked almost spartan. Expensive carpet covered the decksole, and a huge painting of the original Nike's final action in the Battle of Carson dominated one bulkhead, faced from across the cabin by a state portrait of Elizabeth III, Queen of Manticore. A portrait, Honor noted, which bore a striking resemblance to her own exec.
IIRC there is a portrait bust of the monarch (engraved in steel on oak backing rather than a painting) displayed in each of the Captain's and Admiral's dining rooms on the QE class carriers.
