Ship of the Line

[Lord Avalon]

I thought the Solarian League had the best tech, Manticore being next. Anyway, if Manticore didn't have a tech advantage, the Peeps would just have overwhelmed them with superior numbers, and there wouldn't have been much of a series.

[wodan11]

Good point, Lord Avalon.

Anyway no the Solarian League definitely did NOT have the best tech. They had a few "edges" such as the spy sats they secretly sold to Haven. But they drooled to get copies of Manticoran equipment so they could reverse engineer it.

Anyway it's not like Manticore had a monopoly on tech across the board. They focused on shipbuilding and war tech because they had known for 50 years that war with Haven was coming.

Mesa, for example, had the edge on gengineering, Beowulf on medicine and genetic repair, etc.

Wodan

[joncnunn]

Wow, this thread has gotten way off topic.

Anyway, realative order of military techs at beginning of series

1. Manties
2. Solies
3. Andys
4. Haven
5. Endicott[sp?]
6. Grayson

Realtive order of military techs at beginning of "At All Costs"

1. Grayson [boosted by Manties ]
2. Manties [mostly because of tech stagnation during High Ridge Govt]
3. Haven
4. Andies
5. Solies [long term military tech stagnation]
6. Endicott[sp?]

At end of "At all Costs", Manties would be back in first place for now, but a lot for the near future depends upon how many "Apollo" ships Grayson & Manticore have under construction. For now, those ships also make all other ship types obsolete. This would be the second time in the series a Mantie invention has done this; the first being the SD(P)s.

Edit: Forgot to list Mesa in above: Place them esssentialy at the level of Solies since they seem to be trying to use Solie Office of Frontier Security governors as proxies.

[gdijedi7]

Eh. I'm hoping that Manticore and Haven team up on Mesa.

Right now, I like Grayson and Haven better than I do the Manties.

And yes, even though it's annoying when he Godmods, the series is very entertaining.

[nbarclay]

The Fifth Imperium web site has a collection of infodumps containing things Weber has said about his various universes. The information includes some additional information about how the Solarian League fits into the picture.

Basically, what's happened in the Honorverse is that a single superpower (the Solarian League) has been so powerful for centuries that no one has dared challenge it, meaning it hasn't had to worry about pushing its research pace all that hard. Worse, the League has a blind spot of automatically assuming that all the people outside its borders are primitive "neobarbs" who could not possibly pose a threat to its technological supremacy. Since no one could possibly threaten the League's technological leadership, the League's highly corrupt bureaucracy feels free to waste money however it wants instead of being careful to spend it where it will do the most good.

The People's Republic of Haven, the bad guys, seems as if Weber designed it as a warning of what can happen if a society gets so caught up in trying to equalize outcomes that it destroys incentives to achieve. With an education system that cared more about whether children felt good about themselves than about whether they actually learned anything, and with an economic system that refused to allow innovative people to profit from their innovations, it fell behind in technology. A relatively recent change in leadership has put some highly competent people in power, but they're having to work with a technological starting point that is so far behind that their approach to innovation has to focus mostly on how to make good use of the technologies they do have available.

The good guys, the Star Kingdom of Manticore, started out with technology essentially on par with the Solarian League's, and had been pushing technology forward on a "cold war" type footing for more than half a century by the time the war started. In addition, over the course of the series, they have conducted more than a decade of research and development with an actual shooting war to motivate them.

Consider what the outcome would be if the U.S. Navy that existed at the beginning of the Civil War fought against the U.S. Navy that existed at the end of the Civil War. The prewar navy might about as well scuttle its ships and avoid throwing away the lives of the crews. As we've been talking about in this thread, it takes some fudging for gameplay purposes for ships of the line to stand even what chance they do against ironclads in Civ IV.

Now consider the fact that Manticore went through a cold war pressure cooker building up for the war with Haven that lasted longer than the Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. And consider the fact that the shooting war thus far has lasted more than twice as long as the Civil War, or World War I, or U.S. involvement in World War II. The real surprise would be if there weren't any major innovations during the course of the war. And the introduction of new technologies that render the equipment used at the beginning of the war obsolete is certainly not outside the boundaries of real-world historical precedent.

[joncnunn]

On state of the immedate Post US Civil War Navy vs Pre US Civil War navy, actually immedate Post Civil War the US Navy had hundreds of ships that were obsolete for anything other than blockading, and for the most part the blockading ships with less state of the art than the ships in active use before the war started.

So what your paragraph should read is if any old style US navy ship had to go up against the Monitor class ships it might as well schuttle the ship itself to avoid throwing away the lives of the crew.

And actually what happened in the US Navy post civil war may well have been inspiration for Webster on the High Ridge govt actions. The US Navy did indeed divest itself of the ships blockading, and also greatly downsized rest of pre Iron Clads but in addition halted Iron Clad development and got rid of a few of them as well.

It wasn't until C. 1890 that the US again made a serious effect to build modern ships.

[Petrus2]

Originally posted by joncnunn
And actually what happened in the US Navy post civil war may well have been inspiration for Webster on the High Ridge govt actions. The US Navy did indeed divest itself of the ships blockading, and also greatly downsized rest of pre Iron Clads but in addition halted Iron Clad development and got rid of a few of them as well.

It wasn't until C. 1890 that the US again made a serious effect to build modern ships.

More congress not providing funds for a Navy, than the Navy deciding to downsize as precipitously (sp?) as it did.

[gdijedi7]

[SIZE=1] The real surprise would be if there weren't any major innovations during the course of the war.

Yes, but only the Manties develop new tech, and the tech increases only come in astronomical leaps and bounds.

Yes, the Andies copied the missile pods, but those were copies. Yes, Foraker came up with the Tripple Ripple, but that wasn't new tech, that was only a new doctrine.

Actually, it's not suprising that only the Manties get new tech, and everyone else copies them. That is normal. I'm also not complaining that they have better tech. I almost always have better tech than my computer opponents, usually substantially better tech.

However, I don't go from (as the front runner) galleys to frigates in the blink of any eye. That is possible only if someone else has blown by me in technology and I buy it from them and upgrade. The Manties have effectively done this twice so far.

[wodan11]

Well, under your definition of "new tech", I'd say the Manties did it more than twice. Probably a lot more, but at minimum a half dozen times: super LACs (light attack craft) using fission plants, LAC carriers, grav-wave surveillance drones, the "new" intertial compensators, more powerful fission missiles, the Apollo targeting system, MDMs (multi-drive missiles), missile pods, missile pod super dreadnaughts, and more.

And yes I would say that the LACs and LAC-carriers were separate innovations. e.g., Haven developed LAC carriers using fusion LACs, right? I think they never did develop "modern" fission plants. Same with missile pods themselves, and pod SDs: they're separate innovations.

In any event, I think there are two phenomena at play here. One is simply Weber's writing style. He makes it sound as though each Manty innovation was a Big Deal. Which, in a way, it was. Yet, we should recognize that he is absolutely "playing up" the situation simply to make for good entertainment.

Two is that almost all of these things are not new techs, they are simply extrapolations and innovations of the old. Fission is old tech. It actually was the Greysons who applied Manty "modern" technology to their existing need for fission plants. Once that was done, all it took was somene with two brain cells to rub together to realize the implications. These implications are far-reaching and include LACs, fission missiles, MDMs, etc.

The missile pods are also old tech. It was the Manty R&D who came up with the simple idea to stick "modern" grav drivers in them to make them useful once again. But nevertheless is it simply "old" tech which is brought up to date with improvements from other areas.

The ONLY real leap forward by an order of magnitude, that I can see, is the grav-wave communication technology. That's the ONLY one.

Face it... in Weber's universe the human race from a military standpoint has stagnated for 500 years or more. First off, there are only a handful of "players" who even have military R&D in the first place. Most planets are new or fairly new, or economically depressed, colonies. Secondly, the "big" players like Haven and the Sollies simply have no reason to improve. They have the biggest hammer, why waste money trying to find a better one? Third, it is simply accepted by everyone's military that once you have SDs and a wall of battle, the tactics are staid and fixed. Weber talks about this in Basilisk Station I believe.

Only Manticore really has an incentive, of all the planets settled by humanity, to really and seriously try to break that deadlock. They simply can't compete in terms of quantity, so they have to resort to quality (a "better hammer"). No other planet has the money AND the incentive to do this. So, Manticore has poured money into their R&D for 50 years and are seeing the benefit of that. And, this benefit is NOT finding "new tech" left and right. It is simply the ability to take an idea (e.g., put grav drivers into old missile pods) and translate it into reality. In other words, I don't think Manty R&D is so much a "think tank" as it is a skunkworks.

Wodan

[joncnunn]

Mostly agreed with Wodan, except that Grayson has even more of an incentive than Manticore. They'd been in a cold-war for centuries.

For instance: The Graysons were faster at deploying SD(P)s & Carriers since they didn't have any "stuck in the mud" admirals to deal with. (White Haven to Harrington on her return, with White Haven being one of those admirals.)

---

I also note there are a several inventions of the Peeps towards the end "War of Honor" deployed at devesting results against Manticore and ongoing Peep tech improvements throughout "At All Costs". These were under their tech witch Shannon when the old consitution was restored.

Weber appears to be making a point that under totalarism forms of government, innovations suffer, and relasing those bonds unlashes humman inguenity.

[wodan11]

Weber definitely makes political statements through his writing. Not just against totalitarianism, but also against liberalism and excessive social programs. The latter were the downfall of Haven and definitely shown to be a bad idea for Manticore (and not just because it put them militarily in a bad way).

Wodan

[Lancer]

Originally posted by Theben
And you probably would, considering you wrote it. Or are you 'fishing' for discussion?

I'm not so hide bound as to always agree with my pov.

[Yosho]

Eh...I don't really have a problem with the "attacking infantry dies to fortified longbowman in city" thing. Historically, almost no matter how divergent the levels of technology or numbers are, if you try to take and hold a large city that's defended by enemy troops, you should generally expect heavy losses. I mean, if you've got a bunch of infantry walking down the street, and you've got people shooting, say, crossbow bolts down at you from windows, you probably will lose some soldiers, possibly even entire units.

[joncnunn]

Crossbow defending vs Infs depends upon circumstances and how up to date the Infs are.

Crossbows defending would basically have eaten up attacking Musketmen. Rate of Fire, Accuracy, and Range of Crossbows all exceeding Muskets. And it was easier to train someone to fire a Crossbow than a Musket. The Musket main advantage at time of invention was it could penetrate armor that could not be penetrated by Crossbows. (Said armor was rare, normally only owned by Knights, cost much more than the hiring a solider would, and in addition greatly reduced the mobility of anyone in it on foot.)

Now if your talking modern Infs with bullet proof vests on and Uzis, your Crossbowmen are going to be wiped out with little difficulty. Anything designed to be bulet proof is going to be even more effective against slower moving projectives such as Crossbolts.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Now if your talking modern Infs with bullet proof vests on and Uzis, your Crossbowmen are going to be wiped out with little difficulty. Anything designed to be bulet proof is going to be even more effective against slower moving projectives such as Crossbolts.

In open combat, of course. But any bulletproof vests only help you if you get shot in the chest; a good sniper waiting in a window with a crossbow can still kill you with a properly aimed shot.

My point was just that any army trying to occupy a large, hostile city, while enountering stiff resistance from trained enemy soliders, will take losses, no matter what the difference is in equipment. Booby traps, even very low tech ones; snipers, or even just getting seperated from the rest of your unit and then knifed in the back.