Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Battles (Spoilers)

[Vympel]

Next round of edits:-

Iserlohn Skirmish:-

Karl Blakke = Karl Braque

Mistakenly called an Alliance cruiser a destroyer, fixed

Battle of the Fortresses (8th Battle of Iserlohn)

Kesselring = Kesserling
Hilmer von Schaft = Anton Hilmer von Schaft
Lennenkanpt = Lennenkampf
Mashengo = Machungo
Bay = Veigh
Sandar Alarcon = Sandle Alarcon
Patolicken = Patricken
Fusenegger = Fusseneger

Some small fixes and changes to make it read better.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah, I should've remembered that too - when the Patroclus and the Kärnten (or Krunten as I called it off the fansub) battled in ONW (and heck, in the original Episode 2), they're at extreme close range and both of them deflect each other's fire. Especially impressive considering the Kärnten is a standard Imperial battleship and the Patroclus has forty forward guns to the Kärnten's eight.

Was it part of a larger fleet-formation engagement or were they more of an isolated duel?

This sounds about right. The 11th Fleet was smashed (but not completely destroyed) at the 3rd Battle of Tiamat in early 795 - it didn't participate in the invasion of the Empire and was only heard from again in 797 (Alliance civil war). The Thor Hammer's effects would've been more devastating. If the 6th Battle of Iserlohn is any indication, once the Thor Hammer fires the battle is considered over, and it might get off two shots before the fleet gets away.

then possibly a significant portion of a fleet lost (tens of thousands of ships, perhaps.) If that were the case then trying to take Iserlohn contributed in no small way to the precarious economic state of the FPA when Yang managed to take it.

One annoying thing about this is that later on (which you certainly noticed) the trip time has doubled - even though Yang has a somewhat smaller fleet!

Fleet size may not be the only concern, as Simon noted. It could be enviromental conditions ("weather' for lack of a better term), or it may have to do with performance issues simon alluded to, or whatever reason.

Large scale missile bombardments after drawing off the main Imperial fleet are the lynchpin of the Alliance attack in the 6th Battle of Iserlohn (Gaiden Season 1). It would've worked, but Reinhard fucks up their missile ships (they use dedicated missile cruisers for the job). No mass kinetic asteroid attacks though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxoBaNzHauk#t=3m14s

Two points come to mind right off the bat. First is that you could establish a (rough) corrleation between the power of Thor's Hammer, missile firepower and fleet beam weapon firepower based on the ability to displace large quantities of hydrometal, although how and what sort of correlation I can't say without looking more (although tenatively, bombardment by thousands of ships by either method seems to be able to do over a sustained period what a single short of Thor's Hammer can do.)

Still no heating from bombardment, I note. I wonder if this means the "warheads' on those missiles are non thermal or if its the bizarre/magical thermal properties of hydrometal defenses.

Second major point: We get a good look at missile ship performance here, at least on the FPA side. Salient points:

-They were just out of Thor Hammer range, so that would mean (tenatively) around 600,000 km I believe. the Imperial side had virtually seconds of warning before the missiles impacted, which again (for missiles) implies short transit times, supported by the duration and steadiness of the bombardment (they had no time to deploy turrets for point defense before the missiles hit)

I'd guess no less than thousands of km/s, probably more like some tens of thousands of km/s, with commensurate accelerations. One problem however is that they appear to be subjectively "slower" on impact, meaning they either deliberately braked, or somehow lost velocity prior to impact (shields or some other defense, perhaps.)

- Missile ships must carry a great many missiles, and they can fire them off very fast (mere seconds between salvos, I gauge). The missile ship we saw up close had whta looks to be 94 missile tubes as well. i'd guess they fired for at least several minutes.

- missiles are ~35-40 pixels long and 6-8 pixels in diameterl. The height of the ship is 452 pixels. If we knew the ship dimensions in tha tangle (or could scale it from other pictures) we could get an idea of missile size.

Another interesting note is how it seems that the FPA fleet cannot fully deploy in either its horizontal OR vertical axis. Possibly due to the corridor, but it could also be an indication of technological limits - they may be limited in deployment along a given axis by the ability to share targeting data or reinforce one another's shields (speculative) I believe we know they use strategic/tactical computers for coordinating or disseminating information (Yang makes mention of it in one ep, I believe) and it could be having to control/coordinate so many thousands of ships has distinct range limits (due to processing, reaction time, sharing of data, etc.)

In such cases, having a "diamond" formation as we often see might make sense, as it keeps th efurtherst ships as "close" as possible, whilst also maximizing firepower (all ships can bring weapons to bear in a given direction without other ships getting in the way.
May also help explain large numbers of smaller shisp rather than smaller, individually more powerful ships (eg flagships) (along the lines of what simon says) - Numbers provide redundancy as well as greater overall effect due to unity/coordination/networking (more sensors, more beam surface area, more individual shields to deal with, etc.)

Other points of interest: I wonder if therea re dedicated "beam heavy" ships. There are dedicated carriers, and dedicated missile ships, as well as "general purpose" vessels.

Broadside attacks again more devastating here - defences weakened? Why didn't they fire broadside guns? Point defense only?

[Vympel]

More edits:-

Operation Ragnarok - Ninth Battle of Iserlohn

Lansberg = Landsberg
Johann von Remscheidt = Jochen von Remscheid
Assiniboiyer = Assiniboia
Knapfstein = Knappstein
Grillpalzer = Grillparzer

Was it part of a larger fleet-formation engagement or were they more of an isolated duel?

It was in the middle of Astarte.

(from first page):-



The Patroclus destroys the Wallenstein and then the Karnten comes through the debris and they fire on each other in a game of chicken. In the original series, they broadside gunfire each other as well (or at least the Karnten does) but in Overture to a New War, they actually scrape hulls.

then possibly a significant portion of a fleet lost (tens of thousands of ships, perhaps.) If that were the case then trying to take Iserlohn contributed in no small way to the precarious economic state of the FPA when Yang managed to take it.

Yeah - I imagine one of the reasons they sent only a Rear Admiral with a half-strength fleet was because they were afraid to lose more ships in another fruitless attack.

Fleet size may not be the only concern, as Simon noted. It could be enviromental conditions ("weather' for lack of a better term), or it may have to do with performance issues simon alluded to, or whatever reason.

Yeah, might also be a mistranslation - something to check for later actually.

Two points come to mind right off the bat. First is that you could establish a (rough) corrleation between the power of Thor's Hammer, missile firepower and fleet beam weapon firepower based on the ability to displace large quantities of hydrometal, although how and what sort of correlation I can't say without looking more (although tenatively, bombardment by thousands of ships by either method seems to be able to do over a sustained period what a single short of Thor's Hammer can do.)

Still no heating from bombardment, I note. I wonder if this means the "warheads' on those missiles are non thermal or if its the bizarre/magical thermal properties of hydrometal defenses.

I don't know, it looked like there could be heating to me - orange colouration on the hydrometal appears throughout

Second major point: We get a good look at missile ship performance here, at least on the FPA side. Salient points:

-They were just out of Thor Hammer range, so that would mean (tenatively) around 600,000 km I believe. the Imperial side had virtually seconds of warning before the missiles impacted, which again (for missiles) implies short transit times, supported by the duration and steadiness of the bombardment (they had no time to deploy turrets for point defense before the missiles hit)

I'd guess no less than thousands of km/s, probably more like some tens of thousands of km/s, with commensurate accelerations. One problem however is that they appear to be subjectively "slower" on impact, meaning they either deliberately braked, or somehow lost velocity prior to impact (shields or some other defense, perhaps.)

- Missile ships must carry a great many missiles, and they can fire them off very fast (mere seconds between salvos, I gauge). The missile ship we saw up close had whta looks to be 94 missile tubes as well. i'd guess they fired for at least several minutes.

- missiles are ~35-40 pixels long and 6-8 pixels in diameterl. The height of the ship is 452 pixels. If we knew the ship dimensions in tha tangle (or could scale it from other pictures) we could get an idea of missile size.

Another interesting note is how it seems that the FPA fleet cannot fully deploy in either its horizontal OR vertical axis. Possibly due to the corridor, but it could also be an indication of technological limits - they may be limited in deployment along a given axis by the ability to share targeting data or reinforce one another's shields (speculative) I believe we know they use strategic/tactical computers for coordinating or disseminating information (Yang makes mention of it in one ep, I believe) and it could be having to control/coordinate so many thousands of ships has distinct range limits (due to processing, reaction time, sharing of data, etc.)

In such cases, having a "diamond" formation as we often see might make sense, as it keeps th efurtherst ships as "close" as possible, whilst also maximizing firepower (all ships can bring weapons to bear in a given direction without other ships getting in the way.
May also help explain large numbers of smaller shisp rather than smaller, individually more powerful ships (eg flagships) (along the lines of what simon says) - Numbers provide redundancy as well as greater overall effect due to unity/coordination/networking (more sensors, more beam surface area, more individual shields to deal with, etc.)

Actually I'm not sure if the fleet was out of the Thor Hammer's range - they say that the missile ships are sitting in the Thor Hammer's dead angle (why the Thor Hammer has a dead angle, I don't know - we know it can move about the surface) where it can't fire. As for dimensions, don't know of any official dimensions I can confirm, but those on the .gif site I've referred to previously indicate 387m long, 94.5m wide, and 95m high for the Alliance missile ships.

Other points of interest: I wonder if therea re dedicated "beam heavy" ships. There are dedicated carriers, and dedicated missile ships, as well as "general purpose" vessels.

I can't think of any I've seen except for the Alliance flagships, and they're never in groups. Open question I suppose.

Broadside attacks again more devastating here - defences weakened? Why didn't they fire broadside guns? Point defense only?

Well we see Reinhard's own battleship fire its broadside guns as it breaks through Holland's missile ship formation. We also see many other battleships fire their broadside guns in the next episode (as well a firing their forward guns at very oblique angles!). Perhaps they simply have less range?

[Connor MacLeod]

WB. Guess you were busy on SB recently

It was in the middle of Astarte.

(from first page):-



The Patroclus destroys the Wallenstein and then the Karnten comes through the debris and they fire on each other in a game of chicken. In the original series, they broadside gunfire each other as well (or at least the Karnten does) but in Overture to a New War, they actually scrape hulls.

Curious. One possibility is that the effectiveness of shielding is dependent upon power output (they pump more power into shields, teh stronger they get) This requires more knowledge about shields than we have to avoid speculation (like whether shields actually need power to generate to begin with, nevermind the level of draw they represent. nothing says shields have to be energy intensive.)

I don't know, it looked like there could be heating to me - orange colouration on the hydrometal appears throughout

I'd have to look again, but I thought some of it was just "flashes" deonating some sort of explosion. They do that alot in the series.

Of course its also possible that the beams they're firing simply don't rely on energy as a primary damage mechanism

Actually I'm not sure if the fleet was out of the Thor Hammer's range - they say that the missile ships are sitting in the Thor Hammer's dead angle (why the Thor Hammer has a dead angle, I don't know - we know it can move about the surface) where it can't fire.

They make mention several times that redeploying to face Reinhard and to bring their superior numbers to bear would put them into range of Thor's hammer. I suppose they could be talking about angle. In general, the idea seems to be that the Alliance fleet deployed out of range of Thor's hammer, and I don't recall seeing the missile ships being dramatically closer to the station than the main fleet. I mean, if they were, you'd think the Empire would notice.

In any case, you probably could still make a guess if they WERE simply out of the firing arc rather than out of range... it doesn't look like they were closer than half or a third Thor's Hammer rnage. That won't dramatically alter the calc insofar as it is an "order of magntiude" calc anyhow.

As far as "dead Zone", well, we know there's an underlying structure supporting the Hydro-metal shell, and linking it to the station. That means struts, supports, and machinery of all kinds. Whilst they can re-deploy the turrets over the surface at varying angles, I imagine the underlying structure would interfere with the deployment of the gun in some manner. Truth to tell, we never know if the external bits on Thor's hammer or the other turrets represent the ONLY structures pertaining to the weapons.

As for dimensions, don't know of any official dimensions I can confirm, but those on the .gif site I've referred to previously indicate 387m long, 94.5m wide, and 95m high for the Alliance missile ships.

well then, .21 meters per pixel. 1.26-1.7 m diameter, and 7.4-8.4 m long. That makes it somehwere in size between a cruise missile and an ICBM, leaning more towards an ICBM (although a truncated one.) Mind, the angle is bad so they could be longer than I estimate.

Assuming similar densities, I'd imagine they could mass similaritly (which would say tens of thousands of kg) but that's largely conjecture.

I can't think of any I've seen except for the Alliance flagships, and they're never in groups. Open question I suppose.

They may just have never followed up the design. There's alot of ways they could have played with or altered/improved ship designs. In-universe we could just chalk this up to the war interfereing with proper R&D efforts, alongisde general "noble/old guard" stupidity on the Empire's side, and economic/patriotic fervor crippling R&D on the Alliance side. And of course, we can't forget the deliberate interference of Phezzan in the affairs of both governments.

Well we see Reinhard's own battleship fire its broadside guns as it breaks through Holland's missile ship formation. We also see many other battleships fire their broadside guns in the next episode (as well a firing their forward guns at very oblique angles!). Perhaps they simply have less range?

If the broadside guns are particle beams, then they almost certainly have less range, since you can put in longer acceleration coils lengthwise than you can broadside. Same logic why the spinal/bow guns in Mass Effect have greater range and power than the broadside guns.

The telling points of interest in this episode, to me, are: reinhard commenting that missile ships are defensively weak, and the fact he exploits this to drive in and attack the Alliance fleet.

We also see beams passing cleanly through the sides of starships, whereas if they hit bow on they don't always overpenetrate like that. That suggests defenses (armor, and possibly shields) are weaker on the broadsides.

I also like how Reinhard comments that 2000 some ships are strategically insignificant. That speaks towards them having massive numbers of ships. (well we know they do, but in most other universes 2000 ships is not trivial.)

[KlavoHunter]

We also see beams passing cleanly through the sides of starships, whereas if they hit bow on they don't always overpenetrate like that. That suggests defenses (armor, and possibly shields) are weaker on the broadsides.

Certainly, for a lengthwise hit, there's just so much more STUFF in the way that the beam can exhaust its energy on.

[Vympel]

WB. Guess you were busy on SB recently

Oh man

Curious. One possibility is that the effectiveness of shielding is dependent upon power output (they pump more power into shields, teh stronger they get) This requires more knowledge about shields than we have to avoid speculation (like whether shields actually need power to generate to begin with, nevermind the level of draw they represent. nothing says shields have to be energy intensive.)

Something for the books then. One of the fellows on gineipaedia has a book that hopefully we can translate in the future, it may be able to shed some light.

They make mention several times that redeploying to face Reinhard and to bring their superior numbers to bear would put them into range of Thor's hammer. I suppose they could be talking about angle. In general, the idea seems to be that the Alliance fleet deployed out of range of Thor's hammer, and I don't recall seeing the missile ships being dramatically closer to the station than the main fleet. I mean, if they were, you'd think the Empire would notice.

In any case, you probably could still make a guess if they WERE simply out of the firing arc rather than out of range... it doesn't look like they were closer than half or a third Thor's Hammer rnage. That won't dramatically alter the calc insofar as it is an "order of magntiude" calc anyhow.

Yeah, watching the episode, several times when they talk about range, they're really talking about firing arc - watch the tactical displays whilst they're discussing it in particular - notice how the fleets are bisected by the thick red line emanating from Iserlohn? Thats the Thor Hammer's plotted firing line.

As far as "dead Zone", well, we know there's an underlying structure supporting the Hydro-metal shell, and linking it to the station. That means struts, supports, and machinery of all kinds. Whilst they can re-deploy the turrets over the surface at varying angles, I imagine the underlying structure would interfere with the deployment of the gun in some manner. Truth to tell, we never know if the external bits on Thor's hammer or the other turrets represent the ONLY structures pertaining to the weapons.

Yeah, it may be there are big-ass railway-type tracks under the hydro-metal that move the TH around, and they can't go everywhere.

They may just have never followed up the design. There's alot of ways they could have played with or altered/improved ship designs. In-universe we could just chalk this up to the war interfereing with proper R&D efforts, alongisde general "noble/old guard" stupidity on the Empire's side, and economic/patriotic fervor crippling R&D on the Alliance side. And of course, we can't forget the deliberate interference of Phezzan in the affairs of both governments.

Well there was Reuenthal talking about the entire Battle of the Fortresses plan (Eighth Battle of Iserlohn) as being "big guns / big ships" doctrine - in a pretty dismissive manner. Might be its out of fashion.

If the broadside guns are particle beams, then they almost certainly have less range, since you can put in longer acceleration coils lengthwise than you can broadside. Same logic why the spinal/bow guns in Mass Effect have greater range and power than the broadside guns.

The telling points of interest in this episode, to me, are: reinhard commenting that missile ships are defensively weak, and the fact he exploits this to drive in and attack the Alliance fleet.

We also see beams passing cleanly through the sides of starships, whereas if they hit bow on they don't always overpenetrate like that. That suggests defenses (armor, and possibly shields) are weaker on the broadsides.

I also like how Reinhard comments that 2000 some ships are strategically insignificant. That speaks towards them having massive numbers of ships. (well we know they do, but in most other universes 2000 ships is not trivial.)

I love me my big fleet numberzzz.

EDIT: also 1880 seconds (not 188) has been confirmed by Central Anime.

[Connor MacLeod]

Sorry, got caught up in watchign some other anime, playing games, and generally not doing much analysis stuff (I had a LONG stint with some of the 40K stuff.. I need a break lol) Anyhow...

Something for the books then. One of the fellows on gineipaedia has a book that hopefully we can translate in the future, it may be able to shed some light.

Interesting. Is it some kind of tech guide?

Yeah, watching the episode, several times when they talk about range, they're really talking about firing arc - watch the tactical displays whilst they're discussing it in particular - notice how the fleets are bisected by the thick red line emanating from Iserlohn? Thats the Thor Hammer's plotted firing line.

It's not going to make a huge difference though. Part of the fleet is out of the firing range of the gun, and they missile ships aren't vastly closer (maybe half again as close, going by the diagram). There's also Reinhard being "out of range" of the main battle yet being close enough to engage the missile ships.

The really weird thing is why they aren't using the point defense lasers. They could bring them to bear for shooting down missiles, but they didn't bother shooting at the missile ships themselves.

Yeah, it may be there are big-ass railway-type tracks under the hydro-metal that move the TH around, and they can't go everywhere.

I suspect that whatever funky magic makes the hydrometal work and keep it in place is probably related to what moves the turrets and TH around. It probably also provides the recoil compensation (EG why the beams or turrets don't fly backwards despite being in an essentially liquid medium.) There's also the fact TH and VC both seem to conduct whatever weird magic beam effects they generate across/just above the Hydrometal (another fun oddity, that) which I would chalk up to some forcefield mechanism.

The underlying physical structure (and we know its there, because it gets attacked/takes damage when the Hydrometal gets pushed aside) seems to be meant to keep the hydrometal shell in place via the aforementioned magic - it's probably all the mechanisms needed to support and maintain it, and may also provide some supplementary support to the weapons system (EG transmitting power, etc. Otherwise they'd have to beam the power remotely to the turrets and other systems.)

Analogy-wise, I think of the structure as being like the shield generators/repulsors and tensor field systems used to maintain and support SW hulls in various activities.

Well there was Reuenthal talking about the entire Battle of the Fortresses plan (Eighth Battle of Iserlohn) as being "big guns / big ships" doctrine - in a pretty dismissive manner. Might be its out of fashion.

One of the underlying themes of the series is a great deal of stagnation, both in terms of society and the various elements thereof (Technology, etc.) in different ways. Tradition/habit tends to rule things as much (or more) than logic or practicality, which is what makes Reinhard (and Yang) such geniuses really. That's not to say EVERYONE is a complete moron in LOGH, but there is enough entrenched bullshit that it takes someone exceptional to break through (either through position, in the case of Reinhard, or luck, in the case of Yang.)

This is actually a rather significant point as far as LOGH vs debates will go. What point of time you place a vs will dictate responses. a LOGH with Yang and/or Reinhard is going to be gneerally "better" - more flexible, more adaptable, and more likely to do what is needed to win than one without them.

EDIT: also 1880 seconds (not 188) has been confirmed by Central Anime.

Thought so. well that at least keeps numbers from getting TOO insane as far as power generation for engines go. What that means for other stuff, we're still up in the air on.

************

anyhow, I'm bored so I'll throw in a few more observations. By the time you get to this you'll probably have put up your latest review anyhow lol.



Alliance invasion:

Those opposed to the invasion noted that both the Empire and the Alliance had been carrying on the war at a level far in excess of what their economies could sustain, and that the FPA’s economy would collapse if an escalation of the war was undertaken. Furthermore, too much human talent was tied up with the military- the social fabric of the Alliance was in danger of coming undone.

It would be interesting to know if this was over the full course of the war (150 years), or if this wsa a recent phenomenon (a recent escalation) because it says something about the economic and military capabilities of the FPA (at least.)

Things I imagine worked much more differently in the Empire.

The Chief of Staff would be Admiral Dwight Greenhill. Leading the eight fleets, totaling 200,000 ships and 30,227,400 men would be:-

2/3 of the 13 (or so) FPa fleets committed. suggests an approximate upper limit of maybe around 270-300,000 ships in the "fleets" not including reserves, defence or patrol forces (mentioned latter). The fleet numbers also may involve some number of noncombat ships. Note however given what happens in the aftermath of this little fiasco, this is a FPA far from its prime, if we ever see it in such a case here, so this isnt neccesarily an upper limit save in a contextual one (EG this is the sort of fleet a financially gutted, economically tottering FPA can manage.)

”Well now, the goal of this noble cause is to liberate 25 billion citizens of the Galactic Empire who are oppressed by its totalitarian government. "

I have to wonder if Falk is merely speaking of part of the Imperial population, or their estimates to the best of their knowledge. I personally find it hard to believe they know the TOTAL absolute population of the Empire to the last man, woman or child. hell I kinda wonder if the Empire itself knows (or even cares.) Given how I'm seeing that corruption, arrogance, and general idiocy play a huge role in how things are done in the upper echelons (something I'm used to given how prevalent it is in 40K) I do wonder if anyone really knows much about "the common man" or even cares (aside from people like Yang, and Reinhard and their people that is.)

I also have to note they make a strong indication that this is probably a large chunk (if not the majority) fo their fleet. I doubt it would be the totality of it, they still need to garrison and patrol elsewhere, but it could be carrying the bulk of their heavy forces (battleships, command ships, etc.) It also seems to represent the limits (possibly ruinous ones) of the logisitcal and offensive capabilities of the FPA (at least at this point in time)

The population issue is going to be a long and messy one to work with no matter how one cuts it, though. One crazy idea I have bouncing around in my skull is that Phezzan is manipulating populations the same way they are screwing with everything else in either faction. I mean, they seem to have a stranglehold on technology and both sides seem dependent upon Phezzan to some degree, so it wouldnt surprise me if they had some way of suppressing population growth in addition to the use of warfare (or in addition to it. Drugs, chemicals, etc.)

Commodore Paul von Oberstein (promoted from Captain) had devised a plan whereby the forces stationed near Iserlohn would evacuate all food and resources from the star systems near that area before the Alliance fleet arrived, and thereby dump the responsibility of supplying those areas onto the Alliance fleet.

Even with relatively small population sizes (hundreds of thousands or millions) and a handful of planets, that's going to be an insanely huge logistical task. Presumably its also only a short term one, since "salting the earth" is generally a bad strategy (and would kill off your own people anyhow). Especially when you consider ships can spend many days typically travelling from one system to another.

Also, each person ferried off will require some several gigajoules of energy on average (and at a minimum) to haul offplanet. Nevermind resources or cargo.

Also note: given all the numbers they tend to chuck out in this series, I'm betting that a LOT of historical, economic, logistical and other background material is in the novels and may have been cut too. I bet we'd find alot more on all that as well. One thing I progressively note is that there are definite patterns that show some thought or even research may have been put into these details.

More than 200 star systems fell into Alliance hands without opposition, some of them inhabited, with 50 million Imperial citizens in all.

Interesting, as it implies that the average system has fewer than 250,000 people per planet. If this ratio were kept constant throughout the Empire, that would be 100,000 planets. A bit much, methinks, and its probable that most planets have more than than a quater million. however even with a few million as being more "typical you're still maybe looking at a few tens of thousands of worlds in the Empire.

I note you later commented it included "uninhabitable systems" but that seems odd - why would you capture an uninhabitable system? It has no people (that was the point of the invasion fleet) and if it has no people what else would it have? About the only thing I can think of is "its part of the invasion route" since there is still disagreement over how "jump point like" LOGH FTL is. That might explain the uninhabited systems though, but to really bump up the population numbers from a quarter million would still need a huge chunk of those being uninhabited. I find it a bit odd that the Empire would be so thinly spread out over such a huge volume of space (not impossible, since habitable planets are rare), but..eh. All that really means is that they have more systems than the "inhabitable' assessment above implies.

a huge amount of uninhabitable space would also suggest that the territory is not very densely populated - you have few systems or clusters of systems scattered over vast stretches of territory.

In any event food and resources for 50 million (from 200 systems) is still not trivial, although as I noted before there are limits on what they took (I doubt they moved the whole oceans for example. The goal is not to depopulate or render planets uninhabitable after all.)

Interesting note here. For food alone, we can infer it takes ~1.2 pounds (actually .55 kg specifically) of food a day (minimum) to sustain a person as per here - I'm lazy ATM) which means 25 million kg of food a day for those people over 200 systems. 25,000 tons isn't alot it seems (at least in a relative sense) but those are minimums, and campiagns seem to last weeks, if not years. And it really doesn't include other supplies either. We're probably talking about hualing around megatonnes (millions of tons) worth of shit in a relatively short timeframe. Something to keep in mind for next time, as the transport fleets are described in more detail.

I decided to cut it off rather than cover everything. I'll get to that and the Lippstadt rebellion later on.

[General Mung Beans]

Has anyone seen the manga version of LOGH?

Are there ranks higher than Fleet Admiral, because I'd think when you get to commanding thousands of ships, you'd create new ranks like say "High Admiral" rather than have Vice Admirals or Rear Admirals command hundreds or thousands of ships (who commands in extremely small scale fleet actions, like say a hundred ships or so?) Also are ground forces ever seen?

[Simon_Jester]

Has anyone seen the manga version of LOGH?

Are there ranks higher than Fleet Admiral, because I'd think when you get to commanding thousands of ships, you'd create new ranks like say "High Admiral" rather than have Vice Admirals or Rear Admirals command hundreds or thousands of ships (who commands in extremely small scale fleet actions, like say a hundred ships or so?) Also are ground forces ever seen?

Ground forces are seen occasionally throughout the series. At the end of the Goldenbaum dynasty, though, the supreme commander of Imperial ground forces was Ovlessor- a brutish giant of a man, drawn from the aristocracy, and (this is important) with the rank of High Admiral. It seems likely that ground forces are viewed as basically just an adjunct to the fleet, which probably makes sense given that naval actions are far more decisive in this kind of war than ground actions.

Honestly, a good way to make a mental model of the way fleets in this setting work is to imagine them as Napoleonic armies, with roughly one man per ship. Thus, 1000 ships is a significant detachment but not a real 'army,' 10000 ships is a 'division' of meaningful size under the command of a relatively senior flag officer, 30000-50000 is large enough to fight and win battles and about the most ever assembled except for extremely major campaigns, and 200000 or so is about the limit of what the logistics of the era can support in one place.

Obviously it's not at all a perfect analogy, but I think it's instructive.

[Vympel]

High Admiral is an existing rank in the series, you see it several times if you read the previous posts (Reinhard started off as a High Admiral in the series proper). Its unique to the Empire, and is in between Admiral and Fleet Admiral. Further, as Simon said, its the highest rank a ground warfare commander can go.

And yes, ground forces are seen. There's pics of their AFVs throughout some of the entries I've done so far, but the most prolific examples are Gaiden Season 1, where we see quite a lot.

[Simon_Jester]

High Admiral is an existing rank in the series, you see it several times if you read the previous posts (Reinhard started off as a High Admiral in the series proper). Its unique to the Empire, and is in between Admiral and Fleet Admiral. Further, as Simon said, its the highest rank a ground warfare commander can go.

Well, the highest rank that an Imperial ground commander did go; Ovlessor was unlikely to be promoted to supreme rank because he's unsuitable for the highest level of command and strategy. He's most in his element in hand to hand combat, for god's sake; I suspect the main reason he got to such a high position anyway was that he's one of the few high-ranking aristocrats with a strong interest in the blood and guts of ground combat in the setting- his rank is what made him more than "the big bad sergeant."

[Vympel]

I'm pretty when Luneburg meets Offressor in Season 1 of the Gaiden, Offressor (trying to get in the habit of using DVD spelling, though in Ovlessor/Offressor's case, its hard to tell which one is correct) tells Luneburg that as a ground commander High Admiral is as high as he'll go (and to do that, he'll have to displace Offressor).

[Vympel]

Would've had this up yesterday if the forum hadn't been down:-

The Assault on Earth - Episodes 54, 55, 57, 61, 63 and 64

Background

With the proclamation of Kaiser Reinhard's "Neue Reich", the Grand Bishop of the Earth Church immediately moved to assassinate the new Kaiser by means of a catspaw they already had in place in the Empire.

From Heinessen to Earth

Prior to Kaiser Reinhard's ascent to the throne, Yang Wen-li made arrangements for Julian Mintz to travel to Earth to investigate the Terraist Cult first hand. Captain Boris Konev (an associate of Marinesk), a merchant captain from Fezzan, would ferry Julian Mintz and Louis Machungo (his guard, as ever) to Earth on a military transport provided to Captain Konev by Vice Admiral Alex Cazerne (who had quietly added the vessel to the list of ships to be decommissioned under the Treaty of Barlat).

They departed on the whimsically named Undutiness soon after Yang's wedding to Frederica Greenhill (on June 10, Space Year 799).

Their first stop was the (supposedly abandoned) Dayan-Khan supply base, in the Polesoun System, making contact with the secret fleet under High Admiral Merkatz's command.


Undutiness arrives at Dayan-Khan

Meeting with Merkatz and Commander Schneider, they advised Julian that with only 60 ships, they had the strength to perhaps take on a 100-strong patrol fleet, but no more. Julian relayed the following message to them in Yang's own words:-

"According to the fifth condition of the Treaty of Barlat, the Alliance military must scrap all of its battleships and carriers. On July 16, in the Reykjavik System sector, 1,820 battleships and ships [sic?] are to be destroyed. I hope that the independent fleet, under Merkatz, can take care of it."

Before leaving, Commander Olivier Poplin got permission from Merkatz to accompany Julian to Earth.

From Odin to Earth

After his coronation, Reinhard announced his cabinet:-

Secretary of State:- Count Franz von Mariendorf (father of Hildegard von Mariendorf)
Secretary of Defence:- Fleet Admiral Oberstein
Minister of Finance:- Eugen Richter
Minister of Internal Affairs:- Osmayer
Minister of Justice:- Bruckdorf
Minister of Education:- Professor Seeferd
Secretary of Protocol:- Baron Bernheim
Minister of Civil Affairs:- Karl Braque
Secretary of Industry:- Bruno von Silberbech
Chief Cabinet Secretary:- Mainhof

With no Prime Minister, Kaiser Reinhard held the highest political office, ruling personally.

On 1 July 799, Count Mariendorf came to the Kaiser on behalf of his nephew, Baron Heinrich von Kümmel. Chronically ill from birth, he was the only relative of Franz and Hildegard. About to die, Kümmel requested the honour of a visit from the Kaiser.

Reinhard agreed, and they visited on the Kümmel estate on 6 July, with only 16 attendants (including Hildegard von Mariendorf, Vice Admiral Arthur von Streit, and Commodore Günther Kisling, the head of his personal guard).

Unfortunately, Kümmel was the Terraist catspaw. During lunch in the estate courtyard, he revealed that an underground chamber beneath the courtyard was flooded with Seffle particles, and he held in his hand a detonator that would kill everyone.

Reinhard's reaction to seemingly impending death was not what the suicidal Kümmel had hoped for - instead of begging for his life, he merely accepted that if his time was done, then there was nothing he could do - he would choose death before servitude.


The Kaiser frustrates Kümmel

Meanwhile, at Military Police Headquarters, Job Trunicht arrived and informed Admiral Ulrich Kesler of the attempt on the Kaiser's life, and the identity of the culprits, claiming to know of the Earth Church's conspiracy via his dealings with them when he was in the Alliance.


Job Trunicht, chameleon!

Kesler had the nearest unit (under Commodore Paumann) to Kümmel's estate (1km east) deployed, and had a seperate unit (under Commodore Raft) dispatched to the headquarters of the Odin branch of the Earth Church.

Paumann eschewed the use of vehicles so they could creep up on the estate undetected, his troops running barefoot from their base so as not to make any sound whilst running.

At the Earth Church headquarters, Raft was met with armed resistance, and made short work of them with his superior firepower.


Cultists open fire


Devastating reply from an AFV's rapid-fire autocannon

After troops armed with rocket launchers blew the frontage of the building apart, Raft took the building by storm.


Aftermath of the initial barrage

The cultists resisted fiercely, but were quickly overwhelmed as the Imperial troops swept the building, using gas grenades and killing all who resisted. Many committed suicide (by either poison or stabbing themselves).


Kill anyone who resists!

In the end, 124 of the cultists were killed - 28 of them committed suicide. 66 were captured, with 14 of them critically wounded. None escaped. The leader of the branch, Bishop Godwin, was amongst those captured. Raft's men had 18 dead, and 42 wounded.

At the estate, Paumann's men arrived and quickly surrounded the courtyard, hiding. When Kümmel saw that Reinhard was gripping his locket, he asked to see it. Reinhard angrily refused, ignoring his brandishing of the detonator.

Kümmel made a grab for the locket's chain, and Reinhard struck him across the face. The detonator went flying, and Commodore Kisling pounced, throwing Kümmel from his chair. The force of the tackle was enough to hasten his death - he died somewhat happy, that his folly would be remembered for all time.


Don't touch the locket.

When Paumann's men swarmed the clearing, a cultist who had been watching from hiding burst into the courtyard with a pistol, trying to shoot Reinhard. He was disarmed and killed by Reinhard's adjutant, Theodore von Rücke.


Rücke, crack shot

The would-be assassin had been wearing the sash of the Earth Church - "The Earth is our Mother, the Earth is in my hands."

On returning to Neue Sanssouci, Kesler reproached himself for failing to detect the conspircy before it happened, and assumed blame. Reinhard disagreed, and commended him for the prompt suppression of the Earth Church headquarters. Franz and Hildegard Mariendorf were not punished (as Kümmel's relatives, in accordance with old Goldenbaum law, they would have been executed). They were however placed under house arrest.

Kesler ruthlessly interrogated the captured cultists, but very little useful information was gained - the cultists were fanatical, and Bishop Godwin, after being dosed with truth serum, went mad and dashed his head against the cell wall. Further, the attempt had been planned on Earth - the Odin headquarters was just an executive branch.

On 10 July, an assembly was called to discuss the dispatch of troops to Earth - Reinhard commented that though he had no wish to destroy a religion, since they did not wish to coexist, he would be merciful and allow them to die for their faith. On 11 July, the Mariendorfs were released from house arrest and reinstated to their positions.

High Admiral Wahlen was ordered to take his fleet to Earth, suppress the main headquarters of the Church, capture their leaders and other religious figures, and return them to Odin. The others could be killed if they resisted arrest.

To save time, Wahlen planned to devise his formation en route, and deployed his fast battleships.

The Wahlen Fleet left Odin on 13 July 799. At the deployment ceremony, Mittermeyer had occasion to admire Neithard Müller's new flagship, the Parzival- the first battleship constructed after the institution of the Lohengramm dynasty - which had been bestowed on Müller for his distinguished service at the Battle of Vermilion. He had also been promoted to the rank of High Admiral.


The Parzival in dock


Fleet Admiral Mittermeyer and High Admiral Müller, in the new uniforms of the Imperial Fleet, watch the Salamander depart

Müller had hoped to be the one to lead the expedition to Earth, believing he might not get another chance to sortie - Mittermeyer noted that it was because Wahlen had been defeated by Yang Wen-li that he was given his chance to regain his honour. For the same reason, Steinmetz and Lennenkampf had been based in Alliance territory.

Julian Mintz on Earth

On 10 July, the Undutiness arrived on Earth, landing in Lake Namtso, where pilgrims landed to head to the main facilities of the Earth Church, 350km south. Julian Mintz and his comrades - Olivier Poplin, Louis Machungo, and Fezzani Boris Konev and Antoine de Hautetaire (aka "Napoleon") had taken several days rest to adjust to the high altitude, and departed for the headquarters on 13 July.

Earth (or Terra) had regressed significantly since its heydey. Soon after it was attacked by the Black Flag Force of the Anti-Earth Movement in 2704 AD, the population of the Earth had dwindled to no more than 10,000,000 people. Indeed, the area they were in had been an energy center in Earth's golden age - as well as housing underground bunkers for the central government- making it a chief target for attack by the Black Flag Force. Their fleet had blown off a thousand metres or so of the top of Mount Everest itself:-


The Black Flag Force's attack

The ruins of the United Earth Government's bunkers remained in the mountains, however and the Earth Church had made its headquarters at the bunkers located inside Mount Kangchenjunga.


Mintz & company arrive


Pilgrims

Assassination attempt against High Admiral Wahlen

Aware of the expedition approaching Earth, the Grand Bishop arranged to have High Admiral Wahlen killed - after all, if they could get someone close to the Kaiser himself, getting close to the admiral would be easy.

On 24 July, the Wahlen Fleet had reached Pluto, and Wahlen and his officers, Commodore Kleiber, Rear Admiral Kamhuber and Vice Admiral Laible began to formulate their plan of attack.

Because of the difficult terrain, there were few landing spots, and the altitude meant that standard personal jets and parachutes could not be deployed. Kamhuber recommended simply levelling the base with tactical missiles, but Wahlen found the approach inartful, and too likely to harm non-combatants. Laible suggested light infantry. Wahlen's problem was that the base was likely to have multiple entrances - if they merely made for one, then the Terraists could escape through the others.

Wahlen dismissed his officers to think on the matter, and went to the far corner of his bridge. As soon as he rested against a column, an assassin approached him with a knife. Lieutenant Commander Hauff, who was speaking with Vice Admiral Laible, noticed the assailant and called out to Wahlen moments before he struck. Dodging the first few blows, Wahlen managed to draw his pistol, but not before the assassin stabbed him in the forearm. Wahlen then shot and wounded him.


The assassin's attack

The assassin's knife was poisoned - Wahlen collapsed, and was taken to the infirmary, where there was no alternative but to amputate his left arm. Wahlen fell into a deep coma.


Wahlen in the infirmary

Back on Earth

For twelve days, Julian and his fellows played the part of pilgrims, living and working inside the church, looking for access to the church's records. But surveillance was omnipresent. On 26 July, in the course of a meal, another pilgrim went into a violent rage in the mess hall and was subdued by guards with tasers.

Poplin recognized the symptoms immediately, and pulled Mintz out of the mess hall to throw up what they had been eating - they were being poisoned by Thyoxin, in minute amounts. Thyoxin was a substance secretly used for brainwashing in both the Empire and the Alliance. They decided to escape before they could be forcibly converted.

Wahlen recovers

On 27 July, Wahlen awoke from his coma, with the Salamander near Mars. He had the would-be assassin brought before him, but he offered no useful information, instead ranting about how those who defiled Mother Earth's sanctity were subject to divine punishment.

Wahlen's first order of business was summoning Commander Konrad Rinnesal (formerly of the Kircheis Fleet, having defected from the Lippstadt Alliance forces following the defeat of the Littenheim Fleet in Space Year 797) to lead an infiltration team into the Earth Church base.

Wahlen attacks

Julian began going through withdrawal symptoms, and took care to hide his condition as best he could, lest he be discovered and be given a massive dose, and become an addict. However he was discovered, and invited to visit the infirmary - where Poplin and Machungo were also waiting.

As soon as they were alone, Poplin assaulted the doctor (about to give them a syringe full of thyoxin) and Mintz overcame the guards who came running.



Threatening the doctor with a lethal dose of thyoxin, they demanded information on the Earth Church's objectives and secrets. The doctor protested ignorance and fainted.

At that point, the bunker's klaxon sounded, and a cultist burst in declaring they had been infiltrated by heretics. Machungo made short work of him.

In the hallways, a firefight had broken out.

Rinnsesal's forces relayed their intel back to the fleet as it made its descent - reporting they had been aided by collaborators on the inside - independent infiltrators from Fezzan.


Wahlen, recovered


Lieutenant Commander Rinnesal commands the vanguard

Relaying Wahlen's thanks for their help, Rinnsesal dispatched a squad to help Mintz, Poplin and Machungo find Konev and Hautetaire.

As the fleet approached, Wahlen ordered the use of missiles to block all exists to the bunker except for the main one.


Missiles launch


The entrances are blocked

With the ravines in the area were wide enough for the Salamander herself to fly through, Wahlen directed the ship's captain, Captain Dunckel, to guide the ship through the ravines so it could deploy panzer grenadiers, who would assault via hovercraft.



Using the Salamander's unique landing claws, Dunckel secured the ship to a ridge above the objective as the panzer grenadiers launched.


Salamander's claws


Panzer Grenadiers deploy

Though the fanatical cultists were no match for Rinnesal's troops in skill and equipment, their fanaticism and total disregard for their own lives took its toll - they were practically suicidal, with no fear of death, killing themselves with grenades and blocking off rooms and gassing friend and foe alike. The attack began to get bogged down.



Fanatical resistance


Joy in death

With the panzer grenadiers arriving on the scene, Rinnesal withdrew his men to the exits.

In the withdrawal, Julian, Poplin and Machungo were able to break away, and by happenstance ran into Konev and Hautetaire, who had found the Earth Church data centre.

Hautetaire was stabbed and killed by a cultist the moment he walked into the data centre. Subduing the cultist, they retrieved the all the data they could.

Meanwhile, the panzer grenadiers advanced steadily through the cultists' resistance, impervious to their weapons.



Panzer Grenadier armor shrugs off all the cultists have


"Are these men morons?"


"Aren't they afraid to die?"

The cultists were uncowed - they began to set off bombs to kill their assailants, collapsing ceilings onto the grenadiers, and letting the underground resevoirs into the bunker.



Having managed to retrieve all the data, Julian deleted the originals so it would not fall into the Empire's hands.

With defeat inevitable, the cultists blew up their own base. The Grand Bishop and his faithful were gathered in prayer as the roof collapsed upon them.


"Death to the heretics! Death to the heretics! We will have eternal life by returning to Mother Earth!"

Wahlen, horrified, ordered all units to pull out.




Julian & Co escaped...

Bishop De Villie also managed to escape with a handful of followers.


...as did Bishop De Villie

On 28 July 799, the Earth Church headquarters and its folowers were buried underneath millions of tons of rock.



Aftermath

"In a religion, there's nothing cheaper than the lives of its faithful. It's the same as how politicians view the people and emperors view their soldiers." - Boris Konev

Julian and his comrades met with High Admiral Wahlen, who thanked them again for their assistance. Wahlen offered them a reward, so Julian asked for passage back to Fezzan. When he heard Wahlen was returning to Odin, however, he asked if they could come along to see the Imperial capital (hoping to observe conditions there, and get a taste of the culture), to which Wahlen happily agreed.


The Salamander moored, the new Goldenlöwe crest clearly visible

On 1 August 799, the Wahlen Fleet completed its investigations of the battle zone, and departed Earth for Odin, together with the Undutiness.



Julian had succeeded in his mission and obtained data about the Earth Church from its lair. For Wahlen, the church had been successfully suppressed and the leadership (mostly) killed.

The news of the destruction of the Earth Church headquarters reached Odin on 30 July 799. But it was released with the news of the unrest on Heinessen.

[Vympel]

Just a note: the DVD fansub is now officially finished. The entire main series, Episode 1-110, is now available in DVD quality. There is therefore no reason for me to stick to my once-per-month format. However, I may stick with it, because I have less time lately. We'll see how I go. Unfortunately, the Gaiden episodes that haven't been done in DVD format (i.e. all of Season 1, Spiral Labyrinth in Season 2) will be a bit longer- CA is taking a break from LOGH for a bit, to focus on some other series. When they go back to it, their first priority will be Golden Wings.

Resumption of edits:-

The Lippstadt Rebellion, Part 2 (revisit)

Konrad Linser = Konrad Rinnesal

Invasion of Fezzan / Battle of Rantemario

Atringen = Aldringen
Gruneman = Grünemann
Brauhitz = Brauhitch
Kalnap = Carnap
Turneisen = Thurneysen
Lucke = Rücke
Kissling = Kisling
Belryoska = Berezka
Trung Yu Chan = Chung Wu-Cheng
Xaniel = Zarnial
Uruvasi = Urvashi

The Assault on Earth

Rücke is Reinhard's adjutant, not one of Kisling's guards

Sorry took me so long:-

Interesting. Is it some kind of tech guide?

I've got no idea - the name seems to indicate it has something to say about tech stuff, at least.

It's not going to make a huge difference though. Part of the fleet is out of the firing range of the gun, and they missile ships aren't vastly closer (maybe half again as close, going by the diagram). There's also Reinhard being "out of range" of the main battle yet being close enough to engage the missile ships.

The really weird thing is why they aren't using the point defense lasers. They could bring them to bear for shooting down missiles, but they didn't bother shooting at the missile ships themselves.

The impression I got was that they deployed Iserlohn's turrets (why they weren't deployed from the start, I don't know) to fire back at the missile ships, but the missile impacts screwed over their accuracy so they didn't do much good.

I suspect that whatever funky magic makes the hydrometal work and keep it in place is probably related to what moves the turrets and TH around. It probably also provides the recoil compensation (EG why the beams or turrets don't fly backwards despite being in an essentially liquid medium.) There's also the fact TH and VC both seem to conduct whatever weird magic beam effects they generate across/just above the Hydrometal (another fun oddity, that) which I would chalk up to some forcefield mechanism.

Actually the Vulture Claw's firing sequence is a bit different in that I think the propagation of the beam effects appears suspended above the cannon, there's no hydro-metal in the immediate vicinity. You can see the complete thing at the tail end of this episode (the lead-in to the battle):-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oPVhv7crbI#t=22m15s (blargh LaserDisc rip murky)

One of the underlying themes of the series is a great deal of stagnation, both in terms of society and the various elements thereof (Technology, etc.) in different ways. Tradition/habit tends to rule things as much (or more) than logic or practicality, which is what makes Reinhard (and Yang) such geniuses really. That's not to say EVERYONE is a complete moron in LOGH, but there is enough entrenched bullshit that it takes someone exceptional to break through (either through position, in the case of Reinhard, or luck, in the case of Yang.)

This is actually a rather significant point as far as LOGH vs debates will go. What point of time you place a vs will dictate responses. a LOGH with Yang and/or Reinhard is going to be gneerally "better" - more flexible, more adaptable, and more likely to do what is needed to win than one without them.

Yeah - I have a hard time thinking of when anyone would envision LOGH without either of them, though. Heck, if its before them then sure, but after them I don't think much would change, unless you posited a hypothetical far future where all of Reinhard's trusted subordinates are retired and/or dead.

It would be interesting to know if this was over the full course of the war (150 years), or if this wsa a recent phenomenon (a recent escalation) because it says something about the economic and military capabilities of the FPA (at least.)

Things I imagine worked much more differently in the Empire.

Might be something to the recent escalation idea. Consider, although Iserlohn Fortress had existed for 25 years, in the course of Reinhard's career Iserlohn was attacked by large Alliance Fleets twice (5th Battle of Iserlohn - Golden Wings - was probably in Space Year 793, and 6th Battle of Iserlohn in Space Year 794).

I have to wonder if Falk is merely speaking of part of the Imperial population, or their estimates to the best of their knowledge. I personally find it hard to believe they know the TOTAL absolute population of the Empire to the last man, woman or child. hell I kinda wonder if the Empire itself knows (or even cares.) Given how I'm seeing that corruption, arrogance, and general idiocy play a huge role in how things are done in the upper echelons (something I'm used to given how prevalent it is in 40K) I do wonder if anyone really knows much about "the common man" or even cares (aside from people like Yang, and Reinhard and their people that is.)

I also have to note they make a strong indication that this is probably a large chunk (if not the majority) fo their fleet. I doubt it would be the totality of it, they still need to garrison and patrol elsewhere, but it could be carrying the bulk of their heavy forces (battleships, command ships, etc.) It also seems to represent the limits (possibly ruinous ones) of the logisitcal and offensive capabilities of the FPA (at least at this point in time)

The population issue is going to be a long and messy one to work with no matter how one cuts it, though. One crazy idea I have bouncing around in my skull is that Phezzan is manipulating populations the same way they are screwing with everything else in either faction. I mean, they seem to have a stranglehold on technology and both sides seem dependent upon Phezzan to some degree, so it wouldnt surprise me if they had some way of suppressing population growth in addition to the use of warfare (or in addition to it. Drugs, chemicals, etc.)

Hehe, well stranger things have happened (take the Earth Church's mass employment of brainwashing drugs, for example, lol).

Oh, and re: the fleet size issue, Chapter 7 of Book 1 of the original novel (on the wiki, and always with the proviso we don't know if the translation is accurate) indicates that the fleets for the invasion of Imperial space were 60% of Alliance forces, and the number of men (30 million) was 0.23% of the Alliance population of 13 billion.

Even with relatively small population sizes (hundreds of thousands or millions) and a handful of planets, that's going to be an insanely huge logistical task. Presumably its also only a short term one, since "salting the earth" is generally a bad strategy (and would kill off your own people anyhow). Especially when you consider ships can spend many days typically travelling from one system to another.

Yeah, I skipped over it since it wasn't a battle, but a good part of Episode 14 is basically devoted to a random guy of the 7th Fleet helping some Imperial peasants with their agriculture. Episode 13 focuses on Kesler meeting up with an old flame on one of the planets he's tasked with stripping - no indicating of 'salting the Earth'.

Interesting, as it implies that the average system has fewer than 250,000 people per planet. If this ratio were kept constant throughout the Empire, that would be 100,000 planets. A bit much, methinks, and its probable that most planets have more than than a quater million. however even with a few million as being more "typical you're still maybe looking at a few tens of thousands of worlds in the Empire.

I note you later commented it included "uninhabitable systems" but that seems odd - why would you capture an uninhabitable system? It has no people (that was the point of the invasion fleet) and if it has no people what else would it have? About the only thing I can think of is "its part of the invasion route" since there is still disagreement over how "jump point like" LOGH FTL is. That might explain the uninhabited systems though, but to really bump up the population numbers from a quarter million would still need a huge chunk of those being uninhabited. I find it a bit odd that the Empire would be so thinly spread out over such a huge volume of space (not impossible, since habitable planets are rare), but..eh. All that really means is that they have more systems than the "inhabitable' assessment above implies.

a huge amount of uninhabitable space would also suggest that the territory is not very densely populated - you have few systems or clusters of systems scattered over vast stretches of territory.

In any event food and resources for 50 million (from 200 systems) is still not trivial, although as I noted before there are limits on what they took (I doubt they moved the whole oceans for example. The goal is not to depopulate or render planets uninhabitable after all.)

Interesting note here. For food alone, we can infer it takes ~1.2 pounds (actually .55 kg specifically) of food a day (minimum) to sustain a person as per here - I'm lazy ATM) which means 25 million kg of food a day for those people over 200 systems. 25,000 tons isn't alot it seems (at least in a relative sense) but those are minimums, and campiagns seem to last weeks, if not years. And it really doesn't include other supplies either. We're probably talking about hualing around megatonnes (millions of tons) worth of shit in a relatively short timeframe. Something to keep in mind for next time, as the transport fleets are described in more detail.

I decided to cut it off rather than cover everything. I'll get to that and the Lippstadt rebellion later on.

My impression from the quote (the episode really does say "some of them inhabited") is that the majority of the 200 systems that fell under their control had no people. Maybe its some sort of 'zone of influence' paradigm, whereby each Alliance fleet can reach x many systems in its area of responsibility or something.

[Vympel]

Added three new images to the latest post - the crop with the regular Imprial infantry behind shields.

[Connor MacLeod]

Just a note: the DVD fansub is now officially finished. The entire main series, Episode 1-110, is now available in DVD quality. There is therefore no reason for me to stick to my once-per-month format. However, I may stick with it, because I have less time lately. We'll see how I go. Unfortunately, the Gaiden episodes that haven't been done in DVD format (i.e. all of Season 1, Spiral Labyrinth in Season 2) will be a bit longer- CA is taking a break from LOGH for a bit, to focus on some other series. When they go back to it, their first priority will be Golden Wings.

Dude thats a good idea. Even when I catch up I'm likely to inundate you with useful technical details

And don't worry about taking too long. I understand perfectly well about time. My comments aren't going anywhere. That's one reason why i'm holding off on the novels.

And if you wonder why I don't just go through the series and watch, I was partly waiting for the series to finish, but also partly just to get some grounding in it. In watching technical visual stuff, its really easy to miss details or possible useful tidbits even if you watch it through one time. There's stuff in my 40K analysis I only pick up during my 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th time through (I now officially have at least 2 read throughs, and some of my older stuff have had up to 3 including revision stuff.) Sometimes its all about making connections between one episode and another.

I've got no idea - the name seems to indicate it has something to say about tech stuff, at least.

Well every little bit helps and thats what it looks to me too. Here's to hoping, anyhow!

The impression I got was that they deployed Iserlohn's turrets (why they weren't deployed from the start, I don't know) to fire back at the missile ships, but the missile impacts screwed over their accuracy so they didn't do much good.

Could be.. but it did look an awful lot like the lasers were shooting at the missiles. I mean there's no reason they should have let the missile ships open up to begin with (They owuld have to have at least a rough idea of their positions, simply becaues those ships needed to move into place somehow..)

I suspect that whatever funky magic makes the hydrometal work and keep it in place is probably related to what moves the turrets and TH around. It probably also provides the recoil compensation (EG why the beams or turrets don't fly backwards despite being in an essentially liquid medium.) There's also the fact TH and VC both seem to conduct whatever weird magic beam effects they generate across/just above the Hydrometal (another fun oddity, that) which I would chalk up to some forcefield mechanism.

Actually the Vulture Claw's firing sequence is a bit different in that I think the propagation of the beam effects appears suspended above the cannon, there's no hydro-metal in the immediate vicinity. You can see the complete thing at the tail end of this episode (the lead-in to the battle):-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oPVhv7crbI#t=22m15s (blargh LaserDisc rip murky)

One of the underlying themes of the series is a great deal of stagnation, both in terms of society and the various elements thereof (Technology, etc.) in different ways. Tradition/habit tends to rule things as much (or more) than logic or practicality, which is what makes Reinhard (and Yang) such geniuses really. That's not to say EVERYONE is a complete moron in LOGH, but there is enough entrenched bullshit that it takes someone exceptional to break through (either through position, in the case of Reinhard, or luck, in the case of Yang.)

This is actually a rather significant point as far as LOGH vs debates will go. What point of time you place a vs will dictate responses. a LOGH with Yang and/or Reinhard is going to be gneerally "better" - more flexible, more adaptable, and more likely to do what is needed to win than one without them.

Yeah - I have a hard time thinking of when anyone would envision LOGH without either of them, though. Heck, if its before them then sure, but after them I don't think much would change, unless you posited a hypothetical far future where all of Reinhard's trusted subordinates are retired and/or dead.

It would be interesting to know if this was over the full course of the war (150 years), or if this wsa a recent phenomenon (a recent escalation) because it says something about the economic and military capabilities of the FPA (at least.)

Things I imagine worked much more differently in the Empire.

Might be something to the recent escalation idea. Consider, although Iserlohn Fortress had existed for 25 years, in the course of Reinhard's career Iserlohn was attacked by large Alliance Fleets twice (5th Battle of Iserlohn - Golden Wings - was probably in Space Year 793, and 6th Battle of Iserlohn in Space Year 794).

Hehe, well stranger things have happened (take the Earth Church's mass employment of brainwashing drugs, for example, lol).

I have a feeling that most of the oddities in the series will ultimately be chalked up to interference by Phezzan or the Earth Cult, since they seem to be the closest things to villains in the series and basically dick around both sides something fierce - politically, economically, technologically, so why not genetically?

Oh, and re: the fleet size issue, Chapter 7 of Book 1 of the original novel (on the wiki, and always with the proviso we don't know if the translation is accurate) indicates that the fleets for the invasion of Imperial space were 60% of Alliance forces, and the number of men (30 million) was 0.23% of the Alliance population of 13 billion.

Well that is close enough.. that would be over 330 thousand ships (probably warships + transports). The population numbers seem to coincide with the "tens of billions" range rather than hundreds, and I'm starting to incline towards the "canon" numbers being the 40 billion total and the others possibly errors. Which does seem small, but remember that we have no reason to take these as anything but approximate in any case (think of them as potential "back of the envelope" calcs in and of themselves - that way you can cover your ass canon-wise even IF the "hundreds of billions" pop figures turn out to have merit.)

In any case I'm not sure actual population matters as far as their warmaking abilities.. I suspect that they use humans mainly because of the technobabbled EW excuse, but also because Phezzan is holding back on their AI tech (I got the impression the Artemis necklace defense sats might not have been manned) I suspect they could, if they weren't being fucked around by other groups, rely far less on human crews for combat.

My impression from the quote (the episode really does say "some of them inhabited") is that the majority of the 200 systems that fell under their control had no people. Maybe its some sort of 'zone of influence' paradigm, whereby each Alliance fleet can reach x many systems in its area of responsibility or something.

Yeah its probably an under-estimate of planet-specific populations. They might maintain some sort of manned outposts of some kind or another in various systems but i'd expect the acutal population bases are rarer.

It would be interetsing to compare the volumes of space the LOGH universe occupies and compare it to the overall size of the universe and the number of potential habitable planets that exist.. that might tell us something, although its possible that density patterns would skew this. or it may be that for whatever reason the LOGH universe is different from us and habitable planets are much rarer.

[Connor MacLeod]

Wow this was longer than I anticipated! Sorry bout that

They departed on the whimsically named Undutiness soon after Yang's wedding to Frederica Greenhill (on June 10, Space Year 799).

Their first stop was the (supposedly abandoned) Dayan-Khan supply base, in the Polesoun System, making contact with the secret fleet under High Admiral Merkatz's command.

From June 10th to July 10 is 2 months exactly. We dont know exact speeds, but Earth is in Imperial territory so they would have to travel through one or other of the Corridors, which ought to entail at least some 5000-10000 LY of travle time (depending on starting location and corridor used), and the FPA side isn't massively larger, so it can't be dramatically more distant (no more than twice the distance probably unless they do alot of indirect travelling) so just as an Oom calc figure between 5K and 20K Ly - 30K to 120K.. which is for.. a military transport? That may or may not match up to full speeds of a military ship.

Meeting with Merkatz and Commander Schneider, they advised Julian that with only 60 ships, they had the strength to perhaps take on a 100-strong patrol fleet, but no more. Julian relayed the following message to them in Yang's own words:

These are the patrol fleets you've mentioned ? Do we hear mention of the composition? This could be useful to know with more informaton (indications on the scale and numbers of reserves, etc.)

"According to the fifth condition of the Treaty of Barlat, the Alliance military must scrap all of its battleships and carriers. On July 16, in the Reykjavik System sector, 1,820 battleships and ships [sic?] are to be destroyed. I hope that the independent fleet, under Merkatz, can take care of it."

at least 1800 FPA battleships and carriers, with the bulk of those being battleships. Probably includes the command types. This is a reduced fleet after all the losses. I'd imagine they had at least 3000-6000 battleships at the start (I didnt really work out the ratios well, but I figure they had to have at least several times what they have now at the start)

After troops armed with rocket launchers blew the frontage of the building apart, Raft took the building by storm.
...

Kill anyone who resists!

In the end, 124 of the cultists were killed - 28 of them committed suicide. 66 were captured, with 14 of them critically wounded. None escaped. The leader of the branch, Bishop Godwin, was amongst those captured. Raft's men had 18 dead, and 42 wounded.

The "killthemall" image shows a nice effect of their small arms (pistols and rifles) on a person's body. I'd guess roughly a ~3-5 cm wide hole (fairly off the cuff scaling, but the hole looks like it would be no wider than 2 fingers if that) Maybe single or double digit kj depending on exacet hole size and degree of penetration/damage mechanism.

The would-be assassin had been wearing the sash of the Earth Church - "The Earth is our Mother, the Earth is in my hands."

Not technical per se, but damn that slogan is kinda creepy, especially considering hwo the Church cultists act.

The Wahlen Fleet left Odin on 13 July 799. At the deployment ceremony, Mittermeyer had occasion to admire Neithard Müller's new flagship, the Parzival- the first battleship constructed after the institution of the Lohengramm dynasty - which had been bestowed on Müller for his distinguished service at the Battle of Vermilion. He had also been promoted to the rank of High Admiral.

Departure time of the fleet. Also note that the new flagship appears to have been constructed only in a matter of months (less than a year, certainly) given the indications here... (first battleship made under Reinhard) this implies quite fast construction times for their ships, such as things go. (contrast with 6 months to a year typical for an ISD or mon cal star cruiser, not factoring in corruption.)

Earth (or Terra) had regressed significantly since its heydey. Soon after it was attacked by the Black Flag Force of the Anti-Earth Movement in 2704 AD, the population of the Earth had dwindled to no more than 10,000,000 people. Indeed, the area they were in had been an energy center in Earth's golden age - as well as housing underground bunkers for the central government- making it a chief target for attack by the Black Flag Force. Their fleet had blown off a thousand metres or so of the top of Mount Everest itself:-

Watching the screengrab of that is really odd. WE don't see a beam, missile, or anything liek that striking. Indeed what appears to happen is that some sort of shockwave/ring effect encloses the mountain passing downwards and then it just abruptly shatters. Nothing resemlbing molten or vaporized debirs I can see.. no persistant fireball, etc. It also looks like it was a "centrally buried" or internal explosion.

We might explain it as some sort of deep-penetrating attack that had to bypass shielding (the "shockwave" may in fact be some sort of shield interaction that is dissipating along a hemispherical bubble, if they have any sort of theatre or planetary shielding.) and any fireball(s) may have been sub-surface. Both facts would argue more for a beam weapon rather than a projectile, but that's not guaranteed, and in any case we wouldnt know how many shots (it would be a single volley.) a single centrally buried explosive creating a 1 km deep crater would require something on the order of megatons to achieve, but it doesnt tell us a great deal even then.

Also the crappy fansub said 10 billion rather than 10 million, I dont know if that is true (its prtty screwy in how they portray the overall event) but I thought i'd mention it.

On 24 July, the Wahlen Fleet had reached Pluto...

Arrival time of the fleet. 11 Days from odin to Earth. going by the map i'm guessing some 2500-3000 LY, for an average FTL speed of 80,000-100,000c or thereabouts.

Because of the difficult terrain, there were few landing spots, and the altitude meant that standard personal jets and parachutes could not be deployed. Kamhuber recommended simply levelling the base with tactical missiles, but Wahlen found the approach inartful, and too likely to harm non-combatants. Laible suggested light infantry. Wahlen's problem was that the base was likely to have multiple entrances - if they merely made for one, then the Terraists could escape through the others.

Note light infantry as opposed to something heavier (Grenadiers vs the normal troops?) Also the implication they carry some sort of atmospheric jets (we know they carry ground forces as well.) I wonder why they would consider using "tactical missiles" but not a beam weapon of any kind. Perhaps beam weapon yields don't go down that low, but missiles are more variable-yield.

On 27 July, Wahlen awoke from his coma, with the Salamander near Mars.

Three days travel from Pluto to Mars orbit. Mars is roughly 1.5 AU from Earth, and jupiter is some 39.5 AU, meaning 38 AU in 3 days. Average velocity is some ~22,000 kps, and acceleration is at least 35 gees assuming 3 days of constant acceleration or constant deceleration and a favorable planetary alingment (basically both planetarys orbits on same side of sun.) Variables could push the number higher to anything between 70-140 gees depending on other variables (if they took fewer than 3 days to arrive, if the planets were in different orbits in the solar system - say pluto and mars were on opposide ends of the system at that point, or if the timeframe included acceleration up to the given speed and time to slow down towards zero at the destination.)

Overall it fits some ot my earlier assessments as per acceleration, it seems safe to say starships can routinely pull tens or hundreds of gees.

As soon as they were alone, Poplin assaulted the doctor (about to give them a syringe full of thyoxin) and Mintz overcame the guards who came running.
..
Threatening the doctor with a lethal dose of thyoxin, they demanded information on the Earth Church's objectives and secrets. The doctor protested ignorance and fainted.

Two things I noted: once in the episode, we see a surgical instrument looking like a mini lightsaber. They can create energy blades of some kind (its nature and composition aren't known, nor are the effects from what I briefly observed.) The other detail is more a question - do we know what kind of pistols those Earth Cultists were carrying in the "hiyaa" picture where Julian (I think its him tat least) jump kicks the two cultists? I've never seen their like before.

Using the Salamander's unique landing claws, Dunckel secured the ship to a ridge above the objective as the panzer grenadiers launched.

I'm not sure based on the viewed images whether these are landing gear, or the latter seen "ropes/lines" we see ancorhing the ship to the ground, either way would be odd - as odd as republic warships landing. Both would be significant indicators of the use of AG tech (to support the weight on the landing gear and minimize groupd pressure, if nothing else)

Fanatical resistance

Joy in death

The main thing I want to note here is a.) the shields the only observable and obvious sort of armor/personal protection the non-Grenadier soldiers ever display (unless their uniforms/suits are armor, or they have under-armor inserts or vests which aren't that bulky.)

Also the image of that cultist dying happily in the gas is the sort of creepy/disturbing thing you expect from LOGH's portrayal of war. Whatever else you say about the series, they do a good job of making a person realize the human cost of all the action in the series.

Panzer Grenadier armor shrugs off all the cultists have

Which includes seeing the armor stop knife blows and laser attacks (pistol and rifles.) I assume it would have also stood up to lots of projectile weapon fire too, which really makes you wonder att what enables both axes and crossbows to penetrate - the bolts dont seem particularily heavy, nor do the axes, nor do they move especially fast.

The Salamander moored, the new Goldenlöwe crest clearly visible

Looks like some kind of airship/dirigible moored. That would suggest they need to be physically anchored at certain altitudes to prevent the ships from floating away or something weird, implying weird properties about the AG tech.

[Connor MacLeod]

Blargh for some reason i wasnt paying proper attention and I left in some of your replies in the middle, and forgot to reply ot the Vulture's claw bit! Sorry bout that

Actually the Vulture Claw's firing sequence is a bit different in that I think the propagation of the beam effects appears suspended above the cannon, there's no hydro-metal in the immediate vicinity. You can see the complete thing at the tail end of this episode (the lead-in to the battle):-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oPVhv7crbI#t=22m15s (blargh LaserDisc rip murky)

Yeah I forgot that. I think it was the same during the Geirsberg vs Iserlohn battle - they even mention the differences between the two stations and some of the weak points (Iserlohn can shift the position of its guns and can withdraw/hide its weaponry inside its hydrometal shell more easily than Geiersberg can IIRC.) In fact Geiersberg seems to hav emuch more exposed to enemy weapons than the stations do or something to that effect.

I also note in that scene link above they speficically mention the hydrometal reflecting laser beams (like a mirror? lol) so we have confirmation they use both laser and particle beam anti-ship weapons, even though beams are generally both visible and largely simialr in visual appearance.

One other thing I was going to comment on in your introduction of the "Parzival" - i looked up the wiki entry on that and I noted a few interesting details mentioned here

A symbol of Kaiser Lohengramm's new empire, the Perceval inherited the gleaming-white hull, non-centralized cannons, and flowing form of the Brünhild. The Perceval's armor, like that of the Brünhild, was capable of deflecting cannon fire without damage.

I don't knwo what "non centralized" cannons mean, unless it means they are somehow not fixed axis or their positioning is somehow different, but the way the armor sounds is simialr ot what you have mentioned before bout the Brunhild's defenses. It sounds almost like a starship variation of hydrometal, just less flowing perhaps. This also suggests they probably restrict the usage of this technology to admiral's ships of a certain status - either due to cost (money or resources), technology limitations, or just outright elitism (or some combination thereof.)

[Darth Fanboy]

I know I have had a few beers but Connor when you say June 10 to July 10 is two months what am I missing?

[Vympel]

These are the patrol fleets you've mentioned ? Do we hear mention of the composition? This could be useful to know with more informaton (indications on the scale and numbers of reserves, etc.)

No unfortunately. Its an off hand comment.

at least 1800 FPA battleships and carriers, with the bulk of those being battleships. Probably includes the command types. This is a reduced fleet after all the losses. I'd imagine they had at least 3000-6000 battleships at the start (I didnt really work out the ratios well, but I figure they had to have at least several times what they have now at the start)

Yeah. I'd say command types are included, because Attenborough gets one such ship (the Massasoit) - though for all we know Merkatz made off with it after Vermlion ...

The "killthemall" image shows a nice effect of their small arms (pistols and rifles) on a person's body. I'd guess roughly a ~3-5 cm wide hole (fairly off the cuff scaling, but the hole looks like it would be no wider than 2 fingers if that) Maybe single or double digit kj depending on exacet hole size and degree of penetration/damage mechanism.

Yah, the guy's brain practically falls out of his head after.

Departure time of the fleet. Also note that the new flagship appears to have been constructed only in a matter of months (less than a year, certainly) given the indications here... (first battleship made under Reinhard) this implies quite fast construction times for their ships, such as things go. (contrast with 6 months to a year typical for an ISD or mon cal star cruiser, not factoring in corruption.)

Yeah, also pretty decent considering its a one-off vessel (as far as we know).

Watching the screengrab of that is really odd. WE don't see a beam, missile, or anything liek that striking. Indeed what appears to happen is that some sort of shockwave/ring effect encloses the mountain passing downwards and then it just abruptly shatters. Nothing resemlbing molten or vaporized debirs I can see.. no persistant fireball, etc. It also looks like it was a "centrally buried" or internal explosion.

We might explain it as some sort of deep-penetrating attack that had to bypass shielding (the "shockwave" may in fact be some sort of shield interaction that is dissipating along a hemispherical bubble, if they have any sort of theatre or planetary shielding.) and any fireball(s) may have been sub-surface. Both facts would argue more for a beam weapon rather than a projectile, but that's not guaranteed, and in any case we wouldnt know how many shots (it would be a single volley.) a single centrally buried explosive creating a 1 km deep crater would require something on the order of megatons to achieve, but it doesnt tell us a great deal even then.

Also the crappy fansub said 10 billion rather than 10 million, I dont know if that is true (its prtty screwy in how they portray the overall event) but I thought i'd mention it.

I'll check the subtitles of the QTS native rip. It kills me that so soon after I do one of these, my brain goes to mush and I forget in what episode who said what! Will have to hunt it down.

Note light infantry as opposed to something heavier (Grenadiers vs the normal troops?) Also the implication they carry some sort of atmospheric jets (we know they carry ground forces as well.) I wonder why they would consider using "tactical missiles" but not a beam weapon of any kind. Perhaps beam weapon yields don't go down that low, but missiles are more variable-yield.

Going back to the battle in the gas giant Legnica in My Conquest ... I wonder if beam weapons simply aren't as effective in atmosphere. I'd guess light invantry being normal troops/ grenadiers is a good guess too.

Three days travel from Pluto to Mars orbit. Mars is roughly 1.5 AU from Earth, and jupiter is some 39.5 AU, meaning 38 AU in 3 days. Average velocity is some ~22,000 kps, and acceleration is at least 35 gees assuming 3 days of constant acceleration or constant deceleration and a favorable planetary alingment (basically both planetarys orbits on same side of sun.) Variables could push the number higher to anything between 70-140 gees depending on other variables (if they took fewer than 3 days to arrive, if the planets were in different orbits in the solar system - say pluto and mars were on opposide ends of the system at that point, or if the timeframe included acceleration up to the given speed and time to slow down towards zero at the destination.)

Overall it fits some ot my earlier assessments as per acceleration, it seems safe to say starships can routinely pull tens or hundreds of gees.

One possible spanner there is that the fleet may have been in holding for who-knows-how-long, waiting for Wahlen to wake up. Although its also possible that his 2nd continued making preparations to accomplish the mission regardless.

Two things I noted: once in the episode, we see a surgical instrument looking like a mini lightsaber. They can create energy blades of some kind (its nature and composition aren't known, nor are the effects from what I briefly observed.) The other detail is more a question - do we know what kind of pistols those Earth Cultists were carrying in the "hiyaa" picture where Julian (I think its him tat least) jump kicks the two cultists? I've never seen their like before.

Yeah, those are the tasers referred to earlier.

I'm not sure based on the viewed images whether these are landing gear, or the latter seen "ropes/lines" we see ancorhing the ship to the ground, either way would be odd - as odd as republic warships landing. Both would be significant indicators of the use of AG tech (to support the weight on the landing gear and minimize groupd pressure, if nothing else)

The Salamander never uses those claws for anything else in the series - no other ship has them, which is really weird. Its almost like the entire flagship was built with just such a use in mind, 3 years before it actually happened Other times we see it landed (fair few times) its simply semi floating like most ships do.

The main thing I want to note here is a.) the shields the only observable and obvious sort of armor/personal protection the non-Grenadier soldiers ever display (unless their uniforms/suits are armor, or they have under-armor inserts or vests which aren't that bulky.)

Yeah, there's no indication that the uniforms themselves are armor.

Also the image of that cultist dying happily in the gas is the sort of creepy/disturbing thing you expect from LOGH's portrayal of war. Whatever else you say about the series, they do a good job of making a person realize the human cost of all the action in the series.

Mhhhmmm. I get damn uncomfortable watching some bits.

Which includes seeing the armor stop knife blows and laser attacks (pistol and rifles.) I assume it would have also stood up to lots of projectile weapon fire too, which really makes you wonder att what enables both axes and crossbows to penetrate - the bolts dont seem particularily heavy, nor do the axes, nor do they move especially fast.

I wonder if its an issue like the common modern body armor example - i.e. what will stop a bullet may not stop a sword thrust, or however it goes. We know the Alliance armor definitely has some reflective qualities, given it bounces beams. IIRC, we don't ever see explicitly how well the armor stands up to projectile fire.

Looks like some kind of airship/dirigible moored. That would suggest they need to be physically anchored at certain altitudes to prevent the ships from floating away or something weird, implying weird properties about the AG tech.

Good point lol - I have no idea why they'd need that at all.

I also note in that scene link above they speficically mention the hydrometal reflecting laser beams (like a mirror? lol) so we have confirmation they use both laser and particle beam anti-ship weapons, even though beams are generally both visible and largely simialr in visual appearance.

Well they do seem almost mirror like when the Reuenthal fleet is bombarding its surface

One other thing I was going to comment on in your introduction of the "Parzival" - i looked up the wiki entry on that and I noted a few interesting details mentioned here

I don't knwo what "non centralized" cannons mean, unless it means they are somehow not fixed axis or their positioning is somehow different, but the way the armor sounds is simialr ot what you have mentioned before bout the Brunhild's defenses. It sounds almost like a starship variation of hydrometal, just less flowing perhaps. This also suggests they probably restrict the usage of this technology to admiral's ships of a certain status - either due to cost (money or resources), technology limitations, or just outright elitism (or some combination thereof.)

Ah yes - what I was going for when I wrote that was that unlike every other ship in the fleet (except Nürnberg) you can't see where the Parzival has its armament at all. Every other ship has its armament arranged (alongst every arc, but the forward arc most prominently) in readily visible locations, wheras the Brunhild's fire flies out of nowhere all over the hull most times (though there are some times when multiple beams appear to be coming out of circular ports on its hull). Maybe I need to reword that to be more clear ...

I'll have some pics of shot-bounces on the Parzival's hull in the entry after next

[OmegaChief]

The Salamander never uses those claws for anything else in the series - no other ship has them, which is really weird. Its almost like the entire flagship was built with just such a use in mind, 3 years before it actually happened Other times we see it landed (fair few times) its simply semi floating like most ships do.

Possible that they're designed for landing in adverse conditions IE high winds or other wise hostile terratory and terrian? As if there was very high winds I don't think the usual Imperial mooring lines would suffice.

Might help explain why Wahlen was chosen to lead the assault, if his flagship was the best for a harsh troop landing, and they didn't know what the conditions on Earth were like (Or what the cultists might try) it also fits the thoery that the Admirals flagships are test beds of unique systems/technology at least.

[Connor MacLeod]

Two sub points before I inflict myself on poor Vympel again.

I know I have had a few beers but Connor when you say June 10 to July 10 is two months what am I missing?

You're missing the fact that a drunk person caught me in an obvious error. Fear my mathematical skillz!

I was counting June/july as two months for some reason. So its actually a month, which doubles the FTL speeds I stated.

Possible that they're designed for landing in adverse conditions IE high winds or other wise hostile terratory and terrian? As if there was very high winds I don't think the usual Imperial mooring lines would suffice.

We've seen them in fierce wind conditions before.. it takes some truly truly nasty wind speeds (like on the order of 6000 kph) to even start knocking the ships around. They can do 2000 kph without breaking a sweat. I doubt the winds of any terristrial planet, even a hurricane, could hope to match that.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah. I'd say command types are included, because Attenborough gets one such ship (the Massasoit) - though for all we know Merkatz made off with it after Vermlion ...

thought so. In any case though, I find my estimate a little low.. one battleship per 20-30 other warships is possible, but visuals tend to suggest they're alot more common (unless it just so happens for dramatic reasons they tend to focus on battleships blowing up or something, which they may.) I've always figured they'd have at least 2-3 times the number I stated based on simple attrition alone.

Yah, the guy's brain practically falls out of his head after.

I hadn't wactually watched the scene since I coudln't place the episode, but I went back and tried to after. My original estimate was based on scaling the chest wounds on your screencap, which are quite sizeable holes (they're making entry/exit wounds as large as a high powered rifle. That's not bad for an energy weapon) When that guy gets his brain cored, there's some interesting points: 1.) the beam passes completely through BEFORE we see the damage (that happens after). sort of the revese of SW damage before contact (contact before damage - although that works much better for a tracer theory IMHO) It's hard to gauge just how much of a hole they tore in the top of his skull, but I'd guess maybe 1/4 to 1/3 the width (for a 20 cm head? 5-7 cm diameter maybe). Interesting in that it didn't do anything to the brain - it was intact (rather than pulverized) but it cut a nice furrow in the top still. Also complete absence of thermal damage.

Another thing I noticed.. they have tripod weapons of some kind. We see them carting them to the vehicles. And the running without their shoes on, while stealthy, was just begging for something like caltrops.

Funny thing, when they infiltrate and do their door by door, the guy in the middle in the first room they encounter Cultists has his shoulder completely blasted through, but he doesnt react to it immediately (nor does the blood immediaely flow) I dont know how realistic/not that is but it might be an indicator of some protective measures if something is odd. The compact rifles/carbines the cultists are carrying makes a fist-sized hole in the guy's shoulder, possibly a bit larger (25-50%, depending on angle, time I took the frame grab and scaling benchmarks - I use hand/head for mine). That's not bad. Assault rifles and battle rifles can do that, but it really relies on luck WRT tumbling or fragmentation to create those kinds of wound patterns IIRC.

Also of note is that in this case they seem to have abandoned "beam" weapon type rifles and gone with SW style "glowy pulse" rifles. I believe you made early allusions to "machine gun" like noises, which I admit hearing here. They may be related (maybe they are firing projectiles!) If they are, they're very low mass and they have some non-propellant means of acceleration, given there is virtually no observed recoil.

Also of general note is that they don't seem very well prepared combat-wise. The body armor I already addressed, but there's the absence of camouflage, the fact they appear to be using longarms instead of carbine/SMG variants in CQB, etc. This isn't so say they are idiots per se, but rather inexperienced: I gather that ground combat doctrines may be as under-developed as space battles are (less so perhaps, it doesnt seem like they have as much experience in diverse kinds of ground warfare. Save perhaps the power-armored elites.) at least in some areas (They clearly have some sort of combined arms doctrine, of course.)

Yeah, also pretty decent considering its a one-off vessel (as far as we know).

They probably build battleships (and for that matter cruisers and destroyers) in a much faster timeframe, really. Logistics, economy, and probably population (but not quite even this) limit the true scopes of fleet. I'm also convinced that a "million strong" fleet isn't impossible, at least where the Empire is concerned (who seems, especially later on, to be both stronger economically, bette rmotivated under Reinhard, and generally more unified.)

I'll check the subtitles of the QTS native rip. It kills me that so soon after I do one of these, my brain goes to mush and I forget in what episode who said what! Will have to hunt it down.

In this case I'm betting on Central Anime, but one never knows. I was generally left with the idea that Earth isn't very populous anymore, and saying they still have 10 billion or so seems odd to me (PHezzan had "only" 2 billion). Nevermind that 10 billion would be a major chunk of the Empire's population as well. Unless we took this as proof that the 'hundreds of billions" population figures are more accurate. At this point it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Going back to the battle in the gas giant Legnica in My Conquest ... I wonder if beam weapons simply aren't as effective in atmosphere. I'd guess light invantry being normal troops/ grenadiers is a good guess too.

Neutral particle beams aren't very effective in an atmosphere, because they generally lack penetration and lose energy to the enviroment (but if that were the case we'd be seeing lots of thermal blooming n shit.) That would be bad if you want to avoid casualties or collateral damage, but not for general destruction (ajnd we know they don't hesitate to paste them with nukes.) Lasers though shouldn't be an issue. The proposed ABL has a range in the tens or hundreds of km range and thats in the hundreds of kilowatts/low megawatt range, IIRC. Even their lasers shoudl be considerably more powerful than that. Furthermore, I'd be hard pressed to believe they are incapable of making adjustable yield beam weapons as well.

One possible spanner there is that the fleet may have been in holding for who-knows-how-long, waiting for Wahlen to wake up. Although its also possible that his 2nd continued making preparations to accomplish the mission regardless.

What do you mean exactly by 'holding'? If you mean "not moving" then that simply makes my calcs extremely conservative, which doesn't but me in the least - that just means it took less time to travel the distances involved. In fact I'm pretty sure it did, given that we can get some pretty good acceleration values for Geiersberg when they stuck engines on it, and that fucker can easily pull a few tens of gees by itself - I think its safe to say a purpose-designed warship is at least as fast if not faster.

Yeah, those are the tasers referred to earlier.

Looks like no taser I've ever seen. Tasers IRL need two electrical prongs to make a circuit and form the jolt. The only possible thing I could think of is they're using some sort of plasma medium or something to transmit the shock, and I'm not sure how possible that would be (then aain that depends on what sort of 'plasma' you talk about.)

It may also not be a literal tazer either.

The Salamander never uses those claws for anything else in the series - no other ship has them, which is really weird. Its almost like the entire flagship was built with just such a use in mind, 3 years before it actually happened Other times we see it landed (fair few times) its simply semi floating like most ships do.

Like I said something tells me it was done purely for aestehtics reasons, like they do with many things in the series (WW1 airships or blimps I imagine.) I suppose if we must rationalize it the claws provide some sort of ground-contact stability in conjunction with the repulsors (sort of like the way SW starships have landing gear, but rely on their repulsors to bear the brunt of most of the weight , the gear simply providess ome sort of ground contact for whatever reason that currently eludes me but Curtis onece explained.)

For all we know those aren't cable,s but some exotic material alloy that can alter its state as needed (like hydrometal)

Yeah, there's no indication that the uniforms themselves are armor.

Not much, no. Which is kind of odd. If they make power armor for the troops, I don't see why they can't make a non-powred version, even a partial vest to cover vitals, for the infantry. Then again we're still at a loss with the crossbows

Mhhhmmm. I get damn uncomfortable watching some bits.

When I was watching them take the cultist compound the suicide via gutstab was pretty creepy. especially the dark haird chick. Kinda reminded me of someone I knew. Compared to that, seeing some guy's brain leak out isn't nearly as bad.

I wonder if its an issue like the common modern body armor example - i.e. what will stop a bullet may not stop a sword thrust, or however it goes. We know the Alliance armor definitely has some reflective qualities, given it bounces beams. IIRC, we don't ever see explicitly how well the armor stands up to projectile fire.

It probably does. I'd have to dig around, but more or less as I understand it, laser or particle beam sidearms that rely on pulsed explosions (mechanical damage rather than thermal) as a wounding mechanism will have alot more in common with bullets than a heat ray type bea m weapon would. Of course there's a simple fact that if projectile weapons were at all effective, you'd think they'd be using them rather than beam weapons (which they must know would be ineffective.) It's not as if it would be lost-technology, and you can't always explain their absence away by zephyr particles (if slugthrowers would even set them off to begin with, which is debatable if engine exhaust wouldn't.)

As far as modern body armor goes, yeah, the soft flexible bits wont be completely effective at stopping a knife (or at least a knife used in certain ways, I think its mostly icepick/point based stabbing attacks) but metal inserts I['m pretty sure ARE rated to stop them. I even remember Thanatos mentioning ot me once (in a discussion over body armor, rocks and the Battle of Endor) that in his time in the marines they even tested it out by throwing heavy objects at their armor. Since the heavy armor is basically high tech plate mail, I doubt we can use 'specialization" as an excuse, unless they're deliberately using some sort of ceramic or brittle material (which I kinda doubt, given what we've seen. It looks lmetal anyhow)

Well they do seem almost mirror like when the Reuenthal fleet is bombarding its surface

Bit of a brain bug that. Mirrors won't actually work as armor. That just makes hydrometal even more magical really, and more inclined to think of a "force field" approach to the hull defenses if they're making shots bounce off.

Still working out how lasers vs particle beams fit into things really, but the weapons setup is so diverse and screwy anyhow (what with all the weaponry we haven't identified) I may just not read too much into it.

Ah yes - what I was going for when I wrote that was that unlike every other ship in the fleet (except Nürnberg) you can't see where the Parzival has its armament at all. Every other ship has its armament arranged (alongst every arc, but the forward arc most prominently) in readily visible locations, wheras the Brunhild's fire flies out of nowhere all over the hull most times (though there are some times when multiple beams appear to be coming out of circular ports on its hull). Maybe I need to reword that to be more clear ...

Non-spinal? most every normal battleship on both sides, indeed most warships, seem to cluster them in a way that suggests they run much of the length of the ship, after all. Other than that, maybe "trench gun" arrangement, sort of reminsicent of an ISD (both the brunhild and Parzival have a 'sort of' wedge shape, after all.) I'm drawing blanks other than that, though.

[Connor MacLeod]

oh yeah another interetsing thing I watched from that episode.. Rucke's marskmanship. The pistol is interesting in contrast to the long rifles I was discussing earlier. Good calcable instance in Rucke shooting the pistol.

Rucke's pistol has a 1-1.5 cm diameter aperture in the barrel, with the visible beam being of similar diameter. There is no recoil. It has significant thermal effects against the gun barrel, but appears to shatter it still, as if you watch frame by frame you can see that despite the flash when the beam intersects the barrel it is still intact (it also doesn't strike dead on) briefly before being blasted into pieces. It does appear to blow off about half the top part of the gun, as his shot reduces it down to close to the trigger guard. One possibility is that the barrel heated up so rapidly that it shattered, hence explaining the glow and fragmentation, but proving that would require more work and research than I want to do ATM

I tried scaling the gun but I got a bit lazy so I figured its about the size of a Glock.. so 500-600 grams at least, maybe a kilo tops for the full gun (unloaded)

The whole event takes no longer than a second, and I'm guessing much less (maybe half a second or less) but I can't do frame counts/skipping very well for some reason so I couldn't measure it.

The damaged part of the barrel glows a bright orange to dull orange/red, which would suggest an approximate temp of around 900-1200K (or, assuming a 300k enviroment temp, a temperature raise of 600-900K) source) The affected barrel is maybe 1/3 the total weight I'd guess so betwene 200-500 grams affected roughly. Assuming iron composition (600 k specific heat) and for a second ignoring melting.. we're looking at between 70 and 180 kilojoules I'd estimate. melting might add some to that but I'd guess no more than half the barrel got melted, and probably alot less than that (maybe 30-50 grams at a VERY rough estimate, going on approx beam diameter) that might be 36-120 kilojoules maybe. So we're looking at no more than a few hundred kilojoules for the shot, tops, and quite possibly a bit less.

The real interesting bit is that this is a rare instance of a quite obviously thermal damage mechanism. Ususually against other weapons (like cutting in half Schonkopf's axe haft, the numerous cases of beams hitting organic bodies and shooting out blood with no cauterization, etc.) usually suggest a pulse-train explosive style damage mechanism (as described on atomic rockets - more precisely they're the blaster-type lasers. Possibly a raybeam given the narrow holes they tend to make. But in any event they quite obvously have multiple modes/settings incorporated into at least some weapons, which really isnt a surprise I suppose.

Note that both versions of weapons, the beam pistol and the long pulse rifles, both overpenetrate like hell, so they aren't depositing their full energy into the target (but how much I dont know) I didnt see overpenetration against the handgun though - whatever teh beam is it may just be stopped by denser materials (like a gun barrel) more easily than human flesh. Possibly an indicator of some PBW.

[Vympel]

Another thing I noticed.. they have tripod weapons of some kind. We see them carting them to the vehicles. And the running without their shoes on, while stealthy, was just begging for something like caltrops.

True, but the chances of the cultists thinking to deploy caltrops on the off hand that Künmel would completely fuck up a fairly good assassination plan and allow time for the fuzz to arrive (and also anticipate they would go barefoot to mask the sound of their running) are really, really, really low

Also of note is that in this case they seem to have abandoned "beam" weapon type rifles and gone with SW style "glowy pulse" rifles. I believe you made early allusions to "machine gun" like noises, which I admit hearing here. They may be related (maybe they are firing projectiles!) If they are, they're very low mass and they have some non-propellant means of acceleration, given there is virtually no observed recoil.

Given the rifles used by the Imperial troops exhibit both beam and pulse, I'm starting to think they're multifunctional. Its interchangeable throughout the series, with the instantly-propagating beam making a final appearance right up to the end.

Also of general note is that they don't seem very well prepared combat-wise. The body armor I already addressed, but there's the absence of camouflage, the fact they appear to be using longarms instead of carbine/SMG variants in CQB, etc. This isn't so say they are idiots per se, but rather inexperienced: I gather that ground combat doctrines may be as under-developed as space battles are (less so perhaps, it doesnt seem like they have as much experience in diverse kinds of ground warfare. Save perhaps the power-armored elites.) at least in some areas (They clearly have some sort of combined arms doctrine, of course.)

Keep in mind that these guys are just military police - High Admiral Kesler's department. The lack of camoflauge is to be expected. Actual ground battles in the Gaiden, whilst not employ camoflauge (unless grey and green count), are between armored vehicles and see all troops equipped with panzer grenadier armor.

In this case I'm betting on Central Anime, but one never knows. I was generally left with the idea that Earth isn't very populous anymore, and saying they still have 10 billion or so seems odd to me (PHezzan had "only" 2 billion). Nevermind that 10 billion would be a major chunk of the Empire's population as well. Unless we took this as proof that the 'hundreds of billions" population figures are more accurate. At this point it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Unfortunately the subtitles don't show the number in numeric form, and its hard listening, but I'm pretty sure CA is right. Especially where seconds before the same character says that 1 billion people survived the attack originally before the population whittled down to 10 million.

What do you mean exactly by 'holding'? If you mean "not moving" then that simply makes my calcs extremely conservative, which doesn't but me in the least - that just means it took less time to travel the distances involved. In fact I'm pretty sure it did, given that we can get some pretty good acceleration values for Geiersberg when they stuck engines on it, and that fucker can easily pull a few tens of gees by itself - I think its safe to say a purpose-designed warship is at least as fast if not faster.

Yeah, I mean they halted their advance to see what would happen with Wahlen. Could go either way, doesn't really affect things.

Looks like no taser I've ever seen. Tasers IRL need two electrical prongs to make a circuit and form the jolt. The only possible thing I could think of is they're using some sort of plasma medium or something to transmit the shock, and I'm not sure how possible that would be (then aain that depends on what sort of 'plasma' you talk about.)

It may also not be a literal tazer either.

I just called them tasers to be honest, since that what they reminded me of when they used them (i.e. cable with prongs shoots out of the gun, hits the guy, he goes down). Its not from the show. I suppose stun guns might be a more neutral term.

Like I said something tells me it was done purely for aestehtics reasons, like they do with many things in the series (WW1 airships or blimps I imagine.) I suppose if we must rationalize it the claws provide some sort of ground-contact stability in conjunction with the repulsors (sort of like the way SW starships have landing gear, but rely on their repulsors to bear the brunt of most of the weight , the gear simply providess ome sort of ground contact for whatever reason that currently eludes me but Curtis onece explained.)

For all we know those aren't cable,s but some exotic material alloy that can alter its state as needed (like hydrometal)

That's a pretty funky idea. Its too bad we never see em up close.

It probably does. I'd have to dig around, but more or less as I understand it, laser or particle beam sidearms that rely on pulsed explosions (mechanical damage rather than thermal) as a wounding mechanism will have alot more in common with bullets than a heat ray type bea m weapon would. Of course there's a simple fact that if projectile weapons were at all effective, you'd think they'd be using them rather than beam weapons (which they must know would be ineffective.) It's not as if it would be lost-technology, and you can't always explain their absence away by zephyr particles (if slugthrowers would even set them off to begin with, which is debatable if engine exhaust wouldn't.)

As far as modern body armor goes, yeah, the soft flexible bits wont be completely effective at stopping a knife (or at least a knife used in certain ways, I think its mostly icepick/point based stabbing attacks) but metal inserts I['m pretty sure ARE rated to stop them. I even remember Thanatos mentioning ot me once (in a discussion over body armor, rocks and the Battle of Endor) that in his time in the marines they even tested it out by throwing heavy objects at their armor. Since the heavy armor is basically high tech plate mail, I doubt we can use 'specialization" as an excuse, unless they're deliberately using some sort of ceramic or brittle material (which I kinda doubt, given what we've seen. It looks lmetal anyhow)

I'm at a loss - perhaps the axes are some sort of super-sharp-metal

Non-spinal? most every normal battleship on both sides, indeed most warships, seem to cluster them in a way that suggests they run much of the length of the ship, after all. Other than that, maybe "trench gun" arrangement, sort of reminsicent of an ISD (both the brunhild and Parzival have a 'sort of' wedge shape, after all.) I'm drawing blanks other than that, though.

[/quote]

Most gun arrangements appear spinal, but whether they really do run the length of the ship is an open question ...