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Monocled Falcon posted:The Last Angel is a good story, but it was first thing I thought of when I read the plot description of Duchy of Terra, because the story of TLA is so... rooted in the certainty of western civilization, if you'll pardon the pretension. idk im just about done with it and i have no idea where you're getting this conclusion from considering earth's culture is completely exterminated and the remaining humans are slaves
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Aug 20, 2019 06:47
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Larry Parrish posted:I somehow found the inner strength to read through that whole series and it was an incredible piece of poo poo I read 2? 3? of them on a friend's kindle while stuck in the back of a van while on a road trip and suffering from a mild heat exhaustion induced delirium and basically if you unironically agree with the "To Be Fair You Have To Have a Very High IQ to Understand Rick and Morty" copypasta you'd probably love the series.
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Aug 20, 2019 07:25
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please always bring adequate hydration materials when embarking on long car journeys, CM kruger
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Aug 20, 2019 09:33
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Ninurta posted:I would like to add a recommendation, it's a duology by Steven Westerfeld, his Succession series, The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds. These books reminded me of the Dread Empire series, only the Emperor/Empress are immortal and human and things go downhill from there. It is a Hard SF universe, with a twist. Seconding this recommendation.
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Aug 20, 2019 10:58
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Well then, allow me to introduce you to John DeChancie's Skyway series. *HONK HONK* nanoAirBrakes hiss *HONK HONK HONK* PupsOfWar....I wasn't kidding about this recommendation. Google the cover-art for "Starrigger" and be blown away by the futuristic big-rig + trailer the main character runs around in for the entire series. HONK HONK HONK {get the gently caress in PupsOfWar, it's a scifi series literally about infrastructure travel and shipping.} HONK HONK CM Kruger.......thinking you might need to dive into the Sten Chronicles series just like Kchama to experience something truly bad yet kind of enjoyable at times.
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Aug 20, 2019 23:21
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Ninurta posted:I would like to add a recommendation, it's a duology by Steven Westerfeld, his Succession series, The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds. These books reminded me of the Dread Empire series, only the Emperor/Empress are immortal and human and things go downhill from there. It is a Hard SF universe, with a twist. FWIW the kindle edition i bought recently (gave away all my physical books in my last move) had the whole duology released under the name of the first book. unfortunately by the time i realised it was too late to get a refund on the second book.
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Aug 20, 2019 23:56
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Ok so I'm trying to remember a mil-scifi book I read, I thought it was an Eric Flint + someone else joint but looking through their bibliographies I can't really track it down. It was about humans in a space war with bugs. The reason I want to remember it is because the dust jacket was a weird sort of bait and switch where it stated something to the effect of humanity being on the verge of extinction due to the bugs, but in the actual book they started off almost even and just losing the war slightly, and then they immediately discovered a secret jump point that let them take out a bug planet that ended up being like 1/5 of the bugs total industrial capacity. And then they kept discovering new secret jump points and new allies just walking away with the whole thing, to the point where I was like, why bother writing a book on this I know it was mil-scifi because in addition to focusing on spaceships blowing up the human politics consisted of the noble hard-assed military planets, the effete liberal planets who wanted silly things like peace with the bugs, and the corporate planets who manipulated the liberal planets. Also we got a scene of a bug eating a child to make sure we knew genocide was the only right answer
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Aug 21, 2019 00:52
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The Chad Jihad posted:Ok so I'm trying to remember a mil-scifi book I read, I thought it was an Eric Flint + someone else joint but looking through their bibliographies I can't really track it down. It was about humans in a space war with bugs. that's not eric flint - that's David Weber and Steve White's tie-in novels for the 4X board game Starfire specifically, In Death Ground and The Shiva Option, which are about the bug war - there are other Starfire novels about unrelated conflicts it sounds like you started with The Shiva Option anyway the point of writing books about it is that they were trying to sell their board game i guess  ive never played the game but it looks...non thrilling PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 01:50
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alternate history novel where the point of divergence is that david weber got real into Twilight Imperium instead of StarFIre and consequently wrote better books
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Aug 21, 2019 01:59
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PupsOfWar posted:that's not eric flint - that's David Weber and Steve White's tie-in novels for the 4X board game Starfire Always bet on Weber. From what I've seen, Starfire can be likened to like... Excel Sheets, The Game. It's has a lot of dumb rules and the even dumber thing is that basically everything Weber writes that involves space combat is based on Starfire. It's why the ship classes work the way they do in Honorverse. That is to say, being entirely size-based rather than really role-based, with each bigger ship being many times stronger than the next smaller class and basically invincible to anything smaller than that. PupsOfWar posted:alternate history novel where the point of divergence is that david weber got real into Twilight Imperium instead of StarFIre and consequently wrote better books To be fair, Starfire sucks because Weber literally designed and wrote it. So in that universe, Twilight Imperium would suck.
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Aug 21, 2019 02:14
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PupsOfWar posted:that's not eric flint - that's David Weber and Steve White's tie-in novels for the 4X board game Starfire Oh man thank you this explains soooooo much; I almost put in a line about how it felt more like an AAR than an actual book
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Aug 21, 2019 02:25
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You can definitely tell the Starfire series is based on a wargame. I like it anyway, none of the characters are as cringeworthy as any member of Honor's inner circle
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Aug 21, 2019 02:30
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Kchama posted:
I don't know about all that The ship disparity in StarFire is probably less pronounced than in the Honorverse. Cruisers and so on can still damage battlewagons, which is important early on when the humans haven't brought up their real fleet yet and are fighting as underdogs with frontier pickets. Compare Honorverse fleet actions where anything smaller than a superdreadnought might as well be a gnat. StarFire also has actual Star Wars-syle fightercraft rather than "Light Attack Craft" larger than most irl surface ships. space battles in StarFire retain the same descriptive style as in Honorverse ("Task Force 420.69 fired seventeen thousand five hundred and sixty-two missiles. Three thousand lost target lock due to jamming and sped harmlessly into the void of space. Eight thousand two hundred and fourteen were intercepted by countermissiles. The remaining six thousand three hundred and forty-two broke through, savaging the Arachnid fleet with bursts of ravening gamma radiation") however, in Starfire, he'll employ a technique where, once the battle has passed its decisive moment, he'll just skip through the rest of it*. As opposed to Honorverse where we get the full thing no matter how much of a foregone conclusion it is. in that sense it is less spreadsheet-y than his later output *the exception of course being the genocide of the Bugs' planetary population centers, which is portrayed in precise loving detail PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 02:40
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I cant be the only person who thinks that novels covering large ground battles and large fleet actions are incredibly boring when, like all of Weber's stuff, it's mostly just the admiral/general in their bridge/command post staring at status screens. Like the Warp Marine Corps series is shlock but because it generally follows a handful of marines or a fighter wing or two it's a lot less boring since theres the opportunity for you know. Anything at all interesting to happen
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Aug 21, 2019 02:49
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Starfire was my first tabletop game. Back in 1979 it was a 32-ish page zine-sized game with rules and scenarios in the one book. The technological progression constantly producing superweapons was already there, but it was a fast-playing game with a ton of replay value since you could design your own ships. Then it metastasized into the spreadsheet driven monstrosity that no longer deserves the name. Weber ruined (one of) my childhood (favorites).
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Aug 21, 2019 03:21
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Three of the Starfire novels even have a prototype for Honor named Hannah (goes from battlecruiser captain to Sky Marshal and loses half her organic face along the way) except she gets a lot less page-time and isn't crawled up her own rear end. Plus the novels sometimes get down to the POV of guerilla fighters and fighter pilots and marines, in between the battles with thousands of ships firing millions of missiles. idk how much of these novels are Weber, vs. White
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Aug 21, 2019 03:36
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FuturePastNow posted:
White continued writing more Starfire novels after Weber left, so someone could easily read the White books, figure out what his own style and preoccupations are, then apply that to the Weber/White books to figure out which bits were written by who (i am not going to do this) PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 04:07
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PupsOfWar posted:White continued writing more Starfire novels after Weber left, so someone could easily read the White books, figure out what his own style and preoccupations are, then apply that to the Weber/White books to figure out which bits were written by who Ty chto mumu yebyosh? This, ironically, also applies to all Honor Harrington books after say the first 3.
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Aug 21, 2019 06:21
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PupsOfWar posted:I don't know about all that I'm actually talking about the wargame, sorry. I've never read the books.
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Aug 21, 2019 09:05
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Pffffttt. Look at all you people complaining about StarFire being an over-complicated mess when Star Fleet Battles exists. I mean you could fight out a StarFire fleet action in the same time you could resolve a single turn of a similar-sized SFB game.
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Aug 21, 2019 09:52
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Dante had a circle of hell for wargamers and it's a game of Federation and Empire where each battle must be played in SFB. No beer, only pretzels
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Aug 21, 2019 11:49
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That's the starfire combat system, though. The full campaign rules kind of expanded from there. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - WHAT CHANGED? [Examination of the changes in SOLAR STARFIRE] Detection rules for WPs also had some major changes that could significantly impact gameplay. Due to the separation of "data" and "information" (in the communications changes below), WP information is now harder to get. No more detection of WPs with regular sensors unless you are close enough to directly see the transit (1/2 T or Scan range). Transits still give you some size and transit information, but you have to observe a transit - no more sending one ship through and that ship getting all the information. Further information on WPs must be obtained through analysis of survey or transit data and that takes time. Cargo rates have been adjusted so that it takes hours to unload at EL0, but the rate increases to the point it takes much less time at higher ELs Communications are now broken into "Data" and "Information." Information is what is traditionally passed as communications in STARFIRE. Data, however, is raw data that must be processed before it becomes easily transmittable information. For example, Survey Data and Warp Point Location Information. Genocide is better defined. Each other race in the game has a modifier to how much they hate or like genocide, so one race could care less and another could go nuts over the slightest infraction. Guess which one is statistically likely to YOUR ally? Nuclear demonstration strikes can now be used with more or less warheads, and more than once, but it risks turning a potential surrender into defiance against surrender. more knots added to trees that previously didn't have the right knots. Certain trees had unfair advantages in this regard.
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Aug 21, 2019 12:40
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The Chad Jihad posted:Dante had a circle of hell for wargamers and it's a game of Federation and Empire where each battle must be played in SFB. No beer, only pretzels Read this as foundation and empire
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Aug 21, 2019 15:37
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The Chad Jihad posted:Dante had a circle of hell for wargamers and it's a game of Federation and Empire where each battle must be played in SFB. No beer, only pretzels at least SFB produced an amusingly bad schlocky TTRPG spinoff and at least SFB makes fun trivia ie "did you know there was an extremely dumb star trek licensed game that isn't allowed to use most of the actual star trek IP"
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Aug 21, 2019 16:50
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is, not was, and at least it's got famous Star Trek species the kzinti.
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Aug 21, 2019 17:06
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just read the auroa lp's
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Aug 21, 2019 22:13
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Aurora would be my favorite game in the world if it was playable by humans and also maybe had some pretty graphics to show me besides eye searing windows 3.2 flat graphics and drop down lists
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Aug 22, 2019 02:17
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90s Cringe Rock posted:is, not was, and at least it's got famous Star Trek species the kzinti. That's right ! The price for mastery is appallingly high, but SFB is a good tactical down deep. If you want to get your Kzinti on, and with a playable system, take a look at A Call to Arms: Starfleet. That's more of a fast play game, but it has the full mix of Star Trek races - insofar as ADB has licenses, so nothing from Next Gen. You can do a proper fleet action in a reasonable time. There's also an OOP Babylon 5 game using the same system.
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Aug 22, 2019 02:52
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I feel that everyone posting in this thread must immediately seek out and watch the 1956 film The Conqueror. Starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan/Temujin, tons of radioactive dust, and really impressive for the terrain stunt horsework. https://youtu.be/pKxtQzwoHH8?t=194 My personal favorite bits in the movie are: -Bows are used exactly twice in this movie about the horse-archer battles of Genghis Khan -everything involving John Wayne's dialogue + outfits -how the rocky badlands of southern california/utah look nothing like the grass steppelands of eurasia
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Aug 22, 2019 04:29
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:CM Kruger.......thinking you might need to dive into the Sten Chronicles series just like Kchama to experience something truly bad yet kind of enjoyable at times. Looking at the wiki description it sounds like Stainless Steel Rat by way of Keith Laumer or Chris Anvil's "Interstellar Patrol" stuff, probably with a bit of Eric Frank Russell's "Wasp". How close to the mark am I? Though I suppose the author is to be commended for writing something anti-monarchical, since that's the one form of government milSF authors love as much or more than military autocracies.
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Aug 22, 2019 07:14
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C.M. Kruger posted:Looking at the wiki description it sounds like Stainless Steel Rat by way of Keith Laumer or Chris Anvil's "Interstellar Patrol" stuff, probably with a bit of Eric Frank Russell's "Wasp". How close to the mark am I? Impressive. Almost everything in this post was incorrect excluding the re-bolded quoted section. Details and reading comprehension clearly aren't your thing so the Sten Chronicles books are, unironically, right up your alley. Would describe the Sten Chronicles books as perfect peak '80s bullshit wrapped in a vintage "Where's The Beef?" t-shirt.....with nuggets of interesting ideas stolen from action movies + way better scifi authors. Here's the 1984 Wendy's commercial that spawned/and explains the "Where's The Beef?" reference I just made. https://youtu.be/riH5EsGcmTw
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Aug 22, 2019 13:25
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Larry Parrish posted:Aurora would be my favorite game in the world if it was playable by humans and also maybe had some pretty graphics to show me besides eye searing windows 3.2 flat graphics and drop down lists You mean eye searing white isn't what you want to be staring at all day, on the plus side it looks nearly indistinguishable from most software programs used at work.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:00
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friends...brothers...sisters...nonbinary comrades Were You Aware that Thomas P. Kratman is an extremely prolific quora.com responder? he makes seemingly dozens of responses per month, always gravitating toward the exact sort of Questions you'd expect to interest him. also his avatar is a well-known portrait of genghis khan which communicates...a lot i can only surmise he was forced to begin doing this because his few friends no longer speak to him
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Aug 24, 2019 08:47
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Has he ever been banned from here? He used to be notorious for googling his own name, then joining a board to argue if he saw someone not being sufficiently respectful of his genius. He'd generally last a few days before being banned for some horrible unpleasentness. I've personally seen him banned from at least two seperate forums I used to hang on. Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Aug 24, 2019 |
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Aug 24, 2019 08:59
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PupsOfWar posted:friends...brothers...sisters...nonbinary comrades Deptfordx posted:Has he ever been banned from here? The $10 registration fee is probably what keeps fermented cabbage-man from counter-posting here. Fermented-cabbage-man being an extremely sensitive online person should not prove shocking to anyone. Was thinking about adding a recommended genre movies/tv-series section to 2nd post. Then I remembered that A) Battlestar Galactica existed(so.................nope), and B) adding a genre movie/tv-series recommend list would violate the rules I set in in the OP. Ah well, no-one can argue that Battlestar Galactica wasn't utter poo poo after the first season. Galactica 1980 bitches. Even the BSG reboot couldn't break the season 2 curse.
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Aug 24, 2019 13:28
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what do you have against the noble food kimchi, N4G??
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Aug 24, 2019 15:04
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PupsOfWar posted:what do you have against the noble food kimchi, N4G?? The condiment 'kraut is being slurred, not the noble kimchi. The noble food Kimchi's only shame is scoville heat scale related and being only a viscount of nobility in comparison to the king of fruits/condiments.
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Aug 24, 2019 17:20
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i watched every season of the BSG remake. It suffered from the SyFy writer syndrome where they're used to writing complete trash that wont get more than one season so everything after the first feels like they're winging it five minutes before filming that day. but the music is real loving good and unfortunately the bar for good space ship tv show is incredibly low unless you like star trek for some reason
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Aug 25, 2019 13:22
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Larry Parrish posted:i watched every season of the BSG remake. It suffered from the SyFy writer syndrome where they're used to writing complete trash that wont get more than one season so everything after the first feels like they're winging it five minutes before filming that day. but the music is real loving good and unfortunately the bar for good space ship tv show is incredibly low unless you like star trek for some reason For having such a bad ending, BSG still managed to stick the landing better than Game of Thrones, which is saying something. Razor sucked, and Blood and Chrome was an exercise in seeing how many pointless Deep Space Nine references MIchael Taylor could slip into the script.
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Aug 25, 2019 17:44
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Also BSG spawned one of the better fleet command video games of the current generation!
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Aug 25, 2019 18:49
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