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Patrat posted:Somebody did mention Team Yankee earlier, which is notable for being a published novel that is essentially fan fiction for The Third World War: The Untold Story by Sir John Hackett. Third World War is also the basis for this relatively obscure OVA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlZySUW7gVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWvtUoAzXM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vak5wMaRlx4
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Dec 2, 2019 21:37
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I was looking for a mobile suit stomping around in just about every shot. I also watched the first 5 minutes of the full movie: 1. The screenplay sucks. Hard. 2. The English subs are worse. Not "I have no idea what they're saying" bad, but "a high-schooler with a dictionary could probably have done better" bad.
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Dec 4, 2019 06:32
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mllaneza posted:I was looking for a mobile suit stomping around in just about every shot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIZty-Eol4s mllaneza posted:I also watched the first 5 minutes of the full movie: Back in the day most fansubbing was done by sleep-deprived college/university students as a hobby so it checks out. Nowadays it's all done with bots ripping the official subs from Crunchyroll or Amazon or wherever, with most "real" fansub groups just fixing translation issues, using a higher quality/uncensored ATX broadcast as the video source, or adding nicer subtitles/karaoke, apart from the rare show that isn't licensed or the Netflix licensed shows that get speedsubs since they sit on the episodes until everything is out.
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Dec 6, 2019 10:07
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Everyone posted:It's been a long time since I read them, but I remember really enjoying James H. Cobb's Amanda Garret series. Though it doesn't take place on a sub so much as a "stealth" surface ship. I liked the main character (even if in the first book she and her XO accidentally hosed (well, they very intentionally hosed but neither knew the other would be in their chain of command). So that's what that series is called! Much like you said I remember it being good but 15 year old me had terrible taste so I'd take that under advisement and spoilers for a 20 year old book I guess I'm pretty sure the guy she slept with wasn't her XO he was the commander of her ships helicopter detachment. But in her defence they met while out of uniform and at the time were assigned to different ships
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Dec 8, 2019 14:44
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Now that my life isn't entirely on fire, I'm gonna do my Let's Read of Honor Harrington! But the important question is: Where should I start? I was just gonna go from On Basilisk Station, but it's probably the best of the lot, so it might not be as interesting overall, though it does have plenty of gristle to chew through. My other thought was starting on The Honor of the Queen, which was one that convinced me that I was not going to be enjoying future books. It's book two. What do you guys think?
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Dec 15, 2019 20:18
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The only things people need to know from OBS are that it ended with a Q-ship nobody but her knew was a Q-ship being destroyed and the People's Republic of Haven rubber-stamped a murder conviction on the basis of it. That's the only part that is actually relevant to future novels. So start with The Honor of the Queen.
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Dec 15, 2019 20:23
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Aerdan posted:The only things people need to know from OBS are that it ended with a Q-ship nobody but her knew was a Q-ship being destroyed and the People's Republic of Haven rubber-stamped a murder conviction on the basis of it. That's the only part that is actually relevant to future novels. That's a fair assessment. It does set up some stuff at least. Like poorly timed infodumps!
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Dec 15, 2019 20:28
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Kchama posted:Now that my life isn't entirely on fire, I'm gonna do my Let's Read of Honor Harrington! But the important question is: Where should I start? I was just gonna go from On Basilisk Station, but it's probably the best of the lot, so it might not be as interesting overall, though it does have plenty of gristle to chew through. Start with book one so that the thread can get the full Weber experience of a promising but flawed start going straight downhill into a giant pile of poo poo. It's not quite the same if the experience starts when the poo poo is already knee deep.
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Dec 15, 2019 23:35
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blackmongoose posted:Start with book one so that the thread can get the full Weber experience of a promising but flawed start going straight downhill into a giant pile of poo poo. It's not quite the same if the experience starts when the poo poo is already knee deep. That's basically where I've been leaning. Should I do it here or in its own thread? Not like I'd be drowning out content, and it's on-topic, too. I'll probably post the moment I've decided.
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Dec 16, 2019 01:00
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Kchama posted:Now that my life isn't entirely on fire, I'm gonna do my Let's Read of Honor Harrington! But the important question is: Where should I start? I was just gonna go from On Basilisk Station, but it's probably the best of the lot, so it might not be as interesting overall, though it does have plenty of gristle to chew through. Start in reverse order, or don't read them at all. Or pretend you have a concussion and read the Lost Fleet books. Or get your survivalist anti latterday saints groove on and read Dean Ing's Quantrill series. I guarantee you will be more amazed/horrified/  than David Weber could ever take you.
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Dec 16, 2019 01:07
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quantumfoam posted:Start in reverse order, or don't read them at all. Or pretend you have a concussion and read the Lost Fleet books. Or get your survivalist anti latterday saints groove on and read Dean Ing's Quantrill series. I guarantee you will be more amazed/horrified/ Hey I've read these so I know what I'm getting into. I just want to make you all suffer too.
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Dec 16, 2019 01:15
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Doing a Honor Harrington complete Let's Read has ALWAYS been your plan since page 1 of this thread, Kchama. You finally committing to it is admirable, and other inspirational phrases too. Prediction: The only suffering during the Let's Read HH will be self-inflicted Just be sure to take breaks when the David Weber-ness gets too David Webery.
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Dec 16, 2019 01:43
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quantumfoam posted:Doing a Honor Harrington complete Let's Read has ALWAYS been your plan since page 1 of this thread, Kchama. I can't deny your prediction's likelihood. And yeah it's true. Life has just been a complete shambles, presumably to save me from my fate.
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Dec 16, 2019 02:45
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Kchama posted:That's basically where I've been leaning. Should I do it here or in its own thread? Not like I'd be drowning out content, and it's on-topic, too. I'd say post it in here, and start with OBS.
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Dec 16, 2019 02:47
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ToxicFrog posted:I'd say post it in here, and start with OBS. Your wish is my command! On Basilisk Station is the first work in the mildly popular Honor Harrington series of scifi space battle books. "Scifi space battle books" sums it up perfectly, as that's where the meat of everything is in this series. Oh sure, there's a load of politics and the like, but it's all terribly shallow and no where near thought about like the actual battles.  original cover art  (so tiny so I'll keep the next part)presented it as "INTRODUCING HONOR HARRINGTON: ON BASILISK STATION" with the tagline "Commander Honor Harrington has enemies - and she's about to make more of them!" which really isn't the best they could have come up with. I think my best part of it is all the monitors showing pictures of her from all angles, like she's really arrogant. On Basilisk Station was first published in 1993, and you know, I guess was popular enough. It follows COmmander Honor Harrington and her light cruiser the Fearless during Honor's command of the titular Basilisk Station which is seen as a dumping ground for disfavor military officers, despite being one of the primary money making machines, also known as a Wormhole Juncture, of the Manticorean Star Kingdom. It's a knock-off of the Horatio Hornblower book The Happy Return, except with literally none of the nuance. It's impressive, really. PROLOGUE The prologue starts with a map, as all books assumedly require. It's not even a particularly helpful map, and doesn't entirely agree with later maps. It's only purpose is to tell you that Basilisk is in between the Republic of Haven and Silesia.  The story begins with the "Hereditary President of the People's Republic of Haven" staring at his military cabinet, and also apparently the rest of his cabinent, pissed that the military is telling him to expand the military. The Republic of Haven is characterized sometimes very erratically, with it originally being intended to represent the United States of America ON WELFARE and thus prove how evil it is. It eventually mutates into a French Revolution-era France fused with Soviet Russia. "On Basilisk Station Prologue posted:"If we don't keep adding them," Elaine Dumarest broke in sharply, "the wheels come off. We're riding a neotiger, Mr. President. At least a third of the occupied planets still have crackpot 'liberation' groups, and even if they didn't, everyone on our borders is arming to the teeth. It's only a matter of time until one of them jumps us." The basic long and short of it is: Welfare Is Bad. That's basically what the chapter is about. Welfare is so bad it's making the military expand, because the only way for a country to make more money is to take over more countries, apparently. There's a lot of arguing, and the President admits that the idea to presumably (because it's not actually spelled out but just referred to as the 'DuQuesene Plan') conquer everyone in sight in hopes that they could find someone rich enough to fund them was not a real good one. On Basilisk Station Prologue posted:"I can't say for certain. I can paper over the cracks for a while, maybe even maintain a facade of affluence, by robbing Peter to pay Paul. But unless the spending curves change radically or we secure a major new source of revenue, we're living on borrowed time, and it's only going to get worse." He smiled without humor. "It's a pity most of the systems we've acquired weren't in much better economic shape than we were." The military advisers make the argument that if they just war with everyone nearby some more, they can eventually beat everyone and reduce their military expenditures. Which is really just the same plan they already have, except without any hopes that they'd make money out of it. On the other hand, President Harris thinks this is a good idea. The President just got done saying that a nearly identical plan was dumb. posted:
Manticore are our good guys, as stated above. They're the British Empire circa the Age of Sail, except Completely The Good Guys. We don't actually learn all that much about Manticore's domestic situation outside of some of David Weber's Pearls of Weber, which I'll get into later. The map above suggests that they're extremely centrally located, but in reality that's not nearly the case. Chat about why not bust Manticore later, or why not take the other 'rich' nations first. posted:"That's the joker in the deck," Parnell agreed. "They're big enough to give us a fight, assuming they've got the guts for it." It's funny as the Silesian Confedacy, as the books goes on, basically becomes the Lawless West Shitholes full of pirates and the like. And the Solarian League constantly wavers between 'super rich danger' and 'super rich punching bag'. The talk about them not having a foreign and military policy is kind of funny as it actually has an immensely major one that more or less underpins the entire setting. We then get some talk about how space is JUST like the ocean. No, really. Star Ocean posted:"So we can't go south," Dumarest went on, "but going west instead brings us right back to Manticore." Which is uh, not how space works. Like on a tiny map it might look that way, but actually in space, they would not be in your path. The topic shifts to making a deal with Manticore, which is when we find out that the Left is pure evil and would sell out Manticore in a heartbeat, while the Real True Patriots Centrists and Crown Loyalists wouldn't. Also making Manticore mad would crush their economy. Oh also the Basilisk Station juncture gives Manticore "a gross system product seventy-eight percent that of the Sol System itself" which tells us nothing since we don't actually know how rich the Sol System is beyond presumably being part of the Solarian League. With that realized, they decide they should go beat up Manticore and then everyone else, and the chapter ends with the meeting adjourned to go find out how to beat them up. All in all it's... kind of a weak prologue. It's entirely exposition but none of these characters are actually important to the plot of the story and in fact I'm not sure why it's the prologue at all besides I guess some attempt at tension and cliffhanging. Also the standard idioms with the nouns changed for scifi'd ones are really irritating, stop that.
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Dec 16, 2019 03:52
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riding a neotiger was not one of dio's best lines
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Dec 16, 2019 07:40
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90s Cringe Rock posted:riding a neotiger was not one of dio's best lines well you can't ride a hexapuma, that's for drat sure
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Dec 16, 2019 09:07
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The more I think about it, the more I feel like this wasn't originally the prologue at all. For example, aside from the mention that they are in one of Weber's now-patented Conference Rooms Floating In The Void, there's absolutely no description of any form. There's no explanation what Manticore or Haven are, and it's more or less treated like everyone in the room has been fully introduced. It feels like a later chapter fragment slipped in because he realized he needed a hook for the book.
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Dec 16, 2019 09:36
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Maybe an editor told him he needed a prologue sort of thing, so he slapped it in. He probably still had an editor back then.
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Dec 16, 2019 09:52
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I wonder at what point he actually crossed the Tom Clancy Divide and became too powerful for his publishers to insist on actual editing.
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Dec 16, 2019 11:48
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Deptfordx posted:I wonder at what point he actually crossed the Tom Clancy Divide and became too powerful for his publishers to insist on actual editing. My guess: Whenever Jim Baen died.
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Dec 16, 2019 15:30
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quantumfoam posted:My guess: Whenever Jim Baen died. It wasn't like his books were getting too hard of an editing pass as it was. You'll see later. Oh, you'll see.
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Dec 16, 2019 18:47
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Kchama posted:There's no explanation what Manticore or Haven are, and it's more or less treated like everyone in the room has been fully introduced. I first read OBS a long time ago and I remember it dropping you into the setting with very little explanation of who the players are. If Weber were a good writer (and to be fair, I think he was a better writer when he wrote this) I'd suggest this might have been meant to mirror the character's transition from being politically blind to becoming a VIP.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:18
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FuturePastNow posted:I first read OBS a long time ago and I remember it dropping you into the setting with very little explanation of who the players are. Knowing Weber, it was more that he just didn't have any actual details decided or written down beside some basic stuff. Otherwise he wouldn't have started with a scene of the President of Welfare America Also France in a high-level talk with his cabinent. Some scenes in this book really give me the impression that he was still deciding on setting stuff as he wrote, and would just throw them in whenever he was done figuring something out. There's a VERY infamous scene that is a very good example of this.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:24
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not that it ever made sense for her to be politically blind. that's an attitude that's accepted and somewhat encouraged in the US military, but since the Manticore Navy is based on the british age of sail navy where EVERYTHING comes down to your personal and political connections, it'd be a mark of a very dumb officer.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:25
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Larry Parrish posted:not that it ever made sense for her to be politically blind. that's an attitude that's accepted and somewhat encouraged in the US military, but since the Manticore Navy is based on the british age of sail navy where EVERYTHING comes down to your personal and political connections, it'd be a mark of a very dumb officer. Ah, but you're forgetting that Manticore is a RAVING MERITOCRACY where everything is based on your ability and nothing about the people you know! Forget the uh... royalty and aristocracy that hold permanent power. (Pearls Of Weber are a real treat.) EDIT: Also forget the entire plot of this book and several future books. Kchama fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Dec 16, 2019 |
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Dec 16, 2019 19:37
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Baen would probably have published the communist manifesto if he was already mates with marx or marx had previously written a spaceship story for him. It's not necessary for him to die for Weber to get away with refusing a decent editor.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:41
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I'm gonna write a HH fanfiction about the Solarians having a people's revolution that sweeps the settled galaxy and executes all the aristocrats in an effort to give David Weber a heart attack and free us
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Dec 16, 2019 20:45
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Pearls of Weber  ?
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Dec 17, 2019 00:53
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Pearls of Weber A website that gathers up Weber's various forum-posts on his books, though it stop updating about 7 years ago, for Honorverse at least. Also I'm working on the post now. I'll be done before the hour is up.
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Dec 17, 2019 01:16
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Well, it didn't take as long as I expected, so here it is. On Basilisk Station: Chapter One We start the first official chapter introducing treecats! Nobody likes these things posted:The fluffy ball of fur in Honor Harrington's lap stirred and put forth a round, prick-eared head as the steady pulse of the shuttle's thrusters died. A delicate mouth of needle-sharp fangs yawned, and then the treecat turned its head to regard her with wide, grass-green eyes. They're basically Regular Housecats But Cooler. See, they have SIX legs! And they're super smart! And psychic! And can kill any human with ease, not just level 1 Nobles. More details posted:A flat, furry jaw pressed against the top of her head as Nimitz sank his four lower sets of claws into the specially padded shoulder of her uniform tunic. Despite his long, narrow body, he was a hefty weight—almost nine kilos—even under the shuttle's single gravity, but Honor was used to it, and Nimitz had learned to move his center of balance in from the point of her shoulder. Now he clung effortlessly to his perch while she collected her briefcase from the empty seat beside her. Honor was the half-filled shuttle's senior passenger, which had given her the seat just inside the hatch. It was a practical as well as a courteous tradition, since the senior officer was always last to board and first to exit. I wonder if her uniform's shoulder looks like a World of Warcraft-sized pauldron, considering how sharp a treecat's claws are stated to be. Like, a regular housecat's claws are pretty sharp as they are and you don't want them clinging to your shirt. There's a description of her and her uniform and hey, she actually is grinning?! I thought that was illegal for her. A grin and a brief biography posted:
Wait, hold on. So she's 24/40 now. And she joined the military 15/25 years ago. That'd make her 9/15 when she joined the military. 11/17 when she graduated from the officer's academy. 15/21 when she hit Lieutenant, 16/22 when she first hit captain. of a small ship. And then was joining the Commander's academy at 20/30... ish? Am I just really wrong here? Or am I just thinking about this too much? Anyways, more treecat talk. They're known to be more sentient than dolphins or 'Beowulf's gremlins', and are known empaths. Naval officers with treecats are allowed to bring them on board ships, because the queen of Manticore a long time ago loved them, as does basically everyone. In fact people even kept stashes of celery (treecats love it!) for Nimitz. She wonders the hurry for bringing her to her new ships, as she had "literally snatched out of the ATC graduation ceremonies" and hustled off to her favorite admiral's office. About as good as a description as Weber cares about, I guess. posted:Now why, she wondered, was she so certain Courvosier had deliberately bustled her out of his office and off to her new assignment? The admiral was a bland-faced, cherubic little gnome of a man with a bent for creating demonic tac problems, and she'd known him for years. He'd been her Fourth Form Tactics instructor at the Academy, the one who'd recognized an inborn instinct and honed it into something she could command at will, not something that came and went. He'd spent hours working with her in private when other instructors worried about her basic math scores and, in a very real sense, had saved her career before it had actually begun, yet this time there'd been something almost evasive about him. She knew his congratulations and satisfied pride in her had been real, but she couldn't shake the impression that there'd been something else, as well. Ostensibly, the rush was all because of the need to get her to Hephaestus to shepherd her new ship through its refit in time for the upcoming Fleet exercise, yet HMS Fearless was only a single light cruiser, when all was said. It seemed unlikely her absence would critically shift the balance in maneuvers planned to exercise the entire Home Fleet! There's a lot of questioning this refit her new ship is receiving, and that for some reason she has to be there in person and immediately. And then, she spots herself in the mirror (polished wall). I'm not sure this quoted bit has ever made sense in the context of the books posted:She watched the tube map display, shaking off thoughts of evasive admirals and other puzzles as her eyes tracked the blinking cursor of her capsule across it. Her hand rose to press the crispness of her orders once more, and she paused, almost surprised as she looked away from the map and glimpsed her reflection in the capsule's polished wall.  This is who he has stated officially he wants to play her, which totally fits in with "everyone thinks she's plain/ugly". It's not even like the covers are that off. And this can't be a 'Honor just thinks she's ugly for reasons', she straight up talks about how people had to be careful not to call her ugly. She gets all happy again about her new ship: A raving meritocracy posted:She grinned again, feeling the bubble of delight pushing her worries aside, and her reflection grinned back. It made her look like an urchin gloating over a hidden bag of candy, and she took herself firmly to task for the remainder of the trip, concentrating on a new CO's responsibility to look cool and collected, but it was hard. She'd done well to make commander so soon even with the Fleet's steady growth in the face of the Havenite threat, for the life-extending prolong process made for long careers. The Navy was well-supplied with senior officers, despite its expansion, and she came of yeoman stock, without the high-placed relatives or friends to nudge a naval career along. She'd known and accepted from the start that those with less competence but more exalted bloodlines would race past her. Well, they had, but she'd made it at last. A cruiser command, the dream of every officer worth her salt! So what if Fearless was twice her own age and little larger than a modern destroyer? She was still a cruiser, and cruisers were the Manticoran Navy's eyes and ears, its escorts and its raiders, the stuff of independent commands and opportunity. Also note the talk that the Fearless is basically a pile of poo poo that's more or less just a slightly bigger destoyer these days. She has thoughts about responsibility and she stops being all smiley, and then starts heading for her ship, past two corporals who pretend they don't know she's the new captain. And then it cuts to a new POV! The exec of the ship, Lieutenant Alistair McKeon. He's instictively not a fan of Honor because there needs to be some tension I guess. Yay, irrational dislike! posted:Lieutenant Commander Alistair McKeon twitched his tunic straight and smothered a flare of annoyance as he stood by the entry port. He'd been buried in the bowels of a vivisected fire control station when the message came in. There'd been no time to shower or change into a fresh uniform, and he felt the sweat staining his blouse under his hastily donned tunic, but at least Corporal Levine's message had given him enough warning to collect the side party. Formal courtesies weren't strictly required from a ship in yard hands, but McKeon would take no chance of irritating a new captain. Besides, Fearless had a reputation to maintain, and— And here we get to someone's actual internal monologue about what Honor looks like, and really this is probably better than the mirror look, except... She's not 'pretty', she's BETTER than 'pretty' in every way. posted:Commander Harrington floated easily down the last few meters of tube, then spun in midair and caught the final, scarlet-hued grab bar that marked the edge of Fearless's internal grav field. She crossed the interface like a gymnast dismounting from the rings to land lightly before him, and McKeon's sense of personal injury grew perversely stronger as he realized how little justice the photo in her personnel jacket had done her. Her triangular face had looked stern and forbidding, almost cold, in the file imagery, especially framed in the dark fuzz of her close-cropped hair, but the pictures had lied. They hadn't captured the life and vitality, the sharp-edged attractiveness. No one would ever call Commander Harrington "pretty," he thought, but she had something far more important. Those clean-cut, strong features and huge, dark brown eyes—exotically angular and sparkling with barely restrained delight despite her formal expression—discounted such ephemeral concepts as "pretty." She was herself, unique, impossible to confuse with anyone else, and that only made it worse. And it all boils down to how jealous he is of her, as she's basically the best person ever and everyone knows it. She's the best person ever and everyone knows it. posted:He watched her chocolate-dark eyes sweep over the entry port and side party and wondered what she was thinking. Her sculpted face made an excellent mask for her emotions (except for those glowing eyes, he thought sourly), and he hoped his own did the same. It wasn't really fair of him to resent her. A light cruiser simply wasn't a lieutenant commander's billet, but Harrington was almost five years—over eight T-years—younger than he. Not only was she a full commander, not only did the breast of her tunic bear the embroidered gold star denoting a previous hyper-capable command, but she looked young enough to be his daughter. Well, no, not that young, perhaps, but she could have been his niece. Of course, she was third-generation prolong. He'd checked the open portion of her record closely enough to know that, and the anti-aging treatments seemed to be proving even more effective for second- and third-generation recipients. Other parts of her record—like her penchant for unorthodox tactical maneuvers, and the CGM and Monarch's Thanks she'd earned saving lives when HMS Manticore's forward power room exploded—soothed his resentment a bit, but neither they nor knowing why she seemed so youthful could lessen the emotional impact of finding the slot he'd longed for so hopelessly filled by an officer who not only oozed the effortless magnetism he'd always envied in others but also looked as if she'd graduated from the Academy last year. Nor did the bright, unwavering regard the treecat bent upon him make him feel any better. This is Honor's introduction. She's already a famous hero with maxed stats as her introduction. She does the traditional stuff to formally assume command, and then she gets the bad news: The ship was having its weapons gutted to test a new weapon called the gravlance and energy torpedos. Basically all the main broadside weapons are gone for it. What's a gravlance, or a graser, or anything else mentioned? Who knows! There's no actual context given outside of explaining energy torpedos and gravlance functions (energy torpedos fire quickly and do tons of damage but basic 'sidewalls' nullify them entirely. Gravlances have short range and bust shields. That's all we get). Everyone is incredibly impressed that Honor doesn't show any anger or emotion upon hearing this, and the chapter ends.
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Dec 17, 2019 01:30
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Kchama, you are a hero for our time for doing this. Something that stands out from the summary is how little is conveyed, and I don't mean it solely in a plot sense, I mean that there's no actual deeper meaning to it. We have the awkward setup for our Nazi Communist French Revolutionaries who are going to war to support their welfare program because the guy who's an actual hereditary dictator needs to worry about the opposition party (really), and our introduction to Honor which can be summed up as being excited to command a real warship and super hot but doesn't know it. I'm gonna stop commenting before I break into a rant, but if you get through all of OBS I might do Safehold book 1. God help me.
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Dec 17, 2019 04:01
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Kchama, you are a hero for our time for doing this. Technically the writing is fine but it's incredibly sparse on the detail or meaning side, yeah. I actually didn't skip a lot of text. I only cut the last part because it was just technical stuff and the writeup was getting kind of long as is. I just really loved how her viewpoint ends with "Wow no one would call me pretty. Woe!" and then it cuts to a viewpoint of "Wow, she's far beyond pretty!" I might actually do another chapter tonight, if I stay bored enough. And also to put pressure on you, since I wouldn't mind seeing you do Safehold 1.
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Dec 17, 2019 04:20
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Hey it's your pal Nerem HAVE SOME HONORVERSE On Basilisk Station Chapter 2 This one is actually a fair bit shorter than the previous chapter, so I guess I could just get it all done tonight. She was actually secretly mad? No poo poo. posted:Honor Harrington sighed, leaned back from the terminal, and pinched the bridge of her nose. No wonder Admiral Courvosier had been so vague about the refit. Her old mentor knew her entirely too well. He'd known exactly how she would have reacted if he'd told her the truth, and he wasn't about to let her blow her first cruiser command in a fit of temper. Her cabin is very big and nice. But not TOO big and nice? I think if your room can hold a dozen or two people, then it's actually actually spacious instead of comparatively spacious. Just so you know, Honor is the best at everything posted:She paused to adjust the golden plaque on the bulkhead by her desk. There was a fingerprint on the polished alloy, and she felt a familiar, wry self-amusement as she leaned closer to burnish it away with her sleeve. That plaque had accompanied her from ship to ship and planet-side and back for twelve and a half years, and she would have felt lost without it. It was her good luck piece. Her totem. She rubbed a fingertip gently across the long, tapering wing of the sailplane etched into the gold, remembering the day she'd landed to discover she'd set a new Academy record—one that still stood—for combined altitude, duration, and aerobatics, and she smiled. I'm not sure her super skill at sailplanes comes up again, or if sailplanes come up again at all, to be honest. But I just feel like I should add it to the tally of Things Honor Is Better Than You At. She's still upset about the refit, and this is going to lead into some rants just so you know. More about the refit posted:She'd told McKeon she meant to study the ship's books, and so she had, but her main attention had been focused on the refit specs and the detailed instructions she'd found in the captain's secure data base. McKeon's description of the alterations was only too accurate, though he hadn't mentioned that in addition to ripping out two-thirds of Fearless's missile tubes, the yard was gutting her magazine space, as well. Missile stowage was always a problem, particularly for smaller starships like light cruisers and destroyers, because an impeller-drive missile simply had to be big. There were limits to how many you could cram aboard, and since they'd decided to reduce Fearless's tubes, they'd seen no reason not to reduce her magazines, as well. After all, it had let them cram in four additional energy torpedo launchers. Long story short, the Fearless is being used as a testbed. Honor is mad about this. There's more Treecat exposition - just a paragraph about how they talk to other treecats using telempathic senses and people always underestimate how smart treecats are and treecats are the best. And then we get to the rant. Horrible Hemphill posted:It was all quite simple, she thought. She'd fallen into the clutches of Horrible Hemphill and her crowd, and now it was up to her to make their stupidity look intelligent. So this is clearly meant to be inspired by France's "jeune ecole" of the 1820s, who were, uh, frankly right. They advocated the use of big guns on small ships and using swarm tactics to handle the British's more numerous and larger ships, as well as torpedos, torpedo boats, and submarines. All very new things where weapons determined tactics. While researching this I found that someone put down Weber as a 'literary appearance' of Jeune Ecole, lol. But yeah remember this paragraph, because it will become clear in the future that the jeune ecole were one hundred percent correct. Also note the namedrop of Admiral Hamish Alexander, Honor's future husband. After this we get into another rant about politics. Everyone but Centrists And Crown Loyalists, who really might as well be one party as they pretty much always get mentioned together, suck and are bad and wrong posted:Honor suppressed an uncharacteristic urge to swear viciously. She didn't study politics, she didn't understand politics, and she didn't like politics, but even she grasped the Cromarty government's current dilemma. Confronted by the Liberals' and Progressives' inflexible opposition to big-ticket military budgets, and signs the so-called "New Men" were inclining towards temporary alliance with them, Duke Allen had been forced to draw the Conservative Association into his camp as a counterweight. It was unlikely the Conservatives would stay put—their xenophobic isolationism and protectionism were too fundamentally at odds with the Centrist and Crown Loyalist perception that open war with the People's Republic of Haven was inevitable—but for now they were needed, and they'd charged high for their allegiance. They'd wanted the military ministry, and Duke Allen had been forced to buy them off by naming Sir Edward Janacek First Lord of the Admiralty, the civilian head of Honor's own service under the Minister of War. I decided to quote this huge block together because it's all pretty related and I decided I was too lazy to just reiterate the information contained within it. Not that it's actually important, outside of Liberals And Progressives Are Traitors And Conservatives Are Cowards, which is basically the theme of the series, politically. Also this is the first time it comes up that Honor doesn't like or understand politics. She kicks a chair across the cabin and generally throws a temper tantrum, blaming everything on Hemphill and just wishing she had not been the bestest ever in history. Indeed, Honor is first in yet something else posted:Her command, it seemed, was her "reward" for graduating first in Admiral Courvosier's Advanced Tactics class, for Fearless was also Hemphill's secret weapon in the upcoming Fleet problem. That explained the security clamped over the refit (which Courvosier had made his excuse for not warning Honor), and she didn't doubt that Hemphill was chuckling and rubbing her hands in anticipation. For herself, if Honor had known what was waiting, she darn well would have blown off a couple of percentage points just to avoid it! Also my copy of On Basilisk Station keeps calling the upcoming war games as a 'Fleet problem' which uhh I don't really get. Time for finally a bunch of exposition that probably should have come when they were actually talking about this stuff. Lots of exposition you need to understand stuff posted:The problem was that, on paper, the whole thing made sense. Gravity sidewalls were the first and primary line of defense for every warship. The impeller drive created a pair of stressed gravity bands above and below a ship—a wedge, open at both ends, though the forward edge was far deeper than the after one—capable in theory of instant acceleration to light speed. Of course, that kind of acceleration would turn any crew to gory goo; even with modern inertial compensators, the best acceleration any warship could pull under impeller was well under six hundred gravities, but it had been a tremendous step forward. And not simply in terms of propulsion; even today no known weapon could penetrate the main drive bands of a military-grade impeller wedge, which meant simply powering its impellers protected a ship against any fire from above or below. Weirdly, pretty much all of the capship action in the books are pretty decisive and lots get blown up. Especially once some !!! NEW TACTICS EVOLVE !!! from new weapons. Apparently nothing has changed in technology or tactics in over six hundred years, presumably because everyone has been terrified of doing anything new. Also lol Honor calls Hemphill a "technophiliac" for wanting to improve things. In theory, Honor conceded their point and wished they were right but also rages and stews about how super wrong they are. Especially because the grav lance doesn't have the range to make it reliable yet, which is why they shouldn't bother even testing the theories and work on improving the grav lance. More rants posted:And that, she thought gloomily, was the critical flaw. To employ the lance, a ship had to close to point-blank range against enemies who would start trying to kill it with missiles at upward of a million kilometers and chime in with energy weapons at four times the lance's own range. It might even make sense aboard a capital ship with the mass to spare for it, but only an idiot (or Horrible Hemphill) would think it made sense aboard a light cruiser! Fearless simply didn't have the defenses to survive hostile fire as she closed, and thanks to the grav lance, she no longer even had the offensive weapons to reply effectively! Oh, certainly, if she got into grav lance range, and if the lance did its job, the massive energy torpedo batteries Hemphill had crammed in could tear even a superdreadnought apart. But only if the lance did its job, since energy torpedoes were as effective as so many soft-boiled eggs against an intact sidewall. So yeah if they bother making the grav lance work instead of dustbinning it forever, then it'd be a really strong way for small ships to bust big ships. I guess this is Weber trying to imitate the 'big guns on small ships' but it doesn't really work I don't think, since the stuff that came out of jeune ecole was actually rather effective and the British had to actually work to counter it, whereas here their efforts are presented as futile and stupid from the start. So this is the British Empire's sin in this book posted:She'd considered protesting. After all, tradition gave a captain the authority to question alterations to her command, but Fearless hadn't been her command when the refit was authorized, and the right to question wasn't the same as the right to refuse. Honor knew exactly how Hemphill would react to any protest, and it was too late to undo the damage, anyway. Besides, she had her orders. However stupid they were, it was her job to make them work, and that, as they said at the Academy, was that. Even if it hadn't been, Fearless was her ship, by God! Whatever Hemphill had done to her, no one was going to crap on Fearless's reputation if Honor could help it. Messing up the protagonist's ship. Not jerking them around and loving with the natives for funsies. Anyways she begins to think about how to actually use the ship, and in fact Honor had been handed what is going to be another big victory and thing to show off, all while deriding it and making it clear that this doesn't mean the grav lance has ANY sort of use. Honor closes her eyes, and chapter 2 ends. Thank goodness. Still a very detail-light chapter. It was all pretty much entirely Honor mentally ranting about "Horrible Hemphill". We've gotten more details on Manticore's uniform than it's government.
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Dec 17, 2019 05:09
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"Fleet problem" is a real-world navy term. Unusually for this series, it's USN and not RN. These were an annual series of large scale exercises meant to practice specific things at sea under realistic conditions. The USN's Naval War College did an amazing amount of wargaming to test tactical ideas, evolve requirements for new classes of ships, and to train the participants in command & tactics. As useful as they were, a map exercise only has so much value compared to putting ships out to sea and steaming them around, hence the fleet problems. For example, quote:Fleet Problem XX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_problem Norman Friedman's book on the topic is only two bucks on Kindle right now, I think it could go into more detail on actual games as played or the fleet problems themselves, but it's still an informative read. https://smile.amazon.com/Winning-Future-War-Victory-Pacific-ebook/dp/B07RV3NJJY/ref=sr_1_14
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Dec 17, 2019 05:26
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Unusually? Tbh except for everyone talking like a badly written Jack Auburey, Weber can't seem to make up his mind whether the Manticoran Navy is RN or USN. It seems a little... erratic. Maybe he just picked the 'cool' parts of being British.
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Dec 17, 2019 05:31
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mllaneza posted:"Fleet problem" is a real-world navy term. Unusually for this series, it's USN and not RN. These were an annual series of large scale exercises meant to practice specific things at sea under realistic conditions. The USN's Naval War College did an amazing amount of wargaming to test tactical ideas, evolve requirements for new classes of ships, and to train the participants in command & tactics. As useful as they were, a map exercise only has so much value compared to putting ships out to sea and steaming them around, hence the fleet problems. Thanks for the information, there! I had actually been looking up Royal Navy Fleet Problem and only came up with the other meaning of 'problem', so I was baffled. So, this is exactly when one should be testing the gravlance's capabilities, huh. Larry Parrish posted:Unusually? Tbh except for everyone talking like a badly written Jack Auburey, Weber can't seem to make up his mind whether the Manticoran Navy is RN or USN. It seems a little... erratic. Maybe he just picked the 'cool' parts of being British. Honestly I don't know a ton about naval stuff but I'm willing to try and research some. And I do appreciate any information about the differences. I guess he does just kind of half-rear end everything. Kchama fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Dec 17, 2019 |
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Dec 17, 2019 05:32
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Larry Parrish posted:Unusually? Tbh except for everyone talking like a badly written Jack Auburey, Weber can't seem to make up his mind whether the Manticoran Navy is RN or USN. It seems a little... erratic. Maybe he just picked the 'cool' parts of being British. One thing that always amuses me is that he uses traditional British ship names generally, but couldn't really be bothered to make up a bunch of place names for an equivalent of the county-class ships despite naming ships after locations being one of the most common naming schemes in the real world. Similarly, not a lot of ships named after famous fictional Manticoran admirals or the like because that would just be too much effort. I think there might actually be one exception, IIRC there's a big ship named after Manticore - although that seems like an unfortunately self-limiting naming plan (We named the first three ships after our three planets! What are we calling the fourth one? Guess we better conquer someone!)
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Dec 17, 2019 07:20
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blackmongoose posted:One thing that always amuses me is that he uses traditional British ship names generally, but couldn't really be bothered to make up a bunch of place names for an equivalent of the county-class ships despite naming ships after locations being one of the most common naming schemes in the real world. Similarly, not a lot of ships named after famous fictional Manticoran admirals or the like because that would just be too much effort. The HMS Manticore is even mentioned in the posts I've made! Specifically Honor somehow saved a bunch of people when its forward reactor room exploded. And yeah, there's not a lot of history visible in the ship names, which is something you see in actual ship names - famous people and places. Instead it's mostly just British retreads like you mentioned.
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Dec 17, 2019 08:11
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The Japanese Navy uses the names of natural features (rivers, mountains), weather/ocean phenomena, animals and legendary animals. Of course after WWII when the JSDF was formed in the 50s, the JMSDF received several surplus Gleaves and Fletcher Class destroyers from the US Navy, and gave them the names of Kamikaze and Hatsuharu class destroyers.
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Dec 17, 2019 08:27
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