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Kchama posted: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. This will make you completely conversant on WW1 at sea, https://smile.amazon.com/Fighting-Great-War-Sea-Technology-ebook/dp/B00SGC4WYY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Norman Friedman has dug deep into USN and RN naval architecture archives and gotten talented people to draw ship diagrams for the resultant books. Scope out what he's published and grab a copy of something that interests you. His two volumes on British cruisers are fantastic reading for the naval geek. DK Brown is another authoritative author. He was a Constructor for the Royal Navy and has not only designed ships that went to sea, but also written books on how the RN fleet developed from pre-1860 to post-1945 Try this for a start, https://smile.amazon.com/Grand-Fleet-Warship-Development-1906-1922-ebook/dp/B00ONZQ7BY/ref=sr_1_5 edit: In honor of Honor being given a command of an entirely theoretical warship, we presemt HMS Polyphemus, the only Torpedo Ram ever built.: 
mllaneza fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Dec 17, 2019 |
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Dec 17, 2019 08:55
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T. R. E. A. M.
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Dec 17, 2019 09:03
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90s Cringe Rock posted:T. R. E. A. M. Yes. Yes they do.
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Dec 17, 2019 09:21
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The weird thing is that Honor is upset about being chosen to command an experimental prototype vessel which I don't think they hand out to just anyone. Also the "missiles with penetration aids" is incredibly awful.
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Dec 17, 2019 20:31
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:The weird thing is that Honor is upset about being chosen to command an experimental prototype vessel which I don't think they hand out to just anyone. Everyone treats it as some sort of punishment to be the one trusted to make an experimental prototype vessel work. Also, it's time for the next chapter! On Basilisk Station Chapter 3 Time for more "Admiral Hemphill Is All Evil In This World". Get use to this sort of thing. Pretty much every domestic foe Honor gets is incompetent and/or evil. Usually both. Everyone sees how awesome Honor is posted:"General signal from Flag, Ma'am. 'Preparative Baker-Golf- Seven-Niner.'" Honor knows he's a good guy because despite being the dumbest stupidest person in history's chief of staff, he helped her out. Which is fair, I guess. But lol at the fact that she apparently came up with a completely unique signal or something. What's Seven-Niner? Can't tell you. It isn't mentioned in the rest of the chapter and there's no real context for me. Hiding a ship posted:There were only so many options for a commander faced by a normal-space action inside the hyper limit of a star. It was relatively simple to hide even a capital ship (at longer ranges, anyway) by simply shutting down her impellers and dropping off the enemy's passive scanners, but the impeller drive wasn't magic. Even at the five hundred-plus gravities a destroyer or light cruiser could manage, it took time to generate respectable vector changes, so hiding by cutting power was of strictly limited utility. After all, it did no good to hide if the enemy went charging away from you at fifty or sixty percent of light-speed, and you couldn't hide if you accelerated in pursuit. Admiral Hemphill is a big dumb dummyhead posted:All of which meant an admiral simply couldn't conceal her maneuvers from an opponent without risking loss of contact. And since hiding was normally pointless, that left only two real options: meet the enemy in a head-on, brute power clash, or try misdirection by showing him something that wasn't quite what he thought it was. Given Admiral Hemphill's material-oriented prejudices, it had taken all of Honor's persuasiveness to build any misdirection at all into the battle plan, for Lady Sonja believed in massing overwhelming firepower and simply smashing away until something gave, which at least had the virtue of simplicity. I'm glad that the person whose entire job is to develop tactics from new weapons seems to only have one tactic up her sleeve. This is surely reasonable and isn't just here to make us all hate Hemphill even more for unduly holding Honor The Great back. Techy stuff posted:Admiral of the Green Sebastian D'Orville frowned over his own plot aboard the superdreadnought HMS King Roger, then glanced at the visual display. Visuals were useless for coordinating battles at deep-space ranges, but they were certainly spectacular. D'Orville's ships were charging ahead at almost a hundred and seventy thousand kilometers per second—just under .57 c—and the starfield in the forward screens was noticeably blue-shifted. But King Roger raced along between the inclined "roof" and "floor" of her impeller wedge, and the effect of a meter-deep band in which local gravity went from zero to over ninety-seven thousand MPS2 grabbed photons like a lake of glue and bent the strongest energy weapon like flimsy wire. Stars seen through a stress band like that red-shifted radically and displaced their images by a considerable margin in direct vision displays, though knowing exactly how powerful the gravity field was made it fairly simple for the computers to compensate and put them back where they belonged. Lot of  here, to be honest. Not a lot of to say about it besides whatever minimal insight it gives about the tech. There's more talk from D'Orville's POV gloating about how Hemphill is screwed as her dreadnoughts have hosed off and her main forces are sitting ducks without them. It then cuts back to Honor's POV for more lefty bashing.Wait, what are penetration aids, anyways? posted:The first missiles went out as the range dropped. Not a lot of them—the chances of a hit at this distance were slight, and not even capital ships could pack in an inexhaustible supply of them—but enough to keep the other side honest. So missiles cost over a million bucks for 75 tons, without any of the important stuff. Whatever penetration aids are, anyways. I actually can't remember them ever being explained, and instead they get mentioned more like a buzzword rather than anything. The book then gets to Honor's one weakness ever. This is it, what every Peep (that's Havenite Scum for you at home) has been salivating to hear for centuries now: How to defeat Honor Harrington! Let's hear this: "The big weakness! posted:But she had other things to worry about as Admiral D'Orville charged towards her, and worry she did, for Honor wasn't precisely the RMN's best mathematician. Despite aptitude tests which regularly said she ought to be an outstanding number-cruncher, her Academy performance scores had steadfastly refused to live up to that potential. In point of fact, she'd nearly flunked out of multi-dimensional math in her third form, and while she'd graduated in the top ten percent overall, she'd also held the embarrassing distinction of standing two-hundred-thirty-seventh (out of a class of two hundred and forty-one) in Mathematics. ... Oh. So her weakness is that somehow she got bad grades on tests despite being the smartest person in the school. Okay. Like, seriously, this is just a humble brag. Get hosed, book. It continues talking about how she was the best who ever was before abruptly changing POV in a way that confused me for a moment. Hell of a way to change POV posted:But in this instance, she'd had plenty of time to worry about it ahead of time, and telling herself—truthfully—that only the Aggressors' closing speed made it time-critical hadn't helped tremendously. Still, Lieutenant Venizelos, her tactical officer, had run the numbers five times, and Lieutenant Commander McKeon had double-checked them. And Honor had made herself check McKeon's calculations a dozen times in the privacy of her quarters. Now she watched the chrono counting off the last, fleeting seconds and double-checked her engineering displays. Everything on the green. The Aggressor flagship realizes something is up because Hemphill isn't going in guns blazing: gently caress off book posted:Sonja was a great believer in concentration of fire—it was one of her few real tactical virtues, in D'Orville's opinion—and given her numerical disadvantage, she ought to be pouring it on, hoping for a few lucky kills to decrease the odds. Only she wasn't, and the admiral's eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. Which really, gently caress you book. HEMPHILL IS A DUMB IDIOT HONOR IS A GENIUS is just obnoxious like this. They decide to keep an eye out for anything odd when it abruptly cuts back to Honor's point of view just as suddenly, and then immediately cuts BACK to the Aggressor's point of view after a paragraph. So it works. posted:Captain Lewis's frantic warning was far too late, and the range was far too short to do anything about it. Admiral D'Orville had barely begun to turn towards him when a crimson light glared on King Roger's main status board, and damage alarms screamed as the vastly understrength grav lance smashed into the superdreadnought's port sidewall. It was far too weak to inflict actual generator damage, but the computers noted it and obediently flashed their failure warning—just as an incredible salvo of equally understrength energy torpedoes exploded against the theoretically nonexistent sidewall. So the gravlance works amazingly and turns out to only need tactics and properly develop ships to use it. Honor cheers and the Fearlessfucks off at maximum speed. The Aggressors' Admiral is mad that he got beaten by Dumbo Hemphill but figures it must have been someone else behind it. quote:Admiral D'Orville clenched his fists, then sighed and made himself lean back in his chair with a wintry smile. Sonja was going to be impossible to live with for months, and he could scarcely blame her. Few of his ships would be "destroyed" before the wall got itself sorted out and altered course, but enough were already crippled to even the odds . . . and who knew when her "detached units" would suddenly appear, as well? And that's the chapter. It's pretty drat annoying how not a single chapter can go by without tooting Honor's horn. Also really the plot has nowhere actually started yet. This is more or less just puffery of Honor for a good while.
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Dec 18, 2019 01:23
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Kchama posted:
It means "We are going with plan BG79". In other words, they worked up a bunch of possible plans ahead of time, and just tell the other commanders which one to use.
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Dec 18, 2019 04:31
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Kchama posted:Time for more "Admiral Hemphill Is All Evil In This World". Get use to this sort of thing. Pretty much every domestic foe Honor gets is incompetent and/or evil. Usually both. Spoilers for the end of the series: Of course, since Manticore ends up conquering the known universe (for all intents and purposes) almost entirely based on their technological superiority, particularly in the missiles that "Horrible Hemphill" designed, one can argue that it's really Hemphill, not Harrington, who deserves the most credit for Manticare's ultimate triumph....
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Dec 18, 2019 04:57
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jng2058 posted:Spoilers for the end of the series: Of course, since Manticore ends up conquering the known universe (for all intents and purposes) almost entirely based on their technological superiority, particularly in the missiles that "Horrible Hemphill" designed, one can argue that it's really Hemphill, not Harrington, who deserves the most credit for Manticare's ultimate triumph.... I've been hammering the whole "Stupid Hemphill" thing in hard for literally this reason. It's just amazing. Gnoman posted:It means "We are going with plan BG79". In other words, they worked up a bunch of possible plans ahead of time, and just tell the other commanders which one to use. I wondered if it was something like this but the emphasis on the 'Seven-Niner' on its own just made me wonder if I missed something.
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Dec 18, 2019 05:28
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Alright, you got me. Let's do this! The Safehold series really needs no introduction. Weber took the third book of a trilogy he'd already written - that actually didn't tie into the plot at all - got drunk and watched a bunch of Halo cutscene complilation videos, and decided to write a work supposedly about religious strife that's at best meaningless and at worst a glorification of how weapons technology entitles you to rule (more on this later). It is of course atrociously written and exists because Weber displays the mentality of a 12 year old fantasizing about being a dictator. We will be reading Off Armageddon Reef. There's not much reason to read the rest. Prologue The prologue starts off with this: The beginning of my madness posted:July 2, 2378 This immediately jumps out as a cinematic device clumsily transplanted into a literary context, so you all know what we're in for! Anyway this interlude is of Captain Mateus Fofão being awakened because a fleet of space warships appeared out of nowhere. They are alien vessels. A lot of fiction has been written about first contact, and this would be a good time for Weber to show off his writing chops and depict something truly alien. It's harder because things like crystal ships and organic technology have become such cliches, but there's a lot of unexplored space and science fiction is supposed to be about the weird. How do we know these are alien vessels? Weber posted:"Skipper," Lieutenant Gabriela Henderson, the heavy cruiser's tactical officer, had the watch, and her normally strained contralto was strained and harsh, "we've got bogies. Lots of bogies. They just dropped out of hyper twelve light-minutes out, and they're headed in-system at over four hundred gravities. Oh. We have a tense standoff with the aliens which is interrupted by a David Weber infodump about the escape courier dispatched to let Earth know they ran into some aliens. It turns out these are aliens theorized to exist after the Federation found an alien civilization wiped out by external aggressors but now here they are! For reference, this is also nearly the same as the plot of Mutineer's Moon, except the evil aliens wiped out the forerunner human empire that settled Earth. Let no one accuse Weber of creativity or imagination. Fofão attempts to communicate with the aliens as they warp in a massive battlefleet, then comes to the horrific realization that the genocidal aliens are, in fact, genocidal. Drink every time you read the word "missile" posted:They can't possibly expect to actually hit an evading starship at that range. That was his first thought as the thousands of incoming missile icons suddenly speckled his plot. But they can sure as hell hit a planet, can't they? his brain told him an instant later. He throws his ship at the aliens and we cut away to the Excalibur in 2421. The Excalibur is leading a task force and we meet our first protagonist, who I'm sure we'll all hate by the time we finish this. Yet Another Tactical Genius posted:Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban was a very junior officer indeed, especially for an antigerone society, to be suggesting to a four-star admiral. however respectfully, that his judgment might be less than infallible. Pei Kau-shi felt absolutely no temptation to point that out to her, however. First, because despite her youth she was one of the more brilliant tactical officers the Terran Federation Navy had ever produced. Second, because if anyone had earned the right to second-guess Admiral Pei, it was Lieutenant Commander Alban. Pei IS said four-star admiral. He is the last four-star admiral of the Terran Federation. The evil genocidal aliens have wiped out the Terran Federation, and the remnants of the Federation fleet are mounting a last-ditch effort to stall the aliens to get one last colony ship away, and we get a last tearful goodbye. David Weber, Space Anthropologist posted:"That's why I wanted to take this chance to tell you." She looked directly into his eyes. "It's been an honor and a privilege to serve under you, Sir. I regret nothing which has happened since you selected me for your staff." The last Terran fleet prepares its ambush, and we get this exchange. You didn't build that posted:"You know," he said, turning away from the display to face Lieutenant Commander Alban and Captain Joseph Thiessen, his chief of staff,"we came so close to kicking these people's asses. Another fifty years-seventy-five at the outside-and we could have taken them, 'star-spanning empire' or no. It turns out the Gbaba have a stagnant culture that has somehow lasted eight or nine thousand years, and we get to one of Weber's favorite themes, which is that if you invent a better way to kill people you deserve to rule. Seriously. The Gbaba here are in error not because they are violent and evil, but because their culture is stagnant and they refuse to change. I want you all to remember this theme because it's the core of Safehold, Honor Harrington, and that lovely fantasy series he wrote about orbital bombardment wizards. We get two pages explaining that the Gbaba were really dumb and didn't innovate. Oh boy! posted:That suggested a level of cultural stagnation which even Pei's ancestral China, at its most conservative rejection of the outside world, never approached. One which made even ancient Egypt seem like a hotbed of innovation. It was impossible for Pet to conceive of any sentient beings who could go that long without any major advances. Turns out the humans bled the Gbaba dry but were worn down by their nigh-infinite starships that spared no effort to wipe out everyone. Pei and Alban are plotting to disrupt the plans of some people we haven't met - including someone named Langhorne - who are part of the ark operation. As the fleet moves to battle we get one more timeskip, to Weber posted:September 7, 2499 Chapter Opening posted:"Grandfather! Grandfather, come quickly! It's an angel!" A young boy runs to get his grandfather because an angel is coming as foretold by a signal light. It's only a lesser angel, but the entire town gathers because, well, divine revelation. We are told the grandfather is one of the last remaining "Adams" because he was created directly by God. We get a clumsy exposition that "Mother Church" is the real power in the town, as well as a very curious prayer. And Aeris will lead us to the Promised Land posted:"May Langhorne bless and keep you always in God's ways and laws until the Day Awaited comes to us all," Anyway, a hovercraft shows up and drops the angel on a special, angel-only platform. The townsfolk react like any good easily manipulated religious person found in genre's bad Christian analogues. It's a cult! posted:All across the town square, people went to their knees in reverence and awe, and Timothy did the same. His heart sang with joy as he beheld the angel standing on the raised platform at the very center of the square. That platform was reserved solely and only for moments like this. No mortal human foot could be permitted to profane its surface, other than those of the consecrated priesthood responsible for ritually cleansing it and maintaining it in permanent readiness for moments like this. There's a short section on the Church's bullshit explanation of why the "angels" age and die and the angel prepares to deliver a message. Also, "solely and only" is hilariously bad prose, but no editor is gonna kill this awful cash cow, are they? We cut to Pei Kau-yung who is furiously contemplating that the angels and religious bullshit are all a scam made by the colony's administrator - Eric Langhorne - as he witnesses an argument between the ruling council. See, Pei Shan-wei is upset with the religious bullshit and is arguing that no matter how dumb the fake religion and brainwashing are, they won't prevent humanity from creating new technologies and she argues that the culture needs to remember the Gbaba. This gets shot down by Langhorne and the chief psychologist, who pulled a coup to mind control everyone into worshiping them as "archangels." If this sounds familiar it's because it's literally the same scenario as the third book of Mutineer's Moon, where an extremely strawmanned church worships an orbital defense battery as god and bans all technology to avoid evil aliens. Anyway, the colonists spent the entire voyage being mind controlled to avoid technology, and, uh This is really going to be the context for our science vs religion debate, isn't it? posted:The sleeping colonists had volunteered to have memories of a false life implanted. They hadn't volunteered to be programmed to believe Operation Ark's command staff were gods. It turns out that no one can stop this because of the depraved evil known as "politics". All the people who like technology and hate false gods conveniently cluster into one enclave, which then gets bombarded from orbit by an automated orbital weapons system while the angel in the town delivers the message that "Shan-wei has fallen." Oh, you'd think an orbital bombardment system would be the bad technology that draws aliens? Nah. The humans have near-perfect stealth technology which they don't use because our villain is obsessed with setting himself up as god. Seriously. A bit earlier posted:The enormous transport, half again the size of the Federation's largest dreadnought, was at minimal power levels, with every one of her multiply redundant stealth systems operating at all times. A Gbaba scout ship could have been in orbit with her without detecting her unless it closed to within two or three hundred kilometers. Thus we get the core conflict - the technology users against the stagnant, awful cultures who can't innovate (God, the language sounds like a consultant convention) who are set up to be easily defeatable straw men who love power and false teachings. There are no answers in this religion aside from obedience to a bunch of egomaniacs. It's not a good stand in for Christianity/Islam/what have you. It's just dumb. But wait! It gets worse! We do one last jump cut to Nimue who is waking up. She gets an infodump from Pei Kau-yung that she's dead and turned into a robot. Deus ex Machina, literally posted:If she'd been breathing, she might have inhaled in surprise. But she wasn't, because, as Pei had just said, she wasn't actually alive. She was a PICA, a Personality Integrated Cybernetic Avatar. And, a grimly amused little corner of her mind-if, of course, she could be said to actually have a mind-reflected, it was a top-of-the-line PICA, at that. A gift from Nimue Alban's unreasonably wealthy father. We get an entire infodump on how the robot bodies work exactly like humans, because Weber is a bad writer who doesn't understand the need to actually keep things going when there's imaginary technologies to :sperg: about. It's longer than Pei's explanation that Langhorne and co set themselves up as false gods and purged all the dissidents. Anyway, Pei ended up purging all would-be gods and leaving a cache of technology behind for Nimue. That's the prologue. If it seems badly written to set up the author's power fantasy, well...that's Weber in a nutshell.
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Dec 18, 2019 06:36
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Double post because things didn't seem synced on my end. Weber is still bad.
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Dec 18, 2019 06:36
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He at least sets things up in this prologue instead of "Here's some dudes you know nothing about in the void talking about poo poo you have no context for". He's progressed slightly as an author!
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Dec 18, 2019 07:34
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Kchama posted:So missiles cost over a million bucks for 75 tons, without any of the important stuff. Whatever penetration aids are, anyways. I actually can't remember them ever being explained, and instead they get mentioned more like a buzzword rather than anything. They're devices used to aid missiles in penetrating the target's defenses. Decoys, stealth tech, ECM, etc.
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Dec 18, 2019 10:43
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Lube.
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Dec 18, 2019 11:01
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Man, I read a bunch of Harrington back in highschool. It's weird coming back to it. Never read Safehold, though. Looking back, I had forgotten March Upcountry was a collab with Ringo, I thought it was with someone else. I don't really remember any particularly awful Ringo-isms, but all I really remember was that the first three seemed fine and the last one kind of dragged.
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Dec 18, 2019 17:16
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Khizan posted:They're devices used to aid missiles in penetrating the target's defenses. Decoys, stealth tech, ECM, etc. That's how the term is used later in the series, but in the first two books it seems to be some kind of "get through the shields" function.
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Dec 18, 2019 17:53
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Gnoman posted:That's how the term is used later in the series, but in the first two books it seems to be some kind of "get through the shields" function. Yeah, this. I even looked up the wiki to see if I wasn't just being insane about that, and the wiki briefly mentions 'sidewall penetrators' too, but has nothing else. I was asking what they were exactly because the mention of them implies that they aren't a normal part of the missile's workings. Like, it specifies that it's seperate from both the warhead and the rest of the missile, so I was trying to picture just what are they sticking on the missile that helps it pierce through shields. I'm kind of surprised they haven't actually did a description of missiles when actually talking about them. Though, whatever it is, it doesn't seem like the regular missiles they have in the series that fire lasers.
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Dec 18, 2019 19:01
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Kchama posted:Yeah, this. I even looked up the wiki to see if I wasn't just being insane about that, and the wiki briefly mentions 'sidewall penetrators' too, but has nothing else. Back when I was reading this cursed series, my thought was that penetration aids and "sidewall penetrators" are probably based on the same technology as grav lances, as that kind of thing doesn't tend to spring into existence fully formed. Logically, there must have been precursor-techs in use for quite some time before the first super-lances were made. In my head, I was imagining stuff like special missile warheads blasting out grav pulses to weaken sidewalls, or tinier versions of those same grav generators being spit out in addition to the laser rods of the conventional missiles and then being powered by the fusion bomb exploding, like the lasing rods themselves. No idea how close I came to what Weber was thinking to what I just made up on the spot to replace his missing explanations, though. 
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Dec 18, 2019 21:13
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Kchama posted:I'm kind of surprised they haven't actually did a description of missiles when actually talking about them. Though, whatever it is, it doesn't seem like the regular missiles they have in the series that fire lasers. At this point, they're probably wargaming with "contact" nuclear warheads. The more typical laser warheads (which are a real theoretical technology that the US tried to develop, and there are some hints that such a thing was successfully test-fired in one of the last underground nuclear test) are treated as a new thing at this point in the setting, and that fits with where "penaids" are used in the second book.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:47
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It sounds like a sex toy, which is appropriate as this is entirely the masturbatory fantasy of tech writers.
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Dec 18, 2019 22:57
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Gnoman posted:At this point, they're probably wargaming with "contact" nuclear warheads. The more typical laser warheads (which are a real theoretical technology that the US tried to develop, and there are some hints that such a thing was successfully test-fired in one of the last underground nuclear test) are treated as a new thing at this point in the setting, and that fits with where "penaids" are used in the second book. That does hold up to my memory. That's a bit why I'm surprised it's so ambiguous still when that'd be the perfect time to actually talk about the missile tech. Libluini posted:Back when I was reading this cursed series, my thought was that penetration aids and "sidewall penetrators" are probably based on the same technology as grav lances, as that kind of thing doesn't tend to spring into existence fully formed. Logically, there must have been precursor-techs in use for quite some time before the first super-lances were made. In my head, I was imagining stuff like special missile warheads blasting out grav pulses to weaken sidewalls, or tinier versions of those same grav generators being spit out in addition to the laser rods of the conventional missiles and then being powered by the fusion bomb exploding, like the lasing rods themselves. I mean, that kind of stuff makes sense, I agree. It's possible it never came up became Weber did his best to memory-hole gravlances after this book. Yeah, that's right, the book entirely about Honor captaining a vessel with a prototype weapon? The weapon is never mentioned again, even when it'd make total sense. Because, simply put, fans liked the gravlance! So Weber hated it and got rid of it because fans kept pointing out how having one would have been SUPER useful in this situation or that.
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Dec 19, 2019 00:34
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You guys almost thought you were escaping today's chapter, huh? TOO BAD. Here it comes. On Basilisk Station Chapter 4 Just put some milk and sugar in it. posted:The ship-wide elation which had followed the "destruction" of Admiral D'Orville's flagship was noticeably absent as Honor watched her steward pour coffee. The rich aroma of the beverage filled the small briefing room's silence, but the cup Steward First Class MacGuiness placed at Honor's elbow contained hot cocoa. She never had understood how something that smelled as nice as coffee could taste so foul, and she wondered yet again if perhaps Manticoran coffee trees hadn't mutated somehow in their new environment. Such things happened, but she doubted that was the answer in this case, given the appalling relish with which most RMN officers imbibed the loathsome stuff. I mostly posted this because... the answer is you put milk or sugar or whatever in it to dilute the bitterness, geez. ANyways, after their stunning victory, they only succeeded twice more in eighteen exercises because the Aggressors made sure they could never do it again. Now, this is clearly just the author trying to shout "IT'D NEVER BE PRACTICAL AS A REAL WEAPON" and loads of humilitation gets heaped on Hemphill for being so STUPID as to use such an easily counterable weapon! Hemphill Sux posted:Lady Sonja had been livid at how easily her secret weapon (and, no doubt, hopes for advanced promotion) were countered once the other side knew about it, and her messages to Fearless's captain had descended from congratulatory to querulous to scathing . . . and downhill from there. She had to know it wasn't Honor's fault, but knowing didn't seem to make her any happier. Let's be fair to Honor: Trying the exact same tactics over and over when your entire tactic relies on surprise isn't all that smart. The point of the gravlance is clearly to be the, to steal a term from wargaming, 'hidden powerfist'. The surprise weapon that utterly destroys you if you don't pay absolute attention to your enemies and their loadout. . So of course it wouldn't be the ultimate weapon when used openly and the enemies absolutely know when and where it's coming. I mean by Weber's reckoning, torpedo boats were useless piles of poo poo, I guess. Anyways, the morale of the ship is plummeting and the crew is starting to hate Honor and thinking the first victory was just luck and well, she isn't really doing a good showing either way. She has a meeting with her officers directly, even though this is traditionally the XO's job, and is another one of her Honor Is Better Than Everyone Else touch. Long quote of all of the officers posted:Lieutenant Commander McKeon faced her from the table's far end, tense and blank-faced, an enigma hiding some inner reserve that went beyond the maneuvers' disastrous outcome. Lieutenant Commander Santos, chief engineer and junior only to McKeon, sat expressionlessly at her right hand, eyes fixed on the blank screen of her memo pad as if to shut the rest of the briefing room away. Lieutenant Stromboli, the astrogator, fleshy, dark-browed, and physically powerful, sat hunched down in his chair like a child afraid to sulk. Dapper, slim Lieutenant Venizelos sat facing him, eyes unfocused, waiting with manifest resignation for the discussion to begin. Yet the resignation held an edge of bravado, almost defiance, as if the tactical officer dared her to blame him for Fearless's poor showing—and feared she did. I kind of felt all this was a bit important as I don't think we're going to get any kind of reminder of who any of these people are. And for presumably characters who are gonna stick around the entire book, they have very thin descriptions. The most important detail out of all of this is that Honor's parents are physicians, which should also give a clue about Honor's background. It's mentioned earlier that she's 'of yeoman stock' and here we find out that both of her parents are physicans. So it's likely that her family is wealthy. And in fact, we find out that her family is VERY wealthy and much more important than the early books indicate. There's a paragraph about how she wanted to shout at her officers but realize it'll just make things worse, and she's taken to leaving Nimitz her treecat back in her room. There's conversation about supplies, and Honor gets made at her XO for being rather crisp and frosty towards her, because of the aforementioned jealousy. Basically everything going wrong is because McKeon, the XO, is being a jerk. There's talk of a gravlance upgrade, but the POV switches to McKeon and ignores that. He knows he's the jerk, too posted:He watched Harrington's profile, and dull, churning resentment burned at the back of his throat like acid. The captain looked as calm and collected as she always did, spoke and listened as courteously as ever, and that only made him resent her more. He was a tactical officer himself by training. He knew precisely how impossible Harrington's task had been, yet he couldn't rid himself of a nagging suspicion that he could have done better at it than she. He certainly couldn't have done any worse, he thought spitefully, and felt himself flush guiltily. He's afraid of losing his XO job and possibility of ever being a captain, and is tempted to confess it all to Honor, who he knew would respong like a saint. Like a saint posted:He felt a sudden, terrible temptation to confess his feelings and his failures to the captain. To beg her to find a way through them for him. Somehow, he knew, those dark brown eyes would listen without condemning, that calm soprano would reply without contempt. But that just makes him madder. POV back to Honor, and Comms Officers Webster shows up. Apparently this is later, with zero actual indication of that, as the scene transitions without anything to, well indicate that and McKeon's suddenly not in the room, nor are any of the officers. That's some real bad writing, there. In fact it seems like they're in Honor's personal room. This is exactly how it is in my book posted:And that, of course, was what made it impossible. It would be the final capitulation, the admission that Harrington deserved the command he had known from the start could not be his. Webster is, by the way, the third cousin of the Duke of New Texas, a duchy in Manticore. Seriously. Whatever. He was the officer she liked the most, and he brings ill tidings. They have orders to a new station. The worst place to ever be sent posted:Basilisk Station. God, she knew she'd disappointed Hemphill, but the admiral must be even more upset than she'd thought! She tells him to sent the info to the XO and other major officers, and well... Gasp posted:The Basilisk System picket wasn't a duty station—it was exile. Oblivion. She starts to fall into despair, and uhh... So it was actually a super plum and prestigious station but everyone is an idiot posted:It wasn't as if being sent to Basilisk should be a disgrace. The system was of great and steadily growing economic value to the Kingdom, not to mention its strategic military importance. It was also Manticore's sole extra-system territorial possession, and that alone should have made it a prestigious assignment. Also some details on Manticore, nearly five chapters in. Lots of dumb details posted:It wasn't as if being sent to Basilisk should be a disgrace. The system was of great and steadily growing economic value to the Kingdom, not to mention its strategic military importance. It was also Manticore's sole extra-system territorial possession, and that alone should have made it a prestigious assignment. This is a lot to read but really, it's all unfortunately important stuff. Lots of "liberals and progressives suck and stand for everything bad", of course. Also "well, we've decided we won't colonize the place and kill the indigenous people, even though we use the term saying we already colonized the planet, so why even bother protecting the most important point in the system that absolutely isn't the planet?"
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Dec 19, 2019 02:00
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Dec 19, 2019 02:42
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The historical analogue for Honor's ship in this book is HMS Rainbow, a 44-gun frigate that was converted to an experimental all-carronade armament in 1782. This gave an imp broadside of 1238 pounds compared to 318 that could be achieved with the more traditional long guns, but at the cost of having an extremely short effective range. Rainbow won her single battle (against a conventionally armed French frigate of similar size) with the new guns quite handily before being retired due to age (and cost cutting at the end of the war.against America and the Bourbon powers). The experiment continued with a merchant ship.converted into a ship of the line, which won a decisive victory against a larger force in 1794. Not long aferward, the Admirality concluded that both victories were possible only due to surprise, and the increasing importance of long-range gunnery meant that the experiment was a failure.
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Dec 19, 2019 18:31
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Gnoman posted:The historical analogue for Honor's ship in this book is HMS Rainbow, a 44-gun frigate that was converted to an experimental all-carronade armament in 1782. This gave an imp broadside of 1238 pounds compared to 318 that could be achieved with the more traditional long guns, but at the cost of having an extremely short effective range. I did some some poking around and reading and Weber kind of bungles this because the Fearless actually had other weapons, they just had less, so it was actually more akin to a regular ship back in those days, as carronades were common parts of a ship's guns. In this case, it seems like carronades were the equivilant of the energy torpedos that the Fearless had. There had been a second ship that was also all-carronade - the HMS Glatton, commissioned by the captain of the HMS Rainbow during its time with its all-carronade armament. Apparently he had really loved it. It had a distinguished service with its armaments and generally kicked a lot of rear end in regular straight up fights with lots of ships. So apparently it was actually a pretty resounding success in the hands of someone who knew how to work it. Of course then gun advances promptly rendered the carronade completely obsolete forever but they had a good run of like 100 years. This has been 'looking up poo poo' corner with me. Also, thanks for finding that out in the first place. I'll have a post up later tonight.
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Dec 19, 2019 20:24
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Glatton was the merchant ship converted to a battleship I mentioned. The one battle she fought with the experimental loadout was a truly epic accomplishment.
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Dec 19, 2019 21:19
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Gnoman posted:Glatton was the merchant ship converted to a battleship I mentioned. The one battle she fought with the experimental loadout was a truly epic accomplishment. Yeesh, so she was a 56 gun converted east indiaman. Her captain's opinion of her: Trollope was extremely happy with Glatton's seaworthiness, handling and general fitting out. He wrote to John Wells, the shipbuilder and her former owner,[11] "I sincerely hope... we may meet with a seventy four in the Glatton...she would either take her or sink her in twenty minutes." Then he engaged a razee heavy frigate (a 74 cut down to a 50 gun vessel) and five regular frigates (two 38 gun, three 28 guns), plus a brig and a cutter, all at the same time. Before driving them all into harbour and sinking one ship, for the loss of one man wounded and one killed. That sounds like a remarkably successful concept to me.
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Dec 19, 2019 21:59
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Patrat posted:Yeesh, so she was a 56 gun converted east indiaman. Her captain's opinion of her: You know I'm not sure why Weber didn't have the Fearless be a wild success. Wait, I do know the answer. Because if he didn't keep piling on about how it was super garbage and hyper useless, then how could he ever have it be a plucky underdog tale?
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Dec 19, 2019 22:45
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Patrat posted:Then he engaged a razee heavy frigate (a 74 cut down to a 50 gun vessel) and five regular frigates (two 38 gun, three 28 guns), plus a brig and a cutter, all at the same time. Before driving them all into harbour and sinking one ship, for the loss of one man wounded and one killed. That sounds like a remarkably successful concept to me. At close range, it was an extremely powerful loadout - Glatton had a heavier broadside than the 100-gun first rate HMS Victory. The problem was that any conventionally armed ship could stand back out of range, and the Admiralty concluded that, once the terrifying close-range firepower of that weapons variant became known, any enemy would do just that whenever possible, preventing Royal Navy warships from ever engaging except under ideal conditions. Thus, the loadout was only useful when the enemy didn't know it was there. The US Navy experimented with the same concept - USS Essex (1799) carried 6 long 18s and 40 32-pound carronades. She (and the sloop Essex Junior (10 long 6, 10 carronade 18) ran into the conventionally armed frigate HMS Phoebe and the sloop HMS Cherub in 1814 at the Battle of Valparaíso. Essex scored major damage on Phoebe early in the battle, after which Phoebe simply withdrew out of carronade range and pounded Essex to bits.
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Dec 19, 2019 23:49
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Gnoman posted:At close range, it was an extremely powerful loadout - Glatton had a heavier broadside than the 100-gun first rate HMS Victory. The problem was that any conventionally armed ship could stand back out of range, and the Admiralty concluded that, once the terrifying close-range firepower of that weapons variant became known, any enemy would do just that whenever possible, preventing Royal Navy warships from ever engaging except under ideal conditions. Thus, the loadout was only useful when the enemy didn't know it was there. 1814 was a bad time to use carronades as they had been super obselete by then. I think they were almost entirely out of use by 1820s. It's time for the next chapter! On Basilisk Station Chapter 5 Manticore makes is way to the Basilisk system and its station, wherein everyone is really humiliated at being sent to what would be the plummest position in the universe in any non-dumb setting, and is entirely set up so Honor can make a lot of money and prestige with the least amount of effort. Depressed at the easiest posting ever posted:The duty watch manned their stations alertly, and a stranger on Fearless's bridge might not have recognized the air of gloom which clung to them. But a stranger, Honor thought, reaching up to rub Nimitz's jaw absently, wouldn't have lived with these people for weeks now. A stranger wouldn't recognize their humiliation at being condemned to Basilisk Station, or the way they'd withdrawn ever deeper into their shells until the duties they performed were all they really had in common with their captain. There's a lot of exposition about how space forts work and stuff, so I'll just copy it all. It's shocking to see Weber do exposition when a element comes up and is relevant rather than chapters later. Exposition posted:The smallest fortress out there massed close to sixteen million tons, twice as much as a superdreadnought, and its weapons-to-mass ratio was far higher. The forts weren't hyper-capable, for they used mass a warship might have devoted to its hyper generators and Warshawski sails to pack in still more firepower, but they were far more than immobile weapon platforms. They had to be. Apparently the forts were still really worthless, which was the real reason why Manticore annexed Basilisk. There's more exposition about how going through a wormhole destabilized it and made it unusable for a certain amount of time based on the mass, which the book tries to pass off as a weakness when it comes to defending the juncture as it means that if they hold two junctures they can send in two waves at once, which apparently was forever undefeatble by the forts. Which yeah sure whatever. quote:Not even Manticore's, Honor thought as Fearless slowed to rest relative to the Junction. Even though the Junction fortresses accounted for almost thirty percent of the RMN's budget, the security?or at least neutrality?of the Junction's other termini simply had to be guaranteed. Which is why they treat Basilisk as some sort of undesirable useless outpost where only the worthless are sent, despite it being super critical to the kingdom's security. The Fearless reaches wormhole to Basilisk and we get another "Honor has a math weakness!" despite earlier it explaining that she only sucked when doing it theoretically and was a super master ultra best ever when doing it in practice. Honor sux posted:Fearless drifted forward at a mere twenty gravities' acceleration, aligning herself perfectly on the invisible rails of the Junction, and Honor watched her display intently. Thank God for computers. If she'd had to work out the math for this sort of thing, she'd probably have cut her own throat years ago, but computers didn't mind if the person using them was a mathematical idiot. All they needed was the right input, and, unlike certain Academy instructors she could name, they didn't wait with exaggerated patience until they got it, either. The ship goes through its various checks and functions to chain into FTL mode and then moves quote:two hundred and ten light-years distant in Einsteinian space They return to regular flight mode and hook up with the traffic control. They're ordered to meet with the HMS Warlock and there's a lot of chaff of flying over to the Warlock. And then finally the only really important part of the entire chapter happens: ”Yes, it just changes to a new POV without any warning again” posted:"Here it is, Ma'am. HMS Warlock, CA Two-Seven-Seven. Three hundred k-tons. She's a Star Knight-class. Captain Lord Pavel Young, commanding." Soooo, oh boy, Pavel Young. The guy whose entire purpose seems to be putting a lie to the ‘Manticore is a raving meritocracy’ that Weber loves pretending. He’s also Generic Domestic Villian #1. His job is to be hated and only safe from Honor killing him because of !!!POLITICS!!!. Also this one was short because most of the chapter was just "Flying to X place".
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Dec 20, 2019 01:39
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So wait. Wouldn't the fortresses be the perfect place to shove grav lances and energy torpedos because anyone coming out of a wormhole is a sitting duck?
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Dec 20, 2019 02:56
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Weber never goes into details on the weaponry of the forts, just that it is very heavy for their size and they are very large. Energy torpedoes are stated to be in use on some ships in the hopes of getting a good shot, so the forts might well have them. Grav lances would be unnecessary for reasons we won't see until the Big Mistimed Infodump later in this book.
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Dec 20, 2019 03:19
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The whole first book, despite probably being the least lovely one, kind of feels like a fever dream because it's like getting assigned the Panama or Suez station a century ago and getting depressed that you arent rotting in a fleet base Stateside.
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Dec 20, 2019 04:22
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Then again I knew people who didnt want to be assigned Diego Garcia in my career field andit's like, you seriously think a year and a half on a tropical island with zero workload would be bad? I guess it is in the middle of nowhere so it's not quite the same
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Dec 20, 2019 04:23
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Larry Parrish posted:The whole first book, despite probably being the least lovely one, kind of feels like a fever dream because it's like getting assigned the Panama or Suez station a century ago and getting depressed that you arent rotting in a fleet base Stateside. It's insane that it's where they decided to dump their fuckups. Though I guess it totally fits Honor to fail upward into the more plum posting in the universe where it's very easy to make it super rich for almost no effort. Like he spends a page on it but it never makes any sense. "We can't have permanent fortresses by the planet, so none of it can be defended! So let's put zero effort into its defenses. But also forts are loving useless to begin with, so we just have nothing but a little toll station and some losers we hate."
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Dec 20, 2019 05:14
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Actually, I feel like Chapter 6 can’t wait because unlike Chapter 5, it really has some stuff in it. Some... stuff. On Basilisk Station Chapter 6 The chapter begins with Honor making GBS threads on the alien-filled planet of Medusa. No, really. She whines about how boring it looks. ”I hate that planet and the Warlock” posted:The planet Medusa gleamed like a dull ball bearing far below as Fearless slid into her assigned parking orbit for rendezvous with Warlock. It wasn't much of a planet, Honor thought, watching it on the visual display. She was well-aware her concentration on Medusa stemmed from a need to think about anything but the upcoming interview with her senior officer, but her mood had little to do with her conclusion that Medusa had to be the most boring-looking world she'd ever seen. Honor leaves the ship on a cutter, which is different from a pinnace. Which is probably different from a shuttle. The difference between the two is that a pinnace is big enough for an Impellar Drive, while cutters are not, so cutters are a lot slower. Apparently showing up in a proper ship is being ‘ostentatious’. She arrives at the Warlock - apparently it had taken thirty-one hours to reach the Warlock though there is sure no feel of it. She knows its a calculated insult but she’s relieved because she can ‘get her into defenses in place’. Instead, she meets his XO, Commander Paul Tankersley, whose name anyone who has read a few books would know. He’s Honor’s future boyfriend. Spoilers. Here he’s given zero description beyond ‘short, squared-off commander’. You can really tell that Weber just drew his name out of a hat later on.. They don’t talk beyond formalistic stuff and he has a ‘touch of sympathy in his expression’. And then we get to the main event. Captain Lord Pavel Young. ”He fat” posted:Captain Lord Young was seated behind the conference table, perusing a sheet of hardcopy. He didn't look up as she entered, and she gritted her teeth, amazed that such a trivial insult could make her so angry. She crossed to the table and stood silently, determined to wait him out. I love that he has to be fat. Of course he is. ”Some details posted:”Honor had no idea what he'd done to get himself banished to Basilisk Station. Probably, she thought bitterly, he'd simply been himself. Patronage could advance an officer's career—witness the fact that Young, who'd graduated only one form before her, had made list five years ago. Once an officer's name was on the captain's list, his eventual flag rank was guaranteed. Unless he did something so drastic the Fleet cashiered him, he only had to live long enough for simple seniority to see to that. They obviously dislike each other, and Captain Young is taking advantage of her arrival to gently caress off with the Warlock for a few months. She’s initially afraid he means to take over her ship, but nah he just wants to be gone. ”Bye!” posted:"As you know, Basilisk Station is chronically understrength," he went on, "and I'm afraid Warlock is sadly overdue for refit. In fact, this—" he tapped the hardcopy "—is a list of our most urgently required repairs." He smiled. "That's why I'm so pleased to see you, Commander. Your presence will permit me to return Warlock to Manticore for the yard attention she needs so badly." She somehow teleports back into the hallway and is all super mad looking and scares him. She puts on her captain’s beret insultingly and starts to head back to her ship and then we get the details of their encounter. Strap in! ”Surprise, he’s a rapist!!!” posted:Honor was grateful for his silence, for her brain was trying to grapple with too many thoughts at once. Memories of the Academy dominated them, especially of the terrible scene in the commandant's office as Mr. Midshipman Lord Young, broken ribs and collarbone still immobilized, split lips still puffed and distended, one blackened eye swollen almost shut, was required to apologize to Ms. Midshipman Harrington for his "inappropriate language and actions" before the official reprimand for "conduct unbecoming" went into his file. Thanks, I hate it. Especially the repetition of “She thinks she’s ugly!” while everyone is going “She’s BEYOND PRETTY”. Ugh. Every time Weber writes about rape, it’s never good. And this is probably the best he handles it. She ruminates that he put a literally impossible job on her, because apparently they only have one ship police one of their most valuable locations at a time, even though it needs more than that. ”End of Chapter 6 posted:Which was exactly what Young had intended. He was leaving her an impossible job, content in the knowledge that her failure to discharge it would go into her record. Unlike him, Honor had yet to make list, and if she botched her first independent command, however it had fallen on her, she never would. It turns out to not be so impossible, really.
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Dec 20, 2019 06:03
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Kchama posted:
We see the internal thoughts of both Young and a character we meet later in book 3. They agree that Honor was "on the homely side" when she was at the Academy.
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Dec 20, 2019 06:08
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Gnoman posted:We see the internal thoughts of both Young and a character we meet later in book 3. They agree that Honor was "on the homely side" when she was at the Academy. I mean in the stuff I posted earlier they do that and then go "But she's BEYOND PRETTY" which I feel is pretty lame.
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Dec 20, 2019 06:27
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I absolutely despise the tendency of genre authors to just make all their villains rapists because they can't be bothered to write a compelling, intriguing villain.
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Dec 20, 2019 06:36
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That's fair, and it would probably come off a lot less bad if they'd given the actual explanation (that she (and a lot of people her age, including the Queen) was stuck as a gangly teenager for many years longer than normal) in this book. Of course, the explanation is based on the Space Magic tech that lets people live for centuries in this setting, so criticizing it on that basis would also be sound.
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Dec 20, 2019 06:38
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I absolutely despise the tendency of genre authors to just make all their villains rapists because they can't be bothered to write a compelling, intriguing villain. Yeah, no poo poo. And of course this is Honor's very first and pretty much primary domestic villain for quite some time. Gnoman posted:That's fair, and it would probably come off a lot less bad if they'd given the actual explanation (that she (and a lot of people her age, including the Queen) was stuck as a gangly teenager for many years longer than normal) in this book. Of course, the explanation is based on the Space Magic tech that lets people live for centuries in this setting, so criticizing it on that basis would also be sound. Honestly I don't have a real problem with Prolong, but not explaining aside from a very quick "oh yeah she's a gen3 so she looks younger a lot longer" was really not enough for how far I am into the book. Weber's done a pretty piss-poor job actually explaining his setting. The book just expects you to get it and shrugs if you don't because it didn't explain it. By the way I'm thinking of covering the 'raving meritocracy' Pearl of Weber tomorrow. It's something.
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Dec 20, 2019 06:47
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