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PupsOfWar posted:descriptions from earlier in the series make Beowulf's government sound like the sort of literal technocracy that crops up in utopian sci-fi (like Krypton, or the Arisians in lensmen, or the Foundation) but has few real-world antecedents I would look it up but apparently it's described in A Rising Thunder and there's no chance in hell I'm even skimming that book again
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# ? May 9, 2020 06:46 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 11:03 |
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blackmongoose posted:I would look it up but apparently it's described in A Rising Thunder and there's no chance in hell I'm even skimming that book again It's described as having a literal Board of Directors as the government and Honor's uncle is the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors and thus basically the king/president, which means king in Weberspeak. The members of the executive branch are all only Important (Aristocratic) family members. So it's rule by corporation.
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# ? May 9, 2020 08:40 |
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I looked up Beowulf on the Honorverse Wiki earlier. In Beowulfs entry it's called a 'Meritocratic Republic' up top. (Me: Oh, so it's an oligarchy.) Then in the text it's called a 'Representative Elective Oligarchy' which reminds me of classic cold war style "Peoples Republic of (x)*" *(80's Me: Oh so it's a brutal one party dictatorship) Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 09:33 on May 9, 2020 |
# ? May 9, 2020 09:15 |
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"Representative Elective Oligarchy" makes it sound like Beowulf elects new ruling families to replace those who die out
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# ? May 9, 2020 10:48 |
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Libluini posted:"Representative Elective Oligarchy" makes it sound like Beowulf elects new ruling families to replace those who die out Probably not a common occurrence, since being the best at medicine in the universe is their gimmick.
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# ? May 9, 2020 16:42 |
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From the way it's described it should be a hedonistic fuckocracy where the highest form of governance is running a nice clean orgy and keeping your polycule happy.
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# ? May 9, 2020 17:39 |
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As relations with Old Terra decline, Beowulf insists that its League membership should be converted to an 'open membership' so it can have an affair with Manticore
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# ? May 9, 2020 17:41 |
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You're not wrong. Also I love that it's apparently ALSO a meritocracy, like presumably every society Weber likes. Because nothing says 'good guy' like meritocracy! Never mind that Manticore is the opposite of a meritocracy and Age of Sail Britain was super opposite of a meritocracy.
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# ? May 9, 2020 17:52 |
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Kchama posted:He didn't seem to have any revelation when he made Beowulf into a corporate hellworld with corporate royalty (that Honor is a member of). Kchama posted:It's described as having a literal Board of Directors as the government and Honor's uncle is the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors and thus basically the king/president, which means king in Weberspeak. The members of the executive branch are all only Important (Aristocratic) family members. So it's rule by corporation. My impression – and this may be wishful thinking on my part, since it's never explicitly detailed – was that the Beowulfan government had a corporate organizational structure, but that all Beowulfan citizens were (at least formally) equal shareholders. That is, Honor's mom's family are prominent because they've carefully managed the prestige they got from leading the rescue of Old Earth, not because they own more stock in Beowulf Incorporated.
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# ? May 9, 2020 18:16 |
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All citizens are shareholders but I doubt they're equal shareholders. And Corporations are people, too.
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# ? May 9, 2020 20:53 |
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FuturePastNow posted:All citizens are shareholders but I doubt they're equal shareholders. And Corporations are people, too. You're right that that's likely how it would really work out, but I really think Weber meant for Beowulf to be better than that.
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# ? May 9, 2020 22:27 |
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General Battuta posted:From the way it's described it should be a hedonistic fuckocracy where the highest form of governance is running a nice clean orgy and keeping your polycule happy. now that I think about it, the number of "of course, Allison would never cheat on Alfred, she just likes to flirt and get a rise out of people" asides in the narration sorta comes off in a me-thinks-the-lady-doth-protest-too-much way perhaps that is merely a fiction that Honor has been led to believe, to cover up her parents' wild poly lifestyle PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 02:28 on May 10, 2020 |
# ? May 9, 2020 22:37 |
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As Honor is described as somewhat prudish, I could believe that.
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# ? May 9, 2020 23:17 |
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Don't forget the Beowulf special forces soldiers from one of the Flint novels who were all loving each other E: I'll just copypaste a bit Torch of Freedom posted:"What? Already?" He gave Garner's feet a glance. "You haven't even put on the spike-heeled boots yet." FuturePastNow fucked around with this message at 00:00 on May 10, 2020 |
# ? May 9, 2020 23:55 |
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I always read this sort of stuff as "Holy poo poo, I can't believe i'm actually being paid to flex my kinks in public". See also the entire works of Laura K Hamilton post 2K.
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# ? May 10, 2020 00:20 |
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Anshu posted:My impression – and this may be wishful thinking on my part, since it's never explicitly detailed – was that the Beowulfan government had a corporate organizational structure, but that all Beowulfan citizens were (at least formally) equal shareholders. That is, Honor's mom's family are prominent because they've carefully managed the prestige they got from leading the rescue of Old Earth, not because they own more stock in Beowulf Incorporated. See I'd buy that if it wasn't Weber who explicitly thinks that a dictatorship of some form is the ideal government.
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# ? May 10, 2020 01:03 |
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The idea of soldiers being extremely incestuous is is pretty true to life tbf.
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# ? May 10, 2020 01:32 |
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FuturePastNow posted:Don't forget the Beowulf special forces soldiers from one of the Flint novels who were all loving each other this reminds me of ian douglas's marines-in-space novels, wherein all the marines were always loving each other just on the presumption that, in the space future, poly drama is the inevitable norm i don't think douglas ever got in a full contiguous page of recapping 1 squad's interlocking sex web like in that weber/flint excerpt, though also douglas's space marine poly hijinks weren't all cishet Deptfordx posted:I always read this sort of stuff as "Holy poo poo, I can't believe i'm actually being paid to flex my kinks in public". tbh, weber is normally like the least-libidinal old white guy author i have ever read im surprised he let flint put as much sex in the Torch books as he did PupsOfWar fucked around with this message at 02:35 on May 10, 2020 |
# ? May 10, 2020 02:31 |
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PupsOfWar posted:this reminds me of ian douglas's marines-in-space novels, wherein all the marines were always loving each other just on the presumption that, in the space future, poly drama is the inevitable norm It's true, he is. About his only horniness is Honor's mom who is maximum horny all the time.
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# ? May 10, 2020 04:27 |
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I remember catching the miniature mass drivers thing back as a small child. Found it a pretty obvious plot hole. But it does enable the 'you actived my torp card and here's 50 paragraphs on how they work.' IIRC, Honor books are huge money makers for Baen, and again, I get the logic. The series is dying for a fanfic or something where BuOrd gets sick of Honor getting all the glory for using their brilliant scientific breakthrough in a simple tactic and overthrows the government.
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# ? May 10, 2020 15:07 |
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Monocled Falcon posted:I remember catching the miniature mass drivers thing back as a small child. Found it a pretty obvious plot hole. But it does enable the 'you actived my torp card and here's 50 paragraphs on how they work.' Sonja Hemphill overthrows Manticore, having gotten word of how Honor thought of her for the first half of the series.
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# ? May 10, 2020 17:17 |
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Kchama posted:Sonja Hemphill overthrows Manticore, having gotten word of how Honor thought of her for the first half of the series. They find Honors emails. Or teleletters as they are called in the future.
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# ? May 12, 2020 18:28 |
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ianmacdo posted:They find Honors emails. Or teleletters as they are called in the future. That's dumb. Why is everything named dumbly?
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# ? May 13, 2020 01:28 |
Fivemarks posted:That's dumb. Why is everything named dumbly? That's a "joke". Email in the Honorverse is called "email".
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# ? May 13, 2020 01:44 |
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Gnoman posted:That's a "joke". Email in the Honorverse is called "email". To be fair, 'Newsfax' is a pretty goofy term for digital newspapers. But that's the 90s for you.
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# ? May 13, 2020 03:10 |
Kchama posted:To be fair, 'Newsfax' is a pretty goofy term for digital newspapers. It is, but it is an example of the author assuming that the traditional newspaper would no longer be around anymore, and they'd have changed the name. Same with the "chips" you keep complaining about. Weber was astute enough to figure out that floppies, tapes, and even hard drives would be wholly obsolete by then, and correctly deduced that solid-state memory would be the next big step (not an amazing bit of prophecy, it was already being worked on). He just assumed that the nomenclature standard of "RAM chip" and "ROM Chip" would be extended to the new format. Things that exist in unmodified form generally have the same names, which is an improvment from a lot of sci-fi authors.
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# ? May 13, 2020 03:32 |
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Gnoman posted:It is, but it is an example of the author assuming that the traditional newspaper would no longer be around anymore, and they'd have changed the name. There's a reason why I put it down to 90s goofiness, instead of saying it's a super bad thing largely. ... Except for chips. Chips already meant something in the 90s and it makes me think he didn't mean ROM/RAM chips or solid-state memory because he doesn't use it purely to mean storage but also various computer things. Everything's a chip without any clarification about what kind of chips. Which is why that specifically bugs me.
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# ? May 13, 2020 03:45 |
Kchama posted:There's a reason why I put it down to 90s goofiness, instead of saying it's a super bad thing largely. ... Except for chips. Chips already meant something in the 90s and it makes me think he didn't mean ROM/RAM chips or solid-state memory because he doesn't use it purely to mean storage but also various computer things. Everything's a chip without any clarification about what kind of chips. The only times I can remember "chip" being used is for the writable message buffer for standard radio messages (It could be a little clearer that they're recording the entire message, checking it over, then transmitting) and physical movement of data (often in "chip folios", which seems to be a folder that you fit several standard data chips in).
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# ? May 13, 2020 03:52 |
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Gnoman posted:The only times I can remember "chip" being used is for the writable message buffer for standard radio messages (It could be a little clearer that they're recording the entire message, checking it over, then transmitting) and physical movement of data (often in "chip folios", which seems to be a folder that you fit several standard data chips in). There was also, IIRC, the ID chip handed over in the first book.
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# ? May 13, 2020 04:04 |
Kchama posted:There was also, IIRC, the ID chip handed over in the first book. I think that's explained later as containing all the service records and evaluations as well as just proving identity. quote:The delicately built honey-blond midshipwoman led the way to the gallery end of the tube, and the Marine came to attention and saluted. She returned the salute crisply.
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# ? May 13, 2020 04:07 |
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Gnoman posted:I think that's explained later as containing all the service records and evaluations as well as just proving identity. I mean that's not how a chip works, so claiming that this is an 'unchanged' term is something I don't agree with. EDIT: Like, a solid-state disk wouldn't have gotten my ire, because that's what we call storage mediums. Kchama fucked around with this message at 05:13 on May 13, 2020 |
# ? May 13, 2020 05:08 |
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I would respect the Starfire novels a lot more if weber had just admitted that swearing vilkshatha brotherhood means you are husbands
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# ? May 13, 2020 05:26 |
Kchama posted:I mean that's not how a chip works, so claiming that this is an 'unchanged' term is something I don't agree with. In the early 90s, it was as reasonable a predictions as anything.
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# ? May 13, 2020 06:21 |
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HONOR OF THE QUEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN This chapter is kind of bland except for one thing that really caught my attention. quote:Fearless decelerated towards Yeltsin's hyper limit once more, and this time Honor Harrington awaited translation in a very different mood. This entire paragraph just annoyed the poo poo out of me. Like we just went from the Grayson-Manticorean Fleet getting wiped out to 'cheeky little tin-can' in what amounts to a paragraph. Also they don't actually make it clear here, but it's actually three ships here, though only two are mentioned right now. Apollo, Alice Truman's ship, is only mentioned like twice off-handedly in the battle that's coming up and otherwise ignored. Hell I don't think Alice gets a line in this chapter. quote:Much of it stemmed from the simple joy of stretching their legs. Once they'd handed off the freighters who'd lumbered them for so long, Honor's ships had made the run back from Casca well up into the eta band, and the sense of release had been even greater because they hadn't realized quite how heavy-footed they'd really felt on the outward leg. Wait, launched a 'full-scale investigation'? She was just, apparently, asking people who had a bad experience. They weren't collecting evidence or anything. quote:The response had been sobering. Few of her other female personnel had experienced anything quite so blatant, yet once she started asking questions dozens came forward, and she suspected, not without a sense of shame, that they'd been silent before for the same reasons as Wolcott. She hadn't had the heart to pin the ensign down, but her red-faced circumlocutions as she described what the Grayson had said about Honor had told their own tale. Honor hoped the ensign hadn't hesitated to speak up for fear her captain would blame the bearer of the news for its content, but whether Wolcott had been afraid of her or not, it was clear her own failure to fight back was at least partly to blame for the general silence. What she'd put up with had inhibited Wolcott (and others) from coming forward, either because they felt she'd proven she could endure worse than they had experienced (and expected them to do the same), or because they figured that if she wouldn't stand up for herself, she wouldn't for them. Wait, hold on. Wait. Hold on. This really undersells what had happened to Wolcott. The dude sexually assaulted Wolcott but this really doesn't seem to be born out by the text here. Indeed it comes off more that she's mad that the Graysons talked poo poo about her to her crew. Hell, that's the only thing that's mentioned. quote:She hadn't had the heart to pin the ensign down, but her red-faced circumlocutions as she described what the Grayson had said about Honor had told their own tale. Nothing about the sexual assault. I realize I had glossed over it earlier and didn't pay nearly enough attention to the previous scene with Wolcott, so I should fix that here. quote:"He—" Wolcott drew a deep breath. "I'd rather not say, Sir. But I showed him my clearance and orders, and he just laughed. He said they didn't matter. They were only from the Captain, not a real officer, and he called her—" She stopped and her hands clenched on her coffee cup. "Then he said it was about time we 'bitches' got out of Yeltsin, and he—" she looked away from the table and bit her lip "—he tried to put his hand inside my tunic, Sir." Honestly, this entire scene is baffling. She leads in with quote:"Well, it's just—Sir, is the Captain running away from Grayson?" And then goes to "Oh yeah he tried to rape me" like it's a secondary concern to the guys says mean things about the Captain. But the thing is, all of this is left out of the scene, forgotten. The squad is united against Grayson because some jerks said something mean about their cowardly captain, which I must note is one of those things that is just not being talked about. Honor's worshippers bullied any thought of it out of the sexually assaulted women who had to deal with it, and made it so that the sexual assault is not the issue. It's what was said about Honor. I just don't get it. Honor's crimes have been greatly downplayed, but I suppose that's to be expected. It'd be a short series if Honor was dishonorably discharged here for her cowardice and what came about as a direct result of her leaving. But at the same time, the sexual assault has been downplayed as well. It's been forgotten in this chapter, despite the 'full investigation'. quote:
So there's mysterious LACs afoot, and tension is ri--- quote:
Oh it's the Masadans who for some reason have LACs hanging out near the edge of the Grayson system and also they know they're hosed so there goes the tension. quote:Honor wrinkled her forehead. She had the LACs on her own sensors, and she was as puzzled by their presence as Alistair. quote:
Would they have? They managed to ambush a destroyer at nearly point-blank range and didn't do much damage. In twenty seconds they'd be rubbing wedges against each other. And everywhere else they say that the Masadan weapons and stuff are so crappy as to be basically useless. quote:
How does this work. 'almost too stupid to fool'? If ECM didn't work for whatever reason as a defense, then are the missiles being smart an actual disadvantage? But yeah despite the near point-blank range of it, all of their stuff is easily countered and the Manticorean ships don't even need all of their defenses. LACs are pretty worthless. quote:His heavy launchers were still coming on line as their crews closed up, but his energy weapons were ready. Dancing fingers locked in the targeting schedule, and a single, big key at the center of his panel flashed, accepting the commands. quote:He drove it flat. So even at a near point-blank ambush that you'd basically never get, LACs basically couldn't do poo poo to a trio of ships. What an awful chapter, thinking about it. It totally forgot about what was established in previous chapters and the fight wasn't particularly interesting at all.
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# ? May 18, 2020 03:56 |
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Kchama posted:How does this work. 'almost too stupid to fool'? If ECM didn't work for whatever reason as a defense, then are the missiles being smart an actual disadvantage? But yeah despite the near point-blank range of it, all of their stuff is easily countered and the Manticorean ships don't even need all of their defenses. LACs are pretty worthless. If you create a camouflage pattern that's optimized against opponents who see in the ultraviolet, it will be less effective, and possibly completely ineffective, against opponents like humans who cannot perceive that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Grayson and Masada are worse at miniaturization than Manticore or Haven, so for a given size of missile, they can't mount as many different kinds of sensors or as much processing power as the two larger powers can; thus the Masadan missiles are 'almost too stupid to fool' because they can't detect all of the Manticoran ECM, and that portion which they can detect might not be enough to degrade their locks enough to divert them in the desired manner.
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# ? May 18, 2020 04:46 |
Kchama posted:HONOR OF THE QUEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN First, regarding the Wolcott incident, I suspect that this is sloppiness in revision. Nothing I've seen from Weber anywhere else indicates that he'd see it as less severe than you are, and it is more serious than anything else we see from Graysons that I can recall, and is never mentioned again. I mentioned before that the later books seem to retcon Grayson's sexism to a lower level, and I suspect that this may be what happened here. Weber clearly intended Grayson to be Good Guys for the rest of the series even while writing this book, decided to walk back some of their behavior, and missed this one. Second, what I think is supposed to be implied here is that most of the female crew who had bad experiences was keeping quiet about it, because The Captain was taking even more poo poo than any of them and bearing up. So after hearing about Wolcott, her "full investigation" was bringing in every crewmember and ordering them to duvulge any since incidents they experienced or witnessed. As for why so much focus is on Honor herself, there's a few things going on here besides Protagonist Focus. First, there's a strong tendency to conflate a captain and the ship they command, both in history and ficton. You talk about James Kirk when you mean the USS Enterprise, John Paul Jones when you mean the Bonhomme Richard, or Horatio Nelson instead of HMS Victory. So the indignities suffered by the women in this task force get focused entirely on the commander in charge - one Honor Harrington. The other thing is that, when you talk about a group of victimized people, there's a tendency to use the most prominent among them as the "icon". Sometimes this is an individual thing, the way Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, or Frederick Douglass stand in for the millions of American slaves. (there is no intent to equivocate scale or severity here, merely an attempt to find an example that will be familiar to almost everyone) Other times, it is a single group, the way the crew of the USS Arizona represent those killed at Pearl Harbor. This often happens within the group in question - I've seen more than a few workplaces where barely-disguised collective punishments were imposed by management, but everybody focused on how badly one particular employee was hurt. quote:Honestly this sounds like something that'd cause more issues if they're literally destroying other people's comms equipment in this way. Starting to think Honor and crew deserved it. This is clearly hyperbole. Any emitter powerful enough to do that would be a pretty serviceable energy weapon itself. quote:Would they have? They managed to ambush a destroyer at nearly point-blank range and didn't do much damage. In twenty seconds they'd be rubbing wedges against each other. And everywhere else they say that the Masadan weapons and stuff are so crappy as to be basically useless. The LAC laser is very weak by "modern" standards, and still managed to inflict significant damage with a single hit. As for the missiles, a nuclear warhead is a nuclear warhead, and the difference in tech levels doesn't matter that much. Grayson/Masadan missiles are "so crappy as to be basically useless" because they have no standoff range, are very slow, and can't easily see through jamming. This means that they have almost no ability to get through up-to-date missile defenses. When this set of missiles was fired, the targets were far enough away that those defenses could be employed, if only barely - only the last line of defense had time to engage, which was enough. Had McKeon not spooked the Masadans into firing when they did, it would have been too late to bring up any defenses at all, and all thirty-nine missiles would have gotten through unopposed. The "too stupid to fool" concept has some theoretical reality in RW electronic warfare. Early missile seekers could only distinguish targets by the size of the radar/heat signature, so chaff and simple flares giving off a brighter return were enough to fool them, as was pure white-noise jamming. More advanced missiles have onboard software to filter out such crude options, so you need more sophisticated decoys and electronic warfare. This book was written right around the time the US military was starting to publicly discuss the need to transition from a US V. Russia rematch of the Battle of The Atlantic mindset to dealing with smaller nations using obsolescent weapons. I distinctly remember reading an article in Popular Mechanics or a similar publication that such powers might be able to sneak hits in because the sophisticated defenses meant to stop Soviet super-missiles wouldn't fool the simple-minded 1950s-vintage missiles used by nations such as Iraq or North Korea. quote:So even at a near point-blank ambush that you'd basically never get, LACs basically couldn't do poo poo to a trio of ships. Keep in mind that these LACs were built by the same people who built the Masadan hyper-capable fleet, and that a single Manticoran destroyer was able to handle most of that fleet's missile firepower until Thunder of God and Principality opened fire. This was a wholly unequal fight, and isn't a fair comparison to what would happen with a Grayson squadron instead of a Manticoran one.
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# ? May 18, 2020 05:09 |
I'd have sworn that the "too dumb to fool" idea was used by Weber somewhere else. I wanna say the beginning of Mutineer's Moon. Something like the sensor/ECM war between the opposing sides of the big civil war had gotten to the point that radar was ignored as irrelevant so all the Earthling radar guided missiles strike home because no one defends against anything so primitive anymore. Something like that. Could have been another series by another author entirely, but I think that's where it's from.
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# ? May 18, 2020 06:22 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 11:03 |
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Gnoman posted:This is clearly hyperbole. Any emitter powerful enough to do that would be a pretty serviceable energy weapon itself. Yeah, I thought thought was pretty clearly hyperbole as well. If nothing else it's described in that very paragraph as an universally understood insult, and he ponders if they're so isolated that they won't understand how intentionally rude they're being. That's not how you'd talk about slagging somebody's sensors, which would be an actual attack. It's like when you're little and your sibling's ignoring you so you do something really irritating that they have to notice. jng2058 posted:I'd have sworn that the "too dumb to fool" idea was used by Weber somewhere else. I wanna say the beginning of Mutineer's Moon. Something like the sensor/ECM war between the opposing sides of the big civil war had gotten to the point that radar was ignored as irrelevant so all the Earthling radar guided missiles strike home because no one defends against anything so primitive anymore. Something like that. Could have been another series by another author entirely, but I think that's where it's from. I was curious so I pulled that up on my computer and did a ctrl-f for relevant terms and it looks like Mutineer's Moon has the opposite situation, where they assume that the fact that their enemies have never used their advanced weapons means that they can't use them anymore, and so they have inadequate defenses when the big guns are pulled out of retirement.
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# ? May 18, 2020 06:47 |