Not really, David seems to have decided that exactly re-creating the Royal Navy that existed in the Napoleonic Wars wouldn't work so he made something that simply looks like. A similiar example that isn't likely to get me in trouble is the 90's movie Pearl Harbor, where the sexism and racism where turned way down, probably to avoid offending people.
Let's Read: David Weber's Honor Harrington
- Thread starter The Victorian
- Start date
- Books
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Absolutely savage.
In practice, most modern navies are dry when actually at sea, including the RN. The Age of Sail rum ration was so watered down that an attempt to get drunk would just result in an urgent need to urinate.
- Location
- Singapore
They wanted to differentiate themselves from the British Navy traditions of the time which was known for Rum, Sodomy & the Lash. So they dumped the Rum because it would be cheaper.
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The Honor Of The Queen: Chapter 32
The Victorian
Elven Supremacist
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 32 begins with Sword Simonds, who has just spent the last twelve hours or so trying to override the command lockout. He muses that they have no option but to carry on with their attack, as seizing the ship constitutes an act of war on Haven, and facing both them AND Manticore isn't exactly a thrilling prospect. As the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound.
His tactical officer appears to be "obsessed" with "gravity anomalies," which he obviously thinks are nothing important. Looks like he'll be getting a nasty surprise shortly...
On that note, we cut to the Fearless, where Honor asks one of her subordinates how likely it is the Thunder/Saladin will pick up their gravity pulses.
We then cut back to Simonds, whose tactical officer has just detected two impeller signatures.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with those MYSTERIOUS ANOMALIES you were picking up earlier, no sir!
At any rate, he orders a course change, turning 80 degrees to starboard, and back on the Fearless Venizelos remarks that they're breaking off. Honor corrects him, stating that the Thunder was merely surprised, and is trying to keep a constant distance while they decide what to do next.
Meanwhile, Simonds is fuming over all this, wondering how his adversary is able to know every single manoeuvre his ship makes.
Back on the Fearless, Honor declares that she's going to tempt her adversary into a missile duel, and then tells Venizelos to get some grub for the crew, because you can't go into battle on an empty stomach now, can you? A short while later, she discusses the seemingly-baffling tactics of her enemy.
Once again I am reminded of playing Jane's Fleet Command (a game I'm not sure even works on Windows 10, although if you're looking for a similar type of game there's always Command: Modern Operations). One of my favourite ships in that game was the Kirov-class battlecruiser, which was bristling with a truly ridiculous array of weaponry, and my favourite tactic was to go in full steam ahead and launch every single anti-ship missile I had at the enemy in the hopes that at least one would slip through their point defences. And considering its missiles each packed a 750kg warhead, you really only needed one to get through.
Eventually, Simonds get the first shot off, and shit officially gets real:
This is it - the final showdown. All bets are off, the heat is on, the fix is in, the dogs are out, the game is up, the chips are down, the stakes are high, the odds are low, the danger is huge, the payoff is slim, friendships will be made, rules will be broken, wrongs will be righted, and no unturned stone will be left... uh... get ready to be turned inside out and upside down.
At this point we get a lot of back-and-forth scene changes, with paragraph breaks after every three or four sentences, so it's a bit difficult to recap, but I'll give it a shot.
Honor notices that the Thunder/Saladin is splitting its fire between the Fearless and the Troubador, which strikes her as an extremely foolish things to do. Now, I'm no military expert, but this makes sense: a damaged ship can still fight back, but a destroyed one cannot, so thus one should concentrate one's fire on a single ship at a time.
The Thunder gets hit, but damage is minor with no casualties. Meanwhile, Simonds is fretting over the fact that this crew is just too experienced to operate the ship effectively:
Back on the Fearless, the bridge are pleased that the enemy is fighting dumb, but just then a missile detonates 15,000 km to starboard, and two lasers manage to slip through her sidewall, taking out some of her lasers and radar stations. Things are going worse on the Thunder, however, as the ship gets hit for the sixth time. He orders the ship to turn 90 degrees to starboard.
So they've come out ahead in this engagement, but the Masadans have probably learned a few things from their mistakes, so the next time they won't be so foolish (at least they'd better...you don't want to be lowering the stakes at the climax of your novel!)
His tactical officer appears to be "obsessed" with "gravity anomalies," which he obviously thinks are nothing important. Looks like he'll be getting a nasty surprise shortly...
On that note, we cut to the Fearless, where Honor asks one of her subordinates how likely it is the Thunder/Saladin will pick up their gravity pulses.
We then cut back to Simonds, whose tactical officer has just detected two impeller signatures.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with those MYSTERIOUS ANOMALIES you were picking up earlier, no sir!
At any rate, he orders a course change, turning 80 degrees to starboard, and back on the Fearless Venizelos remarks that they're breaking off. Honor corrects him, stating that the Thunder was merely surprised, and is trying to keep a constant distance while they decide what to do next.
Meanwhile, Simonds is fuming over all this, wondering how his adversary is able to know every single manoeuvre his ship makes.
Back on the Fearless, Honor declares that she's going to tempt her adversary into a missile duel, and then tells Venizelos to get some grub for the crew, because you can't go into battle on an empty stomach now, can you? A short while later, she discusses the seemingly-baffling tactics of her enemy.
Once again I am reminded of playing Jane's Fleet Command (a game I'm not sure even works on Windows 10, although if you're looking for a similar type of game there's always Command: Modern Operations). One of my favourite ships in that game was the Kirov-class battlecruiser, which was bristling with a truly ridiculous array of weaponry, and my favourite tactic was to go in full steam ahead and launch every single anti-ship missile I had at the enemy in the hopes that at least one would slip through their point defences. And considering its missiles each packed a 750kg warhead, you really only needed one to get through.
Eventually, Simonds get the first shot off, and shit officially gets real:
This is it - the final showdown. All bets are off, the heat is on, the fix is in, the dogs are out, the game is up, the chips are down, the stakes are high, the odds are low, the danger is huge, the payoff is slim, friendships will be made, rules will be broken, wrongs will be righted, and no unturned stone will be left... uh... get ready to be turned inside out and upside down.
At this point we get a lot of back-and-forth scene changes, with paragraph breaks after every three or four sentences, so it's a bit difficult to recap, but I'll give it a shot.
Honor notices that the Thunder/Saladin is splitting its fire between the Fearless and the Troubador, which strikes her as an extremely foolish things to do. Now, I'm no military expert, but this makes sense: a damaged ship can still fight back, but a destroyed one cannot, so thus one should concentrate one's fire on a single ship at a time.
The Thunder gets hit, but damage is minor with no casualties. Meanwhile, Simonds is fretting over the fact that this crew is just too experienced to operate the ship effectively:
Back on the Fearless, the bridge are pleased that the enemy is fighting dumb, but just then a missile detonates 15,000 km to starboard, and two lasers manage to slip through her sidewall, taking out some of her lasers and radar stations. Things are going worse on the Thunder, however, as the ship gets hit for the sixth time. He orders the ship to turn 90 degrees to starboard.
So they've come out ahead in this engagement, but the Masadans have probably learned a few things from their mistakes, so the next time they won't be so foolish (at least they'd better...you don't want to be lowering the stakes at the climax of your novel!)
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Again, you should be- because so was David Weber, while writing the books. That game, or something broadly similar. i wouldn't be surprised if he was no more than 1-2 "degrees of Kevin Bacon" away from the designers, so to speak.
Incidentally, this is exactly what the battlecruisers are, in fact, designed for. So pat yourself on the back for Working As Intended.
Also, the missiles in question are designed to, in a truly serious situation, carry 750kg thermonuclear warheads.
This is especially true in an engagement like this, in the Honorverse.
Here, any given ship can probably shoot down an average of X missiles per incoming enemy salvo, because it has so-and-so many jammers that will on average foil thus-and-such percent of the missiles, followed by blah blah countermissiles to shoot down ump more, and so on.
So the ship can on average shoot down X missiles... but it would have to specifically get lucky to shoot down X+5 missiles. Conversely, the ship would probably almost always succeed in shooting down X-5 missiles, with only an occasional lucky 'golden BB' getting through.
...
This means that firing only a few of your missiles in any given salvo at a secondary target is almost always a complete waste of those missiles. Alternatively, Simonds could split his fire 50/50 between the cruiser and the destroyer, but while even half his salvo weight is probably enough to threaten the destroyer, it is nowhere near as much of a threat to the cruiser- much less than half as dangerous as a full salvo would be, for the reasons above.
Simonds should either concentrate fire on the cruiser (which is big and well armored enough to tank a few hits) in hopes of starting to rack up meaningful injuries on it...
Or concentrate on the destroyer (which isn't) in hopes of blowing it out of space in the first 10-20 minutes of the battle.
...
I speculate that Simonds' naval combat experience (if any) and theorization (if any) are based on the pre-existing 'primitive' state of Grayson/Masadan weapons. Because in those rules, missiles are vastly harder to stop and are fired in much smaller numbers, to the point where any single missile launch has a pretty good chance of connecting with a single target. In which case if you have a huge salvo (by his standards), it makes sense to split it. Because you have a reasonable chance of taking out both your targets entirely in the first few vollies... And that would save you a lot of trouble by minimizing how long the enemy has to shoot back.
The Masadans are going to work smarter, not harder.
Captain Orsai
Davion Heavy Guards Captain
And to be fair, the Masadans aren't actually stupid as such; they're fairly intelligent, honestly, just really out of their depth as far as knowing what a modern warship can and can't do (bearing mind that they're pretty much running Thunder/Saladin almost literally - possibly actually so - with the manuals in their laps looking things up).
VhenRa
MechWarrior
- Location
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Honestly, maybe a good way to describe it is:
This is a crew from say... 1960-1970 or so dumped onto a modern top of the line cruiser. They sorta understand how the ship works... but the specifics elude them and they are making mistakes because of they know things that aren't quite true in a modern context.
This is a crew from say... 1960-1970 or so dumped onto a modern top of the line cruiser. They sorta understand how the ship works... but the specifics elude them and they are making mistakes because of they know things that aren't quite true in a modern context.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
And they've had a few months to get used to things like the equivalent of "wait, you 'click' with a 'mouse' " and "...so screens display text now, that's a thing..." and that's it.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Eh yeah, but all those simulations are drawing from the same basic reference pool as I understand it.
I expect @notbirdofprey could explain better, - especially since I'm not that well-versed in the specifics of Christian belief - but there are pretty fundamental differences in outlook between Judaism and Christianity. For example:
1) The afterlife, Heaven and Hell are a fundamental concepts in Christianity. While Judaism has the concept of Haolam Haba (the next world) there isn't really a firm concept of what it's like or even if the afterlife exists - Judaism s much more focused on this world.
2) Judaim doesn't really have the concept of Original Sin and salvation like Chrstianity does.
3) Another difference is in the interactions with God. In Christianity, God is to be
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I gotta say, you have to admire the Jews for being the religion to come up with "it is not in Heaven."
There are very few religions which consider it acceptable to tell G-d to stay out of theological arguments.
- Location
- The Old Dominion
The only thing that come close I can think of is the ancient romans who viewed the gods as being part of the community, as fellow citizens of the republic and empire who while having great dignity did not have the ex offiico right to speak without magisterial approval to express their will though at the same time if some sort of disaster or extremely dramatic event happened it was clearly the fault of some magistrate who failed to have the proper rituals conducted and violated the peace with the gods somehow which required a inquiry to find the cause and how to resolve the issue.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Weirdly enough, in *Saganami Island Tactical Simulator* I practically always trued to run a missile engagmeent against Manticoran ships.
Most Havenite ships have excellent Missile Alpha strikes and Manti ships, being "fine-at-everything" take some damage and then you have an advantage to continue playing a longer missile game to wear them out.
I've killed *Star Knight* CAs with a fucking *City* class destroyer that way. Early and Pre-War Haven has far superior doctrine and Manticore is, in practice, utterly garbage at missiles, ironically.
(This incidentally appears a lot in the side media where Haven has hands down better ship design and doctrine, while Manticore just threw money from their magic money hole at stuff. Which doesn't *at all* help dissuade me from my impression that Haven are the underdogs. (Though I suppose it could be a factor of "each Manticoran ship class in the book has to describe it's latest game breaking technological advantage" while Haven class descriptions be like "Well, we built it to do X I guess, and it does X good because Y"))
Most Havenite ships have excellent Missile Alpha strikes and Manti ships, being "fine-at-everything" take some damage and then you have an advantage to continue playing a longer missile game to wear them out.
I've killed *Star Knight* CAs with a fucking *City* class destroyer that way. Early and Pre-War Haven has far superior doctrine and Manticore is, in practice, utterly garbage at missiles, ironically.
(This incidentally appears a lot in the side media where Haven has hands down better ship design and doctrine, while Manticore just threw money from their magic money hole at stuff. Which doesn't *at all* help dissuade me from my impression that Haven are the underdogs. (Though I suppose it could be a factor of "each Manticoran ship class in the book has to describe it's latest game breaking technological advantage" while Haven class descriptions be like "Well, we built it to do X I guess, and it does X good because Y"))
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VhenRa
MechWarrior
- Location
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- She/Her
IIRC Andermanei also have better design doctrine. [They are heavier on missiles, just like the Havenites are...]
And IIRC it all comes down to having more practical combat experience in a military context.
Manty's combat experience is basically beating on pirates who are lucky to have anything built to military spec [and if that... its gonna be Silly hardware or massively out of date] and more often then not are basically flying around in freighters with a few pop guns bolted on.
Where as Haven... has spent the last century gobbling up systems and actually having to fight for many of those systems. Even if said fights are mismatches. And again, in those mismatches missiles are gonna be the decisive weapon. 8 Cruisers vs 8 Cruisers could result in a gun engagement. 8 Cruisers vs 32 Cruisers... is most likely gonna result in the 32 Cruisers just missiling the 8 Cruisers to death.
And IIRC it all comes down to having more practical combat experience in a military context.
Manty's combat experience is basically beating on pirates who are lucky to have anything built to military spec [and if that... its gonna be Silly hardware or massively out of date] and more often then not are basically flying around in freighters with a few pop guns bolted on.
Where as Haven... has spent the last century gobbling up systems and actually having to fight for many of those systems. Even if said fights are mismatches. And again, in those mismatches missiles are gonna be the decisive weapon. 8 Cruisers vs 8 Cruisers could result in a gun engagement. 8 Cruisers vs 32 Cruisers... is most likely gonna result in the 32 Cruisers just missiling the 8 Cruisers to death.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I kind of suspect that this is a consequence of them trying to make the game balanced enough to be fun to play, even if that meant departing from the canonicity of the novels.
Because "a competently handled Havenite ship will consistently beat an equally competently handled RMN ship in a missile duel in the early war era" definitely doesn't come across as the message Weber's trying to send in the narration.
Not that I dispute the core premise, highly plausible, that Haven has better ship design and doctrine, if only from having a lot more combat experience against state-level opposition.
But also this, yeah. There's a scene in Book Six where Honor is looking at an Andermani capital ship and thinking "wow, it's pretty weak in energy armament," and I can remember thinking on a reread of the book (probably in 2010-15) that that was just cute
- Pronouns
- He
I know theology can twist the minds in some pretty tight knots, but that still seems to be above and beyond the call.
- Location
- Largest City West of the Rhine, Germany
That 500 rounds per second sounds impossible but that's the combined output from two pinnaces (each with at least two guns) so the actual rate of per gun fire is probably 125 rounds per second per gun which is only 25% better than the M61 Vulcan (deployed first in 1959 CE) at 100 rounds per second/6000 rounds per minute.
I think when David Weber was writing these books how Hydrostatic shock was thought to work when a bullet hit someone played a major role in his thinking and description.
And the main worry about the use of grenades on board spacefaring vessel is that they would puncture the outer hull and open the interior of the ship to vacuum (which on a ships as large as the Honor-verse Battlecruisers is almost impossible with a grenade) and the potential damage to the systems inside the ship (Again given how large, and how many redundant systems they tend to have for regular Battle damage, the Honor-verse ships are fairly safe to use grenades on. The other thing is that as the Havenites are fleeing the ship they don't care if some of the ships systems are damaged, as this leaves the ship in a worse condition for the boarders).
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Entropy Judge
Recurring Bouts of Misanthropy
... Victorian misread what he quoted - it's 30,000 rounds per second, not per minute. Even dividing by four for two pinnaces with two mounts each, you're getting ~7500 rounds per second per pulser.
The Honor Of The Queen: Chapter 33
The Victorian
Elven Supremacist
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chapter 33 opens with Simonds fuming over his inability to defeat his opponents. But it seems that his subordinates are quickly coming to grips with how to handle their ship.
All this talk of ECM once again reminds me of playing Jane's F/A-18. Can you say, "Range-gate pull-off"?
Back on the Fearless, Honor notices that the Thunder is coming around, and figures that the enemy has no doubt learned from their mistakes the last time.
This isn't the first time I've heard this statement, and having no experience with swordfighting I wonder how true it is.
She reckons that the enemy will likely concentrate fire on the Troubadour, as it can take far less damage than the Fearless, so she orders them to stay within her point defence envelope.
Thunder begins her second attack, opening with a barrage of missiles, and just like our heroine predicted, they're concentrating their fire on Troubadour.
Not only has the Thunder gone and "FIRED ALL THE THINGS," they've also updated their guidance programs, which means Fearless' decoys are far less effective this time around.
Will the Troubadour get killed before it reaches Bombay? I guess we'll just have to wait and see...
Honor chastises herself for not attacking the Thunder will it was breaking off, knowing that far more people are going to get killed because of it. Meanwhile, the Troubadour takes another hit, and now Simonds is feeling right chuffed over his success.
Well, a Troubadour is technically like a bard, and really, is anyone in the party really going to miss the bard? (Also, if the Troubadour is a bard, then it ought to be transmitting some kind of buffing signal to increase the strength of Honor's ships....you know, this yet another example of why I shouldn't write sci-fi).
Simonds is elated at this turn of events, but now it's Fearless' turn to put the smack dab on their ass.
That's...um...not exactly the simile I would have chosen in this situation (though perhaps it's appropriate, considering what the Masadans did to the Manticoran prisoners).
Back on the Fearless, things like dire, but then Cardones notices that the enemy is doing something dumb...specifically, that their ECM is under computer control. It's cyclic between different programs, but the cycle is predictable, always returning to the same point, which means that their ECM behaviour is predictable.
Basically, Fearless has three missiles equipped with jammers in front of six missiles with actual warheads, and the jammers effectively hide them from the enemy's sensors.
Unfortunately, it's going to take more than that to take down the Thunder of God, which is basically like a deep space raid boss. It begins accelerating away, and the Fearless is too badly damaged to pursue. And with that we end this chapter on a cliffhanger...and there are only two more chapters to go after this one!
All this talk of ECM once again reminds me of playing Jane's F/A-18. Can you say, "Range-gate pull-off"?
Back on the Fearless, Honor notices that the Thunder is coming around, and figures that the enemy has no doubt learned from their mistakes the last time.
This isn't the first time I've heard this statement, and having no experience with swordfighting I wonder how true it is.
She reckons that the enemy will likely concentrate fire on the Troubadour, as it can take far less damage than the Fearless, so she orders them to stay within her point defence envelope.
Thunder begins her second attack, opening with a barrage of missiles, and just like our heroine predicted, they're concentrating their fire on Troubadour.
Not only has the Thunder gone and "FIRED ALL THE THINGS," they've also updated their guidance programs, which means Fearless' decoys are far less effective this time around.
Will the Troubadour get killed before it reaches Bombay? I guess we'll just have to wait and see...
Honor chastises herself for not attacking the Thunder will it was breaking off, knowing that far more people are going to get killed because of it. Meanwhile, the Troubadour takes another hit, and now Simonds is feeling right chuffed over his success.
Well, a Troubadour is technically like a bard, and really, is anyone in the party really going to miss the bard? (Also, if the Troubadour is a bard, then it ought to be transmitting some kind of buffing signal to increase the strength of Honor's ships....you know, this yet another example of why I shouldn't write sci-fi).
Simonds is elated at this turn of events, but now it's Fearless' turn to put the smack dab on their ass.
That's...um...not exactly the simile I would have chosen in this situation (though perhaps it's appropriate, considering what the Masadans did to the Manticoran prisoners).
Back on the Fearless, things like dire, but then Cardones notices that the enemy is doing something dumb...specifically, that their ECM is under computer control. It's cyclic between different programs, but the cycle is predictable, always returning to the same point, which means that their ECM behaviour is predictable.
Basically, Fearless has three missiles equipped with jammers in front of six missiles with actual warheads, and the jammers effectively hide them from the enemy's sensors.
Unfortunately, it's going to take more than that to take down the Thunder of God, which is basically like a deep space raid boss. It begins accelerating away, and the Fearless is too badly damaged to pursue. And with that we end this chapter on a cliffhanger...and there are only two more chapters to go after this one!
Shanejayell
Yuri Fan without a Pause
- Pronouns
- He
In a huge twist, everyone dies and a new character named Honor starts in the next book.
It's a psychological ploy by the Manticorans.In a huge twist, everyone dies and a new character named Honor starts in the next book.
Haven: "No matter how many times we think we've killed her, she keeps coming back! She's unkillable!"
Manticore: "Whelp, Honor #132 got her head blown off. Defrost #133 immediately for deployment, we don't want there to be a delay or they might catch on."
Entropy Judge
Recurring Bouts of Misanthropy
Sort of, but really, really not. See, the world's worst swordsman probably isn't going to be unpredictable, and he is also going to be slow, inaccurate, and generally just not a competent swordsman. The sort of 'unpredictable' behavior that might actually catch a master is something that is going to come from an upper-ranked individual, because the world's worst swordsman isn't going to survive performing a 'catch his sword with my face so I can stab him' maneuver without dying. An expert might.
The way the sentiment should be taken, I think, is more that a highly-competent orthodox individual might be taken out easily by someone who uses unorthodox methods and not the orthodox ones. Which is more true to a point, but still runs into the issue that orthodox methods became that way because they worked more often than not.