GregD wrote:n7axw wrote:Thanks for this post, RFC. 90% of what you said was right there in the text.
Guys, are we Reading before we react???
Don
Yes, we are reading before reacting. The point that wasn't answered here was: Why didn't someone with SNARK control cause a SNARK in the magazine to blow up, causing the entire ship to blow up, too.
It took essentially demonic intervention (i.e. the author wanted it to happen) to keep the ship from blowing up. A SNARK finishing the job wouldn't have surprised anyone still alive once the explosion was done.
If RFC has answered this anywhere, I can't find it.
My response, which appears in the thread Duckk started after asking me about it in light of the discussion of this very point on-forum, was that there was no need for him to do so. The capture of this ship by Dohlar is essentially a deadend. The only parts of it they can possibly duplicate in the short term are the carriages and fuses and MAYBE the brown powder, though I have my doubts about how quickly they'll manage that. They can't duplicate the armor, they can't duplicate the wire-wound guns, and they already pretty much know how to do anything else they could "learn" from her.
More to the point, she's already hopelessly obsolescent compared to what's going to be coming at Dohlar in the next few months. There's no way the RDN can put her back into service -- with ammo for her guns-- before the first
City-class ironclads get there and blow her into dustbunnies. If Dohlar wants to waste precious time and resources
trying to duplicate her tech, Merlin is just fine with that. Even Sarmouth and Hektor were more distressed over the loss of life (which Merlin
couldn't have prevented), the loss of conventional platforms (which threatened the ability to project power in the immediate, short-term future simply because they no longer had sufficient hulls, not because the RDN now had a
crippled obsolete ironclad), and the fact that no one at Claw Island knew how the
immediate naval balance had shifted. Before they realised how crippled she was (and how short on ammo) they felt some concern about her leading a counterattack on Claw Island before anyone there knew she was coming, but the ICN knows
exactly to stop her, even with the weapons already sited there IF they know she could be coming.
Merlin worried a bit about the carriages and what could
potentially be learned about her ammo. Beyond that, he simply didn't care about what they might learn
and he saw it (assuming they did try to capitalize on it as a tech booster) as another version of diverting the enemy into what could only be an industrial and economic cul de sac, given their existing tech base and manufacturing capacity. Would he have been happier if her crew had managed to blow her up and take a stack of enemies with her? From an emotional standpoint, sure. From a practical consequences standpoint, there are actually advantages to letting Dohlar have her.
If--
if -- there had been any doubt in his mind about how useful (or not) she might have proven in enemy hands, then he certainly would have blown her up. The fact that he did no such thing should, perhaps, be recognized as an in indicator that he felt no such doubt.
Don't know how much clearer that can be made.