HFQ Official Snippet #23

If I were a fellow thinking about assaulting an entrenched enemy armed with single-fire rifles, or if I were a fellow charged with defending such a position from a screaming horde of Harchongians (sp??) I can tell you for certain that I would be a BIG fan of a pump-action shotgun... We know that the Charisians have already chosen to not assault prepared positions because of the potential butcher's bill. We further know that the Zionist armies will almost certainly outnumber the Alliance's armies in almost every engagement. In a WWI-type of trench engagement, short-range, rapid-fire, dispersed-fragment weapons will be decisive. You point, you shoot. You don't really need to "aim." Similarly with a grenade... You don't need to bean the bad guy in the head with it! Come to think of it, a shotgun would also be very convenient to have in a dense, forest-type engagement where you don't have extended sightlines...

Thanks RFC for the insightful and very long post! It's always nice to see what Howsmyn has up his sleeve, and what new gadgets and weapons his inventive staff have in development.

It's nice to see that manufacturing is spreading across the Empire, especially the explosives. I'm not sure why there's a persistent rumor that there will be a major industrial accident in HFQ though. There has never been a major industrial accident in Charis during the entire war, although there has been a major case of sabotage.

Even Corisande is getting into the action, with its rubber being used in bicycle tires. Emerald is a good central place for manufacturing, and I've thought that its lack of mountains and water power must be the reason that we haven't seen heavy industrialization introduced there before, given that it's the third oldest member of the EoC and much closer to Charis than Chisholm. Steam engines are going to allow all sorts of manufacturing everywhere that coal is available, so the entire Empire should be pitching in soon. Of course that means the TLs will be sending samples and design specifications for all sorts of technology to Zion, which probably can't afford to build it!

Too bad the contents of the stolen briefcase are so useful in the CoGA's iron foundries...

So we will get railroads - after the war. Shotguns will soon be in the building queue, and after some early snafus in cartridge production (which makes me worry for BGV) the allies will have the church boys seriously outgunned. The damage those pistols will do when the enemy closes with the ICA makes me cringe! Those poor Harchongese...

It's nice to see that manufacturing is spreading across the Empire, especially the explosives. I'm not sure why there's a persistent rumor that there will be a major industrial accident in HFQ though. There has never been a major industrial accident in Charis during the entire war, although there has been a major case of sabotage.

There is? I have read all through the forums and I haven't seen any rumors of such.

Even Corisande is getting into the action, with its rubber being used in bicycle tires. Emerald is a good central place for manufacturing, and I've thought that its lack of mountains and water power must be the reason that we haven't seen heavy industrialization introduced there before, given that it's the third oldest member of the EoC and much closer to Charis than Chisholm. Steam engines are going to allow all sorts of manufacturing everywhere that coal is available, so the entire Empire should be pitching in soon. Of course that means the TLs will be sending samples and design specifications for all sorts of technology to Zion, which probably can't afford to build it!

Actually, I did see this addressed somewhere in the forums. We have no idea if Emerald has mountains ( and the rain/water such would bring to a tropical island continent.

Emerald, like Tarot, like Zebediah, and so on... have not had their topographies filled in by the evil genius.

Too bad the contents of the stolen briefcase are so useful in the CoGA's iron foundries...

So we will get railroads - after the war. Shotguns will soon be in the building queue, and after some early snafus in cartridge production (which makes me worry for BGV) the allies will have the church boys seriously outgunned. The damage those pistols will do when the enemy closes with the ICA makes me cringe! Those poor Harchongese...

On the stolen briefcase... that was one of the biggest "God gives the CoGA the plans" deus ex machina moments I have ever seen an author use. It annoyed me far more than Vlad showing up in OotD. There is zero chance someone with plans that important would be walking around without being heavily guarded. None, zero chance... except the author said it happened. ( Mind you, I LOOOOOOVE David Webers books, but that was a "I said it happened, so it did" moment. )

The cartridge ammunition is another pet peeve. When it was first brought into production Howsmyn said it was so far ahead of the rifles and pistols that he would make enough to get by, and then scale back production on the ammunition until the weapons could catch up. The next thing we ever hear about it is him saying "we don't have enough!!!!"... yeah, what happened there?

It was in production of brass casings that he was ahead. They knew that it was in their ability to load that brass that they were going to run into a bottleneck.

Isilith wrote:

It's nice to see that manufacturing is spreading across the Empire, especially the explosives. I'm not sure why there's a persistent rumor that there will be a major industrial accident in HFQ though. There has never been a major industrial accident in Charis during the entire war, although there has been a major case of sabotage.

There is? I have read all through the forums and I haven't seen any rumors of such.

Even Corisande is getting into the action, with its rubber being used in bicycle tires. Emerald is a good central place for manufacturing, and I've thought that its lack of mountains and water power must be the reason that we haven't seen heavy industrialization introduced there before, given that it's the third oldest member of the EoC and much closer to Charis than Chisholm. Steam engines are going to allow all sorts of manufacturing everywhere that coal is available, so the entire Empire should be pitching in soon. Of course that means the TLs will be sending samples and design specifications for all sorts of technology to Zion, which probably can't afford to build it!

Actually, I did see this addressed somewhere in the forums. We have no idea if Emerald has mountains ( and the rain/water such would bring to a tropical island continent.

Emerald, like Tarot, like Zebediah, and so on... have not had their topographies filled in by the evil genius.

Too bad the contents of the stolen briefcase are so useful in the CoGA's iron foundries...

So we will get railroads - after the war. Shotguns will soon be in the building queue, and after some early snafus in cartridge production (which makes me worry for BGV) the allies will have the church boys seriously outgunned. The damage those pistols will do when the enemy closes with the ICA makes me cringe! Those poor Harchongese...

On the stolen briefcase... that was one of the biggest "God gives the CoGA the plans" deus ex machina moments I have ever seen an author use. It annoyed me far more than Vlad showing up in OotD. There is zero chance someone with plans that important would be walking around without being heavily guarded. None, zero chance... except the author said it happened. ( Mind you, I LOOOOOOVE David Webers books, but that was a "I said it happened, so it did" moment. )

The cartridge ammunition is another pet peeve. When it was first brought into production Howsmyn said it was so far ahead of the rifles and pistols that he would make enough to get by, and then scale back production on the ammunition until the weapons could catch up. The next thing we ever hear about it is him saying "we don't have enough!!!!"... yeah, what happened there?

Isilith wrote:

There is? I have read all through the forums and I haven't seen any rumors of such.

I believe he was referring to the explosions at the Hairatha powder mill.

~Tonto

Tonto Silerheels wrote:Isilith wrote:

There is? I have read all through the forums and I haven't seen any rumors of such.

I believe he was referring to the explosions at the Hairatha powder mill.

~Tonto

No, my comment was based on this;

I'm not sure why there's a persistent rumor that there will be a major industrial accident in HFQ though.

Which I had in italics, but that is easy to miss in a quote box.

I haven't seen anything about a supposed major industrial accident in HFQ. Mind you, I could have easily missed it.

Isilith wrote:No, my comment was based on this;

I'm not sure why there's a persistent rumor that there will be a major industrial accident in HFQ though.

Which I had in italics, but that is easy to miss in a quote box.

I haven't seen anything about a supposed major industrial accident in HFQ. Mind you, I could have easily missed it.

Probably the ur-source is RFC himself:

For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book.

- from viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6340&p=164891&hilit=Delthak#p164891

JeffEngel wrote:Probably the ur-source is RFC himself:



For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book.

Thank you sir. Gah, I hope that possibility doesn't happen... if it happens, it should happen to the Go4, especially seeing as they will be the ones trying to create steam engines from scratch.

Isilith wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Probably the ur-source is RFC himself:



For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book.

Thank you sir. Gah, I hope that possibility doesn't happen... if it happens, it should happen to the Go4, especially seeing as they will be the ones trying to create steam engines from scratch.

Certainly the Temple is doing things more dangerously - they haven't got much cheating going on like gauges by OWL, they haven't got precision tools, and they're only dimly aware of how critical safety procedures and standardized, accurate measurements are.

But against all that, the scale and concentration of operations at Delthak is all out of proportion to anything being done under the Temple. Even if the odds of something going wrong with any given activity is much lower, there are just so much more activity there, close enough and interconnected enough that accidents may snowball

runsforcelery wrote:
[snip]

Nitrocellulose propellants were almost certainly going to be available before a suitable high-explosive shell filler, but Lywys was hot on the trail of military-grade TNT. She had all the ingredients (including toulene, extracted from the blue-needle pine, a tree which grew commonly in Charis and Emerald); . . .

[snip]

 

One minor typo correction – for "toulene" read "toluene".

Thank you for the new snippet, RFC.