Tanks in the Honorverse

crewdude48 wrote:

kzt wrote:I hate that story. In my not so humble opinion it's the worst in all the anthologies.

Worse that Grand Tour?

I can't remember that one. So I can't count it.

crewdude48 wrote:

kzt wrote:I hate that story. In my not so humble opinion it's the worst in all the anthologies.

Worse that Grand Tour?

Yes.

By at least an order of magnitude. I can at least accept Grand Tour as remotely possible in the Honorverse. I have trouble accepting Deck Load Strike as possible in the Honorverse, let alone canon.

RFC has been involved in Bolo anthologies so I'm sure he is well informed on potential tanks and their weapons.
Personally I'm biased from experience to believe that aeronautical engineers design weapon systems while armoured engineers design targets.

Weird Harold wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:
Worse that Grand Tour?

Yes.

By at least an order of magnitude. I can at least accept Grand Tour as remotely possible in the Honorverse. I have trouble accepting Deck Load Strike as possible in the Honorverse, let alone canon.

Agree with Deck load strike. It was a generic story with the combatant's names penciled in.

Another place tanks have been seen is on Cerberus, in the State Sec compound. I believe those had plasma cannon on them.

kzt wrote:I hate that story. In my not so humble opinion it's the worst in all the anthologies.

Why? I actually quite like it - several other books mention military advisors, tanks, atmospheric assault craft and so on, but that's the only place we get to see them.

The general idea of a proxy war to gain influence was the main plot in HotQ, low-tech neobarb planets are a known thing, and the stereotypical countries are no worse than Montana (aargh).

But then the only short story I really dislike is 'Obligated Service' (never even managed to finish it). 'Grand Tour' is a nice idea, but contrived plot and poorly written.

EDIT: The other thread reminded me that I hate Honor's parents' backstory too. It's on Beowulf, a Core World planet where Allison's family have massive influence. The situation where Alfred needs to be involved at all is just ridiculous.

Deck Load Strike is pretty bad, because it involved "obsolete" units on San Martin, that still had anti-missile defenses...

And the 'militia' units on various Solarian League planets that were rebelling (mistakenly thinking Firebrand was promising actual Manticoran fire support), were taking out tanks left and right, not even counting the APC's they were also destroying.

Not a one of those League tanks seemed to have any AMS, or any form of active defenses, except the ability to deploy smokescreens.



But for the worst anthology, I'd have to say the one that involved the Manticoran doc, deployed on a Grayson cruiser... who started carrying around his sedation needle because he uses it on the crew that much. and the Captain who did the skiing off some part of the hull and broke his.... collar I think?

Can't recall the name, but *winces* just thinking about that one is blech.

Theemile wrote:Another place tanks have been seen is on Cerberus, in the State Sec compound. I believe those had plasma cannon on them.

And yes, there were tanks on Cerberus, but I don't recall if they had plasma cannon or not. Don't think their armaments were even mentioned, just that they were tanks, and had heavy armor.

And Solarian equipment being designed without any regard to defences, decades behind the Haven sector, and generally a useless deathtrap is new... how?

Anti-tank missiles exist now - it's the Solarians not having defenses against them that's ridiculous, not the San Martinos building armoured vehicles that withstand man-portable weapons.

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Somtaaw wrote:But for the worst anthology, I'd have to say the one that involved the Manticoran doc, deployed on a Grayson cruiser... who started carrying around his sedation needle because he uses it on the crew that much. and the Captain who did the skiing off some part of the hull and broke his.... collar I think?

Can't recall the name, but *winces* just thinking about that one is blech.

Oh, cmon, that one's obviously a comedy! If you don't try to take it seriously (HOW?!) it's hilarious.

"Sir," the XO said, appearing again behind the captain.
"AAAH! Sweet Merciful Tester, Greene, wear a bell on your boot or something."
"Yes, sir," the XO replied, seriously. "Sir, I think that PO Kyle needs to go before the Mast."
"I don't," the captain replied. "He was clearly driven around the bend by Lieutenant Wilson's announcement that the fault in his calculations was that he forgot to account for Blackbird's mass as well as all of her moons! It turns out that if we hadn't had that forty minute delay when we were trying to get the course adjusted on the way in, we would have hit the planet."
Tyler unfolded the straitjacket and started to load the tactical PO in as he kept one ear on the conversation behind him.
"Well, at least we know where we are, Sir," Lieutenant Wilson said. "And I've got a course laid in for Grayson."
"Are you sure?" the captain asked. "And are you sure there's nothing in the way?"

Sure it makes no sense whatsoever, but that's not the point.

Somtaaw wrote:But for the worst anthology, I'd have to say the one that involved the Manticoran doc, deployed on a Grayson cruiser... who started carrying around his sedation needle because he uses it on the crew that much. and the Captain who did the skiing off some part of the hull and broke his.... collar I think?

Can't recall the name, but *winces* just thinking about that one is blech.

A Ship Named Frances; from The Service of the Sword: Worlds of Honor #4

Yeah, not my favorite either.

that one is not a favourite story of mine but it's not one of the worst either

FLHerne wrote:And Solarian equipment being designed without any regard to defences, decades behind the Haven sector, and generally a useless deathtrap is new... how?

Anti-tank missiles exist now - it's the Solarians not having defenses against them that's ridiculous, not the San Martinos building armoured vehicles that withstand man-portable weapons.

Hell tank mounted anti-missile systems exist now too, maybe the Sollie tanks ommited them as a cost saving measure, or maybe the weapons Firebrand was supplying were good enough to bypass them