Stories you wish were told?

Some of you may have seen a similar post I made a while back but here it goes.

In no particular order:
1)Manticoran Liberation of Masada
By this I mean the ground campaign and setting up a new government.

2) Another adventure with Mullins and Gonsalves
Bring back the team from "Let's go to Prague"

3)"Insert Title Here"
Series(Comic?) about the founding of the Manticoran Alliance. We know when Grayson joined, but it would be neat to explore the deeper motivations of certain systems. At the beginning of the war, some systems are still neutral, so clearly recruitment was not a total success.

4)Post Partition Silesia

5)Andermani Story
Centered on New Potsdam.

6)Midgard Federation story
Would be interesting to learn more about them.

7) Asgard Association
Seems ripe for the kind of stories we have gotten from Silesia

8) Edward Saganami story
Manticore begins its policy of using RMN ships protect their trade. Have a story about that starts before the Ranier War and through Saganami's Silesia Campaign.

9) Matapan
DW says its Midgard's version of the Asgard Association, so how this factor in now that Manticore has become an Empire?

10)Pheonix Cluster
We only get some tidbits about this place as a wormhole terminus(Hennesy), but I would like a story set here. It is close to the Maya Sector and Erewhon, so there is an opportunity here.

One thing I would like is the battle or navy scene described from the POV of a treecat, not Nimitz as he is too closely bound up with Honor. Possibly cast as a memory song to a group of youngsters growing up in the copperwalls.

Naturally all human caharacters should nly be mentioned by thier 'cat names not by human name or rank.

Silverwall wrote:One thing I would like is the battle or navy scene described from the POV of a treecat, not Nimitz as he is too closely bound up with Honor. Possibly cast as a memory song to a group of youngsters growing up in the copperwalls.

Naturally all human caharacters should nly be mentioned by thier 'cat names not by human name or rank.

I don't think that would make a very interesting story, simply because up until Paul Tankersley came up with the idea of skinsuits for treecats, their experience of a battle from their POV would go something like this (assuming their person survives and is uninjured):

Alarm sounds, the treecat runs into their life support module. Doesn't actually see anything happen unless a hit penetrates to the compartment their life support module is mounted in. Puts up with emotions from their person and the crew ranging from boredom to near-paralyzing fear. If the ship is hit, the treecat experiences the hit's forces transmitted through the ship. After the battle, the treecat's person lets them out of their life support module.

Vince wrote:

Silverwall wrote:One thing I would like is the battle or navy scene described from the POV of a treecat, not Nimitz as he is too closely bound up with Honor. Possibly cast as a memory song to a group of youngsters growing up in the copperwalls.

Naturally all human caharacters should nly be mentioned by thier 'cat names not by human name or rank.

I don't think that would make a very interesting story, simply because up until Paul Tankersley came up with the idea of skinsuits for treecats, their experience of a battle from their POV would go something like this (assuming their person survives and is uninjured):

Alarm sounds, the treecat runs into their life support module. Doesn't actually see anything happen unless a hit penetrates to the compartment their life support module is mounted in. Puts up with emotions from their person and the crew ranging from boredom to near-paralyzing fear. If the ship is hit, the treecat experiences the hit's forces transmitted through the ship. After the battle, the treecat's person lets them out of their life support module.

Well we know that the individual cat skinsuits were a very popular item so that still gives ~17 years of combat to draw on for the story. Basically since SVW onwards.

Silverwall wrote:One thing I would like is the battle or navy scene described from the POV of a treecat, not Nimitz as he is too closely bound up with Honor. Possibly cast as a memory song to a group of youngsters growing up in the copperwalls.

Naturally all human caharacters should nly be mentioned by thier 'cat names not by human name or rank.

Vince wrote:I don't think that would make a very interesting story, simply because up until Paul Tankersley came up with the idea of skinsuits for treecats, their experience of a battle from their POV would go something like this (assuming their person survives and is uninjured):

Alarm sounds, the treecat runs into their life support module. Doesn't actually see anything happen unless a hit penetrates to the compartment their life support module is mounted in. Puts up with emotions from their person and the crew ranging from boredom to near-paralyzing fear. If the ship is hit, the treecat experiences the hit's forces transmitted through the ship. After the battle, the treecat's person lets them out of their life support module.

Silverwall wrote:Well we know that the individual cat skinsuits were a very popular item so that still gives ~17 years of combat to draw on for the story. Basically since SVW onwards.

Tenth Fleet has two treecats and one is with a Marine if I recall correctly. The treecat attached to Admiral Tourville had a skinsuit. Seems to me that skinsuits for treecats are government issue now ( not meaning that they're free, but readily available through supply). I would also like to see shipboard or combat stories from the treecat's perspective told to the clans.

Silverwall wrote:
Well we know that the individual cat skinsuits were a very popular item so that still gives ~17 years of combat to draw on for the story. Basically since SVW onwards.

Actually I think Vince might still have a point about the issues with a 'cat PoV on combat; even after skinsuits are available.

With the very few 'cats in the fleet odds are low that a 'cat onboard is going to be anywhere they can see screens that show the course of the battle. That's really only certain stations on the bridge or in CiC. Otherwise it's just going to be their person moving around monitoring their stuff at their battle station.
And even a 'cat on the bridge isn't necessarily going to be up to getting the gist of all the information coming in on the screens or holotank; even with the hints they might get from the various people's emotions.


So if you're looking for a story about a 'cats view on ship combat tactics I think you're out of luck. OTOH you could probably get a quite interesting short story out of a skinsuited 'cat working with damage control or in the aid station after the ship starts taking damage / people are getting injured). Like the people there they'd have little idea of what was happening in the battle, but lots of room for first hand (alien) impressions of the emotions and PoV action of people scrambling around patching people and things up in the heat of battle.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Silverwall wrote:
Well we know that the individual cat skinsuits were a very popular item so that still gives ~17 years of combat to draw on for the story. Basically since SVW onwards.

Actually I think Vince might still have a point about the issues with a 'cat PoV on combat; even after skinsuits are available.

With the very few 'cats in the fleet odds are low that a 'cat onboard is going to be anywhere they can see screens that show the course of the battle. That's really only certain stations on the bridge or in CiC. Otherwise it's just going to be their person moving around monitoring their stuff at their battle station.
And even a 'cat on the bridge isn't necessarily going to be up to getting the gist of all the information coming in on the screens or holotank; even with the hints they might get from the various people's emotions.


So if you're looking for a story about a 'cats view on ship combat tactics I think you're out of luck. OTOH you could probably get a quite interesting short story out of a skinsuited 'cat working with damage control or in the aid station after the ship starts taking damage / people are getting injured). Like the people there they'd have little idea of what was happening in the battle, but lots of room for first hand (alien) impressions of the emotions and PoV action of people scrambling around patching people and things up in the heat of battle.

Something like that, although not from Nimitz's PoV and on the planet Gryphon, was shown in The Hard Way Home in the Worlds of Honor anthology, where Nimitz was instrumental in locating Susan Hibson and the others who were trapped in her lift car that was caught in the avalanche.

On the unlikely possibilities front, how about a highly competent, and reasonably honorable Silisian ship commander named Mosby, probably some sort of crazy mutant cross between Sam Weston and Lester Tourville , running a very active guerrilla war agaist the Manty occupiers.

if said person was honourable ad competent he would likely be working with the manties. not against them

Jonathan_S wrote:

Silverwall wrote:
Well we know that the individual cat skinsuits were a very popular item so that still gives ~17 years of combat to draw on for the story. Basically since SVW onwards.

Actually I think Vince might still have a point about the issues with a 'cat PoV on combat; even after skinsuits are available.

With the very few 'cats in the fleet odds are low that a 'cat onboard is going to be anywhere they can see screens that show the course of the battle. That's really only certain stations on the bridge or in CiC. Otherwise it's just going to be their person moving around monitoring their stuff at their battle station.
And even a 'cat on the bridge isn't necessarily going to be up to getting the gist of all the information coming in on the screens or holotank; even with the hints they might get from the various people's emotions.


So if you're looking for a story about a 'cats view on ship combat tactics I think you're out of luck. OTOH you could probably get a quite interesting short story out of a skinsuited 'cat working with damage control or in the aid station after the ship starts taking damage / people are getting injured). Like the people there they'd have little idea of what was happening in the battle, but lots of room for first hand (alien) impressions of the emotions and PoV action of people scrambling around patching people and things up in the heat of battle.

Another point to take into consideration is control consoles are designed around human senses. Any colors shown will be in the human visual range, any sounds will be in the human audible range as well. Displays will be designed around the human depth of vision and have visual refresh rates designed around human capabilities.

It is well known that other terrestrial mammals have different visual and audible ranges, different depth of field (vision), as well as using different senses (whiskers) to augment their experience of their surroundings.

So it would be very difficult to blindly suppose that an animal from a different evolutionary tree would have an identical ability to sense it's surroundings, especially one WITH whiskers and empathic senses.

So to a treecat, the holo-tank may be a dizzying array of (literally) nauseating colors and flashing lights, and view screens either dark or bright white pulsating lights (of dizzying, nauseating colors), while annoying droning sounds drown out anything intelligible.

So instead of rivers of information everywhere they look - Tree-cats might see a spinning kaleidoscope of flashing lights and hear awful, ear-piercing sounds - if so, they might as well stay in the box during any battles, their report will probably be better.