[Spoilers] Magazine remote detonators

n7axw wrote:SNIP
I can't in all honesty agree with this complaint. The good guys have lived and died on the basis of the tech they themselves have developed. Merlin has been there giving hints and prodding, of course. But what was available here were scuttling charges that have to be set by fuses. What that means in this instance is that when this failed, the ship was captured.

Could he have told the story your way? Yes. But it would not have been within the normal perameters of how the story is being told. What happened was normal fog of war.

Frankly, I think if one is going to grump, it would be more valid to focus on the use of the skimmer to destroy the ship conveying Thirsk's family after the rescue. To be sure it was done in a manner that precluded witnesses, but it was still the use of TF magic beans to ensure a desired result that is so far outside what has been the perameters of the story that it really alters the dynamics of the story itself. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a new perameter or if it remains the exception.

Don

Once again Don preaches to this choir.

It'd be no fun if the good guys won so much that they got sick of winning, then won some more anyway!

I got to say, I am not certain that Merlin would have blown Dreadnought after considering it. He needs to have as many people truly innovating as he can before The Return. Nothing forces people to rethink their assumptions and expand their understanding of the tech they use like reverse engineering someone else's creations.

Caoster wrote:

n7axw wrote:It's kinda hard at the moment to comlpain about "Mary Sue", isn't it?

Don

Most people who complain about "Mary Sue" don't actually understand what a Mary Sue is.

Merlin blowing up the ship would not have been Mary Sue.

Him not doing so is a jarring, glarring plot hole that ruins suspension of disbelief, which is far worse than any Mary Sue.

This was my reaction. I fully understand and respect why they don't want to use "magic" or anything that could be seen as demonic to randomly blow up inconvenient ships/people but in the case of the dreadnaught in the confusion of the boarding action that the attackers CLEARLY had to know was likely rigged to scuttle a remote triggering the already laid scuttling charges seems like a no brainer. There were no more friendlies on the ship and the enemies had not yet fully gained control of it so had the magazines blown everybody would have assumed there was one last survivor who got to the scuttling charges.


Given they were actively monitoring the battle is just seems jarring that they just let the dreadnaught go when in theory it would have been simple to just complete lighting the scuttling charges. No major tech would be needed that was not already present in the fight. Especially when they later go and use an assault shuttle to take out a ship.

Anybody on the dreadnaught that would have caught a glimpse of a remote setting off the preset charges had no prayer of getting off the ship alive to say anything about it.

PeterZ wrote:I got to say, I am not certain that Merlin would have blown Dreadnought after considering it. He needs to have as many people truly innovating as he can before The Return. Nothing forces people to rethink their assumptions and expand their understanding of the tech they use like reverse engineering someone else's creations.

This is a very good point. Not blowing the ship is completely consistent with not killing Brother Lynkyn and Lt Zhwaigeer(sp?).
Also, when the privateers got the shipment of M96s nothing was done. It would have been relatively simple for Merlin or Nimue to find and destroy the vessels carrying the rifles.

kaid wrote:BIG SNIP
Given they were actively monitoring the battle is just seems jarring that they just let the dreadnaught go when in theory it would have been simple to just complete lighting the scuttling charges. No major tech would be needed that was not already present in the fight. Especially when they later go and use an assault shuttle to take out a ship.

Anybody on the dreadnaught that would have caught a glimpse of a remote setting off the preset charges had no prayer of getting off the ship alive to say anything about it.

Someone in another thread described the failure to light fuses as a "fog of battle" event. I agree completely. My recollection is that there were no officers not dead or wounded to either go below to light the fuses themselves, or to send someone below to do it. I don't recall what happened to the armorers but nothing about them not firing the magazine struck me as odd.
RFC just chose not to bring out the hand-wavium.