Comparing weapons

Tenshinai wrote:And wouldn´t it have been fun if the Satsuma had been the first "Dreadnought" instead of "Dreadnought"?
(Satsuma was meant to have a unified heavy gun armament but didn´t get it because enough 12" guns would take too long to make, and the second ship of the class(Aki) also got steam turbines instead of triple expansion engines less than 2 years later, while the Satsuma was launched a year before Dreadnought, as the first Japanese homebuilt capital ship, so it was pretty much just one or two political decisions away from being the kind of ship Dreadnought was, but a year earlier)

I suspect "Satsuma" would have had a lot less tendency to adhere to a class of dangerous warships than "Dreadnought".

The King Haarlhds are definitely pre Dreds.

JeffEngel wrote:I suspect "Satsuma" would have had a lot less tendency to adhere to a class of dangerous warships than "Dreadnought".

You never know!


It was after all just pure random chance that gave us the "Dreadnought" name, could have had Bellerophon, Majestic(earlier ship considered for refit), Lion, Tiger, Indefatigable... Heck there´s a whole bunch of names we MIGHT have ended up with instead.
We just got used to "Dreadnought" meaning something specific.
Something that actually could happen, and occasionally does happen to words.

Tenshinai wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:I suspect "Satsuma" would have had a lot less tendency to adhere to a class of dangerous warships than "Dreadnought".

You never know!


It was after all just pure random chance that gave us the "Dreadnought" name, could have had Bellerophon, Majestic(earlier ship considered for refit), Lion, Tiger, Indefatigable... Heck there´s a whole bunch of names we MIGHT have ended up with instead.
We just got used to "Dreadnought" meaning something specific.
Something that actually could happen, and occasionally does happen to words.

I am sure that the naming of Dreadnought was entirely intentional on Admiral Fishers part. Even if the Satsuma had been built to the original spec first I suspect that we would still call them Dreadnougths after the second built ship because it was built by the Royal Navy and at that point they had so much perstige and mindspace (especially in the anglosphere).

sunhawk wrote:The King Haarlhds are definitely pre Dreds.

Considering that the Church and AofG are the chief concern, and obviously a war on land is the important thing in the future, a battleship series will likely be of less use to Charis than weapons for Army use. Of greater use at sea, would be a small cannon for merchantmen to carry with explosive shells to use when attacked. It is the gun, and not the ship that carries it, that commerce raiders would fear.

SciFi90 wrote:

sunhawk wrote:The King Haarlhds are definitely pre Dreds.

Considering that the Church and AofG are the chief concern, and obviously a war on land is the important thing in the future, a battleship series will likely be of less use to Charis than weapons for Army use. Of greater use at sea, would be a small cannon for merchantmen to carry with explosive shells to use when attacked. It is the gun, and not the ship that carries it, that commerce raiders would fear.

I wonder if Charis will really maintain all that much of a land based presence after the war. I mean why would they need it? They control the seas, no one can touch them nevermind come within anyone's wildest daydreams of attack range in terms of their heartland(s). In terms of Merlin's mission and desires, its more naval focused anyway considering that most actions in space have to deal with naval type elements. Plus, there's the RoS that could hand any land threat that would come up to the EoC. I really don't see that alliance going anywhere unless the Republic is more Prussian than has been made evident.

Tenshinai wrote:You seem to have mixed things up a bit.

A Dreadnought is a battleship.
A Pre-Dreadnought is a battleship.
An Ironclad is a battleship.

The term started as a contraction for 'ship of the line of battle' . . . . ."

There was a period when the "heaviest", Line-of-Battle Ships were referred to as "Liners", i.e. fit to stand in the line of battle, before the generic term Battleship became the normal usage

chrisd wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:You seem to have mixed things up a bit.

A Dreadnought is a battleship.
A Pre-Dreadnought is a battleship.
An Ironclad is a battleship.

The term started as a contraction for 'ship of the line of battle' . . . . ."

There was a period when the "heaviest", Line-of-Battle Ships were referred to as "Liners", i.e. fit to stand in the line of battle, before the generic term Battleship became the normal usage

Actually, the original formulation of liner was line-of-battle-ship; that is, a ship suited to lie in the line of battle. That was then shortened to ship-of-the-line, but the term battleship was also applied very early on and never quite went away. The main thing that happens in naval jargon is that as new terminology is needed for changing technical and tactical parameters, old terminology is as likely to be refurbished or recycled as new terminology is likely to be invented.

Which provides lots of opportunities for "false cognates" to bite the casual reader on his gluteus maximus!

runsforcelery wrote:There was a period when the "heaviest", Line-of-Battle Ships were referred to as "Liners", i.e. fit to stand in the line of battle, before the generic term Battleship became the normal usage

Actually, the original formulation of liner was line-of-battle-ship; that is, a ship suited to lie in the line of battle. That was then shortened to ship-of-the-line, but the term battleship was also applied very early on and never quite went away. The main thing that happens in naval jargon is that as new terminology is needed for changing technical and tactical parameters, old terminology is as likely to be refurbished or recycled as new terminology is likely to be invented.

Which provides lots of opportunities for "false cognates" to bite the casual reader on his gluteus maximus![/quote]

Lovely. And this is always the case? Excellent at finding new and better ways to kill our enemies every generation, but using old or refurbished names for them because we're too linguistically lazy to come up with something just as new?

Wait.

You have casual readers?

ChronicRder wrote:Lovely. And this is always the case? Excellent at finding new and better ways to kill our enemies every generation, but using old or refurbished names for them because we're too linguistically lazy to come up with something just as new?

Not ALWAYS, but it happens often enough. It's just very noticeable in science fiction, especially the "Space is an Ocean" tropes where space vehicles are given lots of naval terminology.

Wait.

You have casual readers?

Yo!