EdThomas wrote:Let me put on my "Doubter's" hat and throw out some quick thoughts on what I've read here.
1. There's a lot of talk about "flying". The Proscription about flying seemed pretty straight forward. Once you cut the tether you're in blatant violation.
2. Electricity. Instrumentation and controls are going to be limited to hydraulics and pneumatics.
All these big guns and battlewagons are going to need longer range and more precise fire control systems. Balloons help with the range but I believe there was a pretty good discussion about the difficulty of developing fire control systems without electricity and my recollection is that it's well-nigh impossible.
Turrets to protect our big new guns can be operated with hydraulics or pneumatics but you have to connect them to our new fire control system and that's gonna be tough without electricity
Steam powered tanks seem to be a given. Steam powered submarines, IMHO, will be the next naval game-changer except for the problem of operating submerged with a steam engine. I believe diesel engines are possible but you're still going to need some sort of snorkel systems, and they ain't exactly stealthy.
Long range communication systems require electricity which won't be available until after the OBS and the Proscription are eliminated. There's also the small problem of getting the knowledge out of OWL and into Safeholdian hands to develop these electricity technologies.
Military developments are going to be restricted by the absence of a fast, long range communication systems. Machine guns and tanks are a given but communications is going to be a big mobility limiter for both land and naval forces.
Mechanical fire control computers using cams were standard equipment for the U.S. Army's M-60 series tanks equipped with the M68 105mm cannon. I could routinely hit a 3 meter by 3 meter piece of armor plate at a range of 4,000 meters with my tank's main gun when I was a tank platoon leader in the mid 70s. Admittedly I was firing from a short halt and the target was also stationary. Acknowledge that hitting a target moving in three dimensions at the same time the firing platform is also moving in three dimensions is just a touch more difficult. (As the MWW/RFC has often reminded us in this series.)
is based on conversations early in the series about flight being limited to the Archangels or their helpers, whatever they were called, to allow them to move to communities around the planet. Early in the book, i think just after the first rakurai was unleashed, a messenger from the archangels goes to one of the communities on Lake Pei. My recollection is that somewhere in that discussion a prohibition of flight being reserved for the Archangels is mentioned. 