Honorverse ramblings and musings

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:
I recall that RFC once said he actually had had a possible evolution of the grav lance penciled in as far future part of the tech tree and thought better of that after the insanity of all those threads.

It’s probably going to turn out that grab lances are the counter to something the MA has, but only one ship still in service has one...

John Prigent wrote:Hey, I LIKE the idea of a 'grab lance'! The shiny new weapon in the Honorverse - but how does it work and what does it do?

Cheers, John

quite possibly a cat wrote:Maybe a grab lance is some sort of tractor beam you use to give a ship a few good shakes. Turns the crew into paste, perfect for spaghetti!

I have no idea if it would be practical.

Okay, it would probably be horrifically impractical.

ti3x wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:<SNIP>

I think another bit of it is that I really do try to listen reasonably to questions about/interpretations of Honorverse tech (and politics, for that matter) and the logical implications of what's going on. Logical implications (and consequences) are critically important to any story line that depends on evolving technology and doctrine. Otherwise, you've got to figure out why the transporter is broken this episode . . . or just ignore the question of why no one beamed 5 or 6 kilos aboard the Borg Cube on its way to Earth while all those boarding parties were trying to rescue Picatd. Hah! like to see their "personal shields" deal with [i]that![/]

<SNIP>

Or how about those bio neural gel packs that somehow managed to work faster than the made up circuitry that was faster than the other made up circuitry that was faster than regular old molecular or near-molecular circuitry...

...when the primary purpose of a biological neural network is to do massively parallel "fuzzy-logic"* work as efficiently as possible at an acceptable, although not terribly fast, speed.

Also, don't build vital ship components that can catch a cold.

* Edited to add fuzzy-logic, since that was the old programming term before neural nets and machine learning were actual things we could make. And for anyone that's a stickler, yes, they are different, but in the 90's that was the best we had.

Brigade XO wrote:Thos nural gel-packs were an item for one episode and then --poof--never seen again. Continuity people, continuity. Sigh

cthia wrote:Regarding the MaLign, I wonder just how far those outside of the Onion, are outside of the Onion? Are they expendable in mass?

CmdrAthenaAprilist wrote:

cthia wrote:Regarding the MaLign, I wonder just how far those outside of the Onion, are outside of the Onion? Are they expendable in mass?

I seem to remember that Jack and Zach McBryde's family were part of the outer Alignment, but were not slated for elimination, because it was the threat of elimination that kept those who were being Houdini'd from talking or hinting about it. Jules Charteris got on the elimination list because he got nosy about "Lisa's" being away at that "conference".

George J. Smith wrote:My take on the rest of the McBryde family was that they were just ordinary Mesan citizens, due to their jobs only Jack & Zach knew anything about the alignment, and I think only Jack knew about the onion.