-SPOILER- Uncompromising Honor - Likes and Don't Likes

ywing14 wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
Spider drive, yes.

Warships? They have no indication they were armed. Colliers could have done the job.

Colliers could have done the job, but I don't believe that's what the GA believes did the job.

Of course they were armed - they fired weapons. However, the GA has no PROOF they are conventional warships - they are just guessing at enemy capabilities.

And they aren't "armed" in the truist sense that indicates a warship. The Ghosts Scout ships carried no weapons, just sensors and a flat packed firecontrol platform. The Sharks had no other weapons, just it's pod core and external launchers for Grav torps (they were just test vehicles for the attack concept, without even defensive systems, more for training command crews than anything else.)

SO Loren's correct - the Sharks are essentially colliers for pods.

[/quote]Of course they were armed - they fired weapons. However, the GA has no PROOF they are conventional warships - they are just guessing at enemy capabilities.

And they aren't "armed" in the truist sense that indicates a warship. The Ghosts Scout ships carried no weapons, just sensors and a flat packed firecontrol platform. The Sharks had no other weapons, just it's pod core and external launchers for Grav torps (they were just test vehicles for the attack concept, without even defensive systems, more for training command crews than anything else.)

SO Loren's correct - the Sharks are essentially colliers for pods.[/quote]

I'm not necessarily arguing what the Sharks are. I am arguing what the GA believes they were. The Lenny Dets are purpose built warships. The fact is the SEM was attacked by naval vessels of a hostile star power. To simply assume the MAlign has no warships after what happen at Yawata would be nuts.

ywing14 wrote:I'm not necessarily arguing what the Sharks are. I am arguing what the GA believes they were. The Lenny Dets are purpose built warships. The fact is the SEM was attacked by naval vessels of a hostile star power. To simply assume the MAlign has no warships after what happen at Yawata would be nuts.

The MAlign operates from the shadows as you see terrorist and insurgent groups do. Such groups almost never have major weapons platforms--they operate by hiding, not by open combat.

Every attack has been delivered through basically freighters. They have never deployed a warship.

Even if they have warships it's unlikely they'll stick their noses outside Darius. The warship threat from the MAlign is basically zero for a fair time to come.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

ywing14 wrote:I'm not necessarily arguing what the Sharks are. I am arguing what the GA believes they were. The Lenny Dets are purpose built warships. The fact is the SEM was attacked by naval vessels of a hostile star power. To simply assume the MAlign has no warships after what happen at Yawata would be nuts.

The MAlign operates from the shadows as you see terrorist and insurgent groups do. Such groups almost never have major weapons platforms--they operate by hiding, not by open combat.

Every attack has been delivered through basically freighters. They have never deployed a warship.

Even if they have warships it's unlikely they'll stick their noses outside Darius. The warship threat from the MAlign is basically zero for a fair time to come.

I don't really agree with that assertions in Honorverse where you're dealing with planets. The Peeps provided warships to Zanzibar terrorists, Chalice and Werneke also comes to mind. Yes, the MAlign's long term goals are political not military. But they are developing and constructing their own warships at the moment. That's not counting the RF which is part of the MAlign regardless of whether its citizens know it or not. It would be criminal for the GA not to think they have any warships. I'm not arguing that they have many vessels but most people agree a couple SD(P)s could have done that kind of damage if they could get in undetected. So you've got to assume they've got at least a few warships.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

ywing14 wrote:I'm not necessarily arguing what the Sharks are. I am arguing what the GA believes they were. The Lenny Dets are purpose built warships. The fact is the SEM was attacked by naval vessels of a hostile star power. To simply assume the MAlign has no warships after what happen at Yawata would be nuts.

The MAlign operates from the shadows as you see terrorist and insurgent groups do. Such groups almost never have major weapons platforms--they operate by hiding, not by open combat.

Every attack has been delivered through basically freighters. They have never deployed a warship.

Even if they have warships it's unlikely they'll stick their noses outside Darius. The warship threat from the MAlign is basically zero for a fair time to come.

I don't really agree with that assertions in Honorverse where you're dealing with planets. The Peeps provided warships to Zanzibar terrorists, Chalice and Werneke also comes to mind. Yes, the MAlign's long term goals are political not military. But they are developing and constructing their own warships at the moment. That's not counting the RF which is part of the MAlign regardless of whether its citizens know it or not. It would be criminal for the GA not to think they have any warships. I'm not arguing that they have many vessels but most people agree a couple SD(P)s could have done that kind of damage if they could get in undetected. So you've got to assume they've got at least a few warships.[/quote]

The real problem they have is getting enough ships and keeping up with the combined R and D of the GA, not to mention the Sollies.

They need to stay in the shadows for a while.

Firmly in the DIS-like category

Bruno Behrends wrote:- that the Harringtons turn out to be a lost alpha line - making the whole Alignment plot personal and opening up possibilities for future stories.

I see the loaded musket on the wall with Honor's Meyerdahl Beta modification but the trigger was pulled to explain her empathic connection with Nimitz. The revelation felt much more like a throw away... And while I can see some possibilities of 'a lost Alpha Line' it radically changes who Honor is. It is almost as bad as Greedo getting a shot off.

vonyar wrote:Firmly in the DIS-like category

Bruno Behrends wrote:- that the Harringtons turn out to be a lost alpha line - making the whole Alignment plot personal and opening up possibilities for future stories.

I see the loaded musket on the wall with Honor's Meyerdahl Beta modification but the trigger was pulled to explain her empathic connection with Nimitz. The revelation felt much more like a throw away... And while I can see some possibilities of 'a lost Alpha Line' it radically changes who Honor is. It is almost as bad as Greedo getting a shot off.

You're certainly entitled to hold that view, and it's completely valid from at least one perspective.

The "trigger" you are seeing, however, is no part of her Alpha line mods and no one ever said it was in-universe. Quite a few readers have jumped to that conclusion from what her mom said when she was discussing her review of Honor's genome with her prefatory to the whole sign language project. But the
connection does not come from her alpha mods and there is a whole bunch of genetic material in her that has nothing to do with a genetic mod program from which she has been isolated for 600 years or so. The unique ability that she has -- and which her dad and mom possess, as well, to a limited extent --- stems from the collision of a lot of factors totally beyond the MA's control. Part of that is tied up with her inherited alpha line mods, of course, because that's a huge part of the basic template on which the random genetic elements of 20 or 30 generations outside MA control interact, but it is no more dependent upon the alpha line side of her than is her taste for classical music.

The people who think of her as an alpha --- and who think "she ought to have been ours" --- are taking far too much credit for who and what she is . . . which is sort of part and parcel of their basic blind spot. The whole point of the connection (from my perspective, and at the present time) is that the MA thinks of her that way; that if the GA ever realizes she's a "lost alpha" it may cause all sorts of angst; but tat in the end, she is a triumph of freely associated genetic and societal and philosophical factors which totally discredit the MA's philosophy.

There just hasn't been remotely enough time to make all that clear since you found out about her ancestry. There are a lot of other aspects of her personality and of causative factors in the Honorverse that I haven't analyzed for you in their entirety the very first time I mentioned them. I reserve the right to unpack some of these concepts gradually. In this case, you have jumped in exactly the opposite direction from where I am headed.

Of course, I suppose it's possible (remotely, you understand) that I sort of wanted you to go that direction before you found out where I was really going.

Sort of like that whole French Revolution thing . . . .

Genetic engineering is wonderful, but a few centuries of natural selection will inevitably eliminate the design or correct some of the flaws. Honor's infamoys appetite is an example of the disadvantages of genetic engineering that impose to great a burden to enable survival outside of a technologically advanced and prosperous society.

While the Meyerdal mods might cause Alfred and Honor Harrington to have a short fuse, their political and religious beliefs are established by their upbringing and experiences. Just being gennie doesn't make people inherently evil. This is true even for the Deteiler clones.

Dislike.

No shower scene for Abby Hearnes.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Genetic engineering is wonderful, but a few centuries of natural selection will inevitably eliminate the design or correct some of the flaws. Honor's infamoys appetite is an example of the disadvantages of genetic engineering that impose to great a burden to enable survival outside of a technologically advanced and prosperous society.

While the Meyerdal mods might cause Alfred and Honor Harrington to have a short fuse, their political and religious beliefs are established by their upbringing and experiences. Just being gennie doesn't make people inherently evil. This is true even for the Deteiler clones.

In the Honorverse, certain genetic modifications are "locked," that is, they are inherited in an all-or-nothing fashion. In addition, most "locked" mods are dominant, that is, they are always inherited. This includes the Meyerdhal mods, the Winton mods and, I suspect, the Mesan Alpha mods.

The earliest alpha lines could have been seeded on Manticore is in the immigration wave immediately after the Plague, meaning sometime in the decade after 1486. This is about 400 (not 600) years before Honor is born. Given the 4 generations per century rule of thumb, this is about 16 generations, which should have diluted the alpha line mods to incoherence unless they were "locked."