Space piracy (and OBS named SFIA book of the month)

cthia wrote:I always thought Beth would be partial to the jeune ecole because of King Roger and the history of Project Gram. So how did Beth feel about the dressing down Honor gave Sonja?

cthia wrote:I was told that I should have known. How? I don't usually frequent the technical threads and TWTSNBN wasn't being named or talked about. Yet, somehow I should have known, when a poster who's been on the forum for years wasn't even aware there is a politics forum.

Stop setting up newbies. Post that damn Voldemort as something to steer clear of. But not just in a sticky, but as part of a member's very first private message! In case his reason to join the forum is because he has an idea about the author's own damned Voldemort.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I was told that I should have known. How? I don't usually frequent the technical threads and TWTSNBN wasn't being named or talked about. Yet, somehow I should have known, when a poster who's been on the forum for years wasn't even aware there is a politics forum.

Could be worse. You could have suggested bring back the frigate type as an expendable ship to fire grav lances with! That's two no-go topics!

Stop setting up newbies. Post that damn Voldemort as something to steer clear of. But not just in a sticky, but as part of a member's very first private message! In case his reason to join the forum is because he has an idea about the author's own damned Voldemort.

Agreed. I like the idea of a sticky topic of ideas that have been discussed to death and especially those that David himself put an end to.

cthia wrote:
Looking for Easter eggs on a website is one thing, but having to look out for landmines that can be stepped on by accident is unacceptable and downright uncivilized.

The author chewed my ass off for bringing up that damned grav lance, to the cheers and jeers of many childish posters.

I was told that I should have known. How? I don't usually frequent the technical threads and TWTSNBN wasn't being named or talked about. Yet, somehow I should have known, when a poster who's been on the forum for years wasn't even aware there is a politics forum.

(snip by RAW)

TFLYTSNBN wrote:It is confession time for me.

OBS was not my favorite Honorverse novel nor was it the first book in the series that I read. To be blunt, if OBS had been my first read of the Honorverse, it would have been my last. Weber was expanding the boundaries by having a woman as a warship commander. The character had to be credible. The focus on the attempted rape by Pavel Young and Honor's cowardice in response to that assault demeaned her. It is the only shower scene that Weber has written that I didn't want to visualize. In retrospect, I realize that Honor was reacting to the realization that she has the same beast lurking inside her that frightened her father into becoming a physician.

OBS also demanded to much suspension of disbelief. I am usually able to accept Weber's handwavium, but TWTSNBN was just to implausible.

I can not recall which Honorverse novel I read first. I remember perusing it and being encouraged to see that Weber had actually calculated acceleration, velocities and distance. I am manical about Sci Fi with rivets.. I believe that it might have been Flag in Exhile or Honor Among Enemies. After reading that novel, I returned to the bookstore to buy the first novel in the series but they were out of OBS so I bought HotQ.

HotQ is definitely my favorite Honorverse novel. The weapons and tactics employed were more credible. Not even a reference to Pavel Young. The portrayal of the attempted assination of Protector Benjamin and his family was excellent. Weber set the stage by portraying Honor's high gee physique and martial arts skill in previous scenes. In retrospect, the Pavel Young encounter makes her homicidal response to finding the surviving prisoners from Madrigal even more credible.

Another confession is that AAC is another one of my favorite novels. The final battle of Manticore offended my sense of plausibility. Yanekov had been employing Apollo with only quadruple patterns (24 pods) suggesting that the number of FTL control links was limited. Then Honor launches hundreds of Apollo pods in a single salvo. I accepted the BoM after Weber explicitly revealed how capable Apollo was even without FTL communications. I will piss people off by mentioning that Honor's decision to tube her baby then the scene where she links telepathically with him while he is in the incubator appealed to me politically as well as emotionally.

Shadow of Saganami was another of my favorite Honorverse novels. The shower scene with Abby Hearnes in In the Service of the Sword had certainly made her character more appealing to me but it was the ground combat with Mateo against the pirates that made her a favorite. The reference to her standing on the balcony of her father's palace watching the battle as Honor Harrington took on a BC with her CA just clinched my connection to the character.

Brigade XO wrote:And yet frigates were brought back into the series. Torch has them and, given the roles they are used in they are quite effective. Along with giving Torch hyper capable warships as a training platform and system defense (for some reason Torch doesn't seem to have any LACs) they are being used to carry the fight aginst the genetic slave trade.

In these applications, it is more in the line of giving the Bahama's PT Boats rather than Destroyer Escorts (in the WW II sense) or equiping them with a cruiser with having of 6" guns in turrets.

Sure, Torch actually is a backwater system but it's one that has the interest and support of Manticore, Haven, Erwhon and the Maya Sector Governor. It just doesn't yet have the populations and trained/exerienced people nor the industrial base to support and crew more than those frigates. Still, going after slavers is at least as educational and good training as commerce protection against pirates.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:And yet frigates were brought back into the series. Torch has them and, given the roles they are used in they are quite effective. Along with giving Torch hyper capable warships as a training platform and system defense (for some reason Torch doesn't seem to have any LACs) they are being used to carry the fight aginst the genetic slave trade.

In these applications, it is more in the line of giving the Bahama's PT Boats rather than Destroyer Escorts (in the WW II sense) or equiping them with a cruiser with having of 6" guns in turrets.

Sure, Torch actually is a backwater system but it's one that has the interest and support of Manticore, Haven, Erwhon and the Maya Sector Governor. It just doesn't yet have the populations and trained/exerienced people nor the industrial base to support and crew more than those frigates. Still, going after slavers is at least as educational and good training as commerce protection against pirates.

The frigates were originally built for the Anti-Slavery League, a coalition without a planet. They were also built at cost by the Hauptman Cartel, mostly funded by the Hayptmans (Hauptmen?) themselves. It's understandable they'd go for the smallest ship they could get that could actually do their job.

Now that the Royal Torch Navy exists, frigates don't make much sense. The RTN can pay for bigger ships and with some captured during the Battle of Torch, they have now training platforms too. For their purposes, DDs and CLs make more sense.

cthia wrote:What a wonderful post, Fly. I too, along with many of my friends, was put-off by a hero that is the victim of a sordid rape attempt without having killed the perv. Weber took a huge chance by soiling his heroine. It was impossible to continue the serious without seeing the disgusting rape attempt in your mind. I suppose he wanted to give her at least one character flaw.