A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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@MkSheppard: is that cylinder-thing on the scout-thing supposed to be some kind of radar dome? Just spitballing here, trying to come up with a reason for it.

The unmanned turret from the fifties is, of course, wicked awesome.
Oh, I don't know. The lethal radius of the Bouncing Barbie (fifty meters) is enough that if you throw 48 of them in a single cluster round (you can fire multiples of them, remember), you get pretty good coverage...

48*pi*50*50 is roughly... 375000 square meters. That's a larger area than is covered by the M139, and since these mines can physically relocate themselves, they can probably be programmed to form an optimal coverage pattern. So they can arrange themselves to hit pretty much everything in such an area with lethal effect, slicing and dicing practically everything in that third-of-a-square-kilometer. Six times over. From one repeat one artillery-fired cluster munition.

In theory, you can probably even go pick up the mines after the battle is over, recharge the batteries, and load them into another cargo shell to do it again next week.

So basically, this allows one 155mm shell to do the work of full laydown from an M139, and then some.
In terms of ground covered yes, they're equivalent. But one launches almost a thousand mines, the other fifty mines that can each be used six times (barring possible retrivel and recharge.) Even accepting the barbies will kill every Posleen within a fifty meter radius, which do you think will cause greater casulties before they overrun the position?

What you really need to do, is employ both.
My impression is that they usually stay pretty close to the ground, so as to remain in effective control of their own troops; God-Kings hovering 500 meters up won't be able to talk meaningfully to the normals on the ground. However, they might at least have the concept of a few guys hovering at that altitude as "top cover" and scouting; I don't know.

They don't seem to do it very reliably, though- if they did, you'd expect tactics which revolve around reverse slopes and indirect fire to not work against the Posleen very well, and they do work pretty well.
Yes and no. It remains unclear how the God-kings can communicate with their oolt, and if it has anything to do with their 'bond.' However, thanks to their superior normals they can afford to leave their units alone for a while, unless they encounter a serious obstacle. In which case, they can swoop down in about two seconds.

Most of the combat guidance provided by the God-kings is 'move this way' where the oolt follows their God-kings tenar and 'shoot this way' where they try and shoot at whatever their God-king is shooting at. Neither one requires a lot of micro-management, or even for the God-king to enter shouting distance.

However, that is probably a more extreme example, it's one of the few times I can recall a specific altitude for tenar being mentioned, besides a part in DwtD where a young God-king wants to fly up above treetop level to see better and an older God-king basically calls him sniper-bait.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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So they're Space!Ferengi Mk II.

Wouldn't that corporatist loan-shark nature also lend itself well to creating hapless dupes?

"Yes, we know Ixylpak; you are in debt to our house for 1 trillion GalCreds, as are your children and their children's children...

...but, you can wipe that debt clean if you push that button."
Not really. Though they can be fairly ruthless in their internal politics, the Darhel invest most of their energy into screwing over other people.

You see, a long, long time ago, the Darhel were themselves a ruthless race of galactic conquerors. Until they threw down with the Aldenata, the same race that genetically-engineered the Posleen. Eventually the Darhel sued for peace and to enforce it, the Aldenata basically hardwired pacifism into the Darhel brains via lintatai (the whole madness-coma-death progression if they kill someone.) They can also trigger this state by talking about killing, however circumspectly, ordering killing, or even thinking too hard about killing. "At the heart of every Darhel is a frustrated warrior who longs to reach out and strike down his enemies, but dares not even speak of it, or imagine it."

So instead, they settle for ruling much of the galaxy through their political/economic domination of the Galactic Federation. They control the wealth, the banks. Anyone anywhere in the Federation (or at least the Indowy, we aren't shown much about the how the Himmit and Tcptch figure in) must take out a loan from the Darhel to purchase the tools or other property to make his living. From that moment on, he is effectively an indentured servant to the Darhel. If the Darhel call in someone's loan at any time, that's the end. There's no support, no sort of program, even their family won't give them a couch to sleep on, least they draw down the wrath of the Darhel.

The Federation is also extremely hierarchical, with the Darhel being the top of the heap. Even door locks only work for ones equals and subordinates, their social superiors and bosses can waltz in, unannounced at any time. It's one reason there was so much horse-trading over figuring out where the human military 'caste' would be in the Galactic pecking order.

In the first book, Mike speculates that the Galactics are having a population crisis themselves. Why else would anyone settle a shithole like Diess? I don't think anything ever came of that though.


Well, I'm about a quarter of the way through DwtD, and my head hurts. Here's just a couple things I need to get off my chest before my head explodes.

"The Burb is a cube. The top of the cube is one hundred feet underground with the area over it reinforced with 'honeycomb' anti-shock armor. The cube is broken into eight sectors and each sector is broken into subsectors. The primary sectors are letters, A through H. The subsectors are numbers and once you figure out the way that breaks down if I say something like 'C8-8-4' you know right where you're at. The subsectors are each four stories high and four blocks wide and deep. They start numerically at the center and work outward both from the center and from the joining line to the next sector. The sectors are eight subsectors, or eight blocks, wide and eight deep, but they are still under construction and a few of them continue out beyond eight subsectors.

"Right now you're in Sector F, Subsector 1-1-4. That means that you're right at the top of F, on the border with E and four blocks out from the center. Sector A is security, emergency services, administration and a few living quarters, mainly for administration and security. Sectors B through D are living quarters. Although some of C and D are given over to support. Sector F is hospital and environmental support and E through H are generally given over to support including a fusion reactor in H and an extensive hydroponics and waste reprocessing section in G.

"The main personnel entrance is above Sector A and joins A near the juncture of the other three living sectors. Just outside of it is a large parking garage where most of the vehicles used by the evacuees are parked. On the southwest quadrant, adjacent to Sector D, is the main resupply route. Supplies come in there and are transported down elevators to Sector H.

"There are primary movement routes running along primary sector junctures—that is, where four sectors converge—and at four points within each sector. Prime Corridors have slide-ways, walkways and cart paths. Secondary movement routes are found at every other subsector juncture point. Secondary Corridors do not have slideways and you have to be careful of carts and vice versa. The small corridors where residences are found also can be used to move around; they are referred to as tertiary corridors. Except in special cases, carts are not permitted in residential corridors.

"If you get lost," she continued, hitting a command so that a list of icons came up, and pointing to an icon that looked like a computer, "look for this symbol. That's an info-access terminal. You can query one as to your location and how to get to just about anywhere in the Urb. You also can ask for a 'sprite,' which is a Galactic supplied micrite. It's about the size of a fly and glows. It will leave and take the shortest primary route to your destination. Follow it. It will stop if you stop and leave when you reach your destination."
Sub-Urb. I think Connor said it best as a grimdark, underhive ghetto. Please note that the Sub-Urbs maintain a strict zero-tolerance policy for guns, all weapons must be checked-in at the armory just inside the main entrance, near the security office and the administration.

This ensure that in the event of an armed incursion by the Posleen, the first thing the aliens will do is seize the armory and kill the security staff and administrators. They can then take their sweet time sweeping the lower levels (designed to facilitate rapid transit of large groups, and to be as easy to navigate as humanly possible, including flying lights to lead you to a requested destination) in confidence that the remaining humans have no leaders, no fighters, no weapons, and nowhere to hide. And that they control the only exit.

What a clever design!
"Yeah," Wacleva said with a laugh, pulling out an unfiltered Pall Mall. "Keren started the Spanish Inquisition. Send in a platoon of MPs each with a sheet of questions and answers. Walk up to the senior officers and NCOs and ask them three questions off of the sheet. If they don't get two out of three right, they're relieved. Before you know it, you've lost half your dead weight and people who know what they're doing are all of a sudden in charge."
-snip-
"It's not much good with infantry and armor units, but artillery is a skilled branch. If you don't know how to shore a fucking trench, you shouldn't be in the engineers. If you don't know how to calculate the proper size of an antenna, you shouldn't be in commo. And if you don't know how to compute winds aloft, you shouldn't be an artillery battalion-fucking-commander."
Mad Mike’s preferred way of dealing with slow artillery and other unreliable elements. I’m trying to imagine a real life Army Captain trying to pull this shit, but I keep getting distracted by the ‘JAG’ theme song that starts in my head for some reason…

Hey, MkSheppard? What do think what would happen to an army captain who tried this trick?

Then again, ACS troopers are Fleet, and are thus above merely terrestrial laws like the UCMJ. Mad Mike can basically execute his subordinates whenever he gets bored. Funny how that seems to work out.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Ahriman238 wrote:Then again, ACS troopers are Fleet, and are thus above merely terrestrial laws like the UCMJ. Mad Mike can basically execute his subordinates whenever he gets bored. Funny how that seems to work out.
Hey, if even *thinking* about killing someone causes the Darheel to go into a coma and the others are cowards; how does this work in the GalCiv?
"The Federation treats its military in a way very different from the United States military. You will shortly have a briefing in the high points of Federation military law. I say the high points, because the Federation military operates under a set of strictures more complicated than anything on Earth. You swore an oath to that law and are now bound to it. But there is no way you could possibly understand it.

"For example, as your commander, I can shoot any one of you dead, for no reason whatsoever, and suffer no adverse consequences. To the Federation the military is a separate caste, exempt from most laws while bound by a hedge of others. You may kill a civilian nonmilitary human without legal consequences, with one tiny caveat: as your commander, I absolutely forbid you to violate any American law outside of time of conflict.

"However, the American branch of Fleet Strike operates under a secondary set of regulations which is essentially the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There are massive loopholes; I can shoot you dead and get off scott free, but for your purposes following the UCMJ will do.
:?:
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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MKSheppard wrote:
Ahriman238 wrote:Then again, ACS troopers are Fleet, and are thus above merely terrestrial laws like the UCMJ. Mad Mike can basically execute his subordinates whenever he gets bored. Funny how that seems to work out.
Hey, if even *thinking* about killing someone causes the Darheel to go into a coma and the others are cowards; how does this work in the GalCiv?
"The Federation treats its military in a way very different from the United States military. You will shortly have a briefing in the high points of Federation military law. I say the high points, because the Federation military operates under a set of strictures more complicated than anything on Earth. You swore an oath to that law and are now bound to it. But there is no way you could possibly understand it.

"For example, as your commander, I can shoot any one of you dead, for no reason whatsoever, and suffer no adverse consequences. To the Federation the military is a separate caste, exempt from most laws while bound by a hedge of others. You may kill a civilian nonmilitary human without legal consequences, with one tiny caveat: as your commander, I absolutely forbid you to violate any American law outside of time of conflict.

"However, the American branch of Fleet Strike operates under a secondary set of regulations which is essentially the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There are massive loopholes; I can shoot you dead and get off scott free, but for your purposes following the UCMJ will do.
:?:
Probably a remnant from the Darhel-as-bloody-conquerors days, I can see them pulling the old rulebook out, tweaking and updating it a little, just so the puny earthlings don't think there isn't a system. Plus, I'm sure there are more subtle codes in there that can be used to screw us over.

They can think about killing. Just not too hard. Or long. Or in too much detail. It's kind of funny like that, it extends to pushing a button to destroy a spaceship thousands of kilometers away, but destroying someone's life and throwing him to the dogs is fine. In both cases, the Darhel literally destroys someone, and acts in a manner that causes an abstract death they will never see, but one trips the lintatai, and one does not.
Last edited by Ahriman238 on 2011-09-30 11:14pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Ahriman238 wrote:Probably a remnant from the Darhel-as-bloody-conquerors days, I can see them pulling the old rulebook out, tweaking and updating it a little, just so the puny earthlings don't think there isn't a system. Plus, I'm sure there are more subtle codes in there that can be used to screw them over.
But isn't that a giant landmine? A human if he knew what he was doing, could use this to kill off an annoying Galactic high commander by daring the Galactic to have him executed.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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MKSheppard wrote:
Ahriman238 wrote:Probably a remnant from the Darhel-as-bloody-conquerors days, I can see them pulling the old rulebook out, tweaking and updating it a little, just so the puny earthlings don't think there isn't a system. Plus, I'm sure there are more subtle codes in there that can be used to screw them over.
But isn't that a giant landmine? A human if he knew what he was doing, could use this to kill off an annoying Galactic high commander by daring the Galactic to have him executed.
I think Mike actually does this in a later book. Taunts a Darhel into going over the edge like that.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Ahriman238 wrote:I think Mike actually does this in a later book. Taunts a Darhel into going over the edge like that.
Figures.

MAD MIKE! RESPECTOR OF MILITARY AUTHORITAH! :lol:
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Hey, MkSheppard? What do think what would happen to an army captain who tried this trick?
Laughed out of the CP and told to fuck off. Instant relief is a significantly higher ranking officer's peregotative.

Tom Ricks may be a bit of a leftie politically, but he researches WWII history, etc so he is forgiven for that. LINK

First, relieving a battalion commander in combat used to be pretty common, but has become increasingly rare in recent wars. Even General James Gavin, who thought relief was used too often during World War II, once gave an order to a battalion commander, who questioned it, so Gavin turned to the XO and told him he now had command of the unit.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Ahriman238 wrote:@MkSheppard: is that cylinder-thing on the scout-thing supposed to be some kind of radar dome? Just spitballing here, trying to come up with a reason for it.
No that's a cockpit for the guy who flies it/fires the machine gun. I told you it was crazy.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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MKSheppard wrote:
Ahriman238 wrote:I think Mike actually does this in a later book. Taunts a Darhel into going over the edge like that.
Figures.

MAD MIKE! RESPECTOR OF MILITARY AUTHORITAH! :lol:
:lol: :lol:

Well, he is when it suits him. Meaning, when he can use his respect to cause a permanent breakdown.
Of course not all of those had landed on North America. Indeed, compared to the rest of the world the U.S. was relatively unscathed. Africa, with the exception of some guerrilla activity in central jungles and South African ranges, had been virtually wiped from the map as a "human" continent. Asia had suffered nearly as badly. The horselike Posleen were at a distinct disadvantage in mountainous and jungle terrain, so portions of Southeast Asia, especially the Himalayas, Burma and portions of Indochina, were still in active resistance. But China and India were practically Posleen provinces. It had taken the horses less than a month to cross China, repeating Mao's "Long March" and, along the way, slaughtering a quarter of the Earth's population. Most of Australia and the majority of South America, with the exception of the deep jungle and the Andes spine, had fallen as well.

Europe was a massive battleground. The Posleen did poorly in extreme cold, not from the cold so much as an inability to forage, so both the Scandinavian peninsula and the Russian interior had been ignored. But Posleen forces had taken all of France and Germany except portions of Bavaria and swept around in an unstoppable tide to take all the North German plain to the edge of the Urals. There they had stopped more from distaste for the conditions than any military resistance.

At this point there was resistance throughout the Alps and down through the Balkans and Eastern Europe but the beleaguered survivors remained low on food, manufacturing resources and hope. The rest of Europe, all of the lowlands and the bulk of the historically "central" zones, were in Posleen hands.
Global situation. Posleen have difficulties coping with mountainous terrain, or jungles, I guess. They did all right for themselves in the jungles of Barwhon, and rolled over South America fairly quickly. For that matter, on Diess they avoided the desert and hugged the coastline, you’d think that would be one good way to escape. And who do we know with a long history of disappearing into the desert to fight armed resistance?

Also, I know the Russians like putting cities near the coasts as much as anyone, but doesn’t the “Russian interior” contain about five hundred good-sized cities? Come on, Russian Steamroller, these guys are copying your signature moves! You gonna let 'em get away with that?
America, through a combination of luck, terrain and strategic ruthlessness had managed to survive.
On both coasts there were plains which, except for specific cities, had been ceded to the Posleen. But the north-south mountain ranges on both sides of the continent, along with the Mississippi, had permitted the country to reconsolidate and even locally counterattack.

In the West the vast bulk of the Rockies protected the interior, preventing a link-up between the Posleen trapped in the narrow strip of land between the mountains and the sea. That narrow strip of land, however, had once contained a sizable percentage of the population of the U.S. and the effect of the dislocation and civilian loss there was tremendous. In the end most of the residents of California, Washington and Oregon made it to safe havens in the Rockies. Most of them found themselves in the still-building underground cities, the "Sub-Urbs" recommended by the Galactics. There they sat, working in underground factories to produce the materials the war needed and sending forth their hale to defend the lines.

There were many untapped sources of materials in the Rockies and all of them were being exploited, but what was missing was food production. Prior to the first landing all holds had been released on agricultural production and the American agricultural juggernaut had responded magnificently. But most of the spare food had ended up being sent to the few fortified cities on the plains. They were scheduled to hold out for five years and food was their overriding concern. So there was, elsewhere, a severe shortage when the first massive landing occurred. Almost all the productive farmlands in the west, with the exception of the Klamath Basin, had been captured by the Posleen. So most of the food for the Western Sub-Urbs had to be provided over a long, thin link across the Northern Plains following I-94 and the Santa Fe Railroad. Sever that link and eighty-five million people would slowly starve to death.

In the east it was much the same. The Appalachian line stretched from New York to Georgia and linked up with the Tennessee River to create an uncrossable barrier from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi. The Appalachians, however, were nothing compared to the Rockies. Not only were they lower throughout, but they had passes that were nearly as open as flatland. Thus the Posleen found numerous places to assault all along the line. And the fighting at all of them, Roanoke, Rochester, Chattanooga and others, had been intense and bloody. In all the gaps regular formations, mixed with Galactic Armored Combat Suits and the elite Ten Thousand, battled day and night against seemingly unending waves of Posleen. But the lines held. They held at times only because the survivors of an assault were too tired to run, but they held. They bent from time to time but nowhere had they ever been fully sundered.

The importance of the Appalachian defenses could not be overstated. With the loss of the coastal plains, and much of the Great Plains, the sole remaining large areas for food production were Central Canada, the Cumberland plateau and the Ohio Valley. And although the Canadian plains were high quality grain production areas, their total production per acre was low and they were effectively unable to produce a range of products. In addition, while there was increasing industry throughout British Columbia and Quebec, the logistical problems of a broad-based economy in nearly sub-Arctic conditions that had always plagued Canada continued even in the face of the Posleen threat. It was impossible to shoehorn the entire surviving population of the U.S. into Canada and if they did the survivors would be no better off than the Indians huddling in the Gujarrat and Himalayas.

Lose the Cumberland and Ohio and that would be for all practical purposes the end of active defense. There would be humans left on the continent, but like all the other major continents, they would be shattered survivors digging for scraps in the ruins.

Knowing that the lower Great Plains were indefensible the forces there, mostly armor and Galactic armored suits, had retreated, never engaging unless they could inflict terrific casualties. This retreat had ended near the Minnesota River for much the same reason as the Siberian retreat. However, the Posleen had succeeded in one objective, whether they knew it was an objective or not. In the long withdrawal, the 11th MI, the largest block of GalTech Armored Combat Suits on Earth, was destroyed.
And the situation in the US. Man, you can accurately accuse a large number of writers of parochialism, but he literally takes more than twice as long to describe the precise situation in the CONUS as he does for the ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD!
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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EDIT: Rethinking this post
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Ahriman238 wrote:Sub-Urb. I think Connor said it best as a grimdark, underhive ghetto. Please note that the Sub-Urbs maintain a strict zero-tolerance policy for guns, all weapons must be checked-in at the armory just inside the main entrance, near the security office and the administration.

This ensure that in the event of an armed incursion by the Posleen, the first thing the aliens will do is seize the armory and kill the security staff and administrators. They can then take their sweet time sweeping the lower levels (designed to facilitate rapid transit of large groups, and to be as easy to navigate as humanly possible, including flying lights to lead you to a requested destination) in confidence that the remaining humans have no leaders, no fighters, no weapons, and nowhere to hide. And that they control the only exit.

What a clever design!
On the plus side it does cut down on inconvenient refugee columns. The question should arise of why such structures were deemed necessary in the first place. Posleen don't normally bombard cities and that's about the only reason why you'd want to build underground hives. You move a lot of earth and pour a lot of concrete for no obvious gain at a time when earthmoving equipment and concrete are dearly needed for the defense lines.
Mad Mike’s preferred way of dealing with slow artillery and other unreliable elements. I’m trying to imagine a real life Army Captain trying to pull this shit, but I keep getting distracted by the ‘JAG’ theme song that starts in my head for some reason…

Hey, MkSheppard? What do think what would happen to an army captain who tried this trick?

Then again, ACS troopers are Fleet, and are thus above merely terrestrial laws like the UCMJ. Mad Mike can basically execute his subordinates whenever he gets bored. Funny how that seems to work out.
An Army captain (Is he really just a captain at this point? Still commanding just a company?) doesn't have the authority to relieve an Army lieutenant colonel, or tell him to do anything at all, for one. IIRC that's something about Mike being formally assigned to Fleet, which thanks to how the treaties were written makes him outrank anyone in any terrestrial army. The question of whether Mike would actually be allowed to do that in practice would be answered pretty quickly after the first time he tried. Most likely there would be someone with more political sense than him with a rank higher than his in the Fleet chain of command to tell him not to do that anymore.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Raxmei wrote:The question of whether Mike would actually be allowed to do that in practice would be answered pretty quickly after the first time he tried. Most likely there would be someone with more political sense than him with a rank higher than his in the Fleet chain of command to tell him not to do that anymore.
Naw, he'd be shot by someone.

"I was using my sidearm to hold the obviously insane Captain at bay outside the battalion CP until the MPs could arrive, when the pistol went off."

"You better get that trigger checked. Seems a bit hair trigger."

"I will, General."
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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MKSheppard wrote:
Raxmei wrote:The question of whether Mike would actually be allowed to do that in practice would be answered pretty quickly after the first time he tried. Most likely there would be someone with more political sense than him with a rank higher than his in the Fleet chain of command to tell him not to do that anymore.
Naw, he'd be shot by someone.

"I was using my sidearm to hold the obviously insane Captain at bay outside the battalion CP until the MPs could arrive, when the pistol went off."

"You better get that trigger checked. Seems a bit hair trigger."

"I will, General."
Oh, this isn't Mike going and handling the artillery unit personally, he sent former Specialist Keren, who is IIRC a First Lieutenant now, and IS in the US army, specifically the Ten Thousand. He also gave him a platoon of MPs as backup, a tenar, and orders to blow away anyone who tries something.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Sub-Urbs were designed as evacuation shelters to move humans to after the cities were evacuated. As to why they're designed to be deathtraps for the people inside in the event of a Postie breach...

That was kinda the Darhel's intent.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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"Bad luck," Wendy whispered. "That's the story of my life."

"And that's why I jinxed you," Connolly said calmly. "You don't really have your head around this yet. It's all a game to you, even when it's tough. I don't want anybody going into the fire with me that's in it for the 'fun.' Or the uniform. Or anything, but the burning desire to kill the flame and save the people."

Connolly turned back to look at her and shook her head. "You're still playing fireman, Wendy. That's what your psych profile says; that's why you're not in Security either. You're not sure that you can do it, you're not sure you can handle it and you want to play at it for a while to see if you like it. I don't want anybody in the department who's just playing. I don't want anyone who isn't perfectly, completely, confident and competent. We've got too big a responsibility for 'might.' "

Wendy looked up at her for a moment and nodded her head. "Fuck you." She pointed her finger at the firechief as she opened her mouth. "If you say another fucking word I will kick your ass," she whispered, getting to her feet and then getting to her feet again to stand on the bench so she could look the taller firefighter in the eye.

"Let me tell you about bad luck, Chief 'I am God' Connolly," she whispered again, carefully stripping off the bunker gear. "Bad luck is knowing, not worrying, not wondering, but knowing that the Posleen are going to kill you and then almost assuredly eat you. Bad luck is having every single member of your family, everyone that you are going to school with, everyone you have ever known, killed in one day. Bad luck is seeing your life wiped out in an instant.

"You came here from Baltimore before it was even invested," Wendy continued softly. "You've never seen a Posleen except on television. You've never seen them in their waves, cresting the hills and filling every corner of your town. You've never heard the crack of railgun rounds overhead or had your ears ringing from missiles slamming into the houses around you.

"You're right. I don't want to be a fucking fireman. I don't want to pull hoses and run up and down stairs all day. I want to kill fucking Posleen. I hate them. I hate them passionately. You think you hate fire, but you love it at the same time; most firemen do. Well, I don't love Posleen at all. I take it back, I don't even hate Posleen. I despise them. I don't respect them, I don't think they are fascinating, I just want them to cease to exist."

She'd stripped out of the bunker gear by then and she stood in the coverall tall and stone faced. "You're right, I'm playing at firefighting. Because compared to killing Posleen, firefighting ain't shit. So. Fuck you. Fuck your tests. And fuck this department. I'm done."

"You're right," said Connolly. "You are. I'll keep you on the reserve rolls, but don't bother turning up for drills. Not until you can keep it together."

"Oh, I've got it together," Wendy said, turning away. "Never better."

"Cummings," the chief called.

"What?" Wendy asked, pausing, but not bothering to turn around.

"Don't do anything . . . stupid. I don't want to be cleaning you up from someplace."

"Oh, you won't be cleaning me up," Wendy said, walking away. "But if anybody gives me any shit, you might as well bring the toe-tags."
This is one of those odd things for me. I feel like I’m supposed to agree with Wendy, who was in the last book and the rest of this one, and revile the evil fire chief for rigging the test. Likewise the ‘ass-backwards’ shrinks who won’t let her join the military. But all I can think is that they’re all right. She shouldn’t be in the military, or the police, or even the fire department.

I think I’m even supposed to dislike the misogynistic cigar-munchers who want to keep all women out of combat. But from a purely pragmatic standpoint, over 70% of humanity is dead and gone, they’re going to need women for the aftermath. The annoying reproductive bottle-neck issue again.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

Post by Simon_Jester »

MKSheppard wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:Darhel can push that button and go horribly, fatally mad in short order. It is not something they are proud or eager to do at all; quite the opposite. Their culture does not exactly encourage that sort of self-sacrifice, either. They are the ruling elite of their civilization and they maintain control via what amounts to corporatist loan-shark tactics. Sacrificing others to save themselves comes as second nature; the reverse does not.
So they're Space!Ferengi Mk II.
Wouldn't that corporatist loan-shark nature also lend itself well to creating hapless dupes?
"Yes, we know Ixylpak; you are in debt to our house for 1 trillion GalCreds, as are your children and their children's children...
...but, you can wipe that debt clean if you push that button."
Now that you mention it, yes. That may be how they manage it at all.

Just a minor point, not a direct contradiction: The Darhel run Galactic society; they're not just one of many races that are theoretically co-equal. Their domination might not be feasible if not for the tacit consent of some of the other species, but they're definitely top dog. This affects their determination to accept the casualties from their own species' ranks... until it becomes necessary to do so. It wasn't necessary at first, not for a long time.
No, you cannot find 100 million Darhel out of a population of several billion who are willing to push those buttons.
Dyess IV's population was 12~ bn before the Posleen came. If we go by the traditional socialist working cry of "1% own everything", then there were about 120 million Darheel on Dyess IV at that point.

0.5% to 1% of that (Wild Ass Guess/Assumption of percentage critically in debt) gives us from 600k to 1.2m Darheel who can be coerced into pushing that button.

That's enough to kill 60 to 120m Posleen if we assume 100:1 death ratios from those SpaceClaymore tanks; enough to attrit the typical Posleen invasion force (assuming Earth is a typical invasion example).

And of course, there's other planets that the Galactics can draw on for indebted personnel to provide button-pushers.
Yes, if GalTech weapons are deployed to the planet in sufficient quantity to kill all the Posleen there, without the Posleen being able to settle into any particular chunk of land on the planet and start breeding new Posleen troops faster than the Galactics can kill them- which nearly happened on Earth in the novels.

The same issues of available quantity of supplies that helped screw attempts to defend Earth with GalTech would impact attempts to defend Galactic planets, especially the remote Galactic planets that first got hit by the Posleen advance, because those planets are the ones which are farthest away from the most settled and populated worlds and hardest to funnel the weapons to.
Moreover, and this is important, the Galactics are set up to suck at warfare.
They can't suck at conceptualizing primitive warfare, if they're still alive against the Posleen 150-175 years after first contact.
I get the feeling this has more to do with the amount of time it takes Posleen to consume worlds and move between them than it does with Galactic resistance. Posleen take years to fly from one system to the next, by and large; they take years more on any given world to rebuild their numbers and resources before being forced to leave due to overpopulation and internecine warfare. They then lather, rinse, and repeat on a new planet. Since they seem to only be invading a small number planets at any given time, it's easy to see how their "sweep" across a very large civilization might be relatively slow.

FTL travel in this setting is pretty slow relative to the distances involved, especially done Posleen-style.
Ahriman238 wrote:In terms of ground covered yes, they're equivalent. But one launches almost a thousand mines, the other fifty mines that can each be used six times (barring possible retrivel and recharge.) Even accepting the barbies will kill every Posleen within a fifty meter radius, which do you think will cause greater casulties before they overrun the position?
Quite possibly still the Barbies. They kill more Posleen (especially in a packed mass, where most of the fragments from a conventional mine stop inside the bodies of the Posleen nearest the explosion and cause massive overkill) per mine, or I would expect them to.

Which is not to say you don't use conventional mines too- since you can make them in arbitrary quantity and aren't dependent on off-planet supply. But I don't think conventional mines are the better option, if you have both available.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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MKSheppard wrote:According to The Military Balance 2004-05, the following countries have Airborne units -- generally, these are of decent quality, even if the rest of the military isn't since they're prime anti-coup units/reliable.
We got 4 bataillons of them as well as part of our "Division of Special forces".

As for THE GERMANOIDS (I probably made a hash of this THANAS-kun...)

In the 1980s, they called 2/3rds of all conscriptable manpower up for 15 month obligations (you could opt-out as a conscientious objector and many did), and they formed about half of the Heer's active duty strength.

Once you left the Heer, you were funneled into the reserves, which were laid out as:
  • Ready Reservists: 30,000. Those who completed active duty in prior year. Served 1 year in this status.
  • Alert Reservists: 800,000. Completed Ready Reserve duty. Serve five years in this status then go to the Replacement Reserve.
  • Replacement Reserve: General Manpower pool. You stay in this till 45 for an enlisted man and 60 for an officer.
Thanas may be able to supply more accurate numbers, but from my crude count; Germany from 1980-87 trained somewhere between 210,000 and 800,000 people on how to march in formation and freiheitize people.

These people will be about 30 to 40 in 2001 -- they won't be able to jump out of planes as well as they could in their youth, but they won't need Rejuve to function (unlike WWII vets), and they can train the callow youth of Germany in how to freiheitize the godless alien dinosauroids.
Here is a pretty good graphic from wikipedia laying out how many people were trained:
Image


Legally speaking, these are all reservists.

The structure however is a bit different now - for 2010:

- 46.000 reservists are kept as cadres if there is a General mobilisation (most likely they get special status so that there will be less of a logistical or personal mess when it starts to go down. These posts also include specialists which are needed for civilian life and would be too expensive to keep on as typical soldiers.
- 49.000 additional reservists are kept as replacements in case of loss or if need be as cadres. These are the guys who regularly train on current equipment and would be the most "ready to go", so to speak. They also currently sent people to our peace-keeping missions etc. Usually these are "double postings", meaning they replace one specific soldier in case he or she goes down.
- typical reservists: 1.2 mil. men (currently). Should be more, but due to the financial problems a lot of guys are being let go or no longer have to serve. These usually only drill a few days.


For 2010, the number of people listed as immediate reserve number 1.2 million men.

Still, assuming other nations who have conscripion keep reservists as well and alongside similar lines, there are several million men at least with rudimentary training and skill sets. Should be fairly easy to bring them up to speed - the US might just chose to go all "Arsenal of Democracy" again as in terms of immediate impact, the nations with conscription might be able to contribute more in terms of manpower immediately. Especially huge nations like China, Russia and Europe.

(Yet somehow they seem to be the first to fall in Ringo's idiocy).
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

Post by Ahriman238 »

Getting close to the halfway point here, just.... why?
"And, believe it or not, I can take a little black humor."

"Oh, yeah?" Cally said with a sly grin. "Why'd the Posleen cross the road?"

"I'll bite," Mueller said. "Why did the Posleen cross the road?"

"To get to the fodder side," Cally said.

"Okay," Mosovich said. "That was pretty bad. Try this one: How do two Posleen resolve an argument?" He waited, but nobody jumped in. "Thresh it out between them, of course."

"Ow!" Papa O'Neal said. "What's the difference between a lawyer and a Posleen?"

"I dunno," Shari said. "One gets paid to eat you alive?"

"No, but that's pretty good," Papa O'Neal said. "No, one is a vicious, inhuman, cannibalistic monster; and the other is an alien."

"You hear the new slogan for the Posleen that fight Marines?" Wendy asked.

"Hah!" Mosovich said with a grin. "I can imagine a few. Oh, that would be sailors."

"The few, the proud: DESSERT!"

Cally looked around for a second then grinned. "How do you know that Posleen are bisexual? They eat both men and women!"

"I can't believe you said that!" Papa O'Neal grumped as the others laughed.

-snip-

"Okay, okay, breaking the mood here before bullets fly," Mueller said. "How many Posleen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"

"I dunno," said Papa O'Neal grumpily. "How many?"

"Just one," Mueller said. "But it takes a really big lightbulb."

"I don't get that one," Elgars said.

"They're hermaphroditic," Wendy said. "They can't really self impregnate, not without help. But any two can reproduce with any other two so since 'go screw yourself' is an insult, people joke about them screwing themselves."
Elgars nodded her head. "I still don't get it."

"Think about it," Cally said. "In the meantime: Why did the Himmit cross the road?"

"I don't know," Elgars said.

"It didn't; it's on the wall behind you," Cally said with a grin.

Elgars regarded her calmly. "This is a joke?"

"Never mind," Wendy sighed. "Then there's the one about the Himmit who sat in his car for three days, in a no-parking zone, blending into the upholstery of the driver seat." She paused for a moment. "He got toad." She looked around. "Get it? Toad. T-O-A-D."

"Aaaagh!" Papa O'Neal shouted. "That's awful!"

"I don't get it again?" Elgars said. "What is a Himmit?"

"One of the Galactic races," Cally answered, shaking her head and throwing a biscuit at Wendy. "They sort of look like big frogs. They can blend into the background so well it's like they're invisible."

"Thank you," Wendy said, bowing at the table. "Thank you . . . Or the Himmit in the piano bar? One of the customers says to the piano player, 'Do you know there's a giant invisible frog having a beer on the wall behind you?' And the piano player said: 'Hum a bar or two and I'll pick it up.' Or the one about the extrovert Indowy? He looks at your shoes while he's talking to you."

"Those are awful!" Cally said.

"Worse than the bisexual joke?" Mueller asked. "Okay. Two soldiers in a foxhole. One says, 'I heard about two orphans passin' through town today. Those godamn aliens hit their town a week ago, killed their dad—he was a marathon runner, of all things—and ate their Ma. Didn't eat him—just her. Crazy damn aliens, why'd they do that?' The other says, 'You idiot. Their Pa's lean'."

"That's terrible," Shari said. "Nearly as bad as this one. What's a good mascot for the ACS? A lobster: so good to eat, so hard to peel."

"Hey!" Cally said. "My dad resembles that remark! What do you call a Crab on a sugar high? Flubber. It just bounces and bounces . . . You know what they call a Crab studying Marine Biology? Speaker to shellfish."

"How do two hungry Posleen greet each other?" Papa O'Neal asked, not to be outdone. "With salt and pepper of course."

"Why did the Posleen leave an honor stick at the McDonald's?" Cally asked. "They saw the sign '6 billion served.' "

"You barely remember McDonald's," Papa O'Neal said suspiciously. "Who told you that?"

"Just . . . a guy," Cally said with a twinkle in her eye.

"Oh, shit," Mueller muttered. "Hey! How did the bus full of lawyers escape from behind the Posleen lines? Professional courtesy."

"What guy?" Papa O'Neal asked.

"What did the Posleen say when they took Auschwitz?" she asked, ignoring the question. " 'I prefer Sushi.' "

"What guy, Cally?" Papa O'Neal asked again.

"Just a soldier," she answered. "At the Piggly Wiggly. He told a joke and so did I and I left. It was no big deal. . . ."

"What do you call Posleen in the open and a Fuel Air Explosion?" Mueller asked desperately. "A Whopper and fries."

"What do you mean, no big deal?" Papa O'Neal said dangerously. "I don't want them changing the song to 'Cally went down to town.' "

"Okay," Shari sighed. "Look at me, Michael O'Neal."

"Yes?" he said grumpily.

"What do the Posleen call call Carl Lewis?"

"I dunno," Papa O'Neal said, shaking his head. "You're not going to let me pursue this, are you?"

"No. Fast Food."

He snorted. "Okay."

"What did the Posleen say when confronted by an Ethiopian?"

"I dunno," he said smiling at her. "What?"

" 'Nouvelle Cuisine AGAIN?' I gotta million of 'em. What do the Posleen call a doctor?"

"What?"

"Lunch. What do the Posleen call a construction worker?"

"I dunno."

"Lunch. What do the Posleen call a politician? Competition. What do the Posleen call a lawyer? Trouble. Do you know why they substituted lawyers for Posleen in their chemical warfare experiments? Lawyers bred faster. There are things a Posleen won't do. And the researchers were taking pity on the Posleen.

"And last, but not least: Why did the Posleen take less than a month to go through China? Well, you know how it is, you eat Chinese and an hour later . . ."
Surreal and sad at the same time.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Simon_Jester wrote:
Shep wrote:So they're Space!Ferengi Mk II.
Wouldn't that corporatist loan-shark nature also lend itself well to creating hapless dupes?
"Yes, we know Ixylpak; you are in debt to our house for 1 trillion GalCreds, as are your children and their children's children...
...but, you can wipe that debt clean if you push that button."
Now that you mention it, yes. That may be how they manage it at all.
You know, I've been thinking: it's actually BETTER for the galactics to take as few humans off planet as possible, and not let them bring any equipment. If they want to screw us over, they don't want gigantic savage ape armies with all their heavy gear sitting in the middle of their territorry ; They want lean forces that are JUST enough to liberate their planets, and whose equipment they can take away/disable whenever they want.

This way, if they decide it's time to get rid of us, most humans are nicely packed back on Earth where you can wipe them out by sacrificing only one Darheel to press a button. So I would think they'd be MORE eager to go with Shep's plan, not less.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

Post by CaptainChewbacca »

That was the plan, PeZook. They wanted to make contact, have humans develop weapons and tactics that can defeat the Posleen, remove large 'breeding populations' of humans to use as soldiers, and then allow earth to be destroyed.

It actually took a decent amount of subterfuge and disobeying direct orders for fleet to break the siege of earth.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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One of their... appeal methods as a way to get humans to contribute to Galactic affairs is the offer to take their dependents off-planet. That gives them a refugee population large enough to act as a breeding population from which to draw janissaries in the future, but small enough to be controllable.

But merely having a five thousand strong "corps of button pushers" wouldn't be enough for that- it's not a sustainable breeding population, and it's not really enough to go on the offensive against the Posleen and retake the worlds they still occupy and inhabit.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

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Simon_Jester wrote:There's really nothing stopping them from taking slabs of "alien metal," possibly somewhat less magitech than the stuff in the ACS suits, and slapping it on the front of a tank... it just won't have the kind of protection per ton of armor that ACS suits do, because the production process for ACS suit material is so limited.
Well again I'm not sure that ACS suits are protected just by "slabs of metal" - there's that weird reinforcement issue which seems to provide protection/deflection as well. Can you engineer that into the tank? For all we know the armor without the field isn't nearly as impressive. In any case, you'd still have to get said alien metal from the Federation, which imposes the same logistics issues with getting more ACS suits and antimatter-laden ammo that they had, IIRC. On the othe rhand you could basically just argue that they already did put on "slabs of alien metal" in Hell's Faire. Its just not the same high tech metal.
Yeah, as a solution it left a lot to be desired, but if you want to kill landers at all you kind of need something in that range- it takes a nuke to kill them, more or less. You need naval-caliber artillery, actively guided missiles are not going to cut it, so you need one hell of an AA gun, and if it has to be mobile you need one hell of a chassis to move it on.

I don't know what can be done for that.
The real thing about SheVa is that its basicaly a scaled up self propelled gun, and since the Posleen are less effective against posleen I don't quite see why they needed a huge gun to fire a super-fast shell specifically to take out Landers. Of course, if Ringo could make up his mind whether SheVa's were a joke design that came bout from a misunderstanding or an effective ewapons platform (like in Hell's Faire) it might help.
As to the sixteen guns, part of the issue is that Posleen are so ridiculously numerous and soft that I can see the appeal of numerous antipersonnel automatic weapons. Maybe not so many quad and minigun designs, but the logic for putting on a boatload of .50 caliber machine guns to supplement the fire of the main gun is there. The Posleen don't necessarily present lots of targets individually worth expending 120mm rounds on, but they sure present lots of targets worth firing a machine gun at.
If a person is pressed to it they cna find some reason why they thought sticking sixteen machine guns on it made sense, I'm just saying its probably not the most logical thing. If the point of the book isn't "logic first" that's fine, but again Ringo can't decide whether he's trying to be "logical" or satirical" with stuff.
The point is that each shot from this hundred-kg TNT equivalent rifle is like firing an artillery shell at something in a direct fire mode. You fire, flatten all Posleen within... what, ten or twenty meters of the impact point. You fire again, and flatten another area the same way. And again, and again. Each shot is itself meant to clear an entire area, and there's a certain logic to doing it this way, sort of like sweeping a curtain barrage of artillery across an area.
I might buy that, except for the explanations Ringo gives in Hell's Faire for the grav gun (EG they wanted rayguns, and this was the only way they could come up with rayguns... which doesnt even make sense allowing for a massive stupidity factor of "It looks cool" actually being a design priority.) and nevermind the analogues they come up with (like the reaper flechette cannons. even with the absurdly higher ROF those things make more sense than a freaking grav gun.) Its even more silly when they had the Sluggy Freelance self insert walking in carrying a plasma gun.
It's mostly just a problem of putting down enough fire to keep them from shooting back in sufficient mass to start landing killing hits. Which is difficult with tanks unless said tanks are laying down tremendous amounts of antipersonnel fire... which is when you start wishing you had more machine guns on your tank.
What's the range on the regular posleen troops with the railguns? IIRC they weren't even close to matching a tank gun, and I am pretty sure they aren't faster than tanks.
Uh, I don't know.

I might go for "blown up" over "eaten alive" too, without being a whacko, especially if I get to kill some invading alien monsters instead of just being their lunch.
You would go with "blowing yourself up" over "getting the fuck out of there?" I mean those underground habitats they devised were absolute shit, but I'm pretty sure there were more options humans had other than "get eaten or commit suicide" Of course I have to admit given that in that universe I would be living in a place that was (by authorial fiat) largely protected from Posleen attention by the weather I can afford to say that. :D
Also, I'm not sure this really relates to the Grandpa O'Neil thing. Having a bomb in your house to blow yourself up rather than be eaten isn't very reassuring if you want your child to live, after all. It's just a less bad way to die than "eaten alive."
Grandpa O'Neill was one of the more grating aspects of the entire series for me, especially with Cally along. It just really broke my whole suspension of disbelief the way he managed to survive the whole thing out on his farm, even with Mike's illicit assistance. The stuff that happened later on only got worse, really. I mean for me its even more grating than Tommy, the Ten Thousand and Mighty Mite (wasn't that Mike's nickname?) combined.
For purposes of explaining the tactics to American infantry grunts, hell yes using American football analogies is a good idea.
Didn't they take it a bit more beyond analogies, though? I remember it being along the same lines as "Give the ACS grav guns because we want them to have rayguns" and "have sci fi authors because we have noone in the military who can envision space warfare".

Possibly aircraft can't fire weapons effectively without defeating the point of the stealth- suddenly they become targets again, and about the only thing they can do without getting spotted is sneak around hauling cargo or scouting.
Well, it can't be just movement alone, otherwise "hauling cargo and scouting" would also be problematic. It could be a targeting issue, but then again why not just dump ordnance on a target area, or something? Or sticking mortars or artillery onto an airborne platform (or something like a laser, or whatever) - I'm pretty sure they could devise some means of deploying firepower form the air to support without making them detectable, given things like artillery and whatnot.
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Thanas wrote:Why are you guys trying to make sense out of trash?

Serious question. I can see trying to make sense out of Harington or whatever, but from this stuff? What is the redeeming value here, especially of those NAZI NAZI NAZI books of Kratman?
They aren't totally comparable, but Weber has his own flaws in his writing, especially later on. Early HV novels actually resemble David Drake's Lt Leary series as far as things go - technology wasn't quite as absurdly detailed the way they became later on. His later HH novels actually become alot more like his Starfire novels, only compressed over much shorter timeframes, which I think leads to alot of the absurdity (although the math errors do that as well.)

Ringo (minus Kratman) is quite passable as a book in the same way the Transformers movies are - if you dont think about it or question it, it work if you like that sort of thing. But if it starts getting taken seriously the flaws are more glaring even if you allow for a certain measure of stupiditiy and inconsistency - and Ringo sometimes actually writes like he's trying to take the universe seriously, which is for me, where alot of the problems lie.
Simon_Jester wrote: On the other hand, they don't necessarily fire that many rounds per 'man' in an offensive- their weapons are all shoulder-fired, and they can probably handle a good deal of weight per person, so their ammo loadout could be quite substantial. Their projectile weapons fire pretty light slugs, too, so they can carry a lot of them.

Dunno.

They usually fire what - 1-3mm rounds? IIRC the Steyr ACR had something like a half-gram round. Given the differences between Posleen and human biology/capabilities and the difference in the weight of the ammo, I suspect they could quite literally carry thousands of rounds if not more (for the railguns at least.) I also don't think they just fired them like machine guns - I think they actually tended to fire on semi-auto (we saw a person hit by a posleen 1mm railgun in When the Devil Dances, IIRC, when the Posleen invaded those undergroudn habitats. It didn't exactly shred her apart with a barrage.) That aspect of logistics is probably one of the things I have more time accepting than some of the other things Ringo came up with.
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Connor MacLeod
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Re: A bit of analysis: Posleen War

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Ahriman238 wrote: The plan was always to have a shipyard in the outer system (posleen leave space stations alone if they're outside the habitational band.) They are producing ships and fighting in space the whole time, it's just that most of the senior command of the 'Space Navy' are morons and space duty is considered a death sentence.
If they were building spaceships, or intending to, then I suspect they could have just built fabrication facilities for stuff like "battle steel" or crap on the ground. Given some of the shit projected to be on their starships I would have thought that the stuff on the ground could have been handled radically differently (lasers, railguns, etc. on ships...)

I suppose we might figure they had delays in getting the ground fabrication for that stuff going (or interference) but they managed to get it up and running by Hell's Faire. Of course I suspect they could just have redesigned tanks to change the armor scheme or something in the interim.
The grav-rifles I see as working out alright, as a secondary weapon on a space cruiser or something like that. The grav cannon (what I'm calling the PDC 100mm grav gun) has its own issues, besides the obvious. I'll get to that in a bit.
Actually the grav gun doesn't work out no matter how you look at it, but part of that is simply becaue Ringo keeps changing his mind from novel to novel it seems. I mean when you get to HEll's Faire he basically admits that one of the reasons grav guns were chosen was because someone in the military wanted a raygun, and this was the only way they could do it. :shock:

I'm willing to forgive alot more than Shep is, obviously, but the grav gun really stretches credibility for me. I think he wanted to emulate David Drake's "powergun" but he didnt want it to be an obvious copycat... but why he came up with this I don't know.
I've read the passage now. A signifigant yet indistinct chunk of America's nuclear arsenal was fired at one point in the thin hope of saturating the Posleen AA defenses. Thousands of missiles went up, less than a dozen hit. So yes, they said it was impossible before, but you can overload their defenses against these things with missile spam. It may be instructive to learn if Mr. Ringo had met Mr. Weber before writing that.
To which I say "Casaba Howitzers and artillery launched nukes" - it wouldnt be impossible to pull this off in universe, I just dont know why Ringo didn't pursue those avenues.
The GalTech team did design a 'Howitzer 2000' but all we see of it is a single throwaway line about it being held back. The idea of nuking the Posleen was brought up in Gust Front, but dismissed for want of a better delivery system than loading a warhead into the back of a pickup truck.
What I'm thinking of is humanity resurrecting aspects of Project Orion with regards to weaponizing it. That would have fit in perfectly with alot of Ringo's tech-adaptation mentality and the books itself. But then again so would have shit like Davy Crocketts or something.

The thing about Ringo is that you can think of lots and lots of ways things could have been done better, and you don't even have to go all hardcore logic (you can spot him some degree of stupidity, lack of inventiveness, etc. and still come up with better tactics than what was used) I really just wish Ringo had decided whether he was writing a novellized "big dumb action movie" or not and stuck with it. As it is now he seems to have decided to compete with Dale Brown.
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