Preview of the new Posleen War book: Eye of the Storm

[Count Chocula]

And to demolish a town, and to ski down a mountain, and to use a New York fireboat greeting as weapons countermeasures, and to use M-1 Abrams chassis as skid sticks, and to turn a Posleen lander into a bowling ball, and to perform radical antimatter mountain right-of-way clearing. Good times.

Here's the beast:

[PainRack]

Didn't Mike quote the high rate and speed of fire from the ACS guns as a defect, introduced by one of the suit designers wanting a gun that's equivalent to a ray gun?

[Samuel]

Didn't Mike quote the high rate and speed of fire from the ACS guns as a defect, introduced by one of the suit designers wanting a gun that's equivalent to a ray gun?

Yep. Why they didn't reign the idiot in on the grounds they want to kill the enemy not dazzle them... very independent design teams are a staple of most of his books actually. You even have a guy who made a massive artillery barrage deposit his school colors.

[Vultur]

Re the althistory: I thought the Darhels were supposed to be subtly influencing us for a while before they publicly revealed themselves? They'd certainly studied us (the prologue to A Hymn Before Battle seems to imply they'd done so for quite a while): I thought the later 20th century was supposed to be subtly different than our timeline, it just didn't get blatant until the Darhel started to actually give us (not that useful) help against the Posleen. Is that wrong?

(I thought the Nazi thing was supposed to be a weird political allegory. In the real world, we allied with Stalin against Hitler, and I think the Darhel are meant to be a 'totalitarian force', though not communist. Compare the S. M. Stirling Draka series, where the US allies with the Draka against the Nazis - and this turns out to be a bad mistake, as the Draka are just as evil and much more competent at it. I thought both of these were meant to be touching on the idea of allying with one evil power against another evil.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Didn't Mike quote the high rate and speed of fire from the ACS guns as a defect, introduced by one of the suit designers wanting a gun that's equivalent to a ray gun?

Yep. Why they didn't reign the idiot in on the grounds they want to kill the enemy not dazzle them... very independent design teams are a staple of most of his books actually. You even have a guy who made a massive artillery barrage deposit his school colors.

I vaguely recall some line in the first novel that they recruited sci fi writers in to do some of the design and tactical stuff or some sucn nonsense reason "because they're the only people who thought of it." Which seemed incredibly stupid to me..

[Samuel]

Didn't Mike quote the high rate and speed of fire from the ACS guns as a defect, introduced by one of the suit designers wanting a gun that's equivalent to a ray gun?

Yep. Why they didn't reign the idiot in on the grounds they want to kill the enemy not dazzle them... very independent design teams are a staple of most of his books actually. You even have a guy who made a massive artillery barrage deposit his school colors.

I vaguely recall some line in the first novel that they recruited sci fi writers in to do some of the design and tactical stuff or some sucn nonsense reason "because they're the only people who thought of it." Which seemed incredibly stupid to me..

First book, Mike outside of the breifing room spots a sci-fi writer. I'm betting Weber.
Course, the ship design was rather off- if you have shields build big ships!

Re the althistory: I thought the Darhels were supposed to be subtly influencing us for a while before they publicly revealed themselves? They'd certainly studied us (the prologue to A Hymn Before Battle seems to imply they'd done so for quite a while): I thought the later 20th century was supposed to be subtly different than our timeline, it just didn't get blatant until the Darhel started to actually give us (not that useful) help against the Posleen. Is that wrong?

Correct. The rejuv is a blatant example of that and they mention Atlantis, the US consitution and a German incident. In the 90s there is something called "Operation Monsoon Thunder" that occurs and the military is unhappy about.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Considering how often I remember them fighting from fixed positions, rigging the guns to fire from a stationary power source (or one that could be wheeled in rather than carried) probably would have helped alot more. The "lack of power problem" in the latter books kinda bugged me, because you'd think that recharging stations would be something they'd plan ahead on.

That's actually a contrivance Ringo borrowed from Armor (essentially GrimDark Starship troopers). I think both armor and "Postie-verse" called it the same thing, "The Can".

There's a lot of similar concerns: Outnumbered by enemies (in Armor it's the "Ants") that are death in Hand-to-hand, power needed to run the weapons, keep the suit alive, etc. Stupid upper echelon leaders, cruddy supply situation, and occasionally really stupid design decisions (Armor has a few descriptions of awesome anti-"bug" cannons, but no one thinks to make a "SAW" version of same). It makes me think that Armor was the prime inspiration for the "feel" of the first four books.

edit: Also Armor has an issue that negates orbital bombardment, or missiles; some sort of magnetic anomaly that fleet couldn't compensate for. Might by part of the reason Ringo decided to have his Suit-centric story.

[Samuel]

Armor was awesome, but completely different than the Posleen universe- for starters the armor wasn't invulnerable protection, but protection from the fact that the planet was entirely hostile to human life. They fought in normal military units, had teleportation, used normal guns (no ray guns or walking mortars).

I liked Armor, but the inability to do orbital bombardment was retarded. If you don't mind large scale slaughter, plow some asteroids into the planet.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Armor was awesome, but completely different than the Posleen universe- for starters the armor wasn't invulnerable protection, but protection from the fact that the planet was entirely hostile to human life.

Uh, no. They'd used the armor in other drops against non bug ant combatants (i.e. not on Banshee). They also had hazardous duty suits that could stand up to Banshee's atmosphere, the "P-suits". And the armor actually stood up fairly decently against one or two ant melee or blazer hits.

Additionally the ACS from Ringo-verse weren't invulnerable, plasma, Posleen missiles, or enough railgun hits (or a particularly lucky railgun hit) would kill a suit. Also when the Posleen's hit melee range their mono-molecular blades (in universe also known as boma blades) would eventually chop open a suit. I think Ringo may even have borrowed the same terminology from Armor, for the suit material. Plasteel is I believe what it was called in both universes.

They fought in normal military units, had teleportation, used normal guns (no ray guns or walking mortars).

Also

No ray guns? Everyone uses those Blazers which are big wide swaths of energetic destruction. If that's not a ray gun, I'm not sure what fits the definition.

I liked Armor, but the inability to do orbital bombardment was retarded. If you don't mind large scale slaughter, plow some asteroids into the planet.

It boils down to Steakley doing the same thing Ringo tried to do. Tell a story about infantry in space (or some high-tech battlefield). If that's your goal you've got to somehow cripple (or make stupid) the fleet, the missiles, and all the other high-tech gimmickry that would otherwise make the Ant-War a very short story (realistic and short ant-war; ant's drop a rock on earth, earth fleet counter-attacks by dropping ant's asteroid belt on Banshee, story over). In universe the general staff looks like idiots, out of universe it's just writer's fiat. Fortunately Steakley's novel didn't dwell entirely on the ant-war, so the reader didn't dwell entirely on how unrealistically myopic command was.

[Samuel]

They also had hazardous duty suits that could stand up to Banshee's atmosphere, the "P-suits". And the armor actually stood up fairly decently against one or two ant melee or blazer hits.

Additionally the ACS from Ringo-verse weren't invulnerable, plasma, Posleen missiles, or enough railgun hits (or a particularly lucky railgun hit) would kill a suit.

Yeah, but most Posleen didn't have those toys and rail gun rounds just rang of the suits- I don't remember weak points. As for melee, the suits could be ripped out by the aliens claws- the Posleen need super blades to do that too.

No ray guns? Everyone uses those Blazers which are big wide swaths of energetic destruction. If that's not a ray gun, I'm not sure what fits the definition.

Its been awhile, but weren't blazers the bugs weapon?

Tell a story about infantry in space (or some high-tech battlefield). If that's your goal you've got to somehow cripple (or make stupid) the fleet, the missiles, and all the other high-tech gimmickry that would otherwise make the Ant-War a very short story (realistic and short ant-war; ant's drop a rock on earth, earth fleet counter-attacks by dropping ant's asteroid belt on Banshee, story over).

It can be done- just have a universe with a stargate style method of travel and no other FTL.

[Gerald Tarrant]

Additionally the ACS from Ringo-verse weren't invulnerable, plasma, Posleen missiles, or enough railgun hits (or a particularly lucky railgun hit) would kill a suit.

Yeah, but most Posleen didn't have those toys and rail gun rounds just rang of the suits- I don't remember weak points.

It's never really certain how the average Posleen formation is armed. Later books make it clear that Posleen need to "buy" all the weapons for their brigades. Junior posleen can end up just using shotguns. The more experienced and successful can be packed with plasma, or hvm's, but the books do mention regular plasma shots and hvm shots. In the combat sequences you'll have occasional moments where a suit will get blown up in this fox hole, and another one will go offline a few minutes later, so it's not unreasonable to expect a normal formation to have one or two available heavy pieces per brigade.

As to the lucky rail gun hit

Mike grunted as a three-millimeter round passed entirely through his left leg, and flipped a round off-hand at the aggressive Posleen. It avoided his fire by diving for cover behind the secondary controls. Mike took out the last standard Posleen and bounced left while drawing his pistol. He did a gunslinger's toss, switching pistol and sword, still hoping to keep the noise and energetics down. He was not sure if there was a point; the hypersonic "crack" of the railgun rounds must have been heard throughout the building.

Chapter 32 from the Baen site.

As for melee, the suits could be ripped out by the aliens claws- the Posleen need super blades to do that too.

Their super blades seem to be very widely available, they're really as common as the ant-claws, so both suits are made to cope with the combat environment they're set in.

No ray guns? Everyone uses those Blazers which are big wide swaths of energetic destruction. If that's not a ray gun, I'm not sure what fits the definition.

Its been awhile, but weren't blazers the bugs weapon?

There were blazers and blasters, don't remember which was used by who, but the humans used a directed energy ray, whatever it was called.

Tell a story about infantry in space (or some high-tech battlefield). If that's your goal you've got to somehow cripple (or make stupid) the fleet, the missiles, and all the other high-tech gimmickry that would otherwise make the Ant-War a very short story (realistic and short ant-war; ant's drop a rock on earth, earth fleet counter-attacks by dropping ant's asteroid belt on Banshee, story over).

It can be done- just have a universe with a stargate style method of travel and no other FTL.

Fine, there's multiple ways to get infantry-centric combat stories. They all have their own drawbacks and plotholes. Armor's set up just goes to reinforce Fenix's worldview that command is idiotic. And a stargate style FTL doesn't automatically negate missiles, aircraft, artillery or all the other goodies that aren't transported down to Banshee with Fenix, so it doesn't entirely fulfill the requirement of infantry only as in Armor(oddly I don't recall human artillery ever being mentioned in that book).

[Samuel]

Fine, there's multiple ways to get infantry-centric combat stories. They all have their own drawbacks and plotholes. Armor's set up just goes to reinforce Fenix's worldview that command is idiotic. And a stargate style FTL doesn't automatically negate missiles, aircraft, artillery or all the other goodies that aren't transported down to Banshee with Fenix, so it doesn't entirely fulfill the requirement of infantry only as in Armor(oddly I don't recall human artillery ever being mentioned in that book).

Uh, they have vehicles in Armor. The first section has them being beamed down... and the bugs promtly firing artillary onto their location.

[Gerald Tarrant]

So there's the author's justification for an infantry only book, accurate enemy artillery that the fleet can't counter-battery, it wasn't entirely stupid command decisions. It's still a contrivance that's fitted around the author's goal of suit-centric war.

I don't want to keep meandering away from the original point of this thread, so I'd suggest we just go to the PM's if you want to keep talking Armor.