Watch on the Rhine ( ENTIRELY spoilers)

[consequences]

OMG it's so difficult to hit airbreathing targets limited to 20th Century tech with an AI guided lightspeed energy weapon! Especially one that's on a ballistic path with no capacity for changing its vector under its own power, or limited to the maneuvering capacity of a fucking glider:roll:

No, the retarded bit is that they cannot hit dumb shells, but can instantly triangulate the position of a shell with a radio inside it with minute exactness and no possible margin for error.

Limitations of the programming of their Artificial Sentiences(which we now know were actually supposed to maintain the Posleen under Aldenata imposed Quarantine), and the intelligence of the God-Kings. We know that their shipboard AIs ask for permission before engaging ground based anti-ship batteries, and that they can detect inbound ballistic artillery just fine.

Plus, of course, the fact that it's automatically drastically easier to pinpoint and hit a target that's actively transmitting. That's something that's true in modern warfare as well.

[Darth Hoth]

It is easier, but not the life-and-death matter that Ringo portrays it as. With their arbitrarily uber sensors it should not matter at all, if they used them at all competently. The whole thing is there only to provide a (retarded) rationale in-universe for the wankfest battles Ringo wants to write, just like the wonder that is Posleen biology. It is like the mecha series that include gratuitous trashing of tanks as a throwaway in a pathetic attempt to justify their reliance on weapons that should under any consistent laws of physics be of massively inferior design - pure authorial fiat. In military SF I do not want counterintuitive shit - it need not be hard, but it should at least be consistent and make sense in its own fictional microcosm.