On the naval battles, especially the climax...
In battletech, 'mech action is typically people slapping overheat alarms and firing cascades of fire with sheeting waterfalls of ablative armor and the
occasional physical attack as they leap and bound (and in some of the worst books, cartwheel).
all while chattering away in pseudo-military dialogue and screams.
In space, nobody will hear you scream.
well, not nobody, but it's damned unlikely. Naval Battles are about
position and local superiority rather than your wonderfulness as a gunner or awesome personal piloting. that is, your naval battle
begins with long periods of getting into positions, changing positions, pursuing, retreating, arranging...until you hit the merge, were everything you've een doing comes to a head.
It's a completely different
pace of fighting, with a very 'no-takebacks' sort of conditions. (typically if your 'mech drops, you can walk away. It's very very long walk in space and no air to walk in.)
by definition, it's a lot more lethal.
as it should be. In a Warship (or dropship) losing your ride means a bit more than when you're in a 'mech. It's losing the thing that has all the air you're breathing for one.
and did I mention the walk is a bit further than Lietnerton to the Gash? well, it is.
Clanners don't just use Harjel in their battlearmor, it was first mentioned as something used to keep their ships sealed. Thus, one can in fact safely assume they don't fight de-pressurized.
After all, if htey did, what the ****** good is the stuff? Some material swelling to close a break in a damaged area just makes repairs take longer, if it's not serving other purposes, because you have to scrape it away to weld the hull, bulkhead, or structural ribs and stringers back together.
Thus, the Clanners (except Snow Raven because they're NAVAL focused and would understand this idea) probably run full pressure in their warships (even with the shock transfer and risk of fires).
this ends up asking 'why' and the answer, is "Who Commands?"
Typically 'mechwarriors have a certain...questionable sense of style. (cooling vests and shorts), pressure suits with catheters? not so much, not if they don't have to. when all you fight are honor duels for generations, well, you don't have to, and you still don't have to if you're used to being the only warship on the block, and you still don't have to if your closest competitors still lose a gun duel more often than they win.
the idea of 'continuing to fight after you're defeated' isn't in the Clan psychology. (thus Joanna's lucky jump-jet attack on Nasty K, who ought to have known better than to stand there and gloat...but didn't.)
It is, however, the kind of mentality you need in a Naval command. "Don't give up the ship" means more than just keeping fighting, it's also about keeping in motion, or even getting away. No ship? you're dead. that's how space works.
but why would they have that doctrine? Why would they fight their ships in shirtsleeves when that amplifies every critical hit or potential critical hit?
well, people work better in physical comfort, and it's easier to manipulate touch-screen controls if you're not saddled with bulky gauntlets and a pressure suit. It's easier to communicate by voice than over a suit radio where you have to select your audience. it's
more efficient in limited engagements.
Especially if your equipment designers desgined your control interfaces with touch-screens and voice command, which would be the 'more advanced' option for most people who don't have to think about 'how do I work this when the air's leaked out?'.
These are 'background thoughts' running from the FIRST Captain Roberts story, through to the end of Monbvol's epic "Weapons of War". The ships with AI, and the ones without, built for Helena's Star League (or retrofitted for it to use human crew), got big, lumpy, analog, 'fischer price' controls that you can use while you're suited, because they expect to need to wear the suits in combat.
Why? because they
learned. the Clan system doesn't really permit much active learning, just as it doesn't prioritize things like "damage control is everyone's job" on a ship. Much of the reason the Wolf Fleet lost over terra, was that they had outstanding Damage Control special teams...who didn't survive the actual experience of fighting a true peer force that has the same capability, but actually expects to have to control their damage with "WHomever happens to be here" rather than "this special, dedicated team of highly trained specialists."
against a similar force, the battle would've lasted a LOT longer, because the Wolves wouldn't have lost quite so many ships quite so quickly.
"Killing Sack"-this is an in-universe technical term for a three dimensional, flexible, killing box. that is, a formation designed to contain, travel with, and destroy an enemy target from multiple angles.
Everything in space, is in motion. a "Killing Sack" flexes with enemy attempts to break the ambush, instead of trying to hold a static position. (everything in space is in motion, so if you want to keep them in under your guns, you better be moving too.)
"Jolie Rouge"/"Pretty Red" 17th century term coined by pirates and privateers, from which, the term 'Jolly Roger" evolved. It literally means no quarter will be given-the enemy will not be allowed to retreat. It comes from the use of a red flag to signal the intent, which just goes to show how weird things can evolve to the popular conception of a black flag with a skull and crossbones.
The Use of Mines in the story; My fault. I needed a reason that the wolves didn't just mud-stomp everyone. Thing is, what I came up with mihgt actually WORK. They're not floating there, they have thrusters with a high specific impulse that last for a long time, but aren't high output flares that can be spotted easily, they have a warhead, a guidance module, and rudimentary stealthing that doubles as power for the low-powered thrusters they use to sidle up to an enemy target and go bang.
and a megaton nuclear warhead, because that's what you'd use against warship grade armor.
Obviously going to be both cheap to make, and hard to use effectively.
I toyed with the idea that they'd have to be guided to the target, and maybe they were. Someone in a single (that is, mining skiff or other civilian grade smallcraft) running them on remote to put the limpets that last bit of orbital speed needed to bring them up against an enemy warship's hull or in an enemy warship's 'field'/course.
I threw in some Jihad tech, with mass-drivers on IO and Ganymede just so we could show something BLP didn't-the Belters resisting intelligently instead of following the single stupidest 'defense plan' ever conceived of by non-spacefaring man.
While BLP was leaning heavily on "Downfall" for his story in the Canon, I leaned heavily on the
siege of Vienna (and a few other historical sources) with Helena's forces taking the role of the Winged Hussars.
but, I also leaned on some WW2 history, with the Belters finally asserting their sovereignty as happened in places like Indochina when the allies drove the Japanese out.
These people, per the canon, had held on to their tech, culture, and structure through McKenna, Cameron, Amaris, Kerensky, Comstar, Word of Blake and so on. NOT the kind of people who'll embrace extinction or submission under WoB or Stone, never mind Alaric.
The Debate we used, and Tom Mahan's greatest contribution to the war? those were some of the parts of that final story I'm genuinely proud of, because it touched on something that imho
ought to have been going on in the canon, but wasn't because 'Sheeple'.
(Sheeple, a phenomena that makes a lot more sense when you can actually be illiterate and technologically backward and not die of it because the environment isn't trying to kill you all the time).
more to come...
