u/Potato271

The Falklands War was a somewhat unusual conflict in that it was a modern peer vs peer war involving air, sea and land battles. It featured the first sinking of a warship by a nuclear submarine, and also saw the large scale deployment of anti ship missiles.

The conflict resulted in a decisive British victory, but could easily have gone the other way. To quote Lord Craig, at the time an Air Vice Marshall, "six better fuses and we'd have lost". The war highlighted a serious deficiency in the Royal Navy's air defence capabilities against fast low flying threats.

The British military learnt a number of lessons the hard way during the war, but what did other NATO members analysis look like? I've seen several texts quote the US Navy as having thought a military retaking of the islands by the British was impossible, but no source given. Does anyone have it?

Did the Falklands War impact the decision making of other NATO members? Especially with regards to the defence of warships against anti ship missiles. Did the Soviet Union take note of the weaknesses exposed?

So I just finished reading the short story version of a Call to Arms, and I must say, everything is refreshingly primitive compared to the main story. Technology in the 16th century PD is unbelievably primitive compared to the 20th; even a pre Alliance Grayson ship would be the most advanced warship in the galaxy if transported back four hundred years. The limitations of the technology, and the fact that everyone is still in the discovery stage of combat doctrine is really interesting, like the pre-dreadnought era of seagoing warships.

As a basic rundown, ships typically only mount a few missile tubes (HMS Casey, which the protagonist is on for most of the story) is a light cruiser, and only has 4. Missile combat range is only about 1 million kilometres, whereas even Havenite single drive missiles have a range better than 6 million kilometres at the start of the main series. Countermissiles are much less effective, and large enough that mounting countermissile tubes requires you to sacrifice anti ship tubes.

The enemy fleet thus has an interesting setup where its battlecruisers have only offensive missiles, and rely entirely on the light cruisers for countermissiles. In addition, point defense isn't done by lasers, but by autocannon shotguns, which spam a huge amount of shrapnel into space to try and kill the incoming missile (which is, of course, a contact nuke). Ships typically only carry a few. Lasers are so massive that Casey can only mount them spinally: broadside weapons are restricted to plasma torpedoes.

On the whole, I feel like this makes combat more involved. Like in On Basilisk Station, or even The Honor of the Queen, combat is more about accurately guiding in a small number of shots rather than spamming huge pod launched missile salvos to saturate defenses. Combined with the heterogenous, almost random weapon loadout, ships feel much more alive than in the main series.

It's one of the short stories from The Service of the Sword and it is... something alright. It's written by John Ringo, which already sets off alarm bells in my head. For those who are unfamiliar, Ringo is the author of the Legacy of the Aldenata series, and is right wing enough to make Weber look like a socialist. He (along with Tom Kratman, an absolute nutter) is responsible for the book Watch on the Rhine, in which humanity uses resurrection technology to bring back the Waffen SS to help fight off an alien invasion (ignoring the fact that: in the end, the Nazis lost that war, and that the SS weren't even the main strength of the German military). It's wehrabooism at its finest.

Let's Go To Prague is technically well written, and does have some interesting ideas, including an inside look at the horrors of the People's Republic regime on its vassal worlds, but it has a lot of bits that make me deeply uneasy. The story opens with the protagonists, two Manticoran secret agents, deciding to go to the Havenite world of Prague on holiday. To do this, they blackmail their quartermaster with pictures (potentially faked) of him committing bestiality. Which just seems like intentionally shocking for the sake of it, and not meeting the general tone of the Honorverse setting.

Now what is Prague like? Well it was settled by old fashioned neo-Nazis who believed in the superiority of the Aryan race. While Ringo acknowledges that fascism isn't a reasonable form of government, and states that a sensible democratic government was quickly installed via revolution, the planet's inhabitants are still the descendents of those neo-Nazis, which means very, very white, and Ringo states that it has one of the best looking planetary populations in the explored galaxy. I don't think I need to say why this is problematic.

And why do our protagonists head to a Havenite planet for a holiday in the first place? Well for the cheap and beautiful hookers of course! They utilise ONI resources to set up covers as State Sec agents, and intend to take advantage of the planet's low standards of living to have a lot of cheap sex (with the cost of a hooker on Prague stated to be about an hour of a SS officer's wages). Ah yes, our protagonists are the worst of sex tourists, especially considering the potential for abuse of (perceived) power associated with their use of State Sec covers. Now I get that protagonists don't necessarily need to be good people, but this set of protagonists simply does not sit well with me.

On the whole, I really enjoy the short story collections, and how different authors take on the Honorverse (I really, really enjoyed Promised Land, which covers the escape of a number of Masadan women from their repressive, totalitarian homes), but Let's Go To Prague left a distinctly sour taste in my mouth. I disagree with most of Weber's libertarian views, and his seeming belief in the superiority of monarchies, but reading the Honorverse books I always got the impression that he was a fundamentally decent person, and his social views align more closely with mine on most issues. I do not get feeling that from John Ringo. Let's Go To Prague disturbs me, and not for the plot, but for what it seems to say about its author.

Naval warfare has undergone several seismic shifts in the last two hundred years. The 19th century saw the arrival of the ironclad, the exploding shell, and steam propulsion, instantly rendering wooden sailing ships obsolete. The 20th century introduced torpedoes, submarines, aircraft carriers and the guided missile, which together saw the death of the big gun battleship as the leading capital ship. But changes before that seem far more gradual, at least after the cannon became widespread.

Look at a picture of an 18th or early 19th century ship of the line, and compare to a 16th century galleon, or even a 14th century carrack, and they appear fairly similar, at least on a surface level. Of course, there is one notable difference: ships got steadily more massive over the years, and HMS Victory (which isn't even a particularly large first rate) displaced three and a half thousand tonnes, compared to the measly 1000 tonnes of the Triumph, the largest warship built by Elizabethan England. Correspondingly, the number of guns also went up: Triumph carried only 42 guns, while Victory carried (and still carries I suppose) 102, which is roughly proportional to displacement I guess.

So I guess my question is, what changed over those two hundred years? Was it just changes in shipbuilding techniques and designs that allowed for much larger ships with more guns? Or were there more fundamental changes that are less visible? How would a galleon line up against an 18th century ship of similar tonnage (probably a 5th rate frigate)? Would they be broadly similar in capabilities, or would the frigate hold advantages due to advancing technology?

Hi! So I started playing this week, and I'm having a lot of fun, but I feel like I don't understand the game that well, so I just had a few questions. For background information, I'm playing British ships, mostly Renown, Warspite, and Leander (I bought Warspite because it's my favourite historical ship irl).

1. When to use HE vs AP? So my understanding is that HE is the 'safe' option. It does decent damage, and starts fires. AP on the other hand gives you the opportunity to do more serious damage with citadel hits, but can fail completely if it hits armor that's too thick, or overpenetrate if armor's too thin. So for Renown and Warspite, when should I be using one or the other? So far I've been using AP against cruisers and broadside on battleships, and HE otherwise.

2. How do I deal with submarines? Pretty much every game has one, and I just played a random battle with three on each side and they're really frustrating, just popping up and torpedoing me. Obviously if they surface I can just shoot them, but what can I do while they're underwater? I have depth charges on my battleships but how do I actually use them? Is it just a case of waiting for them to be revealed and dropping on them?

3. On a semi related note, how to deal with aircraft? I see carriers in about half of games I guess, but what is the counterplay? Should I be sticking with other ships to maximise AA? Is there some sort of strat for avoiding just getting murdered by bombers?

I've not played subs or carriers at all so far, would it be worth unlocking some just to play and see how they work?

So something I've been wondering for a while is, when is it worth force buying twice vs saving and then full buying. Now presumably full buy vs full buy evens out to a 50% win rate across sides and maps, but what actually are your odds with a reduced buy?

Obviously this is a slightly more nuanced question, but say you have $2-3000 per player, it's 12-10 in your favour. You only need to win one round. Are you better off saving and sacrificing the first round to get a 50-50 in the second, or is it worth forcing twice and hoping to win one of two rounds at reduced odds?

If force vs full buy was 30-70 odds than the odds of winning at least one of two force buy rounds is 51%, so more or less the same. If it's 20-80 you're better off saving then buying. If it's 40-60 you should force in this scenario.

So does anyone have any stats? I'd be interested in the odds for full save vs full buy, eco vs full buy, and force buy vs full buy.

So you know how you normally can’t use gateways of enemy systems during wars? You can now. Nomads tend to spam build gateways once they have the tech, and as long as you aren’t at war with the nomad you can use their gateways, even in hostile territory.

So I was rereading David Weber's Honor Harrington series lately, and it occurred to me that the Star Kingdom of Manticore is a half decent idea for an origin.

For those who haven't read the series, Manticore is, for most of the series, a single system nation holding off the massive imperialist power of the People's Republic of Haven. They hold control of a wormhole junction, which allows instantaneous travel to six (later seven) locations across the galaxy. A huge portion of interstellar trade passes through the junction, and the taxes make Manticore really, really rich for a nation of its size. In addition, Manticore has an advanced tech base, and a strong naval tradition.

So the origin would be pretty straightforward. Your starting system is the Manticore Binary System, with two distant stars. You have three inhabited worlds: Manticore and Sphinx orbiting Manticore A, and Gryphon orbiting Manticore B. Your starting population is slightly low (all three planets put together have a combined population of only about 3 billion in the books), but spread out over three planets and will grow quickly.

The Manticore System has a wormhole like the Strange Wormhole from the Starlit Citadel origin, only it's the central wormhole, allowing access to seven other systems spread across the galaxy. You would start with the wormhole stabilisation tech so you would initially explore outwards through the wormholes. You would have an increased influence cost to claim systems through regular hyperlanes, but a reduced cost for systems connected to Manticore through the wormhole, in order to incentivise expanding through the junction.

For authority type, it's slightly complicated. Manticore is a constitutional monarch based on Napoleonic Era Britain, so the Queen has real power, but the Houses of Lords and Commons do too. Of the regular authority types, I think Oligarchy is the best fit: there's definitely a class system which disproportionately places power in a few noble houses, but the regular people have power too, so it's not a dictatorship.

Suggested civics would be Distinguished Admiralty and Master Crafters personally, although something science related would also fit.

Actually though, I would be tempted to go MegaCorp. Before the later books, Manticore is very much a 'tall' empire, with only a few systems and only three inhabited worlds. Its power comes from its merchant marine, and its control of the biggest intergalactic trade routes. It also has a powerful and efficient export industry, and operates a financial market out of the Wormhole station.

Obviously this season has (rightly) been completely overshadowed by spygate, but I do think we've learned quite a few other lessons that are worth talking about, and now I've had enough time to think about it after the season's end I've collated a few. This will be quite a long post so feel free to skim the section headings and just read the bits you're interested in.

1. Dogma is dangerous

We've seen several times now that system managers only work when things work in their favour. As soon as things start going wrong a dogmatic manager falls to pieces. We saw it with Martin attempting to play tiki taka in the prem. We saw it with Juric refusing to adapt to players unsuited for his pressing system. And we saw it with Still's direct system when we had no-one up top to hold up the ball. Whether or not Tonda stays (and I think he shouldn't. Even discounting the actual spying, the allegations of workplace bullying have soured me on him), we need a manager who can adapt. That's more important than any amount of 'football philosophy' in my opinion,

2. A solid keeper is vital

Regardless of all the shit stuff that has happened this season, no-one can deny the effect Peretz has had on our defense. I've been Bazunu's biggest defender for some time now, but I think I have to call it. We cannot go into next season with him as our number 1 (and no I don't want McCarthy there either). If we don't hold on to Peretz we need a keeper who is a solid shot stopper, and who can command his box. Our backline really lacks leadership so having a keeper who's not afraid to organise his defense really makes a difference.

We don't need a 'modern' keeper, we need someone who will stop the ball going in the back of the net.

3. Age is not just a number

Ok, it's been clear since the takeover that Sports Republic want to buy young talent, develop them, and flip them for profit like Livramento or Lavia, in the Brighton/Brentford mold. But what they've clearly forgotten is that those teams have a solid experienced spine. Look at Brighton with Dunk/Gross/Welbeck. We need solid players to build a team around. We can't just chuck money at wonderkids and expect it to work.

And even from a player flipping point of view, look at Scienza! He's 27 and been our best player and will likely move on for a hefty profit. I'd argue that we should be looking more at players in their prime, with one or two young players for the future. We can't just rely totally on youth.

4. Hold up play >> Goalscoring

Larin has been a revelation. Stewart has been incredible when fit to the point that Still looked decent. This season has made it clear that we need a target man up top who can provide an outlet for long balls/crosses, hold up play, and just generally menace the opposition back line. If we can hold on to Larin, fantastic. If we can't, we need a similar profile. Goalscoring ability is secondary in my opinion: we've spread the goals out quite well this season, we just need a focal point. Hell, if Still had had Larin instead of Downes he might have done ok.

5. We need risk takers

Finn Azaz has taken some flack for losing the ball stupidly, but that's what happens when you have a creative midfielder. De Bruyne often lead the league for possessions lost, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Azaz is the first really solid creative midfielder we've had since Tadic, last time in the championship we had very little creativity through the middle: only Stu Armstrong really progressed the ball, and that was mostly through carries rather than passing or quick flicks.

Looking for a game I used to love. You built a sort of hovership then played a series of levels where you battled other hoverships using different kinds of weapons. It was turn based I think? And set in a post apocalyptic deserty environment.