cthia wrote:True, but, come on. No access to any real ships? Heck, not even any boarding experience? Quite a while ago, I suggested that they might train with some contingent of the RF, somehow. Or, Darius would certainly have traditional warships in which to at least wargame. Wargaming has its issues, as well, but only academic instruction without at least setting foot on a warship just sounds crazy to me.
Going out on a limb. Once upon a time, I considered that the MA - having so much time on their hands - could actually adopt a truly live fire exercise. If people died they can just replace them. If injured, they can regenerate. I thought that missiles with weaker warheads could be used in wargames to dish out actual battle damage. And I can imagine that the OpFor in MAN SIMS are really difficult.
Note that many sims in the Honorverse are run from the normal bridge, tactical, etc. consoles of their real ships. Just because the combat is simulated does not mean the folks involved haven't set foot aboard real ships.
(Now, sure, there are school or academy sims which aren't ship based -- and cadets would be exposed to those before graduating and being allowed to serve on a real ship. But those aren't the sims that actual naval officers, serving aboard real ships, would be using most frequently)
Also, be the MAlign ever so callous of human life (and they definitely are), I still can't see them adopting routine deaths in their training. Doing so would almost assuredly have significant and measurable negative effects on crew cohesion and performance, and even if they didn't care about that each crewman or officer is still a significant investment of the navy's time and resources. Instructors can only teach and train so many at a time, and it takes somewhere between 1-4 years of post-high school education and training to get most crew positions and officers up to even minimally acceptable standards. And while there are genetic clones in the Honorverse they're not magic; they're born as babies and grow at the normal rate, and have none of the knowledge or skills of their clone-parent -- so the MAlign can't just punch out a replacement every time they kill off a crewman or officer. (Sure, they'll have
some extras in the system as replacements; and they could scale up their naval schools and academies to produce enough new crew each year to replace additional attrition. But that's still more expensive, and you've still got the negative impact on crew performance of unnecessary deaths during training.