munroburton wrote:Ah, never got myself a copy of SITS. It's not just OBS which doesn't leave that impression, none of the subsequent novels feature an example of those ships doing anything with that particular weapon.
From the reader's perspective, it shows up once, shoots and vanishes. Perhaps the reason it's been on my mind lately(aside from a recent reread of OBS) is that by now spider ships are rather similar. They have not been an element in any of the novels since SftS/MoH, published in 2009 and 2010 respectively, aside from maybe the Detweiler yacht. And TEIF pretty clearly indicated that the Alignment probably isn't planning to use them for another 30-50 years.
Of course the reason it never shows up again is that (with the exception of 4th Yeltsin) wallers basically never manage to get into energy range (much less 4/5th of the way across energy range) of an enemy vessel -- the other side always breaks and rolls behind their wedge to escape long before then.
So the SDs, DNs, and the Homer-class BCs, that carried it spend the entire 1st war unable to close to its effective range.
In fact, never even getting close enough to have someone speculate hopefully about making it to its effective range.
Plus, of course, Honor was our main POV character for most of that war and she never captained an SD or DN most of the combat featuring them, especially the fleet battles, happened 'off screen' with only the most minor of details. (Even the SDs of her squadron at 4th Yeltsin were the ex-Peep ones -- and they didn't believe in wasting space on their wallers for GLs)
So it makes sense that it never came up -- but it did very much leave the impression (aside from discussions on the forums; fueled by said Jayne's books) that Fearless was the first and only time it was tried by Manticore. Rather than the actuality which was that the Anduril-class SDs (1889), Gladiator-class DN (1868), and Homer-class BC (1863) all carried it[1], at at least come point in their careers[2].
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[1] At least according to House of Steel[3].
[2] HoS implies that it was not yet in any ships in Sept 1883 (when the novella happens) and clarifies that it was the "later flights" of the Homers that had it added; and it was retrofitted into the the Gladiators at some point.
[3] Jayne's lists those 3 classes, but also the King William-class SDs (1872) and Majestic-class DN (1888); giving each 12 ETs to pair with their GL. Majestics would have been the right time period to have had it built in from the start, but the King Williams would have seemingly had to be refitted to add it.
There are a couple possible explanations for this inconsistency.
* HoS doesn't list weapons 'as built' but rather 'as refit' as of some date, presumably around 1921 PD; and so it's possible that pre-war those two classes had be built/refit with GL+ET and then during the war or during the ceasefire they were removed.
* HoS establishes (or retcons ) that Jayne's is an 'in universe' publication (rather than being canonical word of author) and its editors can be mistaken about the tech specs they include -- see the apology letter about the Star Knight-class specs. These two ships could have been additional cases where Jayne's editors got incorrect information and published it in good faith.