this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2024
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chapotraphouse
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That sounds great.
Iain M Banks had great ship battles. I really enjoyed the battle with the needle ships in the Algebraist.
All the ships are at 99% c and two fleets are converging on one and other. The whole battle hinges on predicting what the other fleet will do and spraying smart munitions everywhere to do the actual killing.
Everyone is swaddled in shock gel and there are no buttons whatsoever.
Basically the same in Lost Fleet, they try to predict opponent moves and react to them in the shortest possible term before battle to concentrate fire where the enemy is weakest and remove their own ships from places where enemy is about to concentrate fire. Weapons being pretty primitive compared to Culture, some particle beams, missiles and swarms of ordinary steel balls (for depleting shields).
Also, while protagonists are usual murican-like corrupted-but-lesser-evil shitlibs, opponents are surprisingly not any proxy for China/DPRK/Russia/USSR, but Real Ancaps, which means they have worst traits of military junta, gigacorpo-turned-state stage of monopoly and mafia in one package.
Story itself is a sci-fi take on classic Xenophon' Anabasis, with protagonist being essentially isekaied war hero from century ago.