OT: Somebody's critique of my story

[rdouglass]

Sorry if I offended you at all but that's just my opinion and I think it will be the opinion of a lot of the smarter sci-fi readers above the 8th grade reading level....though for kids it might make a good light read.

The way this person critiqued and the reasoning behind his comments seems like he includes himself in the pre-8th grade level. Especially when he says:

2. What the hell is with this "Religious Zeal" your people seem to have? If anything an Imperial culture would be more agnostic or down right atheist because religion tends to be for ignorant people who don't understand science, which obviously your Icarans do.

That is about the most ignorant viewpoint I've ever heard. Most people I know who are religious (not fanatical but religious) are by no means ignorant. In fact, they're usually quite well learned and it's usually the opposite. Believing in God does NOT mean you don't believe in science. Those who totally disregard religion are generally the ignorant ones. Those people don't believe anything until science says so; even if it takes 10,000 years for science to "prove" it. Sooooo closed minded and superior. Bah!!!!!

Some people should really not open their mouths (or touch their keyboards) - it makes them sound really silly.

[Starhawk]

See that's the thing that actually kind of confused me the most I mean granted I'm no quantum physisist but I am also not ignorant and I am religious.

But The part about being a good "light read" for "kids" is the part that hurt the most I mean I didn't think my writing was that shallow hrm.

[Hunpecked]

Starhawk writes:

"That hurt."

Two thoughts come to mind:

(1) Everybody's a critic. On the Netflix site I routinely see customer reviews ranging from one to five stars...for the same movie. Ditto for book reviews on Amazon.

(2) Even the best have to start somewhere. I once read a very early story by Isaac Asimov and found it rather, er, unpromising. He got a lot better.

Certainly if Starhawk's story is to become more than just fanfic, it needs considerable polishing, much revision, and a good editor. As fanfic, however, it's fine as is. And compared to the Jim Theis story mentioned in another thread, it's Shakespeare.

With regard to the other points, I agree with most of what El_Phil wrote. Here are a few comments of my own:

1. (Star Trek) I saw very little resemblance to anything in Star Trek; certainly not the Federation or its "Mirror, Mirror" evil twin.

5. (romance) In a navy with mixed crews, romance is inevitable. I've read, for example, that in the modern US Navy, some 10% of female crewmembers are pregnant at the end of a cruise (the rest used birth control ). I've also read of considerable offshore "fraternizing" during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Since "From the Beginning" includes many cultural and social elements, romantic episodes aren't out of place (even if certain war fans among us find them boring).

The romantic writing needs some polish, of course; what I've read seems a bit Hollywood-ish. And barring some advanced Icaran beautification technology, the vast majority of Icaran military personnel would probably be pretty ordinary looking. In behavior, I'd expect female crew to be something closer to a female R. Lee Ermey (the DI in "Full Metal Jacket") or "Stormin Norman" Schwartzkopf than to "Dizzy" or "Carmen" in "Starship Troopers". Think "Vasquez" in "Aliens".

6. (winning easily) From the story and side posts I got the impression that the early campaigns went well, but the Icarans met stiffer opposition later; there were some horrific descriptions of Icaran ship losses and heavy casualties among some fleet elements. I also seem to recall more than one period when the empire suffered substantial mineral shortages (tell me about it!).

7. (pacification) When a whole city, continent, or world is subject to immediate destruction for the transgressions of a few, I suspect the locals would be falling all over themselves to help root out any remaining rebels.

9. (dull battles) This point has some merit, but not because of the nature of SEIV battle. Personally I LOVE the broadside-to-broadside depictions of combat from the age of sail (e.g. "Master and Commander"). Air-sea battles from WW II could certainly be dramatic (e.g. Midway), but were often just slaughters (e.g. the sinking of Repulse, Prince of Wales, Musashi, and Yamato, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, the Battle off Cape Engano, etc.). IMHO the gun battles were at least as exciting, if not more so (the point blank night battles in the Solomons, the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, the Battle of the Denmark Strait, etc.).

However, even the most exciting battle can be dull if poorly described. As others have suggested, it's not necessary (and is sometimes counterproductive) to follow game events too closely. If a game battle is a lopsided one-salvo victory, its fictional description can be "sexed up" into a desperate hours-long stuggle with failing shields, damaged armor, rescues of crippled ships, and even a few losses that didn't actually occur in the game.

A note on sci-fi fighters: "The Unknown Critic" seems to be a die-hard fan of the George Lucas "WW II in Space" school of space combat. In real life, spacecraft can't do aerobatics in a vacuum. In real life, aircraft have an advantage over surface ships because they operate in an entirely different medium. But even in fiction, space is space is space; "fighters" operate in the same medium as everything else and are therefore just smaller versions of conventional spacecraft. In a fictional universe where bigger is better, "fighters" are at the very bottom of the pecking order.

10. (capships rule) Unless there are multiple specialized roles (e.g. RL ASW, AA defense) or some efficiency of smaller scale, it's pure gimmickry to throw in various combat ship sizes just for entertainment value. Given fictional technology (warp drive, efficiency of large scale), 20th Century shipbuilding conventions need not apply.

11. (boring between battles) War has been described as "hours of boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror" (or something like that). In other words, any one individual, ship, fleet, planet, etc. will experience far more "peace" than war, even in the fiercest conflict. If an author chooses to include "peaceful" interludes in a war story/novel, the reader is free to skip over them. As I recall, Herman Wouk's "The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" were a lot more peace than war. Ditto for "War and Peace". For nonstop action, see a "Matrix" movie or read a Marvel comic book.

17. (dumb admirals) For a good overview of military incompetence throughout history, see Charles M. Fair's "From the Jaws of Victory", 1972. War is probably the most complex of all human endeavors, so it's not surprising that mere humans are less than perfect at it.

19. (no R&R) Given advanced Icaran entertainment technology (holodecks?) and the luxury of selecting unusually adaptable crews from "billions and billions" of candidates, I can see Icaran crews easily going without "shore leave" for extended periods. Alternatively, even on restive conquered worlds, the Icarans could make extensive safety zones for crew R&R; if they conquered Earth, for example, they might appropriate Australia and evacuate all but the most docile natives.

To summarize: Compared to professional writing, Starhawk's story predictably has a number of shortcomings. However, I think "The Unknown Critic's" assessment is wide of the mark on most of its points. I've been enjoying the story for what it is (amateur fanfic) and look forward to more.

[Starhawk]

Hey thanks for the input you guys I know my writing style needs more work but that is why I started writing this fanfic in the first place, to polish both my skills and my Characters/Cultures before I wrote a real full fledged book that people would pay to read.
I wrote out a plan of action when it came to how I want to write because I read on a lot of those "self publishing" sites that you need a plan of action and an idea of how you want your story to develope before you actually put "pen to paper".

As far as your points Hunpecked I'll respond by the numbers so I can have an "appropriate" placing for them and not just ramble

1. THANK YOU! I mean where do you see my guys assassinating each other to gain rank? I mean yes the captains and Admirals have their own personal guards but they are not really that much there to protect the captain from the crew as much as they are traditional and they go with the captain whenever they leave ship And YES they always carry sidearms (and marines and army always carry knives too) but they don't use them on each other!

5. Well to be honest with you Hunpecked I'm not all that experienced with romance as I've only asked two girls out since I reached dating age (only two that interested me)
The One said yes before thinking about the fact that she's my Kung Fu instructor's daughter which means NO lol
And the other I literally asked out a day late because someone else asked her out on Tuesday I asked her on wensday hehehe.
So I admit that could definately use polish, but as far as the tough women, Yeah I realized I was making some of them to dizzyish so I made Admiral Tanyra Bright Supreme Navy commander and gave a Woman command of both Home Fleet (Lin) and 5th fleet, though I haven't followed home fleet much because they've just been busy squashing worlds remaining loyal to their empires within Icara though I suppose that could be an interesting story point.
I am a big fan of strong tough women who don't take crap (look back to the first girl I asked out lol she could and has kicked my arse) so I will definately try to fix the "girlish" feel to them.
As far as beauty goes as I said I based parts of Lin on someone I've met and so the good looks comes from that.
I don't think I've ever really described the looks of the other female characters, Fowler was cute but not pretty or gorgious and Tanya is in her 70s (thought looks probobly 30 at oldest) so hmmmm.

AND I HATED CARMEN GAWD I wanted her to be the one to die not Diz, at least Diz didn't just scream and cry and play "pricktease" to every guy in the movie (rolleyes) so I definately don't want my chracters turning out like her lol.

6. Thanks I mean I tried to put the "devestating" effect that some of these seemingly minor losses actually had on the war front I mean if that guy had stopped and looked at the casualties from a single "minor" battle (over 89,000 in the one battle in under three hours!) I don't think he would have said that I wasn't losing enough ships, especially because yeah though I've destroyed a lot more of their ships then they have of mine all I did was open the range for them to build the latest high tech warships they have instead of leaving some of the older junkers lying around.
And yes mineral shortages have plagued the Icarans practically the whole story, which is in part why the offensives stalled up, I didn't have the resources to keep taking worlds that I'd have to upgrade just to get a profi from.

7. Yeah that's what my feeling was, that and you wouldn't really have the chance for "guerilla" warfare because if I see you shoot down a transport plane or blow up a convoy in the woods I'm just going to drop a baby nuke on the woods and get you out of my hair with it.

9. Well in part I wanted to show the "lopsided victory" and how it effects the morale of both the Icarans and their enemies, in a way it hurts Icaran morale because these aren't xenos your exterminating in the millions they're fellow humans who never stood a chance.
I also intended it to some respect to show the inherent cruelty of war that my characters are not the star trek "let's give them a chance to surrender" and then feel guilty when they don't and you have to kill them, the Icarans are the type that goes "good we outnumber them, crush them now." type of people....and in war is there any other type?
And those lopsided battles are quickly coming to a close as the invasion of the Mantis kingdom began, as I said my 3rd fleet was driven out without engaging because of the sheer size of the forces the Mantis put against me, so I should have some seriously interesting battles coming up in the near future, especially since unlike the Anderman the Mantis are gaining worlds every turn not losing them.

Note on fighters: I was thinking that as well, fighters can probobly do a little more maneuvering then a capital ship but for the most part they'd still have to come in 'streight and level' to eving begin an attack run, and while they were doing that the cap ships would dust them.

10. I used the "dreadnought and superdreadnought" only as a story point not just because of game physics but also because IMHO why would an Empire that has rather highly mobile forces "warp point openers in this case" make small ships in quantity unless they were specialized when they can not stand in a line of battle with the bigger nastier ships I mean let's face it a single SD can crush 3-4 battleships if it fires to disable them on the first volley and to kill on the second, I do have small specialized fleet ships that are both battleship size:
The Healing Way fleet maintenance ship and the Road Paver minesweeper/point defense ship.

11. As I said I felt the reader could learn more about the Icaran people by their way of life when they aren't fighting.

17. That's a very good point, wars are complicated blighters where even the slightest mistake can lead to a biiiiig! foulup and even the possible loss of a battle (fortunately I haven't "lost" any battles in a while)

19. Movie Night! Icarans are much more social than Star Trek people they don't just sit in their quarters listening to classical music with perfect posture, watch lame plays or have sex with holograms-which btw ewwww-.
Capital ship's have gyms and even small pools (about half what we would consider standard size for a rec center), they have a small theatre where holomovies (think 3d imaxish) are played and where the crew can socialize and get together, they even have small "restaurant" style mess halls designed to make the crews feel more at home and comfortable instead of just being around polished deck all day evey day.
And of course when possible Icarans have their own form of USO shows with concerts and other things of that sort, not to mention intership competitions which are heald during downtimes.

I mean considering the average Icaran fleet (1st 2nd and soon 3rd and 5th) have about a hundred SDs that's over 610,000 people per fleet! which means there are a lot of things to do to occupy your mind.

That's one thing I never got about ST all people ever seemed to do was sit in their quarters with perfect posture and listen to classical music, either that or go have sex with some of the easy space women that were out there every once and a while lol....I mean how boring can you get in life!


Oh and as you guys may have guessed by reading his critique the "Unknown Critic" as Hunpecked called him is a die hard Trekkie with a mild liking of Star Wars.

[Slick]

In all things, there's a nice way to communicate your thoughts and some not-so-nice-ways. Don't get bogged down by the negative criticism. Take it all in, evaluate, and change what you think should be changed. One risk of putting up your work and asking for reviews is that someone will hurt your feelings.

[Fyron]

Note on fighters: I was thinking that as well, fighters can probobly do a little more maneuvering then a capital ship but for the most part they'd still have to come in 'streight and level' to eving begin an attack run, and while they were doing that the cap ships would dust them.

Not really. Take everything you know about jet planes and throw it out the window. In space, facing is wholely irrelevant as far as inertia is concerned. You can quite easily face your target and fire at it while moving in any direction. Fire some side thrusters to change your facing without affecting your direction of travel significantly. Go watch some Babylon 5 episodes with fighter combats. They did it rather well in that show.

The difference between tiny craft, such as fighters, and gigantic craft, such as dreadnoughts, is that the tiny craft do not have much mass to whip about, combined with being rather small. The stress and shearing forces caused to the ship are far, far more drastic when you have a massive vessel compared to a small one. The small ones can execute wacky maneuvers far more easily than can a huge vessel. If you were to try and take a dreadnought and rotate it 180 degrees in a few seconds, you would probably rip it in half (or many more pieces). Maybe if it was a perfect sphere (or perhaps ellipsoidal even) you could design it to be structurally stable enough to perform fighter-like manuevers, but definitely not some other shape. Odd shapes become harder and harder to make reinforced and resitent to rapid maneuvers as the object gets more massive.

Make sure not to base anything on Star Trek. They have a cheesy "warp field makes mass negligible" effect going.

[El_Phil]

Yep definetly B5 for watching it. For how to chuck it into the story I do like the FreeSpace2 style. There's some line in the editing manual along the lines of making the cap ship combat roughly even with the fighters/bombers the deciding factor. So one decent bombing run can tip the balance, one 'suicide king' turret run can knock effectively take a cap ship out of the battle.

As for variable ship size, hmmm... Well you wouldn't need full DNs everywhere, just in your main fleet(s). There would be smaller ships for anti-pirate duty, convoy escort, etc. Plus say (battle)cruisers which are faster but less guns/armour. Dedicated anti-fighter escort vessels as well maybe, because your aren't going to waste space on a ship of the line with too much anti-fighter weaponry are you.

For ships of the line, if you want to use the Royal Navy system then Dreadnought is big primary gun only while Battleships have primaries and smaller secondaries for taking out yappy things.

Mind you, when (if ) I carry on my stab I do plan to use most of the above ideas..

[Starhawk]

Fyron what i mean by "coming in streight and level" is that the fighter would still HAVE to approach in a streight line like any other ship it can't be dancing about while it's just approaching it's target because it would take forever to get anywhere lol and since a capital ship's guns outrange a fighters by a significant margin the fighters would get pounded before they got into a range where the "Dodging" and whirling would become effective.

Actually as stated I do have Light Raiders of the Hunt class and Artemis class SM raiders designed for capital ship steals. However since mainly I've been focusing on the main battle fleets I didn't much focus on the Light Raiders who've been stealing a whole load of colony ships for me

Battlecruisers, I don't have the economy to support both a battle line and a patrol squadron and so I have chosen the primary battle line.

Convoys actually if you think about it would probobly have a dreadnought or superdreadnought escorting it depending on how big the convoy is and where it is headed

And yeah I have 2 battleship sized craft, one is a point defense craft the other is a fleet maintenance ship that has repair bays and the like.

I am not a firm beleiver in throwing in small ships just for pizazz effect since as said by Hunpecked there is no need to follow the modern ship design requirements.

Although yet another thing that never made sense ST wise, why does starfleet build so dang many classes of starship? I mean most modern navies build 1 or 2 class of ship per size grouping not 10 or more lol.
And why build such itty bitty ships when they clearly show that a Galaxy class (battleship) can juke and swing just as quick as a Defiant class (destroyer)

[El_Phil]

The cap ships main guns may outrange a fighters but such guns wouldn't have the fast tracking you'd need to hit a rapidly dodging fighter. Unless you've got some funky tech. of course. Besides a fighter should be a hell of alot faster than a cap ship, even when dodging and weaving, due to having a tiny fraction of the mass.

Frontline convoy maybe a ship of the line escort, but for anti-pirate duty it would be massive overkill, hence smaller ships. Also for a high speed convoy a DN would/could just slow things down. It depends upon the threat what escort is appropriate, so flexibility is good.

ST tends to keep ships around for decades so once something is built it stays. But you would build the newest design ship in your yards not a xx year old design, hence lots of different class ships that are similar sized.

Small ships for all the reasons above AND why build a BB sized science vessel? AND the Defiant was just guns no exploration role hence alot smaller.

[Starhawk]

El_Phil said:
The cap ships main guns may outrange a fighters but such guns wouldn't have the fast tracking you'd need to hit a rapidly dodging fighter. Unless you've got some funky tech. of course. Besides a fighter should be a hell of alot faster than a cap ship, even when dodging and weaving, due to having a tiny fraction of the mass.

Well as shown even in Babylon 5 (which btw I am a big fan of) a beam weapon just slices so you make a sweep with your beam cannons your bound to hurt a bunch of the fighters until they come within range of your PD cannons then they'll get torn up by those thus fighter=useless. Especially when (like me) you have at least two dedicated 24 PD cannon Point Defense ships in your fleets.

Frontline convoy maybe a ship of the line escort, but for anti-pirate duty it would be massive overkill, hence smaller ships. Also for a high speed convoy a DN would/could just slow things down. It depends upon the threat what escort is appropriate, so flexibility is good.

Well I've never mentioned non frontline convoys so that's a moot point, especailly since the only real convoys I have right now are transport fleets carrying State Security forces and those all have SD escorts for obvious reasons.

ST tends to keep ships around for decades so once something is built it stays. But you would build the newest design ship in your yards not a xx year old design, hence lots of different class ships that are similar sized.

Another thing that is illogical I wouldn't keep an 80 year old ship in my fleet if I have a state of the art 2-10 year old ship to replace it, especially since in Star Trek money has nothing to do with it.

Small ships for all the reasons above AND why build a BB sized science vessel? AND the Defiant was just guns no exploration role hence alot smaller.

Ah yes but in star trek there are "no pirates" out there except the Maquis who were alll butchered by Cardies and Jem'He'Dar.

The Enterprise E actually is smaller than the D which is funny considering it's newer and an "Advanced Explorer" which as we've all seen by her firepower in Starfleet "Advanced Explorer" means "Battleship" lol.

I find it funny however that the defiant apparently packs more firepower then a freakin galaxy and yet they didn't create any more Defiants or outfit capital ships with pulse phaser cannons which are apparently much more powerful then a standard beam phaser.

Anyway my point is when it comes to the story so far I've had no need to mention light raiders or raiders and no need to mention my handful of BCs that are still patrolling my frontier sysems (2 last I counted) so meh.

Although I was thinking of producing a few battleships to act as a rapid strike force