How humanity can affect the war, by turning the moon into a deathstar.

[Mk_C]

If you don't suppose that the two dominant powers of a civilization that's had hundreds of centuries of space war can't figure out some tricks that armchair speculators from a civilization that has not yet fired a single shot in anger in space can come up with

Laser arrays aside, why not?

[Werra]

If you don't suppose that the two dominant powers of a civilization that's had hundreds of centuries of space war can't figure out some tricks that armchair speculators from a civilization that has not yet fired a single shot in anger in space can come up with

Laser arrays aside, why not?

Because if you actually look at it, technological and scientific progress isn't so much pushed by individual geniuses but by the group producing said geniuses. Therefore it's unlikely that a whole culture just misses an obvious application of a technology. The longer the technology is in use, the less likely a continued oversight is.

[Ithekro]

Well, most of Humanities technology is two technology levels behind that of the current known major civilizations (aside from the Historians who are likely a level beyond them). Earth tech is just developing particle beam weapons, while the Umiak have plasma focuses and the Loroi have just getting similar technology via the Historians. Earth hasn't fought any interstellar wars, meanwhile the first Loroi war with alien species was around the time of the Seventh Crusade on Earth and the Mongol Empire was at its height. They have had a lot of space combat experience to build up from and technological advancement based on what worked and what didn't work. How much of this was left over precursor tech and how much was their own is unclear. But they do have a thousand years of space warfare experience over Earth's none.

[Mk_C]

Because if you actually look at it, technological and scientific progress isn't so much pushed by individual geniuses

Of course, but...

Thereforeit's unlikely that a whole culture just misses an obvious application of a technology

...I don't see how that follows. In any case, we can of course ignore for a second that technological and scientific progress is determined neither by brilliant individuals nor by groups of such individuals, but by challenges faced by the advancing society in practical venues and means available to solving those challenges, with challenges and means both being different in various civilizations, like how Deinar had no petrochemicals, or like how every non-human civilization in the Bubble is involved with a lot of precursor tech nudging them along in specific directions, or like how Sister Worlds developed orbital slight and then sat on it for centuries until their Farseers discovered each other - which would mean different technological foci and approaches among such societies even if everyone's thinking was exactly the same - and they explicitly don't. We can also not focus too much on the fact that this exact thing with continuously ignored technological applications happened dozens of times in the one RL example of technological progression that we have.

What I really want to point out in this case is that neither side of the war happens to be a "whole culture", academically or otherwise. They are both multiple-species communities consisting of a number of subservient civilizations and a single shamelessly tech-poaching militant overlordsleadership society. The latter engaging in tech-poaching specifically because on their own they are way better at missing obvious applications and developments of technology than they themselves find acceptable, so they have Floaters and Delrias and Morat and Tenuki etc etc to their proper science for them. Which they do well, but this also comes back to the "whole culture" problem - the inter-disciplinary science of both Union and Hierarchy gotta suck. It's kinda hard to develop a proper electromagnetic field theory and probe out it's finer technological applications when you don't really have a unified community of EM-field development - instead you have a Jellyfish EM-field school that gives you neat impellers, a furry thing EM-field school that gives you neat particle beams, etc - and it seems like those schools don't talk to each other a lot. The central axis that unites the subjugated communities suffers from blue babe academia being very fragmented and inertial in one case, and shells suffering from an inherent creativity shortage in the other one, and neither do their subjects advance their technology in a natural and consistent way, as they have to focus on what their masterschief partners demand from them.

The longer the technology is in use, the less likely a continued overlooking is.

Because everyone just continuously screens past technologies - especially inapplicable and obsolete ones - for new applications. Just fine-combs them erryday.

Now certainly I doubt that this sort of stuff will happen in the plot - because it doesn't fit - but there is no in-setting reason for why it fundamentally couldn't happen, as the setting itself is the perfect set up for entire civilizations missing some less obvious technological applications of their knowledge for someone else to suddenly discover them.

[Mk_C]

But they do have a thousand years of space warfare experience over Earth's none.

Millennia of martial tradition cease to mean anything useful at all when the context of warfare changes. And it already changed for shells and blu elves - they've gotten themselves into a completely new kind of interstellar warfare, and the boundless wealth of their ancestral experience has only failed them so far. To the point that the current Azerein is noteworthy for going "alright fuck the thousand years of space warfare experience - this is a new thing, we gotta do it in a new way" so hard it sent a significant part of the Diadem into a fit of autistic screeching. And the Hierarchy is not far behind, what's with the current offensive and the emergence of Shell-that-Learns. They are all learning in a medium new to them now, perhaps more often restruicted by their past experience than helped by it, and dismissing the perspective of outsider upstarts leads down the path of

Oh vould you kalm down, von Bock! What kan zis Aziatic horde of tekhnologikly backwards DER BAUERN pozzibly unterstant aboot das Deutsche wunderwaffe und jenius of VERNICHTUNGSKRIEG honed by ze centruries of Prussian kriegstradition?

[Werra]

@MK_C
The Loroi have managed to reach interstellar travel and won several interstellar wars. They obviously discover and implement technologies just fine. You mistake their lack of speed of advancement for a lack of rigor in application. That they derived key portions of their knowledge from examples of a precursor species doesn't really matter, as most of the precursor technology was not in working order. Even for working pieces, the Loroi had to rediscover and reimplement all the surrounding technologies, industries, material sciences and underlying principles on their own.

the current Azerein is noteworthy for going "alright fuck the thousand years of space warfare experience - this is a new thing, we gotta do it in a new way"

The changes are in society and industry, not in how the war is actually waged.

[Mk_C]

The Loroi have managed to reach interstellar travel.

Yes, but with a very different incentive than it was, say, for humans. While having only the ones that were present for humans, they instead sat around with their thumbs up their asses.

They obviously discover and implement technologies just fine.

Certainly. They just do it differently. Every society in canon does it differently - this difference is the reason for why Loroi fly on Floater drives shooting Delrias beams and Historian pulses.

You mistake their lack of speed of advancement for a lack of rigor in application

I'm not sure academic process can be dissected like that.

That they derived key portions of their knowledge from examples of a precursor species doesn't really matter

Obviously it does matter. It matters a lot. Do you fancy that humans finding a non-working FTL drive before discovering it on their own would have no effect on how they eventually come around to understanding it? Reverse-engineering advanced tech does not just give you science points. It presents you with ready solutions, often to the questions you didn't even know how to ask, that you either take - and follow a new path different from the one you would've followed on your own - or reject, losing nearly all the potential gain from the artefact. If you take it, you will eventually uncover "all the surrounding technologies, industries, material sciences and underlying principles" - but that development will be guided towards a pre-determined solution, and thus will take a different path from a development that did not involve reverse-engineering. And yes - if the Union presents TCA with their tech, it will be an issue for the human academia.

The changes are in society and industry, not in how the war is actually waged.

There is no difference between those two. It's a total war, society and industry are as involved in the process as the front line is. There is nothing left that is not a part of the war machine in one way or another.
And even concerning specifically combat and operations - there are brand new weapons (none of that experience is for tactics based around Historian pulse cannons), brand new ship design paradigm (remember why Tempest is obsolete?) and brand new strategy - Greywind external policy, Tithric resolution, and even after all those Sunfall's genius has only lead her forces to the disaster of the Semoset offensive, and establishment of the Steppes stalemate - a new status quo. And before any side really got a good grip on this new status quo we're observing it's collapse live right now. Loroi don't even really have the first-hand experience of Delrias and Mannadi wars - those veterans are long dead, and neither they have a good chunk of first-hand Semoset experience - Sunfall and her best girls are also dead, even the proper understanding of those failures being in the hands of living artefacts like Stillstorm, who may or may not be capable of properly moving on and learning from what they've been through. What the Union at large has is merely the approximate second-hand understanding of the now hopelessly defunct doctrines, which if applied directly would serve them as well as Gamelin served France in 1940. Greywind seems to be smarter than this, but she's not flawless. She's old - ancient by human standards - as I imagine the majority of the Diadem are, and as such she was shaped by a very different, pre-war era. Her revolutionary approach itself is the outcome of her outsider Mizol perspective being introduced to the Azerein throne where it was previously unknown. However well the Union manages on their own, they certainly have a lot to learn from other outsiders. Not just humans - Floaters, Barsam, Neridi probably could teach Loroi a lot themselves. But the latter don't seem to be inclined to listen to them, which might threaten them with eventual downfall.

[Mjolnir]

Keep in mind that it's one thing to generate a laser beam capable of inflicting damage across light seconds of distance. It's quite a different matter to do so from a maneuvering warship that doesn't have hours to wait for vibrations to damp down after every movement, and to actually reliably hit a target at that distance. And for the incoherent laser array idea, you're asking to not only hit a target, but to precisely overlap the laser spots on the target's hull. I don't find it unreasonable for this to be beyond their capabilities, or to require so many tradeoffs that it becomes impractical to use in battle.

[Mk_C]

Keep in mind that it's one thing to generate a laser beam capable of inflicting damage across light seconds of distance. It's quite a different matter to do so from a maneuvering warship that doesn't have hours to wait for vibrations to damp down after every movement, and to actually reliably hit a target at that distance.

I mean, Loroi are supposedly capable of that already with Da Loom. All while the plasma stream doesn't exactly move at the velocity of light in vacuum, like a laser does. Obviously Da Loom itself would be very likely to miss a vessel doing evasive maneuvers at it's maximum range of 2 LS, as most targets would be entirely capable of evasion that turns their predicted trajectory for this kind of a shot into quite a cone, but from the abstractions we have from the Outsider adaptation of Attack Vector: Tactical, we can take that Da Loom has a somewhat like 1/2 hit chance against size 5 (superheavy) targets 1 LS away, and supposedly at least a 1/12 chance of hitting a similar size target 2 LS away (the to-hit table for beam weapon ranges doesn't go that far, and obviously at those ranges the damage goes way down, but still), all while Da Loom is not even mounted on a stabilized turret or anything - it's aimed by pivoting the whole bloody ship. Which makes sense - having some capability to pile hurt on huge targets from serious ranges is the whole reason for why Da Loom is a thing.

And for the incoherent laser array idea, you're asking to not only hit a target, but to precisely overlap the laser spots on the target's hull. I don't find it unreasonable for this to be beyond their capabilities, or to require so many tradeoffs that it becomes impractical to use in battle.

Can't be much harder than focusing pulse cannons in a single battery on a single target within it's maneuvering cone. Much less a volley of pulse cannon shots from batteries on different nacelles. Which is like, standard procedure. They already manage to pretty much pin a fly to a wall from the next continent, seems reasonable that there wouldn't be much of a problem with pinning it specifically by the wing. A good portion of the beam can be occasionally (or frequently, at max ranges) out of focus, but that's okay - all the presented beam weapons have less than perfect chances of hitting at such ranges, and missing 9/10 shots is hardly a problem if you can keep taking dozens of shots while the enemy if forced to retaliate by glaring angrily. And as far as practicality goes Loroi already use a gun - namely Da Loom - that utilizes sweaty wall-slamming non-consensual and unlubricated intercourse with the firing ship's own energy and heat distribution systems as part of it's nominal operation, so...

What I'm bringing this to is - this kind of target acquisition, tracking and weapons control doesn't seem to be an issue in the setting. If it had been an issue, everyone would be fighting at humie ranges. The main reason for why laser arrays like that don't work always will be "it would mess with how combat works". Going for hard explanations down to quantum mechanical and field theory would only add convolutions, IF Jim and most of us had PhDs in particle physics. And since very few do (certainly not me), it will only serve to drive all of us completely and irrevocably insane.

[MBehave]

The horse stirrup is a example of humans missing an obvious and simple technology for 6000 or so years.
Seriously when you think about it, you have to wonder how people could miss something that seems so obvious and simple.

We have been told that the Loroi technological advancement is hampered by their society and that humans are advancing at a faster rate.

Their is also the changing technology.
Loroi/Umiak had lasers at some point, both races evolved(stole/given) Particle/Plasma weapons.
Neither plasma or particle weapons can have their range extended by having arrays of emitters, it would interfere with each other and actually reduce range. If you are no longer developing laser weapons its quite possible you miss it as its something not applicable to particle/plasma weapons and then be able to retroactively apply it to lasers.

While laser array is better then blasters at specific ranges, its not better then pulse cannons(in damage or size) and it lacks the flexibility turrets give you against an enemy that has heavy shields/armour and likes to get in close.(Umiak)
Its completely believable that races that are upgrading their tech by taking from other races could miss specific design applications, which means Loroi would want to take the laser Array from Terrans for their point defense or even have Terrans produce them if supply lines allowed.

Of course its not my story or universe, this is just how I see things could be done/work in the outsider.

If you don't suppose that the two dominant powers of a civilization that's had hundreds of centuries of space war can't figure out some tricks that armchair speculators from a civilization that has not yet fired a single shot in anger in space can come up with

Laser arrays aside, why not?

Because if you actually look at it, technological and scientific progress isn't so much pushed by individual geniuses but by the group producing said geniuses. Therefore it's unlikely that a whole culture just misses an obvious application of a technology. The longer the technology is in use, the less likely a continued oversight is.

[Arioch]

We've been all up and down this tree before.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2409&p=34761#p34761

Also, the "Humans proposed this in the 1960's at TL6, but it never occurred to the aliens before and they're at TL11" is perhaps one of the dumbest tropes in science fiction.

[Werra]

You mistake their lack of speed of advancement for a lack of rigor in application

I'm not sure academic process can be dissected like that.

It can. The most prominent example for that is the believe that war is good for scientific advancement. Truth is, the scientific theories are developed in peacetime. In wartime, scientific progress usually stops in favor of applying the recent scientific discoveries to practical effects.

Obviously it does matter. It matters a lot. Do you fancy that humans finding a non-working FTL drive before discovering it on their own would have no effect on how they eventually come around to understanding it? Reverse-engineering advanced tech does not just give you science points. It presents you with ready solutions, often to the questions you didn't even know how to ask, that you either take - and follow a new path different from the one you would've followed on your own - or reject, losing nearly all the potential gain from the artefact. If you take it, you will eventually uncover "all the surrounding technologies, industries, material sciences and underlying principles" - but that development will be guided towards a pre-determined solution, and thus will take a different path from a development that did not involve reverse-engineering. And yes - if the Union presents TCA with their tech, it will be an issue for the human academia.

I would appreciate if you didn't chop up my sentences. That the Loroi didn't have a lot of working examples of technology is hugely important, as it means they still had to puzzle together the principles behind the technology and solve all engineering challenges of material sciences and industrial manufacturing themselves. Which is all part of the application of existing technology, for which we have no reason to assume that the Loroi are bad at. In fact, that they don't advance very quickly speaks to their care in exhausting possible applications before they move on to the next technology.
So to reiterate, Loroi being bad at new discoveries says nothing negative about their skill at working with what they have. They have laser technology, they've used it for centuries, they've stress tested it in hot wars. The Loroi very likely have a near perfect understanding of what they can do with their lasers.

There is no difference between those two. It's a total war, society and industry are as involved in the process as the front line is. There is nothing left that is not a part of the war machine in one way or another.

Ok. If you don't see how a millenia old martial culture, with actual experience in interstellar warfare is a distinct advantage in an interstellar war, then you don't see it. That's fine, but I believe it to be a massive oversight of yours.

However well the Union manages on their own, they certainly have a lot to learn from other outsiders. Not just humans - Floaters, Barsam, Neridi probably could teach Loroi a lot themselves. But the latter don't seem to be inclined to listen to them, which might threaten them with eventual downfall.

The Loroi have been happy to adopt technologies developed by their client species for centuries. As a whole, the Loroi military has proven itself to be very flexible and willing to adapt in the current war.

[Werra]

The horse stirrup is a example of humans missing an obvious and simple technology for 6000 or so years.
Seriously when you think about it, you have to wonder how people could miss something that seems so obvious and simple.

Humans as a whole haven't missed stirrups for 6.000 years. You'd have to limit it to people that were in a position to field appreciable numbers of cavalry. Even amongst those, you'd have to cut out those whose circumstances prohibited the use of cavalry in heavy combat duties, such as nearly all Greek city states thanks to their rocky terrain or the Egyptians, thanks to their reliance on chariots or the Romans who delegated cavalry to scouting in favor of massed, heavy infantry. The rest was subject to a generally high turnover in ancient civilisations, which meant that a given people were likely only in the position to field stirruped cavalry in a way that benefitted them for maybe a century or so.
This is ignoring that human evolution continued merely in ancient times and intellectual capacity had to grow as a prerequisite to new technologies and social institutions. Oh and also that we lack a complete understanding of ancient technologies. It wasn't uncommon for new ideas to vanish again if their founding polities died out due to other causes.

[Siber]

The stirrup analogy isn't really directly applicable here anyway. To me this is more like imagining a culture that just invented the stirrup supposing a future where war is conducted with motorcycles, but that they could revolutionize it by bringing the stirrup to it.

Also, the "Humans proposed this in the 1960's at TL6, but it never occurred to the aliens before and they're at TL11" is perhaps one of the dumbest tropes in science fiction.

Exactly this if the Loroi and Umiak were so incompetent as to not come up with these ideas in the hundreds of years they've been fighting space wars, then they'd have almost certainly been topped already by someone who did come up with them. It'd be like a fantasy story where two empires are fighting war with tens of thousands of archers and the hero turns the tide by suggesting "maybe we should make the arrows pointy?"

This kind of plot turn is to me excusable in some cases, such as when a story is one of the first exploring that idea or intended to introduce an unfamiliar audience to it. A fair number of the classic sci-fi touchstone short stories were like this. But as a plot point in a story like Outsider it'd make me roll my eyes out of my head.

[Arioch]

This kind of plot turn is to me excusable in some cases, such as when a story is one of the first exploring that idea or intended to introduce an unfamiliar audience to it. A fair number of the classic sci-fi touchstone short stories were like this. But as a plot point in a story like Outsider it'd make me roll my eyes out of my head.

The one that comes to mind is Niven's short story "Neutron Star", in which no one (including the ultra-tech Puppeteers) understands gravitational tides, even though humans have known about them since at least the 1960's when the story was written. In the story, reason offered is that the Puppeteer homeworld didn't have a large moon, and so they didn't ever understand tidal forces (not that this explains how humanity didn't know about it either). Niven later admitted that it was silly (and that the main character couldn't possibly have survived the scenario), and he retconned it when the story was collected into the Crashlander novel.

[Mk_C]

We've been all up and down this tree before.
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2409&p=34761#p34761

But this time MBehave dug out a friggin lazzor array, and he himself noted that it would explicitly not work within the setting.

Also, the "Humans proposed this in the 1960's at TL6, but it never occurred to the aliens before and they're at TL11" is perhaps one of the dumbest tropes in science fiction.

Dumbest, maybe. But it's also aggressively hilarious. And reality's wonder is at it's peak when it proves how it can work out in ways that are infinitely dumber than the limits of our imagination could ever fathom. In any case, as I noted myself - this sort of stuff does not seem to fit the plot anyhow. If our protagonist ever does make some sort of a personal wide-effect impact on the Union's practices, I'd rather suspect that it would be something cultural, and certainly not applied tech. But I have no problem picturing something like Loroi only picking up microwave ovens from Neridi despite using microwave radars for centuries. Because they are not big on cooking, aside from Perrein cultures, whose cooking is quirky and peculiar. A jump from observation of microwave effects on water molecules to culinary applications becomes less likely. And even if it happens - a Loroi military R&D organization seems less likely to dabble in commercial consumer products like Raytheon did, and military technology information could be generally much more controlled and compartmentalized. But such applications with their eventual development can find their way back into weapons, like microwave Active Denial Systems. Maybe Loroi could reach the same things by other paths. Or maybe not. And such little things can happen with everything.

A future where war is conducted with motorcycles, but that they could revolutionize it by bringing the stirrup to it.

A future SPACE war conducted with SPACE motorcycles by SPACE Japanese juvenile delinquent gangs. Alas - a concept way too awesome for this sinful humanity. We'll just have to cope with Requiem and 40k.

Exactly this if the Loroi and Umiak were so incompetent as to not come up with these ideas in the hundreds of years they've been fighting space wars, then they'd have almost certainly been topped already by someone who did come up with them.

But missing such things is not necessarily an indicator of incompetence, it could be as well an outcome of a series of circumstances and conditions. And it takes the IF of there being someone who has all the prerequisites for toppling them, aside from possibly some very niche tech. And in the period between the ascendancy of the current political makeup of the bubble and someone coming around for the toppling, a lot of things could take place - it's a period of it's own.

[Mk_C]

The horse stirrup is a example of humans missing an obvious and simple technology for 6000 or so years.
Seriously when you think about it, you have to wonder how people could miss something that seems so obvious and simple.

Gunpowder existing alongside sufficient metallurgy for producing cast bronze cannons without any cannons being made for centuries.
Entirely functional breech-loaded cannons existing since XV century, but not gaining any traction until XIX century.
Steamboats being separated by over a century from implementation of screw propellers on them, despite screw being known from antiquity and widely used for various applications alongside paddle-wheel steamboats.
Medical aseptic being proposed in mid XIX century, gaining strong theoretical foundation a decade later, and only being recognized as a necessary element of medical practice in early XX century.
Aircraft carriers being possible since 1920s but taking until mid WWII to be recognized as the major force of an open-seas navy.
Basics of Mendelian genetic theory being utterly missed by the academia and only getting rediscovered and exhumed decades after Mendel's death.
Hell, the ceaseless on-and-off development processes with actual IRL military laser applications in US and USSR/Russian Federation.

The list goes on and on. There is a huge leap between a technological solution becoming possible within a society's paradigm and it's actual discovery,. Between it's discovery and it's recognition, there's another leap. And yet another one between recognition and successful application. And another one between singular applications and widespread implementation. The process can stumble on any of those for any number of sensible or ridiculous reasons. And then suddenly proceed again for an even more ridiculous reason.

Humans as a whole haven't missed stirrups for 6.000 years. You'd have to limit it to people that were in a position to field appreciable numbers of cavalry. Even amongst those, you'd have to cut out those whose circumstances prohibited the use of cavalry in heavy combat duties, such as nearly all Greek city states thanks to their rocky terrain or the Egyptians, thanks to their reliance on chariots or the Romans who delegated cavalry to scouting in favor of massed, heavy infantry. The rest was subject to a generally high turnover in ancient civilisations, which meant that a given people were likely only in the position to field stirruped cavalry in a way that benefitted them for maybe a century or so.

Yes, that's exactly how humans as a whole missed stirrups for 6.000 years.

This is ignoring that human evolution continued merely in ancient times and intellectual capacity had to grow as a prerequisite to new technologies and social institutions.

I don't think it had anything to do with human evolution, though.

It can. The most prominent example for that is the believe that war is good for scientific advancement. Truth is, the scientific theories are developed in peacetime. In wartime, scientific progress usually stops in favor of applying the recent scientific discoveries to practical effects.

Naaaaah, I'd say it's all more complicated than that, and the scientific process cannot really be separated into qualities of speed, depth, rigour, and creativity. They are all facets of the same process. And neither can theory and practice be really divorced to such a degree.

I would appreciate if you didn't chop up my sentences.

These posts are getting fat as it is.

That the Loroi didn't have a lot of working examples of technology is hugely important, as it means they still had to puzzle together the principles behind the technology and solve all engineering challenges of material sciences and industrial manufacturing themselves.

Well, I addressed that, didn't I:

Reverse-engineering advanced tech does not just give you science points. It presents you with ready solutions, often to the questions you didn't even know how to ask, that you either take - and follow a new path different from the one you would've followed on your own - or reject, losing nearly all the potential gain from the artefact. If you take it, you will eventually uncover "all the surrounding technologies, industries, material sciences and underlying principles" - but that development will be guided towards a pre-determined solution, and thus will take a different path from a development that did not involve reverse-engineering.

Which is all part of the application of existing technology, for which we have no reason to assume that the Loroi are bad at.

Never claimed that they are straight up bad at either discovery or application. Only that their approach is different, giving them certain advantages in some circumstances and disadvantages in others. They didn't build the Floater drive - but they got themselves into a situation where the Floaters eagerly built it for them. Not an easy feat for any society, and certainly impossible for one that is explicitly bad at scientific advancement.

In fact, that they don't advance very quickly speaks to their care in exhausting possible applications before they move on to the next technology.

Or to their society's propensity for homeostasis under some sets of circumstances. Especially for homeostasis where above-mentioned hiccups of scientific advancement regrettably become somewhat more frequent.

So to reiterate, Loroi being bad at new discoveries says nothing negative about their skill at working with what they have.

That's a very arbitrary demarcation, I'd say.

They have laser technology, they've used it for centuries, they've stress tested it in hot wars. The Loroi very likely have a near perfect understanding of what they can do with their lasers.

Unlikely. There can hardly be such a thing as a perfect or near perfect understanding of anything, much less technology.

Ok. If you don't see how a millenia old martial culture, with actual experience in interstellar warfare is a distinct advantage in an interstellar war, then you don't see it.

Wah, nobody gives me a fair shake.

That's fine, but I believe it to be a massive oversight of yours.

I merely explained how reliance on such culture, tradition and experience can prove to be as detrimental as it can be beneficial.

The Loroi have been happy to adopt technologies developed by their client species for centuries.

Poach. Poach their technologies, you mean.

As a whole, the Loroi military has proven itself to be very flexible and willing to adapt in the current war.

Flexibly adapting at the breakneck pace of one dead Azerein at a time.

[Werra]

@MK_C
If you don't claim that the Loroi are bad at applying technology, then whatever does all of that have to do with the Loroi being likely or unlikely to miss an obvious application of a technology which they've made extensive use of for centuries and in several actual wars?

Also

There can hardly be such a thing as a perfect or near perfect understanding of anything, much less technology.

You can duckduckgo how toasters work, you know. Cheeky, I know, but why do you claim obvious falsehoods?
Like any Athenian, Socrates was full of shit. Or his former boy lover Plato was.

And
"Neither can scientific theory and practice be really divorced to such a degree."
Yes, it can. We constantly do it, especially in physics and engineering. The nuclear bomb is maybe the most famous example for just that.

[StarCruiser]

Somehow - this circular argument kinda brings back this old Art Clarke story:

http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clark ... ority.html

[QuakeIV]

The reference to the casaba howitzer was meant as a very clear example of why trying to apply theoretical technology to a fictional setting doesn't make sense because in the fictional universe you are more or less just obliged to assume that that technology doesn't work in whatever fictional universe is currently being regarded.

I am however somewhat resentful of downplaying casaba howitzers, the existing tests for casaba howitzers were purely low cost proof of concept runs, associated with speculation that they could presumably be significantly improved upon. There is no real need for those kinds of weapons at this point so there is no real endeavor to improve on that.