We are not talking about the modern Earth ground military. The Loroi are not the modern United States; they are not a democratic, civilian, free-press, war-hating liberal society that is the world's lone superpower, always assured of total superiority in every conflict, concerned only about the level of human casualties incurred, and caring little about the material cost. The Loroi are a totalitarian, closed, military society without freedoms of press or self-expression in which civilians are second-class citizens, engaged in a total war which they are in very real danger of losing and facing total annihilation. Casualites are never desirable, but they don't drive Loroi military policy in the way that they drive the policy of the United States.anticarrot wrote:Actually in a modern military it isn't.
You would always like for your veteran crews to survive, but starship battles in Outsider are often fought out in nowhere-space where rescue is nearly impossible. In order to be in a position to recover survivors, you have to win the battle and "hold the field"... and even given those conditions, the terrific energies of the drives and weapons involved don't leave much margin of error for fragile organic creatures. Crew safety measures that compromise combat effectiveness don't save any lives, when the victorious enemy watches the survivors die. Crews of a failed vessel most often die... they don't usually live to fight again. The best way to protect your crews is to build a vessel that doesn't get destroyed.
This is a modern Western assumption. It has not been true for most of human history, and is still not true in much of the world where life is cheap and materiel is expensive.anticarrot wrote:Logistically speaking, equipment is far easier to replace then people.
How did this bomb get in point-blank range of the Loroi ship? Any decent warhead at this tech level will destroy a ship at point blank range. The trick is the delivery method.anticarrot wrote:If it can't then a fist-sized 50gigaton antimatter bomb will suddenly make even pesky human torpedoes become much more useful. Even at 40G, it would still take Tempest 5 minutes to escape the lethal zone of a single bomlet.