David Weber’s Honor Harrington novels are really a fictionalisation of the ultimate 4X space strategy game. The Honorverse isn’t just a fictional world, it’s the fictional world of the the 4X strategy game that somebody needs to build.
As epic sci-fi, the ten-plus novels of the Honor Harrington saga are engaging and entertaining, in a light-hearted sort of way, without the deeply thought-provoking stimulus of a Philip K. Dick or a Poul Anderson. The characterisation of Honor herself, the commander who can do no wrong, can be a bit wearing. But what you will also find is detailed recounting of truly epic space battles. battles that are both convincing (within their context) and interesting. They are interesting because their outcome is determined not simply by the fatal-flawlessness of the heroine, but by
- the number and capabilities of the ships available in battle,
- the technological advantages and disadvantages of the warring sides,
- the tactical opportunities that these resources and technologies confer on our glorious commander, and
- the economic and social base of the warring nations, that provides the resources and the technology for each side.
So through the medium of the perfect commander, Weber is able to show off how an economic base can generate technology, technologies can enable tactics, and correct exploitation of those tactics can achieve victory. This is a description of the perfect play-through in a 4X game.
But it’s not just a guide to playing: it’s a guide to game design. Weber’s story is interesting and his battles are epic because he has set up his mythos extremely carefully to make “playing” interesting.
Strategic layer
Weber’s universe demonstrates differing political and economic systems giving rise to differences in the style and capabilities of the nations’ respective militaries.
The military dictatorship of the Republic of Haven has a large number of warships, naturally. The economy of that dictatorship is based on conquest: expand to capture new resources to satisfy the mob back home, but in stripping resources from the periphery you create unhappiness and insurgency that must be quelled by force. In using force to suppress insurrection you must utilise your warships (creating demand for more warships to be built), which works in the short term, but in the longer run it’s cheaper to bribe the insurrectionists with the same goodies the mob back home enjoy: which means further expansion now that the former-periphery is effectively part of the core. At the same time, moving your warships to attack new worlds uncovers your recent conquests, risking a further uprising: a dilemma that can only be solved by building more warships so you can manage both – and if you’re building warships that fast you’re diverting resources from the economy and research. As for the economy and research, a populace which is a seething mob of resentfully conquered peoples does not make for either a good industrial or academic base, and if you’re placating them with bread and circuses you’re not inculcating in them a culture of hard work or a willingness to study.
On the other side, the freedom-loving Kingdom of Manticore is peaceful, with a trading economy. Its planetary base is much smaller than Haven’s sprawling empire, and it is practically undefended. It is, however, extremely rich, which makes it a juicy target for Haven’s aggression. Apart from that its main advantages are a high-tech industrial base and a very strong research base. Manticore therefore fields a small number of very big, very powerful warships that are individually much more capable than anything Haven possesses. Manticore’s research base is sufficient to ensure that Haven will continue to be outclassed by Manticorean weaponary as the war progresses and, while Haven will bring every greater numbers to even the score, Manticorean respect for human life leads them to design vast ships that require very few personnel.
Tactical layer
It is, however, on the tactical layer that Weber’s universe really shines, and it is in this area that the Honorverse really demonstrates the opportunity to improve game design. That’s because Weber doesn’t restrict himself to better technology leading to bigger guns: the new technology leads to different kinds of weapons that are then employed in different ways. And he sets up the physics of his mythos to make sure that will be interesting and fun.
Weber’s key sci-fi tech invention is the “impeller drive”. The impeller drive is the engine that allows ship to move around in normal space (i.e. not hyperspace) at enormous speeds; since even solar systems are enormous, this is necessary to enable battles to be fought. As in GalCiv and Endless Space, battles are (mostly) not fought in hyperspace.
The crucial thing about the impeller drive is a side-effect of the way it works. It generates two disc of gravitational distortion, one above and one below the ship it propels. This then “squeezes” the ship through space. The crucial side-effects are these:
- The discs of gravitational distortion above and below the ship (called the “impeller wedges”) are utterly indestructible impervious to harm.
- The front and back (fore and aft) of the ship are completely unprotected. Trying to seal these with impeller wedges would destroy the ship.
- The sides of the ship are not protected by the impeller wedge, although it is possible to generate a much less impervious force-field protection there.
These features of Weber’s physics create tactical consequences as corollaries.
- Because the impeller wedge is impervious, you can’t shoot through it in either direction. So all guns have to be mounted along the sides, or fore and aft.
- To protect yourself, all you have to do is roll the ship over sideways.
- Because you can roll the ship, throwing simple projectiles at a ship is useless.
- The most useful weapons are missiles, because these can fly around the ship to seek out the relatively unprotected side. Beam weapons can also work if the attacker is in position: laser blasts can shoot before you can roll the ship.
- Since missiles are the only way to attack a ship that has the advantage of a defensive position, battles largely depend on a weapon that has inherently limited ammunition.
- That said, the impeller wedge is a feature of the engine, and one that is largely non-directional. So when you try to fly away, to retreat from the field of battle, you will be exposing your unprotected rear to enemy laser fire.
This sets up a series of technological progressions for Weber’s series.
The series begins, unlike GalCiv or pretty much any space 4X, with Dreadnaughts. In the backstory, interstellar warfare had been reduced to a slugging match between these huge “Capital ships” (in the traditional sense sense of the term, capital ships are those ships so powerful that if you lose them, you’ve lost the battle, but as long as you’ve still got them, you’re still in the fight no matter what else is out there). This follows from the premise set up above: capital ships have the most space to carry the most missiles, the strongest lasers to punch through the enemies shields, and the most point-defence and shields to fend off the same from the other side. When Dreadnaughts take the field, frigates and cruisers had better simply get out of the way. This is a common outcome, but it is the usual end-game for 4X players: despite being able to launch interplanetary invasions, their tech tree generally starts with something more like a Star Wars X-Wing.
In Weber’s first novel, On Basilisk Station, technological innovation (and no small amount of desperation) led to a shake-up in this Galactic standard approach. By placing a capital-ship class beam weapon on a mere frigate (only possible by stripped almost everything else out) the protagonist had the traditional glass cannon, and single-handedly took out a dreadnaught flagship in a training exercise, followed in combat by a cruiser that was itself two- to four-times more powerful than herself. Not an outcome that could be relied upon, but it did point the way to smaller, more fragile, more powerfully armed craft being deployed in numbers.
As I mentioned, missiles are the main weapon, used at stand-off range and while closing for beam weapon fire. Capital ships are desirable in part because they have the largest missile capacity. Because all ships have point-defense, a fleet commander wants a large missile “throw” (meaning the ability to launch a large number of missile simultaineously) as many missiles will be shot down before reaching their targets, so overwhelming the tracking capacity and rate-of-fire of point defense is crucial. This leads to the second major innovation, “Pod-layers”: large cargo-type ships that accompany the fleet and, once in combat, are able to drop missile launch platforms equivalent to many capital ships. These pods are essentially disposable, and the pod-layers’ job is to launch these platforms and then flee the scene: they couldn’t hold territory even against battleships or cruisers, but a pod-layer is an incredible force-multiplier for a capital fleet.
Evolving from the idea of a ship that launches semi-autonomous platforms, the next step is an aircraft carrier. These are essentially similar to the Battlestar Galactica, and if a few dozen frigates and a score of cruisers are no match for the Super Dreadnaught that could be manufactured with the same resources, the two hundred-strong carrier air wing certainly is.
Such innovation demands its own response. Massive missile salvoes demand huge upgrades in point-defense. Alternatively, at least as long as the missile targeting doesn’t keep up with launch capacity, switching to fleets with larger numbers of smaller craft is also valid response: if the enemy waste their missile fire with overkill, more ships will survive to retaliate. And those “disposable” missile launch platforms (or, if not yet deployed, their fragile cargo haulers) are vulnerable to attack from an advance frigate screen before the capital ships are in attack range.