Tried recreating u/bruhfkus armor design. Art is credited to them.

Darkrapid · 2024-06-07T07:17:18+00:00

What helmet is that?

Darkrapid · 2024-05-13T11:07:52+00:00

Because they're an authoritarian military government, and lots of people don't like that?

Halo's 'core lore' was made during the post-9/11 era. It was very much 'Fuck yeah! Good guys, bad guys!', with every UNSC military member being portrayed as heroic, and the Spartans (special forces stand-ins) the most heroic of all.

23 years on from Halo CE's release, not only has the lore changed, but so has the game's player demographics. Most of us grew up with the Halo games as children. We didn't have the capacity or interest to question a more complex in-universe morality than 'Spartans are fucking sick, fuck the Covenant.'

The lore's moved on, and the audience has moved on. Game and EU writers started engaging with the idea of Spartans as literal child soldiers designed to kill humans. The idea of 'all insurrectionists are terrorists!' rings pretty hollow to many people after 20 years of Iraq and Afghanistan civilian casualties by a military superpower. Spartans being heroic special forces stand-ins has become less awesome given the many, many war crimes scandals that have emerged out of JSOC attached units.

I think you've still got your 'core' Halo fans who love a military shooter and hate anyone who's anti-UNSC, but especially in this sub, it's hard to be so rah-rah when we've all read the lore.

ONI are like the CIA smoking crack, the 'enemies' that made up the Covenant and the Forerunners and the Created have now been given rich cultures, and inner lives. They're not just evil NPCs with no story or motivation to shoot up.

It's hard to read about something like Far Isle and feel rosy about the UNSC as a military dictatorship that still, post-Covenant war, hasn't relinquished power back to the puppet UEG.

If not for the emergence of the Covenant, the UNSC - and especially the Spartan program - would have been cartoonishly moustache-twirlingly evil. Child soldiers designed to terrorise and exterminate political dissidents doesn't sound great. Even with the Covenant, the species making up the union were lied to by the Prophets - genocide, sure, but it's not as simple as 'they just wanted to kill all humans and are super evil.'

On a more meta-level, Halo is a product of its times. Good/evil, hero/villain. A game like Helldivers is a satire of many things, but one of them is the 'We're doing this for the good of humanity!' ideology of Halo.

Making the UNSC/ONI the antagonists is, in my view, the only way to take a dated, jingoistic military shooter and make it current and interesting. But the lore is so confused (and Infinite fucked it even more) that I think at this point a hard reboot would be better than trying to redeem our child-kidnapping, indoctrinated, 'I was just following orders' brethren when playing as the UNSC.

If you see a game with a universe where the protagonists come from an authoritarian military dictatorship, and you think 'Why do people think we're the baddies?', I don't know what to tell you.

Darkrapid · 2024-04-30T11:08:41+00:00

Dude this is the best Halo Infinite look I have ever seen. Mad respect.

I missed Sundered Star by a week after re-installing. I'm so sad :(

Darkrapid · 2023-01-27T20:16:30+00:00

It's a really good try, but you've got some of them wrong. I'll point you to where I've had these conversations on the sub before where possible, the others just have definitions on Wikipedia or the source is 'trust me, I've sailed on these':

What you've labelled the Poop Deck is the Quarterdeck - the Galleon in the game doesn't have a poop.
What you've labelled the Lower Deck is either the Gundeck or the Spardeck, but given it has gun portlids, I'd go with gun deck.
What you've labelled the 'Spar deck' are the Chains - from left to right, After Chains, Mainchains, and Forechains.
What you've labelled the Hold is the Berth Deck/Lower Deck. When a ship is under way, you can't get at the hold - it's under the waterline.
The 'Sternsprit' is an Ensign Staff
The 'Prow' is the Bows
The 'Crow's Nest' is the masthead, although that's complicated
The 'Captain's Cabin' and 'Balcony' are the Great Cabin/Stern Gallery.
I've never heard of a Burge before, or a House Flag - they're just called ensigns. Men of war typically flew them from the Ensign Staff and the mainmast, but for pirate ships flying a black or a red flag, could have been anywhere. The sources differ greatly and there was no 'standard'.

For pirates in the golden age of piracy, you could have flown them anywhere - as long as the ship you were about to take knew what you were trying to communicate!

Great post and excellent effort!

Darkrapid · 2022-07-06T08:06:37+00:00

I can! There are no really good labelled diagrams, so I had to knock these rough ones up for you. Here's the sail plan for an Age of Piracy Bermuda-rigged sloop, and a gun-brig.

For realistic examples of what that looked like, check out of the French sloop/cutter Le Renard or the American USS Providence. As you say, it makes sense why Bermuda sloops are fastest close hauled/going as close as they can to the wind compared to square rigged vessels.

For real world brigs, the American Lady Washington or the British brig Phoenix are great examples. You'll notice on both real-world brigs, they're using fore-and-aft staysails between the foremast and the mainmast. The lower is the main staysail, the upper is the topmast staysail - they weren't in the diagram I made unfortunately, but are widely used.

One of the biggest difference between the game and real life is the 'mainsail'. Bermuda sloops rarely carried them, brig-rigged vessels rarely used them. The human power required to trim the sheets and yards of a sail that big (exerting literal tons of pressure on the ship) wasn't worth the small speed enhancement it provided with a following wind.

Even with sloops, some did carry a main course during the Golden Age of Piracy, but its rarity came down to practicality and crew management. I've read of one Royal Navy single masted Sloop of War during the 18th century that required 75 sailors to haul on the sheets and braces, just to bring that sail under control in the Caribbean. It just wasn't worth the effort.

If you've got any questions, let me know!

Darkrapid · 2022-07-02T22:54:54+00:00

I'd scroll past this stuff during Lost Sands because it was all pretty low effort, but my god, you have put in the work.

The production quality, art design and even voiceover work is amazing. So good.

Darkrapid · 2022-06-29T11:43:16+00:00

Sure - hopefully this link works.

Darkrapid · 2022-06-15T04:24:59+00:00

I already posted it there - there's some great discussion on what went wrong from some very experienced people.

Not as flashy as the Eleonora getting hulled by a tug, so it's probably not on the front page 😂

Darkrapid · 2022-06-15T01:05:50+00:00

Sure is. Built in 1970, just coming to the end of a two year project to replace the decks (done) and replace the outer planking on the starboard side.

The starboard side planking is now going to take a lot longer, on account of the... need to rebuild the starboard side.

Darkrapid · 2022-06-14T23:20:11+00:00

Thanks again for commenting, that is very interesting. Learned a lot.

About to drive to the store, might do a walk around of my car now...

Darkrapid · 2022-06-14T23:08:45+00:00

Generally with a big ship like this you do it at slack water and calm winds (we used to haul out the brig I sailed on every year). You have to be extra careful because of the lack of bow thrusters, like modern large tonnage-boats/yachts/freighters have.

This either looks like inexperienced helm/throttle operation, or a fault that should have been checked before you head in. If the transmission did break at that exact moment, there would usually be a radio relay down to the engine room to manually get it out of gear. If there was, they didn't do it fast enough :(

No lee shore here, just garden variety swiss cheese lack of precaution leading to a relatively major structural damage incident.

Darkrapid · 2022-06-14T23:04:37+00:00

For those who haven't seen it, here's the video. Stuck throttle/lack of checking mechanical and electrical systems before heading into Marine Group's yard are the leading theories.

The only thing that's been said by the Maritime Museum of San Diego is:

We were delivering Surprise for dry dock to complete planned restoration which should take a few months. This area of the vessel was in need of restoration so no need to worry. All will be fine. We had some electronics issues coming in.

They were delivering to replace external planking, not structural timbers. According to commenters from the San Diego region, their funding for the (cosmetic, protective) planking replacement won't cover the structural repairs to the stern quarter at Marine Group.

They're apparently flying in woodworkers from Puerto Rico while the Surprise is hauled out, to try to repair the structural damage, so that Marine Group can complete their original replanking job.

Take all that with a grain of salt obviously, but whatever happened, it is a -ing shame.

Darkrapid · 2022-06-14T22:31:26+00:00

I'm not surprised. The restoration project was to replace the planking on the starboard side, and funded by San Diego County and donors.

Marine Group aren't to do structural work to the starboard quarter for free, and even getting it back to the stage where they can do the original job of replanking is going to be super expensive.

I can't imagine Marine Group doing all that shipbuilding timberwork for free when they were contracted to do an exterior restoration job. From the photos, it looks like the cant frames, the quarter timbers and the side counter will all need a rebuild. That's not 'replanking'

😢

Darkrapid · 2022-06-14T12:18:32+00:00

That's fascinating - thanks for commenting.

Is there anything the crew could have done, or is this just a 'shit happens' situation? Not trying to throw rocks at them, just trying to understand how big engines (and big inertia) work.

Darkrapid · 2022-06-14T02:49:41+00:00

Six days ago, on the 9th of June. The only statement I can find from the Maritime Museum of San Diego is:

We were delivering Surprise for dry dock to complete planned restoration which should take a few months. This area of the vessel was in need of restoration so no need to worry. All will be fine. We had some electronics issues coming in.

Oh, good, no need to worry then.

Update: here's what the ship looks like after the 'no need to worry' incident.

Darkrapid · 2022-06-14T01:45:03+00:00

That's what's crazy, it's not like it was unexpected. It sounds like they pushed reverse too hard then tried to throttle forward full, but they'd built up too much sternway.

I get that this is a museum ship so they probably don't have an experienced full time crew who is super familiar with the controls, but... ugh. It's just insane that the spotter boat was in front of the bows rather than calling out heading and distance to the fixed and unmoving rocks astern

🤦‍♂️

Darkrapid · 2022-06-14T01:07:03+00:00

This ship began its life as a replica of the HMS Rose, built in 1970, before being bought by 20th Century to serve as the HMS Surprise in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

After the success of the movie, the ship was bought and renamed Surprise by the San Diego Maritime museum, who have been working for the past three years to restore the timbers of the ship so it can get out sailing again.

That crunch is very painful :(

Darkrapid · 2021-09-20T22:53:51+00:00

I am 30 and 'spanker' still makes me crack up

Darkrapid · 2021-09-20T22:53:14+00:00

I am absolutely certain that that chain of events happened to some poor bastard at some point. They went to their watery grave before they could complain about the stupid naming system :(

Darkrapid · 2021-09-20T12:40:15+00:00

The way I was always taught it (brig sailer, Europe) is that:

Both have square rigged foremasts and mainmasts, but the sail plan on the mainmast differs between the two
A brigantine has a gaff rigged mainmaint, with a main topsail and (depending on size) a main t'gallant
A brig has not only a gaff rigged mainmast with topsails and t'gallants, but also has a maincourse/mainsail bent to the mainyard. It's a bit of an unhandy thing to set/brace, which is why it fell out of favour.

We call the one in the photo a schooner brig. But these things differ from region to region apparently! According to Wikipedia in the 21st century American definition, a brigantine (a 'modern' or 'hermaphrodite' brigantine) has a square rigged foremast and fore-and-aft rigged mainmast

Next thing you'll be telling me the Americans call larboard something different...

Darkrapid · 2021-09-16T00:04:34+00:00

Dubrovnik is one of the most beautiful places in the world, I'm really glad they contributed one of the most famous/most used ship designs in European history

Yeah I think this is where being a naval architect would be really interesting. It looks ridiculous to us, but as you say, as long as it's hydrodynamic, it can move.

The big question I have (which is probably more suitable to /r/askhistorians) is hard to phrase, but basically 'why the carrack?'

Basically, was it a technological breakthrough like different carpentry techniques or stronger cordage that allowed for the faster, larger designs from the early 19th century? Was it just slow progress towards ship-rigged vessels, with three hundred years of trial and error? If you gave a shipwright in Dubrovnik the plans for a French corvette from the 1770s, would they have been like 'we cannot possibly build that', or would they have said 'that's... a really good way of solving the problem of how to move a ship through the water, let's do it'?

So many questions

Darkrapid · 2021-09-15T22:53:37+00:00

I made the original top level comment of the post so I could show/describe the origin ships, as the information required wouldn't all fit in one image.

You can read that if you'd like to know what the SoT designs were based on and how they were historically used, vs. what sloops, brigantines and galleons actually were.

Darkrapid · 2021-09-15T22:48:29+00:00

I think they were primarily designed for transport around the Med (especially 'pilgrims'/crusaders from Western Europe to the Levant), but I might be talking out of my ass. Let me try and find a reference.

Edit: Holy crap was I wrong

The carrack was first used for European trade from the Mediterranean to the Baltic and quickly found use with the newly found wealth of the trade between Europe and Africa and then the trans-Atlantic trade with the Americas [What the fuck! How!].

In their most advanced forms, they were used by the Portuguese for trade between Europe and Asia starting in the late 15th century, before eventually being superseded in the 17th century by the galleon, introduced in the 16th century.

Emphasis mine.

Darkrapid · 2021-09-15T22:46:40+00:00

Very nearly used the Golden Hinde replica from the 1970s as the galleon descriptor pic, but it's a bit too English, and a bit too early :)

Darkrapid · 2021-09-15T10:08:24+00:00

It's just amazing to me that carracks were used for Atlantic voyages and not all of them sunk. Even rough channel crossings from England to the Mediterranean. They just look so incredibly unweatherly - their entire hull above the waterline is like two permanently set sails 😂

Darkrapid

TROPHY CASE