Just a sudden thought on the Reavers, and ship-ship combat. Was there sign that they're growing weapons grade handwavium and related ship/ship weaponry? It'd take a leetle while to dig through 18 pages of thread on my crummy connection.
At any rate, the thought that occurs to me is that how much of this couldn't be explained by boarding actions? After all, given speed drives under computer control, less massy things are going to have top end edges... so what's to keep a small but heavily manned boarding craft from chasing down larger prey? And there's going to be things that'll penetrate even wavetech hulls/hatches when they're touching...
At any rate, the thought that occurs to me is that how much of this couldn't be explained by boarding actions? After all, given speed drives under computer control, less massy things are going to have top end edges... so what's to keep a small but heavily manned boarding craft from chasing down larger prey? And there's going to be things that'll penetrate even wavetech hulls/hatches when they're touching...