That frame can also do something no human body can stand: it can whip 360 degrees or any portion thereof at blinding speed to bring those guns to bear on anything th computers tell them to, and since it is not part of the personnel cylinder, the occupants get no stress from the move.
Two ships passing each other at 7/8 lightspeed do not see each other coming fast enough for human operators to react: ID is made by the two ship's computers spitting out their continual squeal of identification, recognizing friend or foe, and directing fire all before a human mind could even realize the enemy was there, let alone send a hand to the control board.
Two ships differing vastly in speed: the advantage is always to the ship at greater velocity. Therefore, a major objective is to cause your enemy to dump speed and get the battle to a slower speed if you are defending the system. A ship has to dump if it has run out of solar system (or it can jump out altogether and reorganize itself and then come back in a week or so from a neighboring jump point -- if you have been attacked, it is a good idea to send ships out to all the neighboring jump points to prevent this move ... the enemy will also try to set up an ambush when you do, and so on). A ship also has to slow to the speed of its riders it wishes to retrieve -- and no carrier wants to leave its riders behind if it can help. Outside of losing fifteen highly trained crewmen per ship, riders are expensive, and if the situation is bad enough that the carriers are running, the riders are likely to be overwhelmed too.
Union, however, has lost quite a few riders, while Mazian's fleet, much more reluctant to leave riders, has kept most of its own, as witness the fact that most Company Fleet ships have their original riders: i.e., those riders that were lost were destroyed with their carriers, not left behind.
In riderships particularly, Union suffers from less skilled personnel than the Company Fleet has.
Union riderships have been cannonfodder until recently, but the situation is changing.
Union is developing a few carriers that can handle more than four riderships. Mazian has no such ships.
These are just a little larger than riderships, but they do have star capacity: they can go FTL, which means that they travel like carriers and fight like riders. They carry very small crews, only four of five, because they have sacrificed crewspace and complexity to give up mass to the engines. Living in one is miserable.
They are very greatly dreaded because they are hit and run fighters and you never know they are coming. The best you can do is chase them if you can figure out what jump they're going to make: a carrier can overjump one and be waiting for it, but it is very tricky for a stationary ship waiting at a jumppoint to ambush one traveling fast; you have to shoot from the hip on your computer's first indication this is the enemy, and you have to fire at where they're going to be.
The Earth Company has no dartships.
When the Hinder Stars stopped trading with Earth, commerce fell off, particularly as the war heated up. Merchanters feared Earth, feared conscription, feared the lack of understanding Earth had of their situation, and commerce between Earth and Pell was finally severed.
Having built a fleet of fifty great FTL carriers which hurt Earth economically, Earth fell into chaos as a failing economy and the stress of the war and the complexity of Terran politics paralyzed its decisionmaking aparatus. This led to the rise of the Isolationist party which cut off funds to the Fleet.
Supply for Mazian's fleet became so bad few of even the highest officers had a complete uniform ... let alone badly needed equipment and repair. Ships that were damaged had to be scrapped for parts to repair others. Equipment was cobbled together by ingenuity. The Fleet kept fighting -- kept holding off the Union fleet even when the Union regenerated its losses and they could no longer get enough recruits or even food to feed the troops.
So they turned to impressment and raids on merchant shipping to get what they needed.
Ironically, they still relied, even at this point, on the cooperation of Earth Company Merchanter Ships ... for information, voluntary support, contributions of supplies, and even personnel. Some of the present Fleet captains came from such volunteers. The problem was with the frustration of the Fleet when merchants began to refuse this cooperation under the increasing burden of Fleet demands, and after seeing to what extent volunteers were adsorbed into the Fleet -- forgetting Family, putting Fleet loyalty first. What began as cooperation ended up as a bitter relationship. Most merchanters wanted the old days of trade back and the Fleet represents that tradition; they do not like Union's way of life, which is alien to their values of family and ship. They fear if Union wins and starts building merchant ships of its own, they will be run out of business, forced under the domination of a government -- and presently they have no government at all. The only think that is holding Union at bay is Mazian, whose abuses are flagrant and piratical. So they are caught between a rock and a hard place and support Mazian even when he raids them.
The staunchest Earth Company Station is Pell. The Company also claims Viking, Mariner, Pan-Paris, Russell's Star, and Esperance. All others belong to Cyteen.
All stations are too fragile for combat. They have all declared their neutrality in this war and will dock any ship that asks for docking.
Even Cyteen would -- if a Company warship wanted to come to dock -- not, you will understand, likely.
The only Earth Company world besides Earth is Pell's World, called Downbelow, named by the gentle natives who share Pell with humans. It has thus far proven too expensive to colonize the world; and there are ecological reasons not to do so. But Downers, whose own name for themselves is the hisa, supply grain, meat, fruit, and all manner of goods to Pell and the loyalist stations. Humans cannot live on Downbelow without breathing aids.
Also worth mentioning are the insystemers, particularly numerous in mining colonies: these are tin cans with engines for the most part, zero-G ships run by miners collecting ores out of asteroid belts, or the ore haulers who bring it in, or the countless little pusher-ships and skimmers that flit about stations sweeping up debris and assisting with construction and movement of cannisters. Even an insystem transport which runs supplies back and forth moves at a crawl which can take weeks to get from point to point, or months to cross the solar system. Some of them are solar-sailers, riding the stellar wind; some are fusion ships. Theirs is a hard life and they are hard people, right down to the youngsters born on these small ships.