Jonathan_S wrote:Ah good - I'd had the impression that the whole ship pitched over in order to slow down. (Though the description of sails, when it talks about negative grab factor, seems to imply that those can speed up and slow down without necessarily pulling a turnover manouver).
It does. That's exactly the point: it was going kilt first, meaning the aft end of the ship first.
There are passages later in the battle that describe this neatly. First, Casey and the two corvettes from Janus force pitch over to reverse orientation and begin accelerating towards Bogey Two (the Volsung's advance force). This was noted by both sides as an unorthodox manoeuvre because, at this time, sensors didn't work through the wedge, so during the two minutes that the ships are pitching, they can't see anything. Except that the enemy can't see anything inside the wedges either, so they couldn't see those three ships lobbing missiles out and holding them ready to activate their wedges.
Second, the Aegis force also turns from deceleration to acceleration towards the same Bogey, but this time with a yaw manoeuvre and without sidewalls, so they would never lose sensor contact with the Volsungs. Sensing through sidewalls wasn't completely impossible at this time, but difficult enough that this was preferred and that one ship was usually left behind in a "com position" to relay messages. It was this standard manoeuvre that convinced Gensonne that Casey's success was a fluke and that Locatelli was uninspired.
And logically if only the wedge reversed then it'd complicate things for podlayers. When they're in the deceleration phase of a flight the pods they'd be rolling out their stern, behind them, would be overtaking the ship as it continued to slow -- so you'd have to worry about getting rear ended by your own pods
(Though with enough tractor pressor units you could presumably have managed it -- by shoving the pods far enough to the sides that they'd slide past the length of the ship instead of running into it. Still, since the ships do seem to physically flip you'd eject the pods ahead of you, and then slow down so their base velocity carries them further and further ahead of the ship; rather than initially towards it)
Doesn't matter the orientation. Anything that comes out of the kilt of an impeller ship that is accelerating would look to the ship to be "shooting out" of said aspect of the wedge because the ship is accelerating in the opposite orientation.
Another detail I noticed on the ACTA battle: ships must stop accelerating to fire missiles. That's because those missiles are chase armaments, not broadside, and specifically they're meant to exit from the throat of the wedge. So they need to get clear enough of the ship with their boosters, before they can bring up their own wedges. If the ship is accelerating, it'll overtake those missiles and the best case scenario if that happens is that they simply impact the bow, damaging whatever is there.
During early Honor-time battles, missiles are mostly launched from broadside launchers because there are more of them than chase, which means the ship is not accelerating towards its target. It might be accelerating laterally, though. Later, once off-bore launching becomes possible, they wouldn't need to stop accelerating at all.
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