Honorverse ramblings and musings

kzt wrote:

munroburton wrote:More power. The nodes have to be active for there to be a wedge at all.

It also involves changing the angle of the fields IIRC.

Which for a Hypership involves the beta nodes as well

munroburton wrote:More power. The nodes have to be active for there to be a wedge at all.

kzt wrote:It also involves changing the angle of the fields IIRC.

Theemile wrote:Which for a Hypership involves the beta nodes as well

Well technically you can have a hyper capable ship with only Alpha nodes - I think RFC said there were a few freighter designs that went that route (though they tended to be League freighters who don't go places there's any change of getting shot at. (Plus you get less accel with just Alphas than with Alphas + Betas - but it's quite possible that in a big freighter you're compensator limited to a lower accel than a pure-Alpha node setup can achieve. In which case the Betas would only be providing redundancy, not improved performance)

But yeah, a ship with Alphas and Betas they're all involved in forming and powering the wedge.

But whether the wedge is formed by only Beta (LACs, pinnaces, etc), only Alpha (a few freighters), or Alpha + Beta (most starships) the harder you accelerate the more the wedge planes flatten towards parallel. (But we don't have numbers, AFAIK, of how much they flatten out)

Jonathan_S wrote:

munroburton wrote:More power. The nodes have to be active for there to be a wedge at all.

kzt wrote:It also involves changing the angle of the fields IIRC.

Theemile wrote:Which for a Hypership involves the beta nodes as well

Well technically you can have a hyper capable ship with only Alpha nodes - I think RFC said there were a few freighter designs that went that route (though they tended to be League freighters who don't go places there's any change of getting shot at. (Plus you get less accel with just Alphas than with Alphas + Betas - but it's quite possible that in a big freighter you're compensator limited to a lower accel than a pure-Alpha node setup can achieve. In which case the Betas would only be providing redundancy, not improved performance)

But yeah, a ship with Alphas and Betas they're all involved in forming and powering the wedge.

But whether the wedge is formed by only Beta (LACs, pinnaces, etc), only Alpha (a few freighters), or Alpha + Beta (most starships) the harder you accelerate the more the wedge planes flatten towards parallel. (But we don't have numbers, AFAIK, of how much they flatten out)

It'd be nice to know, definitively, what serves as an Honorverse "rudder." Is it attitude thrusters or the wedge somehow? Perhaps it's this changing of the angle of the fields to change vectors.

Why do SD(P)s still need to tow external pods?

Question. With the GA's accel advantage against the League, does it still stand while carrying external pods?

Isn't this an area (external pods) that would be easy for the SLN to duplicate? The tech is perfect for those big-assed Technodyne missiles. And with so many more ships in their order of battle they would be able to put out a lot of missiles - especially if they somehow tweak the design.

cthia wrote:Why do SD(P)s still need to tow external pods?

Question. With the GA's accel advantage against the League, does it still stand while carrying external pods?

Isn't this an area (external pods) that would be easy for the SLN to duplicate? The tech is perfect for those big-assed Technodyne missiles. And with so many more ships in their order of battle they would be able to put out a lot of missiles - especially if they somehow tweak the design.

Sure. And who knows, they might invent that device commonly called the power cord.

Wow, I should really work on more concise responses; but I keep trying to throw in everything and the kitchen sink

cthia wrote:Why do SD(P)s still need to tow external pods?

Question. With the GA's accel advantage against the League, does it still stand while carrying external pods?

Isn't this an area (external pods) that would be easy for the SLN to duplicate? The tech is perfect for those big-assed Technodyne missiles. And with so many more ships in their order of battle they would be able to put out a lot of missiles - especially if they somehow tweak the design.

SD(P)s temporarily tow pods because they can't dump them from internal pod bays as quickly as they can fire them off - especially if you're stacking salvos 4 or more deep.

we don't have a lot of numbers on how towed pods affect acceleration. Way be in SVW towing 7 pods slowed HMS Nike's accel by about 13% (I'm assuming the "less than 359 gees" of the formation was dictated by Nike as she was the bigest and towing the most pods; also assuming that reflected the normal safe 80% power level) - but bigger ships are less affected. Plus if you can tow them really close to the ship they don't impact acceleration.

With pods containing integrated tractors you can basically coat a ship's hull with pods without impacting acceleration; but you'll blind all your sensors and block your weapons. However even towing astern you'd need to tow a lot of pods to give up the roughly 191g accel advantage (at 100% power) that a current RMN SD(P) has over a Scientist-class SD. [

In normal practice it would be worse because Manticore seems to have adopted 90% power as the new default safe accel; while the SLN is still at 80%. So the Invictus would be at 551.9g and the Scientist at 337.4; a 214.5g advantage to the SD(P).


Also don't forget that it doesn't help to fire missiles if you can't control them. SD(P)s are designed with a lot more fire control links than a tube SD. And given the relatively light emphasis the SLN gave missile combat I imagine the Scientist-class SD mounted less fire control than the similar sized pre-war (and pre-towed pod) RMN Bellerophon-class DN. So even with a relative excess of pods they can't fire/control as many missiles as SD(P)s - and unlike the SD(P)s they'll lose whatever missile pods haven't been fired once the first return salvo hits.

And finally they probably can't tractor all that many pods (limited number of onboard tractors) - there are various solutions to that:
a) Andermandi style bolt-on pods
b) RHN donkey tractor multipliers
c) RMN style pods with integrated tractors
But until they implement a solution they're limited in the number of pods each SD can tow.

Jonathan_S wrote:But whether the wedge is formed by only Beta (LACs, pinnaces, etc), only Alpha (a few freighters), or Alpha + Beta (most starships) the harder you accelerate the more the wedge planes flatten towards parallel. (But we don't have numbers, AFAIK, of how much they flatten out)

You've got that backwards. The closer the wedge is to parallel, the lower the acceleration. That's why the after aspect (Up the Kilt) is smaller than the forward aspect (Down The Throat) for a ship underway.

cthia wrote:Isn't this an area (external pods) that would be easy for the SLN to duplicate? The tech is perfect for those big-assed Technodyne missiles. And with so many more ships in their order of battle they would be able to put out a lot of missiles - especially if they somehow tweak the design.

I'm not sure who they'll get to build them, but Adm Filareta's force had enormous towed pod loads of "Technodyne" Cataphract-Cs. The "big-a$$ Technodyne missiles" are system defense missiles and too large for mobile use in any effective numbers.

cthia wrote:It'd be nice to know, definitively, what serves as an Honorverse "rudder." Is it attitude thrusters or the wedge somehow? Perhaps it's this changing of the angle of the fields to change vectors.

AFAIK, speed and direction are controlled by the angle between the wedge plane. If you squeeze a sandwich at the center of one edge, Jelly oozes out of the center of the opposite edge. If you squeeze it on a corner, jelly oozes out the opposite corner. Wherever you squeeze the edge, the jelly moves directly away from the squeeze; wherever you pull the plates of a wedge together, the ship moves away from the squeeze.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But whether the wedge is formed by only Beta (LACs, pinnaces, etc), only Alpha (a few freighters), or Alpha + Beta (most starships) the harder you accelerate the more the wedge planes flatten towards parallel. (But we don't have numbers, AFAIK, of how much they flatten out)

You've got that backwards. The closer the wedge is to parallel, the lower the acceleration. That's why the after aspect (Up the Kilt) is smaller than the forward aspect (Down The Throat) for a ship underway.

Not according to the follow-up to this infodump "The exact angle of the wedge changes somewhat as acceleration goes up -- the throat tends to get narrower and the kilt wider as acceleration climbs, although it certainly isn't a gross deformation until very high (like lethal) accelerations are reached."
(I'm pretty sure this is mentioned somewhere in an actual book, but it wasn't in the appendices of SVW or MTH; and it wouldn't be an easy thing to search for - so I gave up on trying to find that additional reference -- but if someone remembers it I'd be interested to see where it was hiding)

The throat (for the SD mentioned in the infodump) begins at 190 km wide, and the kilt at 40 km -- at 0 acceleration. So the Throat getting narrower and the kilt wider is a flattening of the wedge; but it's nowhere near enough to change the basic fact that the throat starts almost 5x as wide.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But whether the wedge is formed by only Beta (LACs, pinnaces, etc), only Alpha (a few freighters), or Alpha + Beta (most starships) the harder you accelerate the more the wedge planes flatten towards parallel. (But we don't have numbers, AFAIK, of how much they flatten out)

You've got that backwards. The closer the wedge is to parallel, the lower the acceleration. That's why the after aspect (Up the Kilt) is smaller than the forward aspect (Down The Throat) for a ship underway.

cthia wrote:Isn't this an area (external pods) that would be easy for the SLN to duplicate? The tech is perfect for those big-assed Technodyne missiles. And with so many more ships in their order of battle they would be able to put out a lot of missiles - especially if they somehow tweak the design.

I'm not sure who they'll get to build them, but Adm Filareta's force had enormous towed pod loads of "Technodyne" Cataphract-Cs. The "big-a$$ Technodyne missiles" are system defense missiles and too large for mobile use in any effective numbers.

cthia wrote:It'd be nice to know, definitively, what serves as an Honorverse "rudder." Is it attitude thrusters or the wedge somehow? Perhaps it's this changing of the angle of the fields to change vectors.

AFAIK, speed and direction are controlled by the angle between the wedge plane. If you squeeze a sandwich at the center of one edge, Jelly oozes out of the center of the opposite edge. If you squeeze it on a corner, jelly oozes out the opposite corner. Wherever you squeeze the edge, the jelly moves directly away from the squeeze; wherever you pull the plates of a wedge together, the ship moves away from the squeeze.

The way the wedge geometry changes as acceleration increases, from the Pearl Wedge geometry:

Note: That white dot-like line in the center represents a superdreadnaught, bow (and acceleration vector) toward the left.
Image by Russ Isler.



From an email dated April 21, 2002:Assuming the brown is sidewall (which is what I assumed when Russ showed it to me some time ago), this is, indeed, an accurate representation of the wedge geometry. The exact angle of the wedge changes somewhat as acceleration goes up -- the throat tends to get narrower and the kilt wider as acceleration climbs, although it certainly isn't a gross deformation until very high (like lethal) accelerations are reached. I think I've also mentioned that the exact position of the ship within the wedge/sidewalls can be adjusted somewhat if less than optimum acceleration for power is accepted, which further complicates targeting considerations.

Boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

The way the quote from the Pearl reads to me is as acceleration goes up, the two angled planes of the wedge move toward being more parallel. It's just one of those things in the Honorverse. Unfortunately it doesn't go into how the wedge is used in maneuvering.

Vector change is definitely normal done with the wedge. When first developed, the new LACs were noted as having oversize reaction thrusters so they can turn into the enemy with out using wedge forces when the bow wall is up. After a quick search, I am confidant that exactly how the wedge changes the vector is never stated.

And to answer another question, Accel is only sometimes affected when towing pods. If you can tow the pods inside of the wedge, it has no baring on your accel. But, there are only so many pods that internal tractors can tow inside of the wedge before you have to start dragging them along behind. Once you extend the tractor beams out of the kilt of your wedge, this will cause you to loose some speed. According to RFC, this is because sending the tractors out the back of the wedge forces the ship to adjust the relative angles of the wedge, reducing their efficiency.

The Donkey helps because you can tow a bunch of pods with only one single tractor, allowing you to tow many more inside your wedge, or have fewer tractors going out the back and therefor less reduction. The modern Manty pods, having internal tractors, basically allow you to have as many as you can fit inside of the actual volume of the wedge before it starts to affect accel.