Honorverse ramblings and musings

Jonathan_S wrote:The Donkey was an inspired bit of lateral thinking to largely offset the advantage of self-tractoring pods. And without the cost and complexity of mounting a major power source (micro-fusion reactor) into each pod. But it's not quite as flexible; plus the donkey pods are a bigger impact on pods carried than integral tractors.
But as you said they don't enable limpeting pods directly to the hull; so you do suffer acceleration reduction when Donkeying non-trivial numbers of pods.

They also need an opponent who is an idiot and doesn't immediately start shooting.

Vince wrote:

cthia wrote:Why has this tactic never been utilized before? Even by Harrington? Would it have been available to the Peeps in the Battle of Manticore? Then they'd not had to tip their hand that something was amiss by decelerating to roll pods (not that D'Orville could figure out that they were deploying pods in massive numbers) but still. And in the Peeps case, a lower velocity would have been fine -- a cautious commit lest an abort is needed.

It seems to have other desirable effects as well. Yet this is the only incident, IINM, it was deployed. Which begs to surmise some inherent downsides. Yet I can't think of any. Rolled pods are as a cocked gun; why hyper in all half-cocked err uncocked?

Another point: The RHN's pods didn't have the RMN's built-in tractor beam, so they were forced to use the donkey. That meant that pods could not be tractored to the ships hull, because the donkey had all the extra tractor beams, not the ships. Keep in mind that the PRN's battleships only could tractor 11 pods against the ship's hull--and they had more tractors on a tonnage basis than any other ship in PRN service.

Johnathan_S wrote:Yes, the tactic wasn't available to the Peeps because the technology that enabled it wasn't available to them.

The Donkey was an inspired bit of lateral thinking to largely offset the advantage of self-tractoring pods. And without the cost and complexity of mounting a major power source (micro-fusion reactor) into each pod. But it's not quite as flexible; plus the donkey pods are a bigger impact on pods carried than integral tractors.
But as you said they don't enable limpeting pods directly to the hull; so you do suffer acceleration reduction when Donkeying non-trivial numbers of pods.

Thanks. I was wondering if the donkey had any bearing on the Peeps possible use of the tactic.

It still begs the question of why the tactic has never been used 'til the Battle of Manticore -- before Apollo shot the hell out of so many playbooks.

You know what I always thought was missing from storyline? Thanks for asking...

Let's use D'Orville's Home Fleet during either Battle of Manticore...

There are no crew members being recalled from ship leave. COs are always awaiting impellers but never crew members. "Captain, we still have 623 members of the crew en route."

While forever sitting in orbit around Manticore, is it inconceivable that key members of the crew will be afforded ship leave to visit the planet and loved ones? You wouldn't want to leave orbit without your "guns."

cthia wrote:You know what I always thought was missing from storyline? Thanks for asking...

Well, when did they order the evacuation of the orbital platforms that had 240 hostile SDs bearing down on it?

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:You know what I always thought was missing from storyline? Thanks for asking...

Well, when did they order the evacuation of the orbital platforms that had 240 hostile SDs bearing down on it?

Well, when did all the FTL RD's vanish from the home system, so the RMN did not know how many Pods the RHN had on tow?

cthia wrote:You know what I always thought was missing from storyline? Thanks for asking...

Let's use D'Orville's Home Fleet during either Battle of Manticore...

There are no crew members being recalled from ship leave. COs are always awaiting impellers but never crew members. "Captain, we still have 623 members of the crew en route."

While forever sitting in orbit around Manticore, is it inconceivable that key members of the crew will be afforded ship leave to visit the planet and loved ones? You wouldn't want to leave orbit without your "guns."

Yes and no on ships crew being off ship. When I was in the U.S. Navy we had a working day much like a civilian work day, not exactly a 9 to 5 but more like 0730 to 1600. You also have to remember that when ships come over the hyper wall they have several hours to get the crew aboard ship. Plus ships have a crew of 1/4 to 1/3 of the crew on duty at any one time and are capable of fighting the ship for a short period of time. For example during the attack on Pearl Harbor the USS Aylwin sailed with only 50% of her crew and no officers above the rank of ensign aboard. Also ships are not sitting around in port all the time they are out conducting exercises, work-ups, gun and missile shoots, participating in war games, inspections and training,training and still more training, On average a ship will spend two to three weeks at sea for every week spent in port.

saber964 wrote:On average a ship will spend two to three weeks at sea for every week spent in port.

Unless you are a little crappy ship, in which case you spend lots more time in port than at sea.

saber964 wrote:

cthia wrote:You know what I always thought was missing from storyline? Thanks for asking...

Let's use D'Orville's Home Fleet during either Battle of Manticore...

There are no crew members being recalled from ship leave. COs are always awaiting impellers but never crew members. "Captain, we still have 623 members of the crew en route."

While forever sitting in orbit around Manticore, is it inconceivable that key members of the crew will be afforded ship leave to visit the planet and loved ones? You wouldn't want to leave orbit without your "guns."

Yes and no on ships crew being off ship. When I was in the U.S. Navy we had a working day much like a civilian work day, not exactly a 9 to 5 but more like 0730 to 1600. You also have to remember that when ships come over the hyper wall they have several hours to get the crew aboard ship. Plus ships have a crew of 1/4 to 1/3 of the crew on duty at any one time and are capable of fighting the ship for a short period of time. For example during the attack on Pearl Harbor the USS Aylwin sailed with only 50% of her crew and no officers above the rank of ensign aboard. Also ships are not sitting around in port all the time they are out conducting exercises, work-ups, gun and missile shoots, participating in war games, inspections and training,training and still more training, On average a ship will spend two to three weeks at sea for every week spent in port.

But of course, with Home Fleet -- that never really leaves port (the system) -- things are different than normal. How can the crew NOT be granted leave? I was likewise thinking about a third of the ship's complement at any one time as saber964 confirmed. And as someone also pointed out, there'd be hours available to get back onboard. Storyline just never gives us a taste of it. The closest thing to it I recall being in Flag in Exile when Honor fought Burdette then marginally got back before excrement went flying.

Aside:
I always wondered what would have happened if the excrement had hit the fan right at the beginning of swordplay and Honor got a com call.

I suppose Burdette would have been saved by the com, not sure about the formality of rules and possible disqualification?

What would be used to get the crew back, Pinnaces? Shuttles?

In Manticore's case when invading a Peep system and their stealthy drones are close to the planet, it seems that storyline would occasionally mention the busyness of smaller ships shuttling crew back aboard.

cthia wrote:What would be used to get the crew back, Pinnaces? Shuttles?

In Manticore's case when invading a Peep system and their stealthy drones are close to the planet, it seems that storyline would occasionally mention the busyness of smaller ships shuttling crew back aboard.

My suspicion is that you could pretty much get any orbital transport to haul you back to the fleet under the circumstances. Presumably they bring you to the main orbital platform and the fleet picks you up from there.