Honorverse ramblings and musings

At the point where Haven and Manticore are allied, Grayson has everything that Manticore has in the way of tech plus a skilled and EXPERIENCED navy and a drive to succeed. Grayson could probably wipe away Erwhon's navy though there is no reason for them to fight. None. The comment that a BC squadron would crush Torch is spot-on. Even a dozen "Manti-Lite" frigates with highly motivated and experienced crew are not going to survive tangleing with 8 to 12 BC's even if they are SLN BCs.

The SLN is still able to crush Erwhon if they decide they need to try. Send 100 wallers and Erwhon isn't going to remain independent. Maya has he same problem. IF the SL has reason to suspect they need to crush either/both Erwhon & the Maya Sector, they can do it....but they are fast loosing the ability since they are shifting everyting to attempt to deal with Manticore and Haven.
I would think that even with the GA (which I am not sure SLN truly understands) it is Manticore that appears to be firmly fixed in the mind (such as it is) of the official and controling areas of the SLN. Neither Erwohn nor the leadership of Maya are goint to think about tapping the SLN or OFS on the elbow and saying---Hi, we hate you, we are taking everyting we have or can get our hands on and your a bunch of incompetent buffoons, Bye Bye.....They can't survive the responce that the SL will feel itself compelled to make.
But Grayson is probably competent to take on anything beyond the SLN outsie the Haven Quadrant. Well, once it gets it's system infrastructure and military production back and decides it has to go looking for a seperate fight.

Superdreadnaught Tonnage Ceiling

Question. Is the current size of SDs apt to increase or have they pretty much reached the probable ceiling of their tonnage displacement? What's responsible for my curiosity is when I read about the Soviet Typhoon Class of nuclear powered subs.

It seems the Soviets feel that they are just not efficient, or deliver enough bang for the buck, when...

The Russian Navy canceled its Typhoon modernization program in March 2012, stating that modernizing one Typhoon would be as expensive as building two new Borei-class submarines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon-class_submarine
.

Brigade XO wrote:The SLN is still able to crush Erwhon if they decide they need to try. Send 100 wallers and Erwhon isn't going to remain independent.

Eh. If the dozen Erewhonese DNs we saw with 8th Fleet at one point and the ten+ Manticoran tube SDs acquired during the Janacek build-down (as per HoS) are the entire Erewhonese wall (and either it's not or they have substantial fixed defenses in-system, because Erewhon's not going to send their entire wall of battle off away from home), they've got 20+ first Havenite War-capable wallers, many commanded by officers with first Havenite war experience, and homegrown missile pod construction capacity. It might take more than 100 SLN wallers to take them.

munroburton wrote:

Knocked this up based on active SD and SDP numbers as of 1920 and averaging Theemile's figures from the antipiracy defense thread. Works out at approximately 3600 active wallers, being generous to the white-elephant navies with the definition of active.

Yes... I mislabelled the RHN. Initially started with 1905 numbers, but there are fewer hard data points.

Oopsie, forgot to mention that this is a bang-up job munroburton. I was always partial to pie charts because of the name and because you can readily tell what's left of a pie.

Is it correct that the RHN had that many more active wallers than the SL? Was there an SLN Janacek-like build-down as well, or arrogance and complacency shining through?

The thing is, perhaps SLN arrogance prevented any self-concern over neobarb weaponry, but it seems uncharacteristic of any premiere navy to allow another to so exceedingly surpass it in sheer numbers (hardware). The Havenites only managed to pull it off under the veil of secrecy and deceit - subterfuge.

I'm aware that the SLN had many more in mothballs. But mothballed, and ready to roll and face what's coming over the hyper wall is two different things.

Is it correct that the RHN had that many more active wallers than the SL? Was there an SLN Janacek-like build-down as well, or arrogance and complacency shining through?

What? The RHN never even came close to the tonnage, nor number of hulls, of the active SLN.

I think you confused the key there. The SLN is that big blue chunk. Then counterclockwise, it goes PRN(RHN), RMN, IAN, GSN, etc.

Adding the SLN's Reserve leads to them gobbling up nearly seven-eighths of the pie. However, there isn't enough trained manpower or resources to mobilise more than a tiny fraction of it, which is why I stuck with Battle Fleet's active ~2,000.

Since 1920, they have lost around 500 of them - roughly equivalent to the entire active RHN of 1920.

cthia wrote:Superdreadnaught Tonnage Ceiling

Question. Is the current size of SDs apt to increase or have they pretty much reached the probable ceiling of their tonnage displacement?

Barring a breakthrough in impeller design, the tonnage ceiling isn't likely to move much. There may be a bit more reason to crowd it some and accept a significant drop in max accel for a very small increase in mass and volume, but that's not certain.

If you're not concerned to move much under impellers (fortresses) or you don't use them at all (spider drives), there isn't that tonnage ceiling at all. If spider drives supplant impellers for capital ships (I doubt it, but it could happen), then the impeller ceiling wouldn't be relevant anymore for capital ships (and you may well have 8 million ton "battlecruisers" as the fastest impeller drive units).

All that said, the forum often speculates that that sort of breakthrough in impeller design is somehow inevitable. I don't recall seeing the reasoning for that, myself.

munroburton wrote:I think you confused the key there. The SLN is that big blue chunk. Then counterclockwise, it goes PRN(RHN), RMN, IAN, GSN, etc.

Adding the SLN's Reserve leads to them gobbling up nearly seven-eighths of the pie. However, there isn't enough trained manpower or resources to mobilise more than a tiny fraction of it, which is why I stuck with Battle Fleet's active ~2,000.

Since 1920, they have lost around 500 of them - roughly equivalent to the entire active RHN of 1920.

I did confuse the key. Doh!, sorry guys. I can't even read a simple pie chart. oops

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:Superdreadnaught Tonnage Ceiling

Question. Is the current size of SDs apt to increase or have they pretty much reached the probable ceiling of their tonnage displacement?

Barring a breakthrough in impeller design, the tonnage ceiling isn't likely to move much. There may be a bit more reason to crowd it some and accept a significant drop in max accel for a very small increase in mass and volume, but that's not certain.

If you're not concerned to move much under impellers (fortresses) or you don't use them at all (spider drives), there isn't that tonnage ceiling at all. If spider drives supplant impellers for capital ships (I doubt it, but it could happen), then the impeller ceiling wouldn't be relevant anymore for capital ships (and you may well have 8 million ton "battlecruisers" as the fastest impeller drive units).

All that said, the forum often speculates that that sort of breakthrough in impeller design is somehow inevitable. I don't recall seeing the reasoning for that, myself.

I think you hit a wall of diminishing returns on ship size increase vs increase in fire power . At some point you will not get a big enough of a boost in fire power to make it worth building warships beyond a certain size.

You can build a double sized SD. The real question is do you really get something that is more effective then building to two regular size SD?

Erewhon had almost everything right upto the Second Haven War, which means they had basic Keyhole-I's, and fusion powered MDM's (not merely the capacitor birds that Maya got their hands on), in addition to at least the Shrike-A's, compensator's.


Even without wallers, if Sag-C's with DDM's + pods could perform Spindle, than Erewhon has more than sufficient firepower to waste anything short of a 'Filareta' fleet. And since the SLN has finally realized throwing hundreds of wallers at a Haven Sector foe is just a form of mass suicide, Erewhon is safe unless the entirety of Frontier Fleet massed for one assault.


And since Maya is ordering ships FROM Erewhon, there's a very good chance than even with just their over-sized, yet underreported small ships, Maya also already has very good odds short of multiple hundreds of battlecruiser or larger. And if the Grand Alliance officially recognizes Maya Sector, and starts direct tech transfers, Maya turns into another nigh-unbreakable bastion.