Honorverse ramblings and musings

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?

pnakasone wrote: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?

That's a real tactical question for the WDB and Honor Harrington.

You'd get twice the missile capacity from one point source in space and a significant increase in energy batteries that can be brought to bear. Presumably, you'd also get twice the throw weight?

OTOH, you'd lose twice everything with a golden bb. I'd like to know what the WDB would actually say about it. Then cross reference it with Harrington.

Can a single SD be built at twice the size, faster than two normal sized SDs? What will the cost comparison yield between a double-sized SD and two current sized?

In an era of Superior Manty missile range paired with Apollo missiles and a screen, diminished acceleration isn't going to matter as much.

A lion will slow down for a cheetah any day. A lion that can project its power as an Apollo armed SD will slow down for several.

Perhaps the untapped tactical potential of Apollo is great enough to offset a decrease in acceleration advantage.

Somtaaw wrote: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.

agreed.

even if maya only has BCs (wasn't there a mention in cauldron of ghosts that that while their SD(P)s were still a good couple of years from delivery erehon had almost finished the BC(P)S?) and their pod freighters then the SLN is going to need to commit a lot of ships.

erewhon will be an even tougher nut to crack again assuming they don't use anything better then late first haven war SDs and pods from freighters (arsenal ships i think rozak called them?) if they are selling BC(P)s and SD(P)S to Maya then it is a fairly safe assumption they have at least a few of their own which even with nothing beyond fusion powered MDMs is enough to wipe the floor with any SLN fleet that sticks its nose into erewhon

anything heavier then a heavy cruisers will take torch and that is probably being over generous to torch as while the frigates are good they aren't DDM equipped nor has their been any mention of them having pod stockpiles or even one of rozacks pod freighters

Erewhon certainly does not have first-rate Manty equipment like fusion powered MDMs and Keyhole. They're at 1917 PD levels of tech - capacitor powered MDMs, ERMs but not DDMs, no Keyhole, and so forth.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/52/1

Duckk wrote:Erewhon certainly does not have first-rate Manty equipment like fusion powered MDMs and Keyhole. They're at 1917 PD levels of tech - capacitor powered MDMs, ERMs but not DDMs, no Keyhole, and so forth.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/52/1

Thought Manticore had developed Keyhole prior to the outbreak of the Second War, because Honor's superdreadnoughts had them at Sidemore Station.

That pearl only seems to cover Erewhon's compensator tech, and just that they don't have the full-up fusion MDM's. So they're still running the capacitor birds, the same ones that were also given to the IAN in fact. And there's a lot of hedging in the pearl, about "not having refitted" to RMN standards, which would imply they HAVE the technology, they just haven't seen fit to spend the time, money, and energy to constantly refit to RMN standards. This can be seen in how they just handed over 'tech manuals' to Haven, instead of actual working samples. So they almost certainly have the blueprints for fusion MDM's, the Mark 31 countermissiles, and anything else Manticore had up until the Battle of Sidemore, aka Operation Thunderbolt.


Erewhon also hadn't officially severed ties with Manticore until after Honor had deployed, ergo anything she had, or used in defending Sidemore, Erewhon should at the very minimum, have the tech blueprints for it, for anything upto battlecruiser size at the very least, which might just not include the Keyhole platforms I will admit. But there's certainly the possibility they might have it anyways.

Thought Manticore had developed Keyhole prior to the outbreak of the Second War, because Honor's superdreadnoughts had them at Sidemore Station.

Keyhole was never mentioned in WoH. They first appeared in AAC.

Duckk wrote:

Thought Manticore had developed Keyhole prior to the outbreak of the Second War, because Honor's superdreadnoughts had them at Sidemore Station.

Keyhole was never mentioned in WoH. They first appeared in AAC.

http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Weapons_Technology#Keyhole the wiki is saying Keyhole was in WoH, I'm now double-checking the battle for Marsh to see the exact wording since searching 'keyhole' isn't turning up results.

Edit: ok, I can't seem to find anything specifically refering Keyhole, although there is the little snippet about:

Active defenses engaged the weapons which slashed their way through the screen of electronic protection. The latest generation Manticoran counter missiles had increased their effective intercept range to just over two million kilometers, although the probability of a kill in excess of one and a half million was low. Shannon Foraker's best efforts, even with reverse-engineered Solarian technology, had a maximum intercept range of little more than one and a half million. That meant Honor's missile defenses had sufficient depth for two counter missile launches to engage each incoming missile before the attacking birds could reach effective laserhead range.

Which is almost exactly what Keyhole does, it's just not specifically stated to be Keyhole.

cthia wrote:

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?

That's a real tactical question for the WDB and Honor Harrington.

You'd get twice the missile capacity from one point source in space and a significant increase in energy batteries that can be brought to bear. Presumably, you'd also get twice the throw weight?

OTOH, you'd lose twice everything with a golden bb. I'd like to know what the WDB would actually say about it. Then cross reference it with Harrington.

Can a single SD be built at twice the size, faster than two normal sized SDs? What will the cost comparison yield between a double-sized SD and two current sized?

In an era of Superior Manty missile range paired with Apollo missiles and a screen, diminished acceleration isn't going to matter as much.

A lion will slow down for a cheetah any day. A lion that can project its power as an Apollo armed SD will slow down for several.

Perhaps the untapped tactical potential of Apollo is great enough to offset a decrease in acceleration advantage.

The diminishing returns on the impeller effect is ferocious. The 16 mton ship isn't going to be twice as fast as an SD. It will not be half as fast. We're talking at capping out at like 100g - probably less. If you built it with a spider drive, it'd likely be faster than that for once.

How much of the volume would have to be impeller room is an open question. Same goes for the hypergenerator. It's encouraging - not that I like using the word in this context - that hypergenerators seem to occupy a decreasing proportion of ship size as they grow larger, but that's not a guarantee.

Larger ships tend to maneuver with less agility to a worse extent than they lose accel. The 16 mton ship may not be practically able to roll wedge in the face of an attack. That may let missiles in in ways the 8 mton lightweight (!) would never have to fear. You could go to a spherical sidewall like fortresses do - we're talking about, in effect, a fortress with a hyperdrive here, apart from having to be built in the classic cigar shape - but those will also mean an obligation to armor the entire surface well enough, which is trickier for a cigar than a sphere.

That it hasn't been done before - with the possible exception of Leonard Detweiler SD(P)'s, which themselves may not be built for a stand-up fight in which the enemy is allowed effective shots back - argues pretty well that it's still a bad idea. A slow, nigh-unstoppable capital ship that merely takes far more time to get from hyperlimit to planet would probably be worth it - if it really did play out in those terms. When decisive combat was in energy range and you either accepted it or left the system, that kind of battle-cow would be the bee's knees.

Apollo would mean that the enemy would be able to engage at the range of their choice indefinitely, and pod-based combat means they could carry missiles of enormous individual size as needed to get hits on the thing. It does mean that the battle-cow gets to bring much larger fire control support systems to bear at ludicrous range - but again, it's going to have no control over the range, so the benefits are strictly limited.

Somtaaw wrote:http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Weapons_Technology#Keyhole the wiki is saying Keyhole was in WoH, I'm now double-checking the battle for Marsh to see the exact wording since searching 'keyhole' isn't turning up results.

Edit: ok, I can't seem to find anything specifically refering Keyhole, although there is the little snippet about:

Active defenses engaged the weapons which slashed their way through the screen of electronic protection. The latest generation Manticoran counter missiles had increased their effective intercept range to just over two million kilometers, although the probability of a kill in excess of one and a half million was low. Shannon Foraker's best efforts, even with reverse-engineered Solarian technology, had a maximum intercept range of little more than one and a half million. That meant Honor's missile defenses had sufficient depth for two counter missile launches to engage each incoming missile before the attacking birds could reach effective laserhead range.

Which is almost exactly what Keyhole does, it's just not specifically stated to be Keyhole.

The HV Wiki has a reputation for being unreliable or inaccurate.

In any case, they didn't have Keyhole-II at Solon. They did have Keyhole-I and it was more effective than the technologies used at Sidemore. There may have been a few Keyhole-I equipped units in service by the end of WoH, but none were at Sidemore.

cthia wrote:[
You'd get twice the missile capacity from one point source in space and a significant increase in energy batteries that can be brought to bear. Presumably, you'd also get twice the throw weight?

OTOH, you'd lose twice everything with a golden bb. I'd like to know what the WDB would actually say about it. Then cross reference it with Harrington.

Can a single SD be built at twice the size, faster than two normal sized SDs? What will the cost comparison yield between a double-sized SD and two current sized?

In an era of Superior Manty missile range paired with Apollo missiles and a screen, diminished acceleration isn't going to matter as much.

A lion will slow down for a cheetah any day. A lion that can project its power as an Apollo armed SD will slow down for several.

Perhaps the untapped tactical potential of Apollo is great enough to offset a decrease in acceleration advantage.

First, one of the earlier posters was incorrect; it's compensators not impellers that limit acceleration above 8-9 mtons. Even a 16 mton fort uses impellers; however it has to use grav plates to counter the acceleration as its way off the edge of the compensator effeciency cliff. Once you go past that inflection point a compensator loses something like 1g if acceleration for ever extra 2500 tons.

Now one issue with building a 16-18 mton Apollo ship is that while the volume to carry missile pods went way up the surface area to mount fire control antenna, PDLCs, CM tubes, sensors, etc grows much slower than the volume. A pair of Invictus SD(P)s can together probably fire and control more point defense than a singe double-sized super-SD(P).

Somtaaw wrote:

Duckk wrote:Erewhon certainly does not have first-rate Manty equipment like fusion powered MDMs and Keyhole. They're at 1917 PD levels of tech - capacitor powered MDMs, ERMs but not DDMs, no Keyhole, and so forth.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/52/1

Thought Manticore had developed Keyhole prior to the outbreak of the Second War, because Honor's superdreadnoughts had them at Sidemore Station.

That pearl only seems to cover Erewhon's compensator tech, and just that they don't have the full-up fusion MDM's. So they're still running the capacitor birds, the same ones that were also given to the IAN in fact. And there's a lot of hedging in the pearl, about "not having refitted" to RMN standards, which would imply they HAVE the technology, they just haven't seen fit to spend the time, money, and energy to constantly refit to RMN standards. This can be seen in how they just handed over 'tech manuals' to Haven, instead of actual working samples. So they almost certainly have the blueprints for fusion MDM's, the Mark 31 countermissiles, and anything else Manticore had up until the Battle of Sidemore, aka Operation Thunderbolt.


Erewhon also hadn't officially severed ties with Manticore until after Honor had deployed, ergo anything she had, or used in defending Sidemore, Erewhon should at the very minimum, have the tech blueprints for it, for anything upto battlecruiser size at the very least, which might just not include the Keyhole platforms I will admit. But there's certainly the possibility they might have it anyways.

Remember that almost as soon as the took power the High Ridge government and the Janeseck admiralty cut their allies out of the R&D loop. (arguing it was a security measure). That was one of the things that pissed off those allies.
So Erewhon almost certainly didn't get the specs on any of the new hardware that came out anytime after the back half of the ceasefire.