Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:Keep in mind the people who did the most damage to treecats are now pretty much on Darius.

There may be anger at the League and blame but I have the feeling the treecats are able to judge things for themselves. Nimitz did not attack most of the Peeps he came into contact with.

With one defining difference. The Peeps didn't wipe out an entire clan of 'Cats.

The Malign made it personal!

Yes and it might be interesting for a treecat to meet a Detweiler. But a lot of people in MAlign had no knowledge of the strike. Also, to be fair, the damage was done by falling debris from space. These were not targeted strikes.

ldwechsler wrote: Yes and it might be interesting for a treecat to meet a Detweiler. But a lot of people in MAlign had no knowledge of the strike. Also, to be fair, the damage was done by falling debris from space. These were not targeted strikes.

To be fair, the damage had to fall somewhere. Boo hoo, so sad too bad. It was as intentional as tossing a rock off an overpass onto a car. You can't charge me with an Epsilon Eridani Edict violation, not that I give a ... whatever. I'll take my legally fictitious fig leaf.

But back to the cataphracts for a sec, if I might. Technodyne developed them and offered them to the SLN who politely declined purchasing them. The Detweillers at some point were miffed over Filareta getting them becausehe gave thenGA a look at them and "they are too close to ours"

pappilon wrote:

ldwechsler wrote: Yes and it might be interesting for a treecat to meet a Detweiler. But a lot of people in MAlign had no knowledge of the strike. Also, to be fair, the damage was done by falling debris from space. These were not targeted strikes.

To be fair, the damage had to fall somewhere. Boo hoo, so sad too bad. It was as intentional as tossing a rock off an overpass onto a car. You can't charge me with an Epsilon Eridani Edict violation, not that I give a ... whatever. I'll take my legally fictitious fig leaf.

But back to the cataphracts for a sec, if I might. Technodyne developed them and offered them to the SLN who politely declined purchasing them. The Detweillers at some point were miffed over Filareta getting them becausehe gave thenGA a look at them and "they are too close to ours"

The Alignment specifically addressed the need to avoid hitting anything on the 4 planets involved in Oyster Bay with weapons. Ok they didn't strike anything (that we have been told of) in Grayson orbit but they certainly knew that the debris from hitting at least the three major Manticoran stations was going to fall on the planets and not just in tiny pieces. It was going to come down in massive chunks. That is what you get when you start by cutting 70+km long space stations into massive sections with graser beams including disrupting the containment of fusion powerplants.
Oh, hundreds of thousands were killed when peices of stations fell on inhabited planets (people that is, we don't count animals- oh, wait, from the Alignment's perspective, "normal" humans are animals)....because we attached with no warning and nobody knew they were at war...it was only collateral damage because the Manticorians built the stations and were disrupting our plans to have them subjugated and or all killed by Haven. Shame on them for being so disruptive and not putting self destruct devices in those stations so no piece bigger than a breadbox would hit the atmosphear. THEY MADE US DO IT.
Sound familure?


Technodyne was the agent for providing the Cataphracts, 1st to the Monicans and then "improved" versions to the People's Republic Navy In Excile, then to Fillerta. Provided a lot of them. Cataphracts appear to be a more SL approach to DDMs than a compleat departure such as what Manticore and the Aldermani came up with. One of the things that stuck me was the possibility or even probability of Manticore and others deciding that people who were using Cataphracts were tied to this new Star Nation which isn't identified until later as "the Alignment"
The shipping information Fillerta sees says Technodyne but he has doubts about that. Nobody seems to know where Technodyne is producing these things. Nobody is mentioning Yelden. They are apparenetly not being made at Mesa. In fact, while the PRNIE is told they are comming from Mesa, that appears to be just another lie and the "Mesan" military advisor is clearly an Alignment person--he's Alignment Navy, not Mesan. So, it appears that the Alignment has provided it's cats paws with early version of their DDM. So much earlier that these thing are huge and pod launched. They have range, they can have a ballistic component but so far they are not as powerful as SLN weapons (warheads) of similar size. The Alignment probably has the next version or two which a) is more powerful and b) can be tube launched and that is part of what will be deployed in the Lenny Dets along with other weapons and ships we haven't seen yet.
A problem with this- for the Alignment- is that their enemies should be able to follow the design evolution and conclude that the stuff used in the attack on Torch, the pods provided to Monica and the pods provided to Filerta show a commonality of design and development. So that is either Technodyne selling these things- where they are building them would be interesting- OR this is an Alignment design being passed out to their dupes and minions. Ok, providing some and selling a lot more. "Giving" them to the exiled Peeps is arming your vicious thugs to do your dirty work. Selling them to the SLN is a way to fund other operations as well as give your usefull idiots something that might almost let them accomplish what you want them to do and keep your own forces out of the battle for later use.

Brigade XO wrote:Technodyne was the agent for providing the Cataphracts, 1st to the Monicans and then "improved" versions to the People's Republic Navy In Excile, then to Fillerta.

One correctiong - the missiles the Monicans used do not appear to have anything in common with Cataphracts.

They appear to be a form of single-drive extended range missile, and are relatively low acceleration.
They burned at 43,000 gees to 0.32c (so about 225 seconds - and giving them about 10.66 million km range). That was stated to be half power, so full power would be 86,000 gees for 75 seconds.

That's lower acceleration (though for longer) that current SLN single-drive missiles, or the first (slower) stage of the Cataphract. Those can each do 47,600/98,000 gees for 180/60 seconds - which at half power provides 7.5 million km.


So it seems like the Monica pods were de-tuned about 10% (relative to the best SDM tech Technodyn has) as part of designing them with 50% more endurance on their single drive. But being restricted to a single drive gives them about 2/3rd the range of a Cataphract, and without any chance to use a ballistic segment.

Brigade XO wrote:So, it appears that the Alignment has provided it's cats paws with early version of their DDM. So much earlier that these thing are huge and pod launched. They have range, they can have a ballistic component but so far they are not as powerful as SLN weapons (warheads) of similar size. The Alignment probably has the next version or two which a) is more powerful and b) can be tube launched and that is part of what will be deployed in the Lenny Dets along with other weapons and ships we haven't seen yet.

Second correction. Even the Cataphract's fist appearance, with the Peaple's Navy in Exile there were tube launched versions. We've seen three versions of the original Cataphract,
Cataphract-C, built around the SLN's Trebuchet capital missile, could be fired only out of one of the missile pods
Cataphract-B, based on the Javelin missile intended for the League's battlecruisers and heavy cruisers, could be fired from a standard superdreadnought missile tube
Cataphract-A, based on the Spatha, the SLN's new-model destroyer and light cruiser shipkiller, could be fired from standard battlecruiser and heavy cruiser tubes

There's also already Flight Two Cataphracts introduced in Shadow of Victory claiming "new Flight Two Cataphract, with almost twenty percent more powered range and marginally improved warheads"[1]

But they don't seem to be any smaller, so you probably still can't launch a Cataphract-A with it's SD weight warhead from an SD's tube. Though as you say the Lenny Det's might carry oversized tubes that can handle them. After all we know they've got even more oversized tubes for launching graser torps.


[1] however there's something weird with that claim because it shortly says: "thirty million kilometers. That was damned near twice the range even the Flight Two Cataphract could manage in a continuous burn". But given the numbers provided the flight one Cataphract's already had a max powered range of 16.5 million km, 20% more would be 19.8 million (or ~2/3rds the 30 million km demonstration shot)

Jonathan_S wrote:One correctiong - the missiles the Monicans used do not appear to have anything in common with Cataphracts.

They appear to be a form of single-drive extended range missile, and are relatively low acceleration.

The Technodyne missiles and pods used at Monica were System Defense Missiles. They got their extended range by being big. (described in textev later as "those big-assed missiles.)

The 10% reduction in acceleration was due to the missiles' size, not a deliberate de-tuning of the drive specs. Much the same way that SDs are slower than DDs.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:One correctiong - the missiles the Monicans used do not appear to have anything in common with Cataphracts.

They appear to be a form of single-drive extended range missile, and are relatively low acceleration.

The Technodyne missiles and pods used at Monica were System Defense Missiles. They got their extended range by being big. (described in textev later as "those big-assed missiles.)

The 10% reduction in acceleration was due to the missiles' size, not a deliberate de-tuning of the drive specs. Much the same way that SDs are slower than DDs.

One of the fun things will be that more than a few key people from Technodyne, Manpower and Jessyk will be captured on Mesa. That should provide some nice show trials.

OMG, youse guys are gonna make me dig out my copy of Shadow of Saganami, aren't you!

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:One correctiong - the missiles the Monicans used do not appear to have anything in common with Cataphracts.

They appear to be a form of single-drive extended range missile, and are relatively low acceleration.

The Technodyne missiles and pods used at Monica were System Defense Missiles. They got their extended range by being big. (described in textev later as "those big-assed missiles.)

The 10% reduction in acceleration was due to the missiles' size, not a deliberate de-tuning of the drive specs. Much the same way that SDs are slower than DDs.

Simply making them big doesn't automatically let the drive nodes last longer before burning out - but it's certainly possible, or even likely, that making the drive nodes more robust (with Technodynes tech level) pushed up the size. And of course without better capacitors you need more internal volume to store the extra power needed for that extended runtime.

I guess I just assumed they'd de-rated the accel as part of it because there's already a well known linkage between acceleration (power level) and missile drive endurance (half power = triple the run-time)

pappilon wrote:
But back to the cataphracts for a sec, if I might. Technodyne developed them and offered them to the SLN who politely declined purchasing them. The Detweillers at some point were miffed over Filareta getting them becausehe gave the GA a look at them and "they are too close to ours"

minor point.

Technodyne (and others) who were paying attention to the war in the Haven Sector couldn't get the SLN to FUND their R&D; they never offered a working Cataphract to them; it was a Malign monopoly until the battle of Torch.

The SLN didn't fund development of extended range missiles because they didn't believe they were possible; no one in the SLN ever heard of Cataphracts until they were diverted to Filareta --well, maybe Rajampet. There was some commentary on that in ToF, by the Mesan liaison to Luff.

Laserhead missiles were initially developed some 80 years ago (1830's), but had poor performance. The SLN refused to buy them or finance further development; Astral Technologies(?) bought out the design. These were upgraded, and sold to the Andermani and the Peeps; only later did the SLN accept them.

Whether the Cataphract was developed by Technodyne or in the Malign's labs is a mystery, but it wasn't offered to the SLN until the Malign wanted to get a real field test on the missile in combat. That was why they gave some of them to Luff for Torch, but they never got their field data.

Regards,
Rob

I wonder where Honor would be buried? Not that there's a huge chance there'll actually be any remains recovered. Wasn't there a ceremony on Grayson, as well as on Manticore during her premature death?

Her home is Sphinx.