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cthia wrote:Do I really havta? But the whole world's in the doghouse now. LOL

See what you did tlb, you didn't have to call out the Peep Princess. Well alright, but I don't have to like it. If it makes any difference, I think Eloise is a great gal.

Before I go, why exactly does a warship have to have the hammerhead design? Someone says it's a more efficient design upstream, but why is that again? I would imagine it's easier to design a compensator, sidewalls and the like, to operate on a simple shape, overall? :shrug:

Drive nodes are optimally placed within the last 10-15% of the hull on each end, well inside maximum beam of the ship. Civilian ships accept this and end up with more of a elongated football shape with the points cut off. Warships need the additional volume to mount weapons and sensors so they flare the hull out again after it pinches down to put the nodes where they need to be.

Notably, the new designs of LACs do not have hammerheads because they don't need the volume past the drive rings and the length of hull available past the ring would be insufficient to mount much of anything anyway. Instead, they mount the missile and CM tubes on the main hull positioned such that they can fire forward past the drive ring on the outside.

tlb wrote:The hammerheads are to provide area for the chase tubes and everything else a military ship needs to expose to space. Cargo ships do not have that need, nor that shape.

The basic shape of an impeller-driven ship is two circular rings of nodes, spaced a minimum distance. That doesn't mean a cylinder: you could just as easily have an ellipsoid, which would maximise internal volume and minimise armour/hull area. That also doesn't preclude more mass outside of the planes formed by the two rings. We know missile pods can be towed inside the wedge and that the ship can choose its position in there too, not having to stay exact centre.

That's where the compensators come in. I don't recall anything saying specifically what form they impose, but I suspect that they are the ones that limit how far outside the rings and how much volume inside of them can be occupied by compensated mass.

Is the Position of the Alpha Nodes driven by the geometry of the Wedges or the Sails? When the BC's were broken up for the Patrol Service each half only had a single set of Alpha nodes but could still generate a wedge. 1 Half had a Hypergenerator as well so could travel in Hyperspace as well but we don't know if it could survive a Grav Wave (not local to MC) or a WH (not known about either!).

LAC's don't have W. Sails and are not Hypercapable.

Captain Golding wrote:Is the Position of the Alpha Nodes driven by the geometry of the Wedges or the Sails? When the BC's were broken up for the Patrol Service each half only had a single set of Alpha nodes but could still generate a wedge. 1 Half had a Hypergenerator as well so could travel in Hyperspace as well but we don't know if it could survive a Grav Wave (not local to MC) or a WH (not known about either!).

LAC's don't have W. Sails and are not Hypercapable.

From the Pearls, the Alpha nodes need to be at the very ends to generate sails. But the sails do not otherwise affect the shape of the ship (in my understanding), it is the wedge that places some restrictions on the shape. Also I think one sail is possible, but two give much better control.

tlb wrote:

Captain Golding wrote:Is the Position of the Alpha Nodes driven by the geometry of the Wedges or the Sails? When the BC's were broken up for the Patrol Service each half only had a single set of Alpha nodes but could still generate a wedge. 1 Half had a Hypergenerator as well so could travel in Hyperspace as well but we don't know if it could survive a Grav Wave (not local to MC) or a WH (not known about either!).

LAC's don't have W. Sails and are not Hypercapable.

From the Pearls, the Alpha nodes need to be at the very ends to generate sails. But the sails do not otherwise affect the shape of the ship (in my understanding), it is the wedge that places some restrictions on the shape. Also I think one sail is possible, but two give much better control.

One sail is suicide in a grav wave. The ship needs a sail at either end to stabilize the ship in relation to the wave or a wormhole transition.

There are numerous textev cases where losing a single alpha node - and thus losing one sail but not the other - prevents a ship from entering hyperspace due to the system being located inside a wave. OBS, for instance.

The remnant of the BC with the hyper generator could enter hyper space, though, so long as they're doing it in an area that is not part of a grav wave. Transiting from Manticore-A to Manticore-B would be possible but bigger interstellar trips would be ill-advised.

Brigade XO wrote:Grant vs Lee endgame.
Looking back at the years of people writing about what was going on in the Eastern campaigns, and at the campaings from the Southern point of view, yes it is clear that they were using the interior lines of communication and supply, and yes it is clear that the Federal Generals were pausing- even drawing back- after pushing hard, espeicialy if stopped hard or suffered defeat.
When Grant took command he did as described here, kept pushing. Never give Lee any appreciable time to rest.

Though even though I advanced the same argument earlier, to be fair to some of those earlier Union generals I'm not sure that a lot earlier in the war that the logistics were up to the point of sustaining the Union army for all that long in the field. So some of that march out, fight, march back may have been dictated by logistics more than personal preference.


Though the Union army in Virginia did seem to have a sequence of sub-par generals. Logistics can't absolve all their apparent sins.

Brigade XO wrote:Grant vs Lee endgame.
Looking back at the years of people writing about what was going on in the Eastern campaigns, and at the campaings from the Southern point of view, yes it is clear that they were using the interior lines of communication and supply, and yes it is clear that the Federal Generals were pausing- even drawing back- after pushing hard, espeicialy if stopped hard or suffered defeat.
When Grant took command he did as described here, kept pushing. Never give Lee any appreciable time to rest.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though even though I advanced the same argument earlier, to be fair to some of those earlier Union generals I'm not sure that a lot earlier in the war that the logistics were up to the point of sustaining the Union army for all that long in the field. So some of that march out, fight, march back may have been dictated by logistics more than personal preference.

Though the Union army in Virginia did seem to have a sequence of sub-par generals. Logistics can't absolve all their apparent sins.

Gen Meade had some merit. Gen McClellan was good at all the phases except for the actual fighting, where he was too timid; as though he had built the Army and did not want to see it broken.

But prior to Grant's arrival the main problem for all of them was that Gen Lee was one of the best tacticians on the Southern side. Gen Grant was able to practice against lesser talent, finishing with Gen Pemberton who managed to trap his own army in Vicksburg.

cthia wrote:

Royal Manticoran Astro-Control Service

The Royal Manticoran Astro-Control Service, commonly abbreviated to just ACS, was a civilian agency of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, responsible for the operation of the various termini of the Manticore Wormhole Junction. It had uniforms and a rank structure similar to the that of the Royal Manticoran Navy. (HH1, HH8)

In 1905 PD, the ACS was directing a wormhole transit through the Junction once every three minutes. By 1920 PD, following the discovery of the seventh terminus, it was handling one transit every eighty-five seconds.[1](SI1)

Organization
Termini detachments

ACS had a detachment operating in each of the termini's systems. They directed traffic in and outbound from their particular terminus, in coordination with the central control in the Manticore System. (SI1)

Survey Command

ACS Survey Command was responsible for conducting junction and terminus beacon surveys. Until the Royal Manticoran Astrophysics Investigation Agency was established by the High Ridge government, Survey Command also conducted research into the existence of the seventh terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction. (HH10)

Search and Rescue

As a secondary responsibility, ACS also controlled intrasystem civilian search-and-rescue craft for any space-based emergency response. (Companion)

Queues

Each terminus had an inbound and outbound vector, and so had an arrival and departure queue. Ships requesting permission from ACS to transit were assigned a queue number, based on priority, which would count down as ships entered/exited the Junction. When the number reached 10, ships were given "readiness clearance", which allowed them to enter the outbound lane, aligned with the entry vector for that termini. Ships progressed along the outbound lane at a slow fifteen gravities. When the number reached 1, the ship was first in line, and could approach the Junction.

In 1905, ACS was handling a transit every three minutes. In 1920 it was every eighty-five seconds. That's ~ 30 warships per hour. I maintain, the area around the junction is the perfect place for the MaLign to set up an ambush. And yes, I still maintain they can get that close.

At any rate, I'm looking for a few incidents to occur at ACS. A lot of ships can be targeted while they are waiting in line. Like ducks all in a row.

Pear Harbor all over again.

"ALL FLIGHTS ARE GROUNDED."

I'm definitely going to buy House of Steel. I thought it is simply a bunch of technical stuff about sails, whales and cattails. IT ISN'T! It's chock-full of other goodness too! I admit, many of you did pass that memo on to me. I'm including this link to a review, which includes an interesting portion of the book for interested parties.

It seems there is a lot of activity at the Junction. House of Steel details "A large number of platforms providing warehousing and transshipment stations, maintenance and refueling facilities, and financial offices are located in the vicinity of the Junction. The majority of these platforms are owned by one or more of the Solarian transstellars."

It seems the Forts would have their hands full if the LDs attacked the infrastructure at the Junction, as well as the Pearl Harbor-like scenario included.

I'm also surprised Manticore would allow foreign presence at the Junction. The MA could have sleepers in the midst of the SL owned companies, if they still exist after BoM. These SL owned, MA infected platforms could be "conditioned" to ignore anything they "might" see.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:The hammerheads are to provide area for the chase tubes and everything else a military ship needs to expose to space. Cargo ships do not have that need, nor that shape.

The basic shape of an impeller-driven ship is two circular rings of nodes, spaced a minimum distance. That doesn't mean a cylinder: you could just as easily have an ellipsoid, which would maximise internal volume and minimise armour/hull area. That also doesn't preclude more mass outside of the planes formed by the two rings. We know missile pods can be towed inside the wedge and that the ship can choose its position in there too, not having to stay exact centre.

That's where the compensators come in. I don't recall anything saying specifically what form they impose, but I suspect that they are the ones that limit how far outside the rings and how much volume inside of them can be occupied by compensated mass.

Efficient compentator shape got touched on a bit in the Manticore Ascendant series. One of the designs that predated grab plates, and used a rotating section to provide gravity, was mentioned to park it during combat at a specific position because the compensation field they could produce wasn't quite symmetrical and by parking the rotating section in a "wide" part of the field it didn't impact the acceleration like it would if parked, say 90 degrees further round, in a "narrow" part of the field.

You can extend the compensator field to a fair extent, but when you stretch it out you get lowered acceleration.


Though there are some hull shape limits that are driven by the impeller start-up that don't necessarily apply once the wedge is up. The impeller start-up, at least, apparently causes destructive forces in the area around the taper of the ship hull. I think you might be able to move or store things in that area after the wedge has stabilized - but at least during start-up my understanding is that anything sticking out beyond the taper would get torn apart.

The main body of the hull though could be taller or fatter; the wedge wouldn't care. But the compensator would; and you'd get reduced acceleration.

tlb wrote:From the Pearls, the Alpha nodes need to be at the very ends to generate sails. But the sails do not otherwise affect the shape of the ship (in my understanding), it is the wedge that places some restrictions on the shape. Also I think one sail is possible, but two give much better control.

Though I keep wondering if RFC misspoke when he said that. Because LACs, shuttles, pinnaces, and forts don't have the same limits on hull shape. And all of those have only beta (or beta squared) nodes. It would make more sense to me that it was the alpha nodes which have the larger effect on hull shape.

Galactic Sapper wrote:One sail is suicide in a grav wave. The ship needs a sail at either end to stabilize the ship in relation to the wave or a wormhole transition.

It might be suicide to enter a wave with only one sail; since you're right about ships losing just a single alpha ring were getting stuck if the system was in a grav wave.

However we saw in SVW, when the Havenite raiding force jumped the RMN convoy in a grav wave, that while they were very clear that losing both sails would doom the ship losing one would just render it unable to maneuver; but they'd expect to be safely towed out of the wave by a ship retaining both its sails.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though there are some hull shape limits that are driven by the impeller start-up that don't necessarily apply once the wedge is up. The impeller start-up, at least, apparently causes destructive forces in the area around the taper of the ship hull. I think you might be able to move or store things in that area after the wedge has stabilized - but at least during start-up my understanding is that anything sticking out beyond the taper would get torn apart.

The main body of the hull though could be taller or fatter; the wedge wouldn't care. But the compensator would; and you'd get reduced acceleration.

tlb wrote:From the Pearls, the Alpha nodes need to be at the very ends to generate sails. But the sails do not otherwise affect the shape of the ship (in my understanding), it is the wedge that places some restrictions on the shape. Also I think one sail is possible, but two give much better control.

Though I keep wondering if RFC misspoke when he said that. Because LACs, shuttles, pinnaces, and forts don't have the same limits on hull shape. And all of those have only beta (or beta squared) nodes. It would make more sense to me that it was the alpha nodes which have the larger effect on hull shape.

Clearly you say the wedge start-up has an effect on the hull shape and that is the result of both Alpha and Beta nodes. So the sail might not affect hull shape (except for the requirement to be at the ends), but the Alpha nodes will still have an effect on the overall shape.

We do not think a fort has a compensator. So is it the compensator that has most effect on the ship shape (along with wedge start-up effects)?