New Honorverse renders uploaded

I am not trying to be argumentative or critical. Just trying to convey my impression.

Weber's description of "running out the energy mounts" is obviously intended to reinforce his obvious analogy to the sailing man of war. It therefore seems entirely logical that the missile tubes are also run out to protrude through the hull and interface with the gun ports in the sidewall. The structural issues are not daunting. Given a 12 meter long missile and a 19 meter long missile tube, you get about 7 meters of bearing length on the "carriage."

Aside from enabling breach loading, enabling the launch tubes to reciprocate would mitigate the enormous recoil from launching the missile. IIRC Webers launch tubes exert a few million gees on a 100 ton missile. This equates to a recoil force of hundreds of millions of tons. Depending on tube mass, enabling a recoil stroke of 12 meters would dramatically reduce the recoil forces.

MaxxQ wrote:

namelessfly wrote:Why not have the launch tube run out to pprotrude through the armor and out the hull?

Because only the energy weapons do that, as far as I've been told to make them. I always thought *all* weapons ran out, but apparently not. Even so, they'd have to run out pretty damn far to breech-load a missile, and again, you're limited on the maximum length of the tube anyway, which is about 19 meters. Sure, you could run it out 12-13 meters to load a missile, but that kinda increases vulnerability, no?

OTOH, it's been several years since I was told that the tubes don't run out, so I may actually be misremembering that, but again, it doesn't help with breech-loading.

namelessfly wrote:I am not trying to be argumentative or critical. Just trying to convey my impression.

Weber's description of "running out the energy mounts" is obviously intended to reinforce his obvious analogy to the sailing man of war. It therefore seems entirely logical that the missile tubes are also run out to protrude through the hull and interface with the gun ports in the sidewall. The structural issues are not daunting. Given a 12 meter long missile and a 19 meter long missile tube, you get about 7 meters of bearing length on the "carriage."

Aside from enabling breach loading, enabling the launch tubes to reciprocate would mitigate the enormous recoil from launching the missile. IIRC Webers launch tubes exert a few million gees on a 100 ton missile. This equates to a recoil force of hundreds of millions of tons. Depending on tube mass, enabling a recoil stroke of 12 meters would dramatically reduce the recoil forces.

Sorry... I probably overreacted a bit, seeing as how these ships are kinda my babies. I don't pretend to *know* everything involved, and while I understand what you are talking about, I have to work with what I'm given. If David or Tom were to come along later today and suddenly say that nameless has a point and you should have the tubes run out, then you'll get your breechloading and recoil-absorbing tubes. I'll be perfectly happy to make the necessary changes, as I love doing this stuff because I feel I'm contributing in a significant way to the background and to the community. Until then, it stays as is.

It won't be the first thing that annoyed the nitpickers here or at the bar, and I highly doubt it will be the last.

At the risk of inducing facepalms/headdesks, I have a very small query about the Chanson hammerheads. If the hatches on the hammerhead opened vertically, would that do away with the need for the side-bulges?

Just asking...

Michael Everett wrote:At the risk of inducing facepalms/headdesks, I have a very small query about the Chanson hammerheads. If the hatches on the hammerhead opened vertically, would that do away with the need for the side-bulges?

Just asking...

LOL... yeah, that was brought up, by myself actually, and rejected. Reason was that we would like to keep things as consistent as possible for the separate navies. On *all* RMN ships, the weapons hatches are split in the middle and slide to either side - no "ifs", "ands", or "buts".

That said, I can see one ship where side-sliding hatches will cause problems, although they're not weapons hatches: the LAC bay hatches on a CLAC. I'm not sure what we'll end up with for those, as we haven't really discussed it, but I'm opting for sectioned doors that layer as they retract upwards and downwards - similar to the shuttlebay doors on the Enterprise. It's almost the only way to open those things without getting in the way of adjacent bays.

The other option is to have them swing outwards, and even *I* think that would look silly. But CLACs are a ways down the road, so don't hold your breath waiting.

OTOH, if anyone wants to track my progress, you might note that I've been following the ship list in House of Steel. I'm only doing ships that have lineart attached to them, but that's only for now. I *may* get to those that don't have art attached later on. Could be that by the time I get finished with what I'm already doing, that House of Lies will be out, and I'll have to start on Havenite stuff.

I'm not sure what I'll do when I run out of regular warships and get to things like LACs and Q-Ships, although I suspect I'll have to make at least a basic LAC for no other reason than to have something to check the layout of the CLACs once I get to them.

namelessfly wrote:I am not trying to be argumentative or critical. Just trying to convey my impression.

Weber's description of "running out the energy mounts" is obviously intended to reinforce his obvious analogy to the sailing man of war. It therefore seems entirely logical that the missile tubes are also run out to protrude through the hull and interface with the gun ports in the sidewall. The structural issues are not daunting. Given a 12 meter long missile and a 19 meter long missile tube, you get about 7 meters of bearing length on the "carriage."

Aside from enabling breach loading, enabling the launch tubes to reciprocate would mitigate the enormous recoil from launching the missile. IIRC Webers launch tubes exert a few million gees on a 100 ton missile. This equates to a recoil force of hundreds of millions of tons. Depending on tube mass, enabling a recoil stroke of 12 meters would dramatically reduce the recoil forces.

I believe the references to 'running out the guns' apply primarily to energy weapons, though a part of the process applies to missile tubes as well. The ship's sidewalls work in both directions, so if you tried to fire one of your own grasers through it the beam would be attentuated before it ever got within a light-second of the target. Similarly, if you tried to fire a missile through your own sidewall you'd just end up with a shredded missile. To avoid this, small gaps referred to as gunports are opened in the sidewall to permit outgoing fire. In the case of energy weapons, I believe the final stage of the grav-lensing that focuses and directs the beam occurs in this gunport, as well, so the final lense effectively 'locks into' the gunport.

And yes, I believe it's been mentioned that these gunports do constitute a vulnerability in the sidewall - if you hit one of your target's gunports, you get a free pass through the sidewall.

Dafmeister wrote:

namelessfly wrote:I am not trying to be argumentative or critical. Just trying to convey my impression.

Weber's description of "running out the energy mounts" is obviously intended to reinforce his obvious analogy to the sailing man of war. It therefore seems entirely logical that the missile tubes are also run out to protrude through the hull and interface with the gun ports in the sidewall. The structural issues are not daunting. Given a 12 meter long missile and a 19 meter long missile tube, you get about 7 meters of bearing length on the "carriage."

Aside from enabling breach loading, enabling the launch tubes to reciprocate would mitigate the enormous recoil from launching the missile. IIRC Webers launch tubes exert a few million gees on a 100 ton missile. This equates to a recoil force of hundreds of millions of tons. Depending on tube mass, enabling a recoil stroke of 12 meters would dramatically reduce the recoil forces.

I believe the references to 'running out the guns' apply primarily to energy weapons, though a part of the process applies to missile tubes as well. The ship's sidewalls work in both directions, so if you tried to fire one of your own grasers through it the beam would be attentuated before it ever got within a light-second of the target. Similarly, if you tried to fire a missile through your own sidewall you'd just end up with a shredded missile. To avoid this, small gaps referred to as gunports are opened in the sidewall to permit outgoing fire. In the case of energy weapons, I believe the final stage of the grav-lensing that focuses and directs the beam occurs in this gunport, as well, so the final lense effectively 'locks into' the gunport.

And yes, I believe it's been mentioned that these gunports do constitute a vulnerability in the sidewall - if you hit one of your target's gunports, you get a free pass through the sidewall.

While what you say is true, the energy weapons are also *physically* run out of the ports. I believe Honor even has a bit of expository thoughts about the irony of a spaceship "running out the guns" just like age of sail warships. The reasoning is because of the grav lensing needed to focus and aim the beam. It needs to be beyond the hull, or else it would cause damage.

OTOH, for missiles, I believe the way we are working it is that a "grav tunnel" connects the missile port with the sidewall, effectively giving the ship a ten kilometer missile tube that continuously accelerates the missile until it is beyond the sidewall. At some point, I'd like to work up a design for a surface mount detail to place around the missile ports that could be the grav tunnel generator, and help distinguish which port belongs to which weapon. It's not necessary, but my thinking is almost more aesthetic than anything else. One of the few times I'll admit to that, though.

Daryl wrote:You'd want to hope that the enemy hadn't cracked your codes, and knew the self destruct command sequence.

Yeah, but I don't see that as being much worse than if they'd cracked your code for the missile launch sequence. Either way you've probably got a wasted pod pattern worth of missiles.

And the self-destruct and/or location beacon could be programmed not to be accepted until a set time after the pod's missiles have been launched. Can't do that with the launch codes


And if you detect a signal meant to screw with your pods you can probably update the codes on any unlaunched ones; so the vulnerability seems to have a fairly limited window to exploit.

MaxxQ wrote:
OTOH, for missiles, I believe the way we are working it is that a "grav tunnel" connects the missile port with the sidewall, effectively giving the ship a ten kilometer missile tube that continuously accelerates the missile until it is beyond the sidewall.

This is exactly how I always visualized it working Trying to build the mass driver into the ship itself to impart all of the launch velocity means either not getting much initial velocity or using literally crushing acceleration that might damage the missiles.

TheMonster wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:
OTOH, for missiles, I believe the way we are working it is that a "grav tunnel" connects the missile port with the sidewall, effectively giving the ship a ten kilometer missile tube that continuously accelerates the missile until it is beyond the sidewall.

This is exactly how I always visualized it working Trying to build the mass driver into the ship itself to impart all of the launch velocity means either not getting much initial velocity or using literally crushing acceleration that might damage the missiles.

Of course, that begs the question of what to do about chase weapons, since there's no fore or aft sidewall to anchor the grav tube to. The answer there is that the tubes are much longer than the broadside tubes, and the forward tubes are longer than the aft tubes.

MaxxQ wrote:Of course, that begs the question of what to do about chase weapons, since there's no fore or aft sidewall to anchor the grav tube to. The answer there is that the tubes are much longer than the broadside tubes, and the forward tubes are longer than the aft tubes.

Does the grav tube need to be anchored or is it just anchored on the broadsides to keep from shooting your own sidewall?

Wouldn't it be similar to a reversed tractor beam (presser beam?) that doesn't need any anchor except the object it is pushing.