The big problem of late Honorverse

kzt wrote:Every 200-300 pods masses a million tons. How many pods were they towing?

If it was one pod then I’d be off by two orders of magnitude. I seem to remember more than two pods being involved.

Interesting to see that carrying a full load of pods fully doubles the mass of an Agamemnon.

Galactic Sapper wrote:Interesting to see that carrying a full load of pods fully doubles the mass of an Agamemnon.

Yup. General consensus here is that a Mk23/16 pod masses somewhere between 3000 and 5000 tons, based on the stated mass of the missiles and the grav drivers, reactor, plasma ducts, attitude control system and all the other things needed.

IIRC, the pod load also costs a significant proportion of the cost of the complete warship.

kzt wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:Interesting to see that carrying a full load of pods fully doubles the mass of an Agamemnon.

Yup. General consensus here is that a Mk23/16 pod masses somewhere between 3000 and 5000 tons, based on the stated mass of the missiles and the grav drivers, reactor, plasma ducts, attitude control system and all the other things needed.

IIRC, the pod load also costs a significant proportion of the cost of the complete warship.

yep.

It's been said several times, the missile loadout of an SD is about the cost for the empty ship.

Consider the this fact we know for certain - a mk 16 masses 94 tons. A pod of Mk 16s has 14 missiles, which mass ~1316 Tons alone.

Even IF the rest of the hardware that kzt mentions above only brings a Mk 16 carrying flatpack pod to 2000 tons (very unlikely), carrying 300 pods would still mass 600,000 tons - Essentially the Mass of a Sag C and an Avalon put together! Just the missiles in 300 pods weigh 394,800 tons, as much as a SAG-A!!. Add the automated pod carrier the pods were mounted in and the outrageousness continues.

So do we want to discuss tactics of how you can use invisible LACS to tow invisible SD(P)s into battle?

Theemile wrote:yep.

It's been said several times, the missile loadout of an SD is about the cost for the empty ship.

Consider the this fact we know for certain - a mk 16 masses 94 tons. A pod of Mk 16s has 14 missiles, which mass ~1316 Tons alone.

Even IF the rest of the hardware that kzt mentions above only brings a Mk 16 carrying flatpack pod to 2000 tons (very unlikely), carrying 300 pods would still mass 600,000 tons - Essentially the Mass of a Sag C and an Avalon put together! Just the missiles in 300 pods weigh 394,800 tons, as much as a SAG-A!!. Add the automated pod carrier the pods were mounted in and the outrageousness continues.

An Agamemnon is basically carrying Reliant-class BC in its pod bay, and an Invictus is carrying just short of a Nike in there. In terms of mass, anyway; not so much in terms of volume.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Theemile wrote:yep.

It's been said several times, the missile loadout of an SD is about the cost for the empty ship.

Consider the this fact we know for certain - a mk 16 masses 94 tons. A pod of Mk 16s has 14 missiles, which mass ~1316 Tons alone.

Even IF the rest of the hardware that kzt mentions above only brings a Mk 16 carrying flatpack pod to 2000 tons (very unlikely), carrying 300 pods would still mass 600,000 tons - Essentially the Mass of a Sag C and an Avalon put together! Just the missiles in 300 pods weigh 394,800 tons, as much as a SAG-A!!. Add the automated pod carrier the pods were mounted in and the outrageousness continues.

An Agamemnon is basically carrying Reliant-class BC in its pod bay, and an Invictus is carrying just short of a Nike in there. In terms of mass, anyway; not so much in terms of volume.

Just visualizing this makes my butt hurt.

tlb wrote:I disagree; because I believe RFC is quite capable of writing the story in a way that makes the SLN less of a paper tiger, but still allows the GA to foil the plan for the RF to take over the remnants of the SL. However this would not fit in the limited number of mainline books, without dropping much of the Firebrand stories in the Verge. Since I expect that Firebrand is intended to be a major part of the "second season", that would be a problem.

However; my main problem with the ineffectual SLN is that the Detweiler Plan intended to force the battle between the SLN and the victor in the Haven Quadrant, with the sides even enough to destroy both. Since the Malign was keeping eyes on the war between Manticore and Haven, it should have been apparent to them that the SLN had been too emasculated and the beginning stages should have been delayed to address the imbalance. That this did not happen, I can only attribute to panic at the events in the Talbot Quadrant after the discovery of the Lynx terminal.

In a perfect universe I'd agree with you:

Both on that DW is capable of writing the SL war in a more complex and nuanced way and in that the Alignment should have done more to help the SL - or delay their plans.

You are also right that the Talbot Quadrant is the in-world reason for the Alignment's hasty actions.

Now I'm coming back to the hook from my first sentence: 'perfect world'

I have written a novel myself (one - only one, not DW's enormously productive output!) and even that much more limited scope has showed me how hard it is for a single person to on the one hand keep a whole in-world system even half-ways logical and on the on the other find the damned time to actually write even only half of what could be written.

Yes, the SL war could have been more. Theoretically.

But believe me: there is no way a single writer could have done it. Due to RL time constraints. Family. Health. The 24-hour limit of our days. Etc. You name it. It's not humanly possible. I am eternally astonished how much he does manage to produce. It's unbelievable already. Don't demand too much, please.

At the end of the day the whole SL war is just a side show. And it needs to be treated as such if DW wants to reach the real finale in the time available to a single human writer.

Edit: added last paragraph

tlb wrote:However; my main problem with the ineffectual SLN is that the Detweiler Plan intended to force the battle between the SLN and the victor in the Haven Quadrant, with the sides even enough to destroy both. Since the Malign was keeping eyes on the war between Manticore and Haven, it should have been apparent to them that the SLN had been too emasculated and the beginning stages should have been delayed to address the imbalance. That this did not happen, I can only attribute to panic at the events in the Talbot Quadrant after the discovery of the Lynx terminal.

We've discussed this, either in this thread or in another. It's a major intelligence failure in the MAlign's part, indeed, but we found mitigating factors:

1. it happened only after Haven kicked the Solarian contractors out, so the MAlign lost their most direct source of intel on the war
2. like everyone else, they probably thought the number of missiles fired was exaggerated upwards
3. the SLN's actual capabilities were unknown, since they hadn't actually fought anyone in too long
4. "quantity is a quality of its own"

I remember reading "The Service of the Sword", which is the first time SLN warships make an appearance, and wondering if HMS Gauntlet would survive and how well it would fare. At that time (1918), everyone (including us readers) thought the SLN was better. Even in "Shadow of Saganami", I kept wondering if the MAlign (then still unknown by that name) plan to seize the Lynx terminus could have succeeded with 14 BCs.

It wasn't until the Battle of Monica and especially until Second New Tuscany, both in 1921, that RMN's superiority gap became clear, including to the RMN. If the RMN didn't know it was that far ahead, how could a third party relying on third-hand information come to a more accurate conclusion?

We've also discussed that the MAlign should have changed course when the information did become clear, but at that point arrogance kicked in.

I don’t hVe a problem with the SLN getting rolled over. I have a problem with it being done flawlessly by the RMN. Nobody makes mistakes and David kept doing butt pulls to make it easier. Like ‘this week we have an armed logistics ship we never heard od, who can mystriously power up their millions of tons of pods despite not having that system installed.’

So what I have a problem with is that almost all the battles were either boring examples of the SLN juggling idiot balls or infuriating examples of the flawless RMN plot armor ensuring they mysteriously intuit exactly how to flawless counter whatever they did and everything always worked perfectly, even when it required that LACS tow millions of tons of pods at hundreds of gravities under stealth. Which is odd as he once stated that this was impossible, they could tow at most two pods and probably only one.

But whatever the easy to write story demands...

I’d rather he didn’t even write up the ‘battles’.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just visualizing this makes my butt hurt.

I started running the numbers for the other Mk 16 armed ships to get similar comparisons. Rolands aren't too bad, carrying a bit over 11 ktons of missiles in a 189 kton hull. Basically a pre-war Highlander class LAC in terms of tonnage.

A Sang-C is carrying 112.8 ktons of missiles in a 483 kton hull, or a Culverin class destroyer.

A Nike is carrying 564 ktons of missiles in a 2520 kton hull, well more than a Sang-C heavy cruiser. In fact, a Nike is carrying about 20% more missiles than an Agamemnon and can fire salvos almost as large as a single pod pattern.