What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

psy9o wrote:The problem with using MT to express ship classes is that some people confuse this with weight. This is incorrect, kg is a measurement for mass. 1L of water is one 1kg, doesn't matter whether your on earth or on a planet with ten times as much gravity this always stays true. Weight however is measured in Newton because this is a force. So a ship of 8.5 MT can vary in sizes depending on how much mass construction materials had and what the cargo is. So even if and SD(P) has a mass of 8.5 MT and you have a cargo ship of 8.5 MT the size both ships have can be different since an SD is probably going to be constructed with materials wich have a higher mass and the ship is going to have a lot less empty space then a cargo ship.

The MT measurements are not a measurement of the ship's mass. They are a measurement of the size(volume) of the compensator field needed for that ship.

There is word of god to that effect, though I don't remember exactly where/when he said it.

it doesn't matter how much extra mass the system takes up (after all it fitted into a courier boat with no one noticing) its to valuable not to fit into every new ship under construction (and retro fit where possibile) as it fundamentally alters a critical link in the war, travelling between the star systems.

Garth 2 wrote:it doesn't matter how much extra mass the system takes up (after all it fitted into a courier boat with no one noticing) its to valuable not to fit into every new ship under construction (and retro fit where possibile) as it fundamentally alters a critical link in the war, travelling between the star systems.

I don't think this a critical factor for warships for several reasons.
1. It gives no advantage what so ever in actual ship to ship combat. You can't accelerate faster and you don't have stronger offensive or defensive capabilities because of it.
2. At short distances the speed advantage of the streak drive is minimal and at longer distances it doesn't matter cause your are always going to be to late to respond to an attack.
3. For offensive operations we have seen that the key is primarily timing. Both in operation Thunderbolt and Cutworm it was the timing of every attack happening at the same time so that the enemy couldn't formulate a good response that made the difference, not the speed at which they could reach the target.

The only advantage from a military eye that i can see is faster messaging and allowing ship to patrol multiple systems in a smaller amount of time. These are important advantages but not critical.

psy9o wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:it doesn't matter how much extra mass the system takes up (after all it fitted into a courier boat with no one noticing) its to valuable not to fit into every new ship under construction (and retro fit where possibile) as it fundamentally alters a critical link in the war, travelling between the star systems.

I don't think this a critical factor for warships for several reasons.
1. It gives no advantage what so ever in actual ship to ship combat. You can't accelerate faster and you don't have stronger offensive or defensive capabilities because of it.
2. At short distances the speed advantage of the streak drive is minimal and at longer distances it doesn't matter cause your are always going to be to late to respond to an attack.
3. For offensive operations we have seen that the key is primarily timing. Both in operation Thunderbolt and Cutworm it was the timing of every attack happening at the same time so that the enemy couldn't formulate a good response that made the difference, not the speed at which they could reach the target.

The only advantage from a military eye that i can see is faster messaging and allowing ship to patrol multiple systems in a smaller amount of time. These are important advantages but not critical.

1 - Agreed but besides the point.
2 - At shorter & longer distance its even better, since you can get your fleet to the star system faster than the enemy may be expecting you.
3 - specific operational examples, not general operational practise.
Your final point is why it would have to be equiped and the time it takes for vessels to get between systems is critical to your overall victory which is why it would be refitted across the board.

Once the bugs are worked out Streak drive will be standard on all military ships. Remember that all military ships currently have hype generators that are bigger and/or more maintenance intensive than the main civilian ones. While the new drive is likely to be larger than the old one, the greater strategic speed is going to be worth what will need to be cut in magazine space. Getting there first is very important, think of the implications of access to the next hyper band on the final ship battle in HotQ. White Haven, could have told Honor to take her ship back for repairs, while he dealt with Thunder of God.

The reason I said that in short distances the speed advantage of the streak drive is minimal is that in short distances it is your acceleration that is most important for travel time. It is even possible that in any travel less then week the current manticore ships are actually faster then the streak drive because they can accelerate much faster towards their top speed and can climb much faster in the hyper bands. Getting the streak drive isn't going to change that very much because the higher bands only start paying of when you can stay in them for longer times at top cruise speed. In the case of HToQ white haven would probably have much more benefit from the grayson compensators then from the streak drive. Remember that every shift to another band results in a loss of the ships actual speed.

I doubt we'll see retrofitting of the streak drive onto existing ships. The advantages are there, true, but they're not strong enough to call for putting them in every ship that can handle them - cf the Grayson-style compensators, which were not retrofitted to old ships. We've heard multiple times about how drives are difficult to upgrade - now, granted, that was talking about the impeller drives, since nobody's had any reason to upgrade hyper drives before, but it seems believable that we'd have similar issues, especially in light of the same situation occurring with compensators.

psy9o wrote:The reason I said that in short distances the speed advantage of the streak drive is minimal is that in short distances it is your acceleration that is most important for travel time. It is even possible that in any travel less then week the current manticore ships are actually faster then the streak drive because they can accelerate much faster towards their top speed and can climb much faster in the hyper bands. Getting the streak drive isn't going to change that very much because the higher bands only start paying of when you can stay in them for longer times at top cruise speed. In the case of HToQ white haven would probably have much more benefit from the grayson compensators then from the streak drive. Remember that every shift to another band results in a loss of the ships actual speed.

In HotQ, Trueman hit the iota wall a day out of Grayson. If normal operation of couriers is a day and a half to the iota wall, anything longer than 3 days would be faster for the streak drive.

Although most couriers operate in the Theta band, under normal operating procedures warships operate in the safer eta band. The Streak drive would enable warships to operate in the Iota band, couriers in the Kappa band, which would mean 35% faster travel time on trips longer than 3 days. Not insignificant when you don't have enough ships to go around.

Werrf wrote:I doubt we'll see retrofitting of the streak drive onto existing ships. The advantages are there, true, but they're not strong enough to call for putting them in every ship that can handle them - cf the Grayson-style compensators, which were not retrofitted to old ships. We've heard multiple times about how drives are difficult to upgrade - now, granted, that was talking about the impeller drives, since nobody's had any reason to upgrade hyper drives before, but it seems believable that we'd have similar issues, especially in light of the same situation occurring with compensators.

I don't think it would work with the Streak drive, but Grayson-style compensators were retrofitted to old ships (at least, if they were being kept in service at all). Doing that was one of the major reasons behind the RMN's large-scale refit operation after taking Trevor's Star.

drothgery wrote:

Werrf wrote:I doubt we'll see retrofitting of the streak drive onto existing ships. The advantages are there, true, but they're not strong enough to call for putting them in every ship that can handle them - cf the Grayson-style compensators, which were not retrofitted to old ships. We've heard multiple times about how drives are difficult to upgrade - now, granted, that was talking about the impeller drives, since nobody's had any reason to upgrade hyper drives before, but it seems believable that we'd have similar issues, especially in light of the same situation occurring with compensators.

I don't think it would work with the Streak drive, but Grayson-style compensators were retrofitted to old ships (at least, if they were being kept in service at all). Doing that was one of the major reasons behind the RMN's large-scale refit operation after taking Trevor's Star.

Although it would not be an easy proposition, it could be done by moving things around internaly, which RFC has said is possible. Granted they might need to cut something else in order to make room, (1% fewer missile storage, for example) but it is possible, and IMO would be highly likele as part of a refit cycle.