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Attacking Darius:

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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 6:03 pm

cthia
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Sidewalls don't come up until needed. Probably in a few seconds. Wear and tear must be significant. At any rate, even though the wedge may be up, the sidewalls are not up unless battle has been joined. Which means a Spider that has crept oh so close could take out the Salamander. That is an acceptable sacrifice.

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sub: crept for creeped, are not for aren't

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Last edited by cthia on Mon Mar 21, 2022 5:25 am, edited 2 times in total.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 6:23 pm

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Jonathan"S wrote:Well the one Spider we've seen get close was starting to get worried about detection at just under 2 light minutes (just under 35,980,000 km).
I know you feel they can hide significantly closer; but that 2 LM is the only text-ev we have.


Yes, I think the Spider can creep considerably closer. Those were Ghosts on their maiden voyage. Stealth has probably been improved upon since then, and it was probably already slated to be better for the Spider.

BTW, can we assume the Ghosts had the new stealth material on the hull?

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Last edited by cthia on Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by tlb   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 7:02 pm

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cthia wrote:Sidewalls don't come up until needed. Probably in a few seconds. Wear and tear must be significant. At any rate, even though the wedge may be up, the sidewalls aren't unless battle has been joined. Which means a Spider that has creeped oh so close could take out the Salamander. That is an acceptable sacrifice.

What is your source for this? I did find one case in HotQ where a Masadan LAC damaged a Manticoran destroyer that did not have its sidewalls up. But there the ships did not realize that they were in a warzone. Otherwise I would expect any naval ship to have sidewalls up whenever the wedge was up.

Perhaps I am wrong; if so, that will become the new standard procedure after the first ship is lost.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 7:31 pm

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cthia wrote:
Jonathan"S wrote:Well the one Spider we've seen get close was starting to get worried about detection at just under 2 light minutes (just under 35,980,000 km).
I know you feel they can hide significantly closer; but that 2 LM is the only text-ev we have.


Yes, I think the Spider than creep considerably closer. Those were Ghosts on their maiden voyage. Stealth has probably been improved upon since then, and it was probably already slated to be better for the Spider.

BTW, can we assume the Ghosts had the new stealth material on the hull?
The stealth might have improved since Oyster Bay (though it hasn't yet had long to do so) -- but Ghosts definitely had the new stealth material on the hull, and they were designed to be the ones that sneak in close in order to do the pre-strike recon and deploy the forward fire control relays that the distant strike vessels use to control their missiles and torps. That need to sneak in close, plus their smaller size should make them the very stealthiest of the spider driven ships.

And the text backs that up:
Mission of Honor wrote:The Ghost-class ships [...] all the manifold stealth features built into the scout ship [...] they’d been equipped with every stealth system the fertile imaginations of Anastasia Chernevsky and the rest of the MAN’s R&D establishment had been able to devise, packed into the smallest possible platform.[...]
the architects had accepted some significant compromises even in that regard in favor of knitting the most effective possible cloak of invisibility.
Unlike the starships of most navies, the MAN’s scouts hadn’t settled for simple smart paint.
[...]
The Ghosts’ capabilities, however, went much further than that. Instead of the relatively simpleminded nanotech of most ships’ “paint,” the surface of Apparition’s hull was capable of mimicking effectively any portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Her passive sensors detected any incoming radiation, from infrared through cosmic rays, and her computers mapped the data onto her hull, where her extraordinarily capable nannies reproduced it. In effect, anyone looking at Apparition when her stealth was fully engaged would “see” whatever the sensors exactly opposite his viewpoint “saw,” as if the entire ship were a single sheet of crystoplast.
That was the theory, at least, and in this case, what theory predicted and reality achieved were remarkably close together.[...]
It wasn’t perfect, of course. The system’s greatest weakness was that it couldn’t give complete coverage. Like any stealth system, it still had to deal with things like waste heat, for example. Current technology could recapture and use an enormous percentage of that heat, but not all of it, and what they couldn’t capture still had to go somewhere. And, like other navies’ stealth systems, the MAN’s dealt with that by radiating that heat away from known enemy sensors.


So yes, the entire description we have of the new stealth material is specifically describing what the Ghosts have. We don't get any such description for the Sharks (though they presumably have the same system), nor for the Lenny Dets (though, ditto). But remember, the entire description of their amazing revolutionary stealth system is prelude to the captain's concern about the slight risk being spotted at 2 LM. (Especially if the Grayson ship has launched recon drones. And even without drones he believed the likelihood would go up if the spider drive had been running, and gone up even more if it was freshly brought online at the range)

Now, in the event, no such drones were launched and the Ghost wasn't detected. So he was being somewhat cautious in his concerns at 2 LM closest approach. However if he had confidence that he was likely undetectable at, say, 3-4 light seconds then he shouldn't have reason to start sweating at 30-40 times that...
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 9:50 pm

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tlb wrote:
cthia wrote:Sidewalls don't come up until needed. Probably in a few seconds. Wear and tear must be significant. At any rate, even though the wedge may be up, the sidewalls aren't unless battle has been joined. Which means a Spider that has creeped oh so close could take out the Salamander. That is an acceptable sacrifice.


What is your source for this? I did find one case in HotQ where a Masadan LAC damaged a Manticoran destroyer that did not have its sidewalls up. But there the ships did not realize that they were in a warzone. Otherwise I would expect any naval ship to have sidewalls up whenever the wedge was up.

Perhaps I am wrong; if so, that will become the new standard procedure after the first ship is lost.

Or after the first task force, squadron or fleet is lost.

I found it somewhere in UH.

We discussed it a bit beginning here. Of course the book was talking about bow walls, and in that thread it seems to be unanimous the same applies to the sidewalls.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by tlb   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 10:15 pm

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cthia wrote:Sidewalls don't come up until needed. Probably in a few seconds. Wear and tear must be significant. At any rate, even though the wedge may be up, the sidewalls aren't unless battle has been joined. Which means a Spider that has creeped oh so close could take out the Salamander. That is an acceptable sacrifice.

tlb wrote:What is your source for this? I did find one case in HotQ where a Masadan LAC damaged a Manticoran destroyer that did not have its sidewalls up. But there the ships did not realize that they were in a warzone. Otherwise I would expect any naval ship to have sidewalls up whenever the wedge was up.

Perhaps I am wrong; if so, that will become the new standard procedure after the first ship is lost.

cthia wrote:Or after the first squadron or fleet is lost.

I found it somewhere in UH.

We discussed it a bit beginning here. Of course the book was talking about bow walls, and in that referenced thread it seems to be unanimous the same applies to the sidewalls.

There is a fundamental difference between a sidewall and a bow-wall (or stern-wall), in that the bow or stern-wall prevents you from using the wedge to accelerate (either in a change in velocity or a change in direction); something that is not true with a sidewall. That is why the early books say that it is impossible to close either the fore or aft aspect; something that we later find is not a physical impossibility, but a limitation on maneuvering.

The few cases mentioned of ships not having a sidewall up in that thread, are where the ships captain did not realize that war was imminent (the same as in HotQ)
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So during war times it is common to have the bow or stern-wall down (and not even a buckler up), but it is not common to have the sidewalls down.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 10:22 pm

cthia
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tlb wrote:
cthia wrote:Sidewalls don't come up until needed. Probably in a few seconds. Wear and tear must be significant. At any rate, even though the wedge may be up, the sidewalls aren't unless battle has been joined. Which means a Spider that has creeped oh so close could take out the Salamander. That is an acceptable sacrifice.

tlb wrote:What is your source for this? I did find one case in HotQ where a Masadan LAC damaged a Manticoran destroyer that did not have its sidewalls up. But there the ships did not realize that they were in a warzone. Otherwise I would expect any naval ship to have sidewalls up whenever the wedge was up.

Perhaps I am wrong; if so, that will become the new standard procedure after the first ship is lost.

cthia wrote:Or after the first squadron or fleet is lost.

I found it somewhere in UH.

We discussed it a bit beginning here. Of course the book was talking about bow walls, and in that referenced thread it seems to be unanimous the same applies to the sidewalls.

There is a fundamental difference between a sidewall and a bow-wall (or stern-wall), in that the bow or stern-wall prevents you from using the wedge to accelerate (either in a change in velocity or a change in direction); something that is not true with a sidewall.

The few cases mentioned of ships not having a sidewall up in that thread, are where the ships captain did not realize that war was imminent (the same as in HotQ).

So during war times it is common to not have the bow or stern-wall up (or even a buckler), but it is not common to have the sidewalls down.

Of course during war times, after battle has been joined, or after kzt's flaming datum.

Besides, you can't expect the sidewalls to always be up, when the complacent fools don't always have the wedges up.

On the LDs maiden voyage, a lot of people, places, Captains and warships will be caught without pants.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by tlb   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 10:26 pm

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cthia wrote:Besides, you can't expect the sidewalls to always be up, when the complacent fools don't always have the wedges up.

It is true that on a normal ship, the sidewalls are never up if the wedge is down.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 10:37 pm

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tlb wrote:
cthia wrote:Besides, you can't expect the sidewalls to always be up, when the complacent fools don't always have the wedges up.

It is true that on a normal ship, the sidewalls are never up if the wedge is down.

But my point is that the sidewalls do not automatically go up just because the wedge is up, or they wouldn't have had to snap on in that incident Jonathan referred to when the Peeps jumped Bellerophon.

Hey, I am just as incredulous as you are that it isn't a double switch down in engineering. Throw the switch to snap the wedge on and the sidewalls come on.

It makes sense that the sidewalls aren't always up if there is a matter of wear and tear, and since there has always been plenty of time to get them up. But a new sheriff is in town now. And he and his deputies really need a short victorious war.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Mar 19, 2022 11:16 pm

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Also, we can only speculate on how fast the sidewalls can be brought up. As Jonathan posted in one incident, it seems to be pretty quickly. But pretty quickly may not be good enough.

Like I said, when the Spiders crawl out of their nests, a lot of people are going to be caught with their pants down. I hope the GA can get those sidewalls up faster than we can pull our pants up. We know energizing them won't be faster than energy weapons.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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