Compensators, Wallers, and tonnage

This is a fairly long first post, so I moved my TLDR to the top for those who'd rather just get the summary without actually reading the whole thing.

TL:DR, everything from Destroyers to Battlecruisers have jumped anywhere upto a full 2.5 times larger over the two Havenite wars, but Superdreadnoughts have only grown by 450,000 tons and I'm speculating on what could be included in larger SD's.

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As I've been re-reading the series yet again, interspaced with reading some of the threads here (looking at you, notional light combatant type threads), I've been considering the place of wallers.

Over the course of the two Haven wars, SD's slowly crept up in size and speed, much like their smaller cousins. For a quick recap for reference later, House of Steel numbers, sorted loosely by launch date.

RMN:
SD -Sphinx: 8,207,000 tons @ 403.9 G (1895-present)
SD -Gryphon: 8,339,000 tons @ 402.1 G (1900-present)
SDP-Medusa: 8.554.750 tons @ 502.8 G (1914-present)
BC -Reliant: 934,250 tons @ 616 G (1915-present)
SDP-Invictus: 8,768,500 tons @ 562.6 G (1919-present)
BCP-Aggie: 1,750,750 tons @ 692.6 G (1919-present)
BC -Nike: 2,519,750 tons @ 674.3 G (1920-present)

GSN:
BC -Couvosier: 903,750 tons @ 514.7 (1904-present)
SD -Manticore's Gift: 7,187,250 @ 417.5 G (1906-present)
SD -Benjie: 8,517,750 tons @ 468.3 G (1911-present)
SDP-Harrington: 8,629,250 tons @ 498.5 G (1913-presemt)
CLAC-Covington: 6,244,250 tons @ 476.7 G (1915-present)
BCP-Courvosier II: 1,763,500 tons @ 678.4 G (1919-present)
SDP-Harrington II: 8,779,250 tons @ 561.9 G (1919-present)




Sub-wallers have been creeping up in size considerably faster than wallers have been going up, even after the advent of podnoughts they did not change much. From the Gryphons (the largest known SDs pre-podnought) to the very latest known RMN Invictus SD(P) was a change of only around 450,000 tons.

Meanwhile, Battlecruisers in particular have jumped from just shy of a million (Reliants and Couvosiers) to just shy of 2 million tons (Agamemnons and Courvosier IIs) or 2.5 million tons (Nikes).

Now leaving aside the thoughts of smaller warships, the point of this, is I'm starting to wonder why wallers size is staying so static, while sub-wallers are just sprouting higher and higher, and we're all starting to think of ship size creep making sub-X tonnage obsolete now.


One of the only reasons I can think of for SEM/Grand Alliance ships to have not gotten bigger, is Manticore has always favoured her battlecruisers, and fast, slashing tactics. That's evidenced in TSVW when Honor first takes command of Nike, and we learn every Skipper worth the braid craves a Battlecruiser command. With Manticore's tremendous R&D lead over the various Haven regimes, by holding their SD's static in tonnage, they could have SD's fast enough to run down BBs without a forced defense (of a Havenite planet).


But at the core, Superdreadnoughts are built to project power, and with such efficient compensators, unless there's an absolute maximum ship size in a pearl, there's no reason to hold SD's at their sub-9 megaton range, except speed. Armor wise, we know Reliant-class had upto 1 meter over her vitals, so we can imagine SD's probably have at least that much everywhere and more for vitals.


-more room to build in active defences without sacrificing offensive punch
-more room for those big arsed Keyhole platforms
-more room to store pods, or single missiles for internal launchers
-larger hull = more LAC launch bays (I think Republican Aviary-class CLACs carry almost 900 LACs as is. BC's have gone 2.5x larger, same meterstick could be applied to a CLAC)

Dedicated Army transport built around the new, oversized SD would be able to not only carry full Army division(s), but also have plenty of room to load in orbital strike packages, reducing need for escorts to mere DDs. Currently, Michelle Henke sent half a CA squadron to babysit the freighters (mil-spec speed, but still freighters) that carried the Marines to whatever planet it was (Moebius?)

Edit log: moved the TLDR to the top and added a "wall of text warning"

I seem to remember something about the current waller size already reaching the maximum tonnage that compensators can work with.

quark wrote:I seem to remember something about the current waller size already reaching the maximum tonnage that compensators can work with.

I'll have to go digging through the tech stuff again. I can't recall ever seeing anything about a maximum size really. So I'd though the RMN/RHN navies capped their SD's more for speed rather than technical limitations.


If it's not compensator limits that put a cap, most of the idea of making ever tougher SD's is somewhat pointless in pod environments. Not to mention the Malign doesn't really have anything that could fight even existing designs in straight up combat (that we know about anyways, fully operation Sharks are still more ambushers rather than waller).

But giving them their ammo storage back might be a damned good idea. Honor was shooting herself pretty dry when she was stationed at Sidemore. Giscard shot 3 squadrons dry in less than 30 minutes at... Solon I think? Battle of Manticore, Admiral Chin was definitely driving deeply into her pod storage when she flailed the crap out of Second Fleet.

All three engagements were in the space of only an hour or two of combat, and I think it's a known issue with pod-designs, they're really low on ammunition storage compared to their non-pod brethren.

At the start of the first war, SDs were at about the maximum size for the compensators. It wasn't a hard maximum, however, above a certain point, acceleration dropped off radically. Now, with the Grayson compensators, we have posited (with very little evidence) that the point where the drop off happens has moved upwards. We had a discussion on this point not to long ago. I suspect that, within a decade or so, the RMN will build a 12-13 Mton ships.

Somtaaw wrote:
If it's not compensator limits that put a cap, most of the idea of making ever tougher SD's is somewhat pointless in pod environments. Not to mention the Malign doesn't really have anything that could fight even existing designs in straight up combat (that we know about anyways, fully operation Sharks are still more ambushers rather than waller).

I don't think that the Alignment would go forward without at least some equalizing force capable to withstand the SD(P), after all I don't think that they were ignoring the Manticore and Haven war as much as the SLN was. If technology is not a limiting factor, bigger does mean better if bigger = more defenses... think about adding another million tons or two tons to an SD and putting the bulk of it in missile defense.

Somtaaw wrote:

quark wrote:I seem to remember something about the current waller size already reaching the maximum tonnage that compensators can work with.

I'll have to go digging through the tech stuff again. I can't recall ever seeing anything about a maximum size really. So I'd though the RMN/RHN navies capped their SD's more for speed rather than technical limitations.

Quark is correct. In The Universe of Honor Harrington (published in More Than Honor), David writes:

Note also that in 1900 pd, 8,500,000 tons represented the edge of a plateau in inertial compensator capability. Above 8,500,000 tons, warship accelerations fell off by approximately 1 g per 2,500 tons, so that a warship of 8,502,500 tons would have a maximum acceleration of 419 g and a warship of 9,547,500 tons would have a maximum acceleration of 1 g.

Since then, the Grayson inertial compensator has shifted the plateau upward somewhat. David indicated some time back that the current plateau is around 10 megatons. Some people on this forum have speculated that the plateau is even higher, maybe 12 or 13 megatons, but there is no textev for that. The last word we had is 10 megatons.

Somtaaw wrote:But giving them their ammo storage back might be a damned good idea. Honor was shooting herself pretty dry when she was stationed at Sidemore. Giscard shot 3 squadrons dry in less than 30 minutes at... Solon I think? Battle of Manticore, Admiral Chin was definitely driving deeply into her pod storage when she flailed the crap out of Second Fleet.

All three engagements were in the space of only an hour or two of combat, and I think it's a known issue with pod-designs, they're really low on ammunition storage compared to their non-pod brethren.

Its not that ammo storage is lower for pod-layers than the earlier types (in fact they probably devote more total tonnage too missile storage than any previous warship type, particularly in later classes like the Invictus). The problem is that they can shoot through that storage more quickly. In a traditional SD design (although the issue is common across all warship types) when firing they are trying to funnel a storage of several thousand total missiles through around 30-40 tubes per broadside. A SPD on the other hand can fire 60+ in one pattern of pods (considering 6 pods with 10 missiles per pod), and they can stack multiple patterns of pods together for one salvo if they wish. That is why salvos have grown so large and why many pod laying fleets can chew through ammo so quickly, especially considering salvo size increases as the opponents defensive capabilities increase too.

Missile capacity in Pod layers is also determined by the size of missiles they are carrying (which is also affected by pod variant), and the type/dimensions of the pods themselves. Manticore currently uses flat-pack pods which are asymmetrical (wedge shaped rather than box), which allows them to fit together more tightly. These same pods also can carry a micro-fusion reactor and mini-tractor beam. Missile loads might be down to 10 (9 for Apollo) compared to previous 12/14 variants in pre-MDM versions but their capabilities in other ways are so much greater simply stuffing more pods into a single ship.

You could in theory pack a Invictus SDP with thousands of smaller non-Apollo missiles, but would that be as capable as a lower pod load that is Apollo control capable. For comparison, which would be more effective? A storm of unguided arrows numbering in the thousands, or a few hundred crossbow bolts fired on precision targets. (And new models of laser heads are becoming more effective too, Mod G Mark 16s from Roland destroyers can easily take out full sized battle cruisers)

For things like Keyhole and similar control platforms I suspect that Keyhole 3 and other future versions will be smaller and more efficient. In already GA/RMN controlled space we will soon be looking at Mycroft and similar system-wide control systems meaning small ships will not need to carry big control platforms. RFC has said the RMN does not like building ships with specific functions but I would not be surprised if another Navy later designs a dedicated missile control ship class or even a self propelled Keyhole like platform that can be either carried by support ships or fly themselves within a fleet (like a more offensive AWACS).

All of these options are in many ways much more efficient and easier to achieve than simply building bigger capital ship variants to stuff full of missiles. In the modern world we can potentially build ships, buildings, aircraft etc much larger and with greater capacity than they are currently made but there is always a host of other issues and variables than ultimately constrain them.

SWM wrote:Quark is correct. In The Universe of Honor Harrington (published in More Than Honor), David writes:

Note also that in 1900 pd, 8,500,000 tons represented the edge of a plateau in inertial compensator capability. Above 8,500,000 tons, warship accelerations fell off by approximately 1 g per 2,500 tons, so that a warship of 8,502,500 tons would have a maximum acceleration of 419 g and a warship of 9,547,500 tons would have a maximum acceleration of 1 g.

Since then, the Grayson inertial compensator has shifted the plateau upward somewhat. David indicated some time back that the current plateau is around 10 megatons. Some people on this forum have speculated that the plateau is even higher, maybe 12 or 13 megatons, but there is no textev for that. The last word we had is 10 megatons.

I'm in the camp that's speculating at about the new drop-off point being 12.8 mtons.

The way RFC seems to have calculated the post-grayson compensator is on a straight percentage improvement. So the new curve is a linear displacement of the old curve. Given that, and given that the best compensator improvement I have hard numbers on is the Roland and Wolfhound classes from HoS; each having 151% of the accel you'd expect with a pre-grayson compensator.

But that's me speculating based on number crunching; not official word of David.

(Sidenote as most of you probably know, the calculation in quote SVM posted isn't ever taking to it's logical extreme. Once the max accel drops down to below about 100g even normal grav plates can handle it; so that 9.5 mton ship would be able to do closer to 100g than 1g. That's why forts, which are larger that SDs, don't have 1g max accelerations)

Somtaaw wrote:Now leaving aside the thoughts of smaller warships, the point of this, is I'm starting to wonder why wallers size is staying so static, while sub-wallers are just sprouting higher and higher, and we're all starting to think of ship size creep making sub-X tonnage obsolete now.

As noted already, the high end is fixed not by tactical or operational needs or role but by the compensator technology. (Just where it is now fixed, or where it will soon be fixed, is controversial.)

What hasn't been brought back up so much is that the tonnage creep below that is due to the classes being defined by role, and what it takes to perform that role adequately has called for more tonnage over time. And the better compensators, and willingness to cut the margins from 80% to 90% as a norm, have meant that you can retain acceleration while jacking up tonnage, so if a given role requires so much tonnage and so much acceleration, the odds improve that they can be jointly satisfied.

Somataw et al:

For modern comp curve, obtaining a straight line one needs to use DW's origninal curve(pre1905) ships: IE pre Grayson compensator and then compare post Grayson compensator ships acceleration curves.

To get post need ship of the exact same compensator. We have three:

1905: Lots of ships already tabulated *

1920 Ships
Rolland 188,750 780G
SAG-C 483,000 726.2G
BCL 2,519,750 674.3G

Suppose you could compare 1919
Wolfhound 123,500 784.7G**
Avalon 146,750 749.9G
BCP 1,750,750 692.6G
Invictus 8,768,500 562.6G

Curve fit those in Excel. Use linear.

* More than Honor book already posted above.

** Could be under 1920 curve and not 1919.

*** We still have no idea why RFC chose his arbitrary ~8.5Mton limit *** WE can speculate of course. Obviously no death star moons comes to mind...