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A thought on EE violations

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A thought on EE violations
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 1:35 am

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Now, we have size/mass limits on ships because acceleration drops too much as the ship gets too big. Nobody has said anything about size limits on wedges themselves, though.

Would it be possible to build a planetary-scale wedge? The reason you can't have a big wedge is irrelevant if you don't want acceleration in the first place!

Equip the planet with three separate wedge systems, each perpendicular to the other. No matter where the kinetic strike (and it's kinetic weapons that matter, a laser head firing in the gap isn't going to do much) is coming from energizing the right wedge will stop it.
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Re: A thought on EE violations
Post by kzt   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 3:56 am

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The wedge startup might be kind of hard on the planet. There is that whole geometry bit iirc...
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Re: A thought on EE violations
Post by cthia   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 4:36 am

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What about specialized ships with oversized wedges for intercepting crimes of passion?

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: A thought on EE violations
Post by George J. Smith   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 5:07 am

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cthia wrote:What about specialized ships with oversized wedges for intercepting crimes of passion?


They already have the "docking tugs" which almost match that description.

I don't know what mass they are but they are used to tow SDs around, among other things.

As was seen during the Yatawa strike, they were only used in the aftermath of the strike because the grazer torps and missiles were not detected before the strike took place.

What sort of maintenance problems would there be keeping such ship wedges on permanently just in case?
.
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Re: A thought on EE violations
Post by Theemile   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 10:50 am

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cthia wrote:What about specialized ships with oversized wedges for intercepting crimes of passion?


David mentioned in '02 about a frigate sized defensive buoys with overpowered nodes for wedge defense.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/126/1

(The bottom post is an excerpt from the longer post on the topic)

These Bouys are standard kit for orbital protection for stations/planets. However, like any defenses, they take a handful of critical seconds to activate.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: A thought on EE violations
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 5:24 pm

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cthia wrote:What about specialized ships with oversized wedges for intercepting crimes of passion?

You mean as block ships we saw used at Beowulf and were told exist at Manticore?

I think the Manticore ones are dedicated platforms so they probably do carry the largest wedge Manticore can produce on a given frame. However I wouldn't be surprised if you can't oversize a wedge by very much on a given diameter and separation of impeller rings.
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Re: A thought on EE violations
Post by stewart   » Mon Jan 28, 2019 6:48 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
cthia wrote:What about specialized ships with oversized wedges for intercepting crimes of passion?

You mean as block ships we saw used at Beowulf and were told exist at Manticore?

I think the Manticore ones are dedicated platforms so they probably do carry the largest wedge Manticore can produce on a given frame. However I wouldn't be surprised if you can't oversize a wedge by very much on a given diameter and separation of impeller rings.


----------------

The pre-positioned ships (Call them System Defense Destroyers) would need
(1) numbers large enough to intercept on multiple vectors
(2) wedges on standby 24/7 (or 25/7 for Manticore)
(3) enough warning/sensor alert time to bring the wedges to full power

Boewulf's Block ships form the same function for external threats, but an attacker with prior recon (any good attacker) would/could place a threat inside that shield.

No defense is perfect.

-- Stewart
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Re: A thought on EE violations
Post by cthia   » Wed Jan 30, 2019 7:15 am

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So there's a point where the size of the wedge may not increase accel but does wonders for towing capacity, torque?

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: A thought on EE violations
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:11 pm

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cthia wrote:So there's a point where the size of the wedge may not increase accel but does wonders for towing capacity, torque?

Wedge size (as opposed to power) seems to have a lot more to do with ship size than with acceleration. A bigger wedge on the same ship isn't going to get you more acceleration -- you're still limited by your compensator.

However the books did mention that Haven's Mars-class CAs were build with overpowered (though nothing said about oversized) wedges in anticipation of being able to get the improved compensators Manticore and Grayson had. When they weren't able to do so the overpowered wedges could lose more nodes before acceleration dropped or retained more accel than you'd expect from a CA when towing pods.

So wedge strength does have towing benefits. (Though it seems like only pods, decoys, etc, get towed at really high accelerations)
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Re: A thought on EE violations
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:40 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
cthia wrote:So there's a point where the size of the wedge may not increase accel but does wonders for towing capacity, torque?

Wedge size (as opposed to power) seems to have a lot more to do with ship size than with acceleration. A bigger wedge on the same ship isn't going to get you more acceleration -- you're still limited by your compensator.

However the books did mention that Haven's Mars-class CAs were build with overpowered (though nothing said about oversized) wedges in anticipation of being able to get the improved compensators Manticore and Grayson had. When they weren't able to do so the overpowered wedges could lose more nodes before acceleration dropped or retained more accel than you'd expect from a CA when towing pods.

So wedge strength does have towing benefits. (Though it seems like only pods, decoys, etc, get towed at really high accelerations)

Pods, decoys, etc. are designed to accelerate at insane power without a compensator to protect the crew (since they don't have one). A ship being towed has to rely on its internal grav plates to counter acceleration since its compensator can't dump inertial forces into the towing ship's wedge.
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