New Manty ship ideas.

At this point the forts are being produced in sections and transported that way to the intended point of use. For Manticore that means making them in the Home System and towing the sections through to the various termini to be assembled.

It would certainly be possible to just continue the tow from one outbound leg of a wormhole to someplace like Idaho and fortify that end of the Idaho-Zunker bridge and then or at the same time put the same type of forts at Zunker. Depends on what you think is nessisary. Of course, at this point Manticore isn't building any forts so if you were going to want to stiffen the defences at Zunder or Idaho you would need either somebody's hypercapable warships or contract for whatever Haven or that IAE are using at wormholes they control. That leads to the additional details of needing Haven or IAE ammunition for the missile tubes and CMs but, again, you do what you think you need to do.

Jonathan_S wrote:And IIRC David Weber made a semi-recent post about forts and their wedges; where he said that it was the Alpha nodes (required for sail generation and wormhole transit) that imposed the hull shape limitations on hyper capable ships but that vessels with only beta nodes like a fort (or a pinnace) don't have to have that tapered spindle shape.

So that post confirmed that forts do have wedges, but also scuttles any idea of sending them through a wormhole. You can't refit them with the alpha nodes they'd need (in addition to the hyper generator they'd need) in order to transit.

Plus I'd guess that the bubble sidewall couldn't be up during actual transit, so you'd still have a vulnerable gap before you could raise it on the far side. Though the appendix to Short Victorious War said that some navies had experimented with equipping them for grav-wave combat so I'm going to assume you can use it simultaneously with your sails; so you should be able to raise your bubble sidewall before you clear the exit lane and can switch to your wedge.

Very interesting. Kind of takes the super heavy attack craft / fort to another level.

How about using multiple small hyper drones. Say 50 per ship, with mini fusion power plants, the ship gets blasted and they just float out of the limit, passive scanning then hyper away. Return with coordinates. Then go in the long way.

Lord Skimper wrote:How about using multiple small hyper drones. Say 50 per ship, with mini fusion power plants, the ship gets blasted and they just float out of the limit, passive scanning then hyper away. Return with coordinates. Then go in the long way.

That may be a new record for ignoring Pearls. SWM quoted the relevant bit (about parasite craft) only yesterday; just 7 or 8 posts ago.

Won't work if the mothership is destroyed (as it will be) before it finished exiting the grav lane from the wormhole.


And a dispatch boat is the smallest ship or object capable of squeezing in drive nodes and a hyper generator. That's pretty big to squeeze 50 of into a ship

Jonathan_S wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:How about using multiple small hyper drones. Say 50 per ship, with mini fusion power plants, the ship gets blasted and they just float out of the limit, passive scanning then hyper away. Return with coordinates. Then go in the long way.

That may be a new record for ignoring Pearls. SWM quoted the relevant bit (about parasite craft) only yesterday; just 7 or 8 posts ago.

Won't work if the mothership is destroyed (as it will be) before it finished exiting the grav lane from the wormhole.


And a dispatch boat is the smallest ship or object capable of squeezing in drive nodes and a hyper generator. That's pretty big to squeeze 50 of into a ship

And lets not forget that Mr. Weber has said that a drone that can travel by it self through hyper is impossible in the Honorverse.

Lets also not forget in this impossibility of attacking through a wormhole that RFC pretty much contradicts himself on the subject. (A specific example is when the forts are first mentioned and the loss rate expected among the on duty forsts)

Annachie wrote:Lets also not forget in this impossibility of attacking through a wormhole that RFC pretty much contradicts himself on the subject. (A specific example is when the forts are first mentioned and the loss rate expected among the on duty forsts)

He did a decent job of walking that back as mostly that that pre-war Manticoran sim underestimating the effectiveness of laserheads, plus apparently noone had ever tried an assault through a fortified wormhole so its not like there were real world examples to calibrate the model with.

Don't forget that scenario was looking at something like an 88 ship simultaneous transit by BBs. Even for 16 mton forts, suddenly being confronted with 400 mtons of BBs is going to take a while to wipe out and you're going to take some licks in return.

(Those pre-pod forts may also have been too close it; within actual energy range. Not taking advantage of the standoff ability of laser head missiles which let you get free hits in because the transitting ships can't launch their missiles until their clear the grav shear.)


But there certainly could be an element of refining, or ever changing, how he envisioned a wormhole assault would play out on a mechanical level. I don't think there was every and change in his belief that it was a suicidal thing to do; but how much damage you might do while dying may have been toned down. (or not )

Oh lots of things change from the first book. That's normal actually.

But even into ART/Shadows there's a bit of a disparity.

One could also argue for some 20:20 hindsight in-universe. Looking back, it may be easy to say that the Junction forts were an excessive drain on resources and manpower that could have been better spent on mobile units. Before the Havenite Wars no-one could be certain of that, and if they'd made the assumption and been wrong then the consequences would have been appalling.

It is attacking through a fortified wormhole that is RFC says is nearly impossible or at least so massivly impractical due to the amount of damage even a fleet would suffer against the defences in a place such as Manticore.
What happened to the Harvest Joy is the example of one ship (and that one NOT expecting a battle on the other side) against warships sitting right on the exit of a wormhole with weapons hot and set up to shoot first and do anything else later.

We have the examples of Lacoon I and II where SEM warships move through multiple and series of wormhole bridges which are NOT being defended by either forts or warships. If there is nobody in range to react to your warship(s) comming through, you make it through just fine with the possible problems of traffic on the other side being in the wrong place but hopefully nobody would knowingly cross through the exit lane of a wormhole.
With the possible exception of the Commodore Chalker at the Nolan System with 6 Solly DDs that was threatening to start shooting SEM freighters, there was nothing more than customs boats and probably and Astro Control facility at any of the wormholes. Even then, the warship was not sitting on the exit lane in a position to fire upon the SEM warship that came through. That is the start of A Rising Thunder. Chalker's ships are 8 light seconds from the SEM crusier and that is well after Pang Yau-pau's force had entered the system (we presume through the wormhole) and evicted the Solly Astro Control from it's station.
For other than SEM who is defending both it's home system and the primary source of income for the Empire we haven't seen any regular fortification defence of a wormhole terminus. That would be at BOTH ends of the various Manticore Junction wormholes.
Not a single one.
Taking a force through an undefende wormhole, even if you have to do it without the cooperation of local Astro Control, is apparently not a big problem. Other than the fighting going on out in the Haven Quadrant, much of the explored universe has been mostly at peace and other than, it would appear, basing fleet units at systems with well trafficed wormholes in some cases, the rest of the SL space doesn't maintain anything like the fortification systems.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Annachie wrote:Lets also not forget in this impossibility of attacking through a wormhole that RFC pretty much contradicts himself on the subject. (A specific example is when the forts are first mentioned and the loss rate expected among the on duty forsts)

He did a decent job of walking that back as mostly that that pre-war Manticoran sim underestimating the effectiveness of laserheads, plus apparently noone had ever tried an assault through a fortified wormhole so its not like there were real world examples to calibrate the model with.

Don't forget that scenario was looking at something like an 88 ship simultaneous transit by BBs. Even for 16 mton forts, suddenly being confronted with 400 mtons of BBs is going to take a while to wipe out and you're going to take some licks in return.

(Those pre-pod forts may also have been too close it; within actual energy range. Not taking advantage of the standoff ability of laser head missiles which let you get free hits in because the transitting ships can't launch their missiles until their clear the grav shear.)


But there certainly could be an element of refining, or ever changing, how he envisioned a wormhole assault would play out on a mechanical level. I don't think there was every and change in his belief that it was a suicidal thing to do; but how much damage you might do while dying may have been toned down. (or not )

Just a note. IIRC the Manticoran Wormhole has the highest ceiling for mass at 200Mtons. So I think that the Torch Wormhole mass ceiling would be lower.

Does anyone have textev for mass ceiling for other wormholes? More or less mass then the Manticoran Wormhole?