BB(P/C) for rear area security

Theemile wrote:One item you missed that throws a ringer in the hyper stalk idea - The geography of Hyper.

In short it has none. There are no permament land marks - no distant stars or pulsars to accurately fix your position. The Hyper limit gives no indication where it is without trying to translate down. If you miss - and if you're lucky, you'll just bounce off of it or translate on the far side of the star from where you intended. All you have to go by is the Hyper log - which is essentially a computer record of what you perceive your ship did after you left the last known reference point. We know there are lesser and greater grav currents, eddies and sheres in Hyper space - the grav waves are just the biggest.

So you want to stalk Planet X. You plug where you want to go into the computer with the Hyper log and it stops you where you "think" the translation point is (Hyper logs are pretty good - you are probably close).

But did you completely stop? How do you know? If you have any velocity you didn't account for, you are still moving - even if just milimeters per second. (and let's face it, if you don't know exactly where you would translate, you have to have SOME velocity variable you have only accounted for in your error factor).
If there is a gentle current in that area of hyper, you also will soon be pulled off that point. The more time you spend in theat one "place", the longer any initial velocity and any currents will be pulling you off the intended point.

That's one of the reasons for the "Paul Revere" destroyer for Hyper Defenders - it is also a beacon for the entry locus for the fleet to use. If not, they would have no idea where they were relative to the hyperlimit to translate down.

Considering that merchant shipping seems to usually arrive roughly at the right spot and rarely seems to get turned into goo by trying to cross the alpha wall at the wrong spot I'm going to say that this is pretty much a solved problem in the honorverse. They have been doing this for centuries and have a pretty good idea how to navigate in hyper.

The reason you send a vessel to the alpha side to summon help is because there is no communication between real-space and alpha-space without someone carrying a message between them. It isn't to show them where to go, it's to tell them that they need to go.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:One item you missed that throws a ringer in the hyper stalk idea - The geography of Hyper.

In short it has none. There are no permament land marks - no distant stars or pulsars to accurately fix your position. The Hyper limit gives no indication where it is without trying to translate down. If you miss - and if you're lucky, you'll just bounce off of it or translate on the far side of the star from where you intended. All you have to go by is the Hyper log - which is essentially a computer record of what you perceive your ship did after you left the last known reference point. We know there are lesser and greater grav currents, eddies and sheres in Hyper space - the grav waves are just the biggest.

So you want to stalk Planet X. You plug where you want to go into the computer with the Hyper log and it stops you where you "think" the translation point is (Hyper logs are pretty good - you are probably close).

But did you completely stop? How do you know? If you have any velocity you didn't account for, you are still moving - even if just milimeters per second. (and let's face it, if you don't know exactly where you would translate, you have to have SOME velocity variable you have only accounted for in your error factor).
If there is a gentle current in that area of hyper, you also will soon be pulled off that point. The more time you spend in theat one "place", the longer any initial velocity and any currents will be pulling you off the intended point.

That's one of the reasons for the "Paul Revere" destroyer for Hyper Defenders - it is also a beacon for the entry locus for the fleet to use. If not, they would have no idea where they were relative to the hyperlimit to translate down.

Considering that merchant shipping seems to usually arrive roughly at the right spot and rarely seems to get turned into goo by trying to cross the alpha wall at the wrong spot I'm going to say that this is pretty much a solved problem in the honorverse. They have been doing this for centuries and have a pretty good idea how to navigate in hyper.

The reason you send a vessel to the alpha side to summon help is because there is no communication between real-space and alpha-space without someone carrying a message between them. It isn't to show them where to go, it's to tell them that they need to go.

Actually there have been repeated mentions of hitting too close or too far throughout the series. The whole scene of tracking down the sensor ghosts of OB was overlaid with curses of Merchant skippers needing to "requalify" for missing the system light months out - in short, it had happened before, and frequently enough to be everyone's first thought.

The fact is virtually no one hits on an exact spot planned but inside a grey area set by the error bar caused by the calculations of their trip - ie the error in the hyperlog. Repeatedly, A good navigator is applauded for hitting within 100,000 KM of his destination, meaning a normal translation can be off a 1/4 of a light second or more and not blinked at - as long as it's this side of the target.

David even mentioned this early on. If you overshoot in the distant parts you bounce back into hyper or land on the far side of the star - if you translate too close to the star - bye-bye.

Then there was the entire Havenite taskforce that came out of hyper on the opposite side of the Basilisk terminus. They had even stopped to refine the hyperlogs not to long ago.

crewdude48 wrote:Then there was the entire Havenite taskforce that came out of hyper on the opposite side of the Basilisk terminus. They had even stopped to refine the hyperlogs not to long ago.

You base your argument on incompetence? It clearly said that the astrogator in question "dropped a digit".

Besides in the new verse, they have these things called MDM's...

wastedfly wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:Then there was the entire Havenite taskforce that came out of hyper on the opposite side of the Basilisk terminus. They had even stopped to refine the hyperlogs not to long ago.

You base your argument on incompetence? It clearly said that the astrogator in question "dropped a digit".

Besides in the new verse, they have these things called MDM's...

No, I am basing one example, not the entire arguement , on an admiral's staff astrogator, who should be one of the best and most experienced astrogators in the fleet, making a single mistake that wasn't caught by any of the other astrogators who should have been double checking as a matter of course and training. It is obviously not that hard to screw up hyper locations.

And while MDMs would have allowed them to attack the terminus, if they were making an approach like that to a star system, Bad Things would have happened with the same error.

TheMonster wrote:DDs equippped with single-drive missiles could survive firing initial salvoes at each other. Once you start putting MDMs on ships, their range goes up dramatically, as does the ability to fire multiple salvoes with different ballistic phase lengths that effectively merge into a single salvo by the time they reach the target.

Ah, no. You can quadstack a missile launch with SDMs if you want. And you can use hopping control for SDMs just as well as you can for DDMs.

Just because folks usually DIDN`T do it, doesn´t mean they COULDN`T do it.

And you also skip the fact that DDMs are MUCH BIGGER. If you try having two 100kt DDs fight each other, one with SDMs and one with DDMs, the SDM one suddenly has quite decent chances, simply because the DDM one barely have room for any launchers (or magazine space or room for defenses etc).

The general assumption also seems to be that postwar, suddenly everybody are going to reach and maintain Manticore level of tech. Why would that happen now, when it has not happened before, as Manticore invests in keeping the edge. No reason for them to stop that, no matter how peaceful things might become.

And neither them nor others of the GA are very likely to suddenly start selling the latest hightech to any civillian that asks for it.

TheMonster wrote:Suppose the greater tonnage means 20% more maintenance and therefore requires 20% larger crew. For every six smaller DDs (let's just go ahead and call them FGs) that you could build and crew, then lose as soon as they see action; you could have five larger ones with a chance to fight another day.

Wow, that´s a bit too dishonest argumentation for me...
For one thing, anything that brushes aside a 200kt DD that easily isn´t going to have much more trouble with a 300kt one.

Unless of course your comparison was between a 200kt and a 500kt, as has been suggested often enough. But then you´re not looking at anything remotely close to 20% more expensive, try at least >100%.

And by your argument, the Manticore/Haven war should have killed off every DD many times over already. Didn´t happen, wonder why?

TheMonster wrote:And a DD that can't survive an encounter with an enemy warship is effectively a non-combatant

And we´re back to the battleship only fleet argument... *sigh*

Did you ever consider that the same limits are true for the both sides?

And as i already said, with some ship classes set up with hullarea free specifically to carry flatpack pods(for Mk-23s), your argument essentially makes Nike the smallest realistic shipclass.

Which makes the argument overall absurd as there´s just no way for a navy to do that.

TheMonster wrote:It's barely better than a DB

And that´s complete rubbish and hyperbole to a ridiculous level.

The only way a thousand dispatch boats are going to win against even a single 200kt DD is by ramming.

You remember here that these DD are the exact same ones you fear as being unable to defend against.

Tenshinai wrote:The general assumption also seems to be that postwar, suddenly everybody are going to reach and maintain Manticore level of tech. Why would that happen now, when it has not happened before, as Manticore invests in keeping the edge. No reason for them to stop that, no matter how peaceful things might become.

The assumption isn't that Manticore can't stay marginally ahead of the curve (like they were early in the series). The assumption is that Manticoran R&D will not continue to make game-changing discoveries before anyone else when its existence is not on the line and it's operating on peacetime budgets, especially in an environment where disruptive tech is more likely to weaken the GA's edge than strengthen it. The RMN has introduced more disruptive tech in the last 25 years than all other navies combined did in the last 250; it's unreasonable to expect that to continue.

SWM wrote:Second of all, destroyers are not "suddenly" being given this test. It is the same standard that Manticore has always used.

And most previous DDs fail the test.

SWM wrote:And BuWeaps is looking ahead to the peacetime era when they will need better defenses, and they need to go back to that standard.

The cat is literally out of the bag, because all it takes is for a pirate to come up with a decent way to build their own pods, and suddenly a 150kt pirate ship can easily kill your 300kt DD.

Or the theoretic pirate needs one single person who is capable of programming a multistacked missile launch and use control hopping.

The test only worked before, because folks didn´t really realise just how much more firepower you could potentially generate, with the same amount of launchers and control links.

The test has essentially become futile.

What if, for example, one side starts building 300kt DDs relying 100% on external pods, with the hull shaped specifically to allow for as many as possible, while the ship itself has nothing but defenses and control links instead of internal magazines and launchers.

Then your conventional 300kt DDs are DEAD by default if they get in a fight with one of those DDPs.

So then what? Well yeah, then you´re back at the Nike as the smallest survivable ship class. Except of course, that even those much smaller BCPs can shred a Nike to ittybitty pieces if built on equal tech.

In short, taken strictly, the test is utterly useless.

SWM wrote:Even the Saganami-C and the Nike do not carry pods around all the time, because it blocks some of their sensors.

Incorrect. Both classes were specifically designed to carry 40/80 pods respectively without affecting their abilities.

That´s not the maximum they can carry, that´s what they can carry without negative effects.

SWM wrote:Their only advantage is that they are slightly cheaper.

190kt vs 500kt? Slightly cheaper?

SWM wrote:The missions destroyers used to do are even now being done by light cruisers or LACs, so technically they already do not have a mission.

Circular argument thank you very much.

SWM wrote:Manticore will be much richer than before, with numerous new systems, a still-growing economy, and a radically changed galaxy in which they will be the biggest merchant fleet.

Which means they will in the future need MORE light units, not less.

SWM wrote:I’m sure you agree that BuWeaps and BuShips are smart enough to figure out whether they can build enough ships.

Not really. They haven´t exactly managed that so far. Consider that it was noted as one of the few things the conservative clown govt of Manticore did right. By accident and pennypinching.

So, Tenshinai, does this mean that you have a better standard for balancing offense versus defense? Because it sounds like you want to give up on defense.

As I said before, every nation has to decide on how to balance offense versus defense, on each individual ship design. Manticore has a standard. The fact that you don't like it, and even the fact that most other star nations have not to this point put as much thought into that balance as Manticore, does not invalidate the choice, because some choice has to be made. You apparently are willing to lose a lot more ships than Manticore does. Your choice is also valid, if you were building your own fleet.

crewdude48 wrote:

wastedfly wrote:
You base your argument on incompetence? It clearly said that the astrogator in question "dropped a digit".

Besides in the new verse, they have these things called MDM's...

No, I am basing one example, not the entire arguement , on an admiral's staff astrogator, who should be one of the best and most experienced astrogators in the fleet, making a single mistake that wasn't caught by any of the other astrogators who should have been double checking as a matter of course and training. It is obviously not that hard to screw up hyper locations.

And while MDMs would have allowed them to attack the terminus, if they were making an approach like that to a star system, Bad Things would have happened with the same error.

Other than the fact that a simple 1970's computer will be doing all the computing as they don't bollicks the works up, and the only error possible, is some klutz entering the wrong number. Beyond sensor addition error that is.