First Technical Mission To Bolthole

Duckk wrote:

Yes, I got the TNG tech manual, I'm that much of a geek.

You're on a board which discusses, among other things, the finer points of gravity manipulation and fictional warship design. Don't worry, you're in good company.

Discussion of the atmospheric effects of using capital ship graser against a ground target was something of a giveaway...

Oyster Bay was a contingency when it turned out that even if Haven won the war with Manticore it wasn't going to fall apart on its own. Then Detweiller moved up a limited Oyster Bay to just take out Manticore.

I can't help but think Oyster Bay was a mistake caused by Albrecht Detweiler's egomania (megalomania?). I may be projecting, but I read into his character a deep seated need to be THE DETWEILER, the one who made the key plays in taking over the universe and, by the way, proved those pompous a-holes on Beowulf were wrong.

We have been along the thread of what is a Detweiler Class ship several times.
We "know" that it is being built to carry GTs in internal magazines.
We "know" it will be a Spider Drive ship.
We "know" that at least the Ghosts are very stealthy beyond their drives and can sneak around in the Manticore system. Probably the Shark class (which was designed to be a test and training class for the Detweilers while they were in development and building) will have the same level of stealth. They were not designed as the primary launch platforms, just training ships.
The Sharks had the GTs they were carrying on external hard points so we can guess that while they were set up operate with the GTs it was only to get the crews proficient in setting up the tactical parts of the missions. Since this does NOT appear to involve launching the GTs from a present standard launcher -which carries a gravitational signature all its own- but to insert them into a system to ride in on the GT's Spider Drive. This could mean that the launching of the GTs from the Detweiler Class is going to be purely a mechanical procedure, possibly as simple as pushing them out of the magazine through a port on a dolly attached to a chain conveyor belt. They don't need the modern missile launcher speed, they are not high speed weapons and need to be launched in a very stealth fashion.

It can be anticipated that the Detweilers are possibly a BC sized ship designed to slink into a system, gather all of the targeting information by stealthed drone and its own passive sensors and than deploy it's load of GTs like a transport plane making a HALO drop of paratroopers. The mission is to gather the nessisary data and then program the GTs to all reach thier widely scattered targets at the same time. They could even be the size of the Erewhon ammunition ships.
This still all presumes that the Detwilers scale up effectivly from the Sharks and maintain the same level of stealth. It may be that the mission profiles are to do the approch and slinking around inside the hyper-limit of a system to gather the data, deploy your weapons and be over the hyper-limit and ready to hyper out when the strike hits. Since they don't have FTL, they are (or perhaps a Ghost is to be left to capture the results letting the Detweiler be gone) going to have to wait for information and observations of things happening inside the system to arrive at lightspeed contraints to find out what the damage was.
Just guessing here.

The sharks were 4MT, how BC sized do you think a scaled up shark is going to be?

Brigade XO wrote:We have been along the thread of what is a Detweiler Class ship several times.
We "know" that it is being built to carry GTs in internal magazines.
We "know" it will be a Spider Drive ship.
We "know" that at least the Ghosts are very stealthy beyond their drives and can sneak around in the Manticore system. Probably the Shark class (which was designed to be a test and training class for the Detweilers while they were in development and building) will have the same level of stealth. They were not designed as the primary launch platforms, just training ships.
The Sharks had the GTs they were carrying on external hard points so we can guess that while they were set up operate with the GTs it was only to get the crews proficient in setting up the tactical parts of the missions. Since this does NOT appear to involve launching the GTs from a present standard launcher -which carries a gravitational signature all its own- but to insert them into a system to ride in on the GT's Spider Drive. This could mean that the launching of the GTs from the Detweiler Class is going to be purely a mechanical procedure, possibly as simple as pushing them out of the magazine through a port on a dolly attached to a chain conveyor belt. They don't need the modern missile launcher speed, they are not high speed weapons and need to be launched in a very stealth fashion.

It can be anticipated that the Detweilers are possibly a BC sized ship designed to slink into a system, gather all of the targeting information by stealthed drone and its own passive sensors and than deploy it's load of GTs like a transport plane making a HALO drop of paratroopers. The mission is to gather the nessisary data and then program the GTs to all reach thier widely scattered targets at the same time. They could even be the size of the Erewhon ammunition ships.
This still all presumes that the Detwilers scale up effectivly from the Sharks and maintain the same level of stealth. It may be that the mission profiles are to do the approch and slinking around inside the hyper-limit of a system to gather the data, deploy your weapons and be over the hyper-limit and ready to hyper out when the strike hits. Since they don't have FTL, they are (or perhaps a Ghost is to be left to capture the results letting the Detweiler be gone) going to have to wait for information and observations of things happening inside the system to arrive at lightspeed contraints to find out what the damage was.
Just guessing here.

It is from the wiki that I got info that the Detweiler Class are superdreadnaught sized ships.

Leonard Detweiler class
THIS WIKI
The Leonard Detweiler class was a class of superdreadnought-sized warships secretly built by the Mesan Alignment Navy in the 20th Century PD.
It was equipped with superior new technologies such as the spider drive, and was supposed to carry out the first Mesan missions against the Manticore System (codenamed Operation Oyster Bay) after the Shark-class ships proved the basic concepts. However, the need to speed up the original operational plan prevented their use for Oyster Bay.

With twenty-eight Shark-class training ships, a far bigger number of Leonard Detweiler-class units was planned to be build. The first units awaited completion in the Alignment's secret base in the Darius System in the early 1920s PD. (SI2)
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Leonar ... iler_class

thinkstoomuch wrote:In fact the Spider Torpedo is a ship weapon with all the heat management systems removed to save weight and space. This results in self destruct from heat in three seconds. Ship weapons fire for much longer than three seconds. It takes about that many seconds to go from temp warnings to catastrophic failure.

So if it were programmed to fire for 2.5 seconds, then wait for some heat to dissipate before firing again, would it be able to recover in enough time to get another shot at its target, or is it wise for the thing to be designed to fire until it blows itself up?

Brigade XO wrote:We have been along the thread of what is a Detweiler Class ship several times.
We "know" that it is being built to carry GTs in internal magazines.
We "know" it will be a Spider Drive ship.
We "know" that at least the Ghosts are very stealthy beyond their drives and can sneak around in the Manticore system. Probably the Shark class (which was designed to be a test and training class for the Detweilers while they were in development and building) will have the same level of stealth. They were not designed as the primary launch platforms, just training ships.
The Sharks had the GTs they were carrying on external hard points so we can guess that while they were set up operate with the GTs it was only to get the crews proficient in setting up the tactical parts of the missions. Since this does NOT appear to involve launching the GTs from a present standard launcher -which carries a gravitational signature all its own- but to insert them into a system to ride in on the GT's Spider Drive. This could mean that the launching of the GTs from the Detweiler Class is going to be purely a mechanical procedure, possibly as simple as pushing them out of the magazine through a port on a dolly attached to a chain conveyor belt. They don't need the modern missile launcher speed, they are not high speed weapons and need to be launched in a very stealth fashion.

It can be anticipated that the Detweilers are possibly a BC sized ship designed to slink into a system, gather all of the targeting information by stealthed drone and its own passive sensors and than deploy it's load of GTs like a transport plane making a HALO drop of paratroopers. The mission is to gather the nessisary data and then program the GTs to all reach thier widely scattered targets at the same time. They could even be the size of the Erewhon ammunition ships.
This still all presumes that the Detwilers scale up effectivly from the Sharks and maintain the same level of stealth. It may be that the mission profiles are to do the approch and slinking around inside the hyper-limit of a system to gather the data, deploy your weapons and be over the hyper-limit and ready to hyper out when the strike hits. Since they don't have FTL, they are (or perhaps a Ghost is to be left to capture the results letting the Detweiler be gone) going to have to wait for information and observations of things happening inside the system to arrive at lightspeed contraints to find out what the damage was.
Just guessing here.

The thing that makes Mesa's ships so dangerous is the stealthiness. After Manties learn to spot the things, the problem they represent is solvable. Elizabeth commented in her speech following the Yawatta strike that the signature of the ships carrying out the strike had been identified. So repeat Yawatta would not occur without attackers being engaged.

Don

TheMonster wrote:So if it were programmed to fire for 2.5 seconds, then wait for some heat to dissipate before firing again, would it be able to recover in enough time to get another shot at its target, or is it wise for the thing to be designed to fire until it blows itself up?

It's B. They want it to turn into slag, because they don't want anyone else to have beam grasers.

n7axw wrote:The thing that makes Mesa's ships so dangerous is the stealthiness. After Manties learn to spot the things, the problem they represent is solvable. Elizabeth commented in her speech following the Yawatta strike that the signature of the ships carrying out the strike had been identified. So repeat Yawatta would not occur without attackers being engaged.

Don

They'd identified the hyper footprint of the ships' dropping into normal space, but not the signature of the ships themselves. Which is a start, but doesn't let the Manties track the spider ships after they've arrived.

[Edit: Promotion -- woo hoo!]

TheMonster wrote:

thinkstoomuch wrote:In fact the Spider Torpedo is a ship weapon with all the heat management systems removed to save weight and space. This results in self destruct from heat in three seconds. Ship weapons fire for much longer than three seconds. It takes about that many seconds to go from temp warnings to catastrophic failure.

So if it were programmed to fire for 2.5 seconds, then wait for some heat to dissipate before firing again, would it be able to recover in enough time to get another shot at its target, or is it wise for the thing to be designed to fire until it blows itself up?

I don't know if the power for the graser is completely dedicated or if it can draw power from the capacitors powering the drive.

If the former I'm sure the stored power is closely matched that 3 second burnout duration. So firing less than that wouldn't get you any additional total firing time.

If the later, the if there's spare power left because the drive didn't use 100% of it's allocation to get to the target then maybe you could fire in burst and total more than 3 seconds.


On the other hand, against most targets you either don't have 3 seconds of useful fire (to high a combined closing velocity), or 3 seconds was probably more than enough (unprotected station). At some point the energy of firing that graser should be noticeable - I wonder how long it would take any nearby point defense (that wasn't blown up) to locate a pulse firing graser platform and return fire...
It's possible that hanging around pulsing off shots won't get you all that much more firing time even if power does remain and the emitter doesn't melt down.

Guess there are too many variables to make solid estimates.