How much Technology was Stolen

Jonathan_S wrote:

Hutch wrote:Remember folks, three destroyers, without sidewalls, wedges or any defense besides their limited armoring, were destroyed by the concentrated Grazer fire of Seventeen Battlecruisers, each mounting 12 Grazers per broadside.

I doubt that there was anything useful recovered after that.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

I take and certainly agree with your overall point. And yet the technical little nitpicker in me raised a flag over "12 Grazers per broadside"; that sounded like a heck of a lot for a BC. That's what a Nike-class BC(L) carries, and twice what a Reliant or Sultan-class BC carry.

Was there a reference to Byng's BC broadsides that I can't find? Or was this just a bit of (possibly incorrectly lodged) memory?


Sorry for diverting us down this (irrelevant to your point) tangent

The more intriguing question is why does the Nevada class have a graser-only energy armament when the Grayson going to pure graser armaments for their BCs and SDs was considered another revolutionary tweak.

Does the SLN simply have a bad grudge against lasers due to the crazy idea of putting them on missiles, which obviously would never work and completely discredited the laser entirely?

Randomiser wrote:No certain info on this, but remember old-fashioned warships, ie everything the SL has, concentrated much more on energy weapons than modern RMN or Havenite ships do. I wouldn't be surprised to find that SL BCs have lots of big grazers, which are now just so much dead-weight.

The annex at the back of SFTS has the specs of a Nevada class BC in it. It gives the following broadside:

28 missile tubes, 12 Grasers, 12 Counter Missile tubes and 16 Point Defence Clusters.

From textev, an Indefatigable Class has slightly less, but the same sort of mix.

In this case both classes appear to be optimised for missile combat, whereas the wallers have the traditional energy-heavy broadside that was prevalent pre-1905. This ties in with the "Building a navy in the Honorverse" chapter in HoS which has ships below the wall trending towards missiles by the end of the 19th Century PD.

munroburton wrote:The more intriguing question is why does the Nevada class have a graser-only energy armament when the Grayson going to pure graser armaments for their BCs and SDs was considered another revolutionary tweak.

Does the SLN simply have a bad grudge against lasers due to the crazy idea of putting them on missiles, which obviously would never work and completely discredited the laser entirely?

Good question. If the SLN's meant to be as conservative as it's been portrayed, it is a bit odd. I expect that there will be some revision of a Nevada's specs the next time we get an infodump on them.

Going back to the main thrust of the thread, although all three of Chatterjee's ships were minced, there would have been wreckage of some description. Although Byng was Battle Fleet twat, from what we've seen so far Frontier Fleet officers have functioning brains. Hence my comment earlier about someone snagging some material for intel purposes.

Mike.

There was nothing left. Those destroyers were completely pulverized.

Crown Loyalist wrote:There was nothing left. Those destroyers were completely pulverized.

Alright, I'm going to be a smart-arse Scotsman.

Absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence.

SFTS doesn't make any mention of wreckage as it's not germain to the story. We're debating something hypothetical, which means we have to assume shades of grey rather than simple black and white.

To leave nothing, you have to completely atomise what it is your destroying. The book also says "massed fire" rather than saying that all the BC's and DD's fired their complete energy broadsides - Byng merely orders Miazawa to "open fire", rather than saying "fire all energy batteries".

Depending on the fire plan adopted, rather than all 17 BC's and 8 DD's spreading their fire at all three targets ("massed fire" can mean that) it's possible that one third of the SLN ships targeted each destroyer. Therefore each Roland may have absorbed the fire of only one third of the ships engaging it. Add in the extra variable that not all of the Solly's energy weapons may have fired (again "massed fire" can be interpreted to mean all did), you get a hypothetical situation where complete atomisation doesn't occur. Add in the other variable of how each Roland was torn apart/disintegrated/blew up and you can still get wreckage, even if it isn't exactly huge.

Mike.

Ok, 17 Nevada's fired 12 grazers at 3 targets that means that each Roland was hit by a maximum 68 beams but if you figure an average 80% hits you get roughly 54 hits per ship.

You also have to remember that the fusion reactor would probably go off like a megaton level atomic bomb from damage.

You hit a DD with one or two BC grasers the DD comes apart. The fastest guns got to shoot, the rest had no targets.

Michael Riddell wrote:[

To leave nothing, you have to completely atomise what it is your destroying. The book also says "massed fire" rather than saying that all the BC's and DD's fired their complete energy broadsides - Byng merely orders Miazawa to "open fire", rather than saying "fire all energy batteries".

Rolands are tiny little completely unarmored ships. When Commodore Chatterjee was fired upon, he had his squadron in orbit, with no active defenses. They were completely defenseless. And 17 battlecruisers opened fired.

Think about what Honor did to the Peeps at Cerberus. That's what we're facing here, except it's not battlecruisers, it's three completely unarmored destroyers, and the range isn't 500k kilometers, it's between two formations in orbit around the same planet. Even if each ship gets hit only once by a battlecruiser graser at point blank range, there would be nothing left of those ships. If there was anything at all that was left, it would be worthless for intelligence purposes.

Assume is a dangerous word. Lots of us here are just ASSUMING because of many different reasons, but could some of it just be because assuming makes one feel good because it rubs your funny bone correctly?

Never assume. If a solution, opinion or decision makes you feel "good" or seems "logical", then it is probably wrong. There is always wreckage. There is always the potential for human survivors. To assume otherwise is very dangerous indeed.

Yeah, all of this is imaginary. A very very good book series that lets us relax and have fun. Not to be taken too seriously. All I am saying is that we may find out later in future books....

.... that the Sollies did in fact recover all sorts of neat things. Small bits, tiny bits, some large bits. How about some intact blasted off closed up compartments with human survivors? Something always survives.

My read only. I love this forum. HB of CJ (old coot) The Sollies may have gotten it all. It will take some time to figure it all out and then reverse engineer, but not that much time. Yikes!! The sleeping giant!

saber964 wrote:Ok, 17 Nevada's fired 12 grazers at 3 targets that means that each Roland was hit by a maximum 68 beams but if you figure an average 80% hits you get roughly 54 hits per ship.

You also have to remember that the fusion reactor would probably go off like a megaton level atomic bomb from damage.

I'm fully aware of that - that's why I added the variable of how each Roland reacted to the damage inflicted to it.

I'm not completely discounting the possibility that there wasn't anything left. That is just as likely. I'm highlighting the possibility that something may have survived, which is also just as likely. Too many people are assuming a negative rather than considering the possibility of a positive, which I find slightly frustrating.

TBH, I had the same reaction when I highlighted that LAC's might have lifepods even though RFC never mentioned it. Too many people assumed they didn't because we hadn't seen them in the novels.

Hence absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence. Just because it's not mentioned, doesn't mean to say it can't happen. Maybe it's because I personally don't believe in black and white, but shades of grey?

Mike.

HB of CJ wrote:Assume is a dangerous word. Lots of us here are just ASSUMING because of many different reasons, but could some of it just be because assuming makes one feel good because it rubs your funny bone correctly?

Never assume. If a solution, opinion or decision makes you feel "good" or seems "logical", then it is probably wrong. There is always wreckage. There is always the potential for human survivors. To assume otherwise is very dangerous indeed.

Yeah, all of this is imaginary. A very very good book series that lets us relax and have fun. Not to be taken too seriously. All I am saying is that we may find out later in future books....

.... that the Sollies did in fact recover all sorts of neat things. Small bits, tiny bits, some large bits. How about some intact blasted off closed up compartments with human survivors? Something always survives.

My read only. I love this forum. HB of CJ (old coot) The Sollies may have gotten it all. It will take some time to figure it all out and then reverse engineer, but not that much time. Yikes!! The sleeping giant!

Is it possible? It's so unfathomably unlikely for all the reasons we've already discussed.

Firstly, from everything we know about energy weapons in the Honorverse, the range, and the conditions, and the design of the Roland, the chance that something with intelligence value actually survived is infinitesimal.

Second, even if something had survived, the probability that Byng would go searching through the wreckage to collect any pieces of "inferior" Manticorian technology is very small. Perhaps someone like his Flag Captain would have, but even if we allow for the possibility of that, we're stuck with:

Third, it's only weeks later that Henke comes in and blows Byng away and takes the whole squadron into custody. If any Manticoran spacers or Manticoran tech had survived, the Manties would have found out about it when they took the squadron's computers.

Now, let's consider the possibility that some fragment of information did fall into Solarian hands. So what? What are they going to do with bits and pieces of a Roland-class destroyer? Even with an all-up example, it's going to take them a while before they're able to duplicate anything. Then, remember that most Manticoran tech is stuffed full of safeguards. The Solarians are probably better off trying to develop the tech themselves than trying to duplicate it from the wreckage of a Roland. The hard part for the Solarian League wasn't producing all this advanced military tech, it was knowing it was possible in the first place and being incentivized to pursue it.