How much Technology was Stolen

Thank you for the correction. Good points all.

Stray thought I should have examined more fully before I typed anything.

Enjoy,
T2M

Dafmeister wrote:Firstly point of order - it would have been 15 lasers unless Byng's force had surrounded them (which they may have done, I can't get hold of my copy of SftS at the moment to check), otherwise Chatterjee's could only have brought one broadside to bear. That's assuming they were broadside-on at all, if not it would have been 6 grasers rather than 15 lasers. However, the weapons may well have been larger than most people (i.e. the SLN) would have expected on a destroyer or light cruiser; the absence of broadside missile tubes might have left space for bigger energy mounts on the larger hull, although the extra PDLCs and CM tubes will have taken up a fair bit of space too.

That said, in terms of damage I would suspect quite a lot, at that range. The lasers might not penetrate the BC's core hull, but they could certainly have done a number on sensors, weapon mounts and impeller nodes. If Chatterjee had fired, I doubt Byng would have lost a ship except to extreme bad luck (some kind of power surge overloading a reactor and shutdown system's failing - I would assume that a Nevada, like Honor's Nike, is too big for a reactor core to be ejected), but there could have been some cripples.

Michael Riddell wrote: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.

Thanks for mentioning that appendix; I'd completely forgotten it was there and because it's just an image it doesn't show up in an ebook search.

[Edit - should have finished reading the thread before doing this digging; I now see Dafmeister did a version of the same analysis and posted it a few hours ago]

Those are some interesting specs on the Nevada. It's got a lot of weapons crammed into it; and while the defensive numbers aren't up to sustained pod combat they're quite good for a BC even though the mid-war period. (Of course the anemic firing rates of it's missile and CM tubes totally offset those numbers; but still I wonder what they gave up to jam all that hardware in there. (I do note that the specs for the Nike in the same diagram don't 100% match HoS; so take all this for what it's worth)



To visualize it I looked at the two latest 'conventional' BC designs we had specs on, Grayson's Courvosier and the (newer) flight III-IV Reliant of Manticore.

In terms of size and displacement the Nevada falls between the two (although all are quite close). Despite that the Nevada has:
* The most missiles [1]
* The most energy mounts [2]
* It is behind on CMs [3]
--
[1] 2 or 4 more tubes in both chase and broadside than either of the GA designs
[2] 50% more grasers than the all graser Courvosier, and 2 more that the combined laser/graser broadside of the Reliant
[3] The GSN design has 50% more, and the Reliant 2 more than that. But it's does have more than the Flight I Reliants; like Honor's HMS Nike
--

Still, cramming all those offensive tubes and energy mounts into a hull that size means something should have had to go and the somewhat lagging point defense doesn't really look like enough (to me) to offset all those.

(I do note we don't know the relative size of each unit's energy mounts; the SLN might have gone for more CL/CA weight grasers; but that would take up more volume and total surface area; making the ships paradoxically more overgunned)

Extract from SFTS and HoS wrote:GSN Courvosier-class (1904 PD)
903,750 tons - 719 x 91 x 81 m
Missiles 26 Broadside; 4 Chase
Lasers none
Grasers 8 Broadside; 2 Chase
CM 16 Broadside; 6 Chase
PDLC 16 Broadside; 6 Chase

SLN Nevada-class (???? PD)
911,250 tons - 721 x 92 x 81 m
Missiles 28 Broadside; 6 Chase
Lasers none
Grasers 12 Broadside; 6 Chase
CM 12 Broadside; 6 Chase
PDLC 16 Broadside; 8 Chase

RMN Reliant-class (Flight III-IV) (1915 PD)
934,250 tons - 727 x 92 x 82 m
Missiles 24 Broadside; 4 Chase
Lasers 4 Broadside
Grasers 6 Broadside; 2 Chase
CM 18 Broadside; 6 Chase
PDLC 18 Broadside; 6 Chase

I think that we are falling into the trap of presuming that the SL and SLN are universally stupid. While the SLN BF has zero recent combat experience and outdated ships, the SLN FF does engage in occasional combat operations and has more modern ship designs. The increased missile armament on the more recent BC classes demonstrates some comprehension of the evolving, tactical realities. ( SLN had decent success developing a BC class laser head that was effective against BC class sidewalls and armor but had failed in its efforts to upscale the technology to get enough energy and power density to penetrate SD class sidewalls and armor? This would result in two, contrasting tactical paradigms). Since SLN FF has been deploying BCs with heavier missile armament, they are compelled to reduce energy armament to make room for it. They might have then reached the same conclusion as the GSN that they should compensate for the reduced number of energy mounts by going to an all Graser armament. They might be BC class Grasers rather than the SD class Grasers that the GSN and RMN favor for their BCs, but they are Grasers.

Michael Riddell wrote:

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.

Are those 12 Grasers per broadside grouped into 2, Hexagonal arrays of 6 Grasers?

If so, has the SLN developed the technology to link 6 Grasers into a phased array Graser that has 6 times the power output and more importantly has diffraction limited focusing which would result in orders of magnitude higher power densities at much longer range than is achievable through solitary mounts?

If so, then SLN BC could be quite nasty if they can get within their extended, energy range.

All I am saying is that just because the SLN has not kept up with MDM technology, they might have made progress in other areas.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Michael Riddell wrote: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.

Thanks for mentioning that appendix; I'd completely forgotten it was there and because it's just an image it doesn't show up in an ebook search.

[Edit - should have finished reading the thread before doing this digging; I now see Dafmeister did a version of the same analysis and posted it a few hours ago]

Those are some interesting specs on the Nevada. It's got a lot of weapons crammed into it; and while the defensive numbers aren't up to sustained pod combat they're quite good for a BC even though the mid-war period. (Of course the anemic firing rates of it's missile and CM tubes totally offset those numbers; but still I wonder what they gave up to jam all that hardware in there. (I do note that the specs for the Nike in the same diagram don't 100% match HoS; so take all this for what it's worth)



To visualize it I looked at the two latest 'conventional' BC designs we had specs on, Grayson's Courvosier and the (newer) flight III-IV Reliant of Manticore.

In terms of size and displacement the Nevada falls between the two (although all are quite close). Despite that the Nevada has:
* The most missiles [1]
* The most energy mounts [2]
* It is behind on CMs [3]
--
[1] 2 or 4 more tubes in both chase and broadside than either of the GA designs
[2] 50% more grasers than the all graser Courvosier, and 2 more that the combined laser/graser broadside of the Reliant
[3] The GSN design has 50% more, and the Reliant 2 more than that. But it's does have more than the Flight I Reliants; like Honor's HMS Nike
--

Still, cramming all those offensive tubes and energy mounts into a hull that size means something should have had to go and the somewhat lagging point defense doesn't really look like enough (to me) to offset all those.

(I do note we don't know the relative size of each unit's energy mounts; the SLN might have gone for more CL/CA weight grasers; but that would take up more volume and total surface area; making the ships paradoxically more overgunned)

Extract from SFTS and HoS wrote:GSN Courvosier-class (1904 PD)
903,750 tons - 719 x 91 x 81 m
Missiles 26 Broadside; 4 Chase
Lasers none
Grasers 8 Broadside; 2 Chase
CM 16 Broadside; 6 Chase
PDLC 16 Broadside; 6 Chase

SLN Nevada-class (???? PD)
911,250 tons - 721 x 92 x 81 m
Missiles 28 Broadside; 6 Chase
Lasers none
Grasers 12 Broadside; 6 Chase
CM 12 Broadside; 6 Chase
PDLC 16 Broadside; 8 Chase

RMN Reliant-class (Flight III-IV) (1915 PD)
934,250 tons - 727 x 92 x 82 m
Missiles 24 Broadside; 4 Chase
Lasers 4 Broadside
Grasers 6 Broadside; 2 Chase
CM 18 Broadside; 6 Chase
PDLC 18 Broadside; 6 Chase

namelessfly wrote:I think that we are falling into the trap of presuming that the SL and SLN are universally stupid.

No, not universally stupid. Institutionally stupid, maybe, but definitely run by "political admirals" with better bloodlines than tactical or strategic sense.

namelessfly wrote:While the SLN BF has zero recent combat experience and outdated ships, the SLN FF does engage in occasional combat operations and has more modern ship designs. The increased missile armament on the more recent BC classes demonstrates some comprehension of the evolving, tactical realities.

Adm Byng's task force at New Tuscany was almost entirely the best Frontier Fleet had to offer with only Adm Byng's flag staff from Battle Fleet. However advanced the newest and best the SLN had in frontier fleet might have been in relation to other SLN warships, they were just targets to the RMN. (and not particularly difficult targets either.)

The SLN BCs have been nothing but targets to the RMN at absurdly long distance missile engagements. How would they do if they managed to get within more normal missile ranges? Would the RMN discover that the SLN BCs can vaporize their ships with Grasers at absurdly long energy ranges of perhaps 5 million Kms? Would this explain why Abby Hearnes developed her tactical plan at Saltash to annihilate the SLN BCs at maximum missile range?

Weird Harold wrote:

namelessfly wrote:I think that we are falling into the trap of presuming that the SL and SLN are universally stupid.

No, not universally stupid. Institutionally stupid, maybe, but definitely run by "political admirals" with better bloodlines than tactical or strategic sense.

namelessfly wrote:While the SLN BF has zero recent combat experience and outdated ships, the SLN FF does engage in occasional combat operations and has more modern ship designs. The increased missile armament on the more recent BC classes demonstrates some comprehension of the evolving, tactical realities.

Adm Byng's task force at New Tuscany was almost entirely the best Frontier Fleet had to offer with only Adm Byng's flag staff from Battle Fleet. However advanced the newest and best the SLN had in frontier fleet might have been in relation to other SLN warships, they were just targets to the RMN. (and not particularly difficult targets either.)

Well, Nfly, we have the answer in SoSag.

Nevada's are Indefatigueables with a pretty paint scheme.

Sorry, no phased graser array

RMN units fire over twice as fast on both SDM/CM's as well as have the usage of both broadsides along with the hammerheads. Giving them a tidy 4x advantage in missile warfare numbers in equivalent hull size even when limited to SDM's. Add in pentration power(missile head), stronger sidewalls, better(slightly via SWV) physical armor, better ECM/EW, and I would put 1 RMN BC at about 4-8 SLN BC when both in range without pods. Only 4x because total damage and missile hits for those SLN BC's is far higher than the 1 RMN ships ability to swallow.

After reading first page i just have to ask.

Hellooo people? These ships got hit with wedges, sidewalls and ECM all DOWN. Hit at point blank, unimpeded by active defenses, ships with zero or near zero armour protection.

Hit by BC-sized weapons.

There´s unlikely to be much recognisable parts left, if any.

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.

IIRC the revolutionary part was that they went for fewer BIGGER guns. But i could recall badly.

namelessfly wrote:The SLN BCs have been nothing but targets to the RMN at absurdly long distance missile engagements. How would they do if they managed to get within more normal missile ranges? Would the RMN discover that the SLN BCs can vaporize their ships with Grasers at absurdly long energy ranges of perhaps 5 million Kms? Would this explain why Abby Hearnes developed her tactical plan at Saltash to annihilate the SLN BCs at maximum missile range?

The problem with that is the light speed lag (~20 seconds @15 Mkm) makes actually hitting an Honorverse ship at those ranges pretty much impossible once they are aware that you have such a weapon. Even with conventional energy weapons one of the major range limitations is that its damn hard to actually hit an Honorverse ship through its sidewalls and EW at long range for conventional energy weapons.

Time to say thank you all. Now I am going to be "Hoist By His Own Petard". I am going to "assume" that the Sollie Navy, (pick which one) has SOP, (standard operating procedure) to do many things after an active shooting incident.

In fact I would assume the Sollies are hip deep in SOP. They have had time to keep piling it deep and deeper.

This would include, I assume, to conduct search and rescue operations after blasting somebody, even the enemy. Particularly friendly destruction. The space station had just blown up. Full of friendly people. Space full of debris.

Also include debris from 3 Manti Cans. Big ones, but still cans. Lots of pieces of both the space station and enemy ships. Which is which? What about search and rescue? The aftermath would include the search for survivors? We hope so.

The Manti Cans would NOT BE VAPORIZED! Big and small pieces would survive. Some large enough for survivors.

Lots of junk flying around the planet. I still think some Sollie would take it upon him or herself to go by the book, which would be to examine each big piece for survivors. I would not depend upon just scanners. I would look and see.

I am going to assume infrastructure was already in place and went into local mode doing the S&R without Byng's awareness.

Thus the distinct possibility of recovering both Sollie and Manti pieces. This may include Manti teck. It may include alive or dead human bodies recovered for burial. High teck can come in very small pieces. My read. HB of CJ (old coot)