I suspect a couple of the problems the Peeps encountered towing Masadan LACs were that their tractor beam mounts weren't well positioned for it and old-style LACs weren't built for being tractored flat against a hull.Vince wrote:Quotes reordered to avoid embedding limit.
What we have is something of a contradiction, in that the Masadan LACs moved to Yeltsin's Star in The Honor of the Queen had to be towed astern of a destroyer (1 LAC) and a Sultan class battle cruiser (2 LACs), experiencing the full uncompensated acceleration that was being applied. One of the LACs had a tank come loose from its internal mounting points which caused serious damage to the LAC, essentially mission-killing it even before it could be put into action.
I would guess that DD Principality and BC Thunder of God didn't have any way to safely tractor a Masadan LAC tight in against the hull of the DD or BC.
However in Cauldron of Ghosts, we have two Nat Turner class frigates being tractored to the hull (using the racks designed to transport external cargo containers) of the Hali Sowle, (a smallish tramp freighter described in Torch of Freedom as: "massing slightly over a million tons").
I think the underlined text is key to two points:
1) If you don't have a purpose built external hull rack, you are limited to the relative size of what can be safely tractored against the hull of the ship that is the carrier. Textev that might support this interpretation, from the smallest to the largest:
a) In Shadow of Saganami, a Nuncio LAC tractored both a RMN pinnance with personnel onboard and a sensor drone against its hull. No mention of purpose built external racks.
b) In Echoes of Honor, PRH BBs tractor 11 missile pods tight in against their hulls. PRH BCs tractor 2 missile pods inside their wedges, but the text doesn't explicitly state the pods were against their hulls as it does for the BBs, just that the pods were tractored inside their wedges where they would have no effect on their acceleration curves. No mention of purpose built external racks.
2) The inertial compensator field of the carrying ship extends beyond just the external hull. Textev that seems to support this:
a) The crew of the RMN pinnance in Shadow of Saganami did not experience any felt acceleration (other than the pinnance's internal gravity) while being tractored against the Nuncio LAC. No mention is given of the pinnance's compensator until it maneuvers (on the main reaction thrusters) free from the LAC.
b) The two Nat Turner class frigates in Cauldron of Ghosts were tractored by the Hali Sowle and "settled them into their jury-rigged nests on her flank." Admittedly the Honorverse standards of jury-rigging might exceed present day design and build standards, but why bother describing the nests as jury-rigged?
c) It is at least implied the same two Nat Turner class frigates in Cauldron of Ghosts were manned when the Hali Sowle brought up its wedge and accelerated to 175 gravities. (No mention of the frigate crews being transferred to the Hali Sowle after the frigates locked a personnel tube to the freighter, just that the pressure checks were satisfactorily completed and then the frigate captains gave the go ahead to the Hali Sowle.
d) Go back to the underlined text from Cauldron of Ghosts above: "the racks which had been built to transport external cargo canisters back when the freighter’s designers had thought they were building an honest merchantman." Some points here:
i) The ship designers thought they were building an honest merchantman. That meant they designed the ship to civilian, not military standards of strength.
ii) The racks that were built to transport external cargo canisters were designed and built to the same civilian standards.
iii) Even if the racks and the external cargo canisters were capable of dealing with a compensator field that doesn't extend past the hull at all, or only a very short distance so that only part of the rack and its external cargo canister is enclosed in the field, leaving the rest of the rack and canister to experience 175 gravities of acceleration (in normal space, in hyper space in a gravity wave under Warshawski sail the acceleration would be approximately 1,685 gravities) I simply cannot believe, even in the Honorverse, that civilian cargo (goods) could stand up to that amount of force applied to it, let alone part of that cargo experience no acceleration and another part of that same piece of cargo be experiencing over a hundred or thousand gravities of felt acceleration forces.
[snip]
I think the question of "Does the inertial compensator field of an Honorverse spaceship extend beyond its hull?" can safely be answered: "Yes, it does."
We know that when towed astern it took a three tractors to fully "zone" each of them, and I suspect you had to tow a fair distance out to get the angularity for three separate tractor emitters to have line of sight. If you tried towing up against the hull probably only one emitter would be able to 'see' the LAC. And without some kind of docking cradle the LAC and the warship hulls would probably damage each other; neither was designed for rubbing, rolling contact. (Well the warship's armor might not much care, but surface emplacements and sensor likely would)
A mounting rack of some sort stabilizes the ship and prevents either ship from damaging hull mounted items.
I know in an emergency Manticoran LACs can tractor several deep to an SD so it can jump them all up into hyper. But that's probably enough of an emergency that they're willing to accept damage to escape. (And it's possible there were some design choices made to make this emergency maneuver more practical; which wouldn't be considered in LACs that would never have to consider retreating from a failed raid)
Towing a pinnace on a LAC shouldn't have those same problems. For one, the pinnace can use it's own belly tractor to hold itself against the LAC. Or if it had to use a LAC tractor it's small enough that just one should be able to "zone" it. And second pinnaces have landing legs, because they're designed to land on the ground, even on rough terrain. So it should be easy enough to fine a relatively clear section of LAC hull and extend the legs to secure yourself in place so there's you're not moving around and there's no hull to hull contact.