What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

crewdude48 wrote:Once again, if everything you said was ture, than SDs would have merchant class hyperdirves instead of millspec ones.

Vince wrote:I can think of at least one scenario where it would be advantageous to mount streak drives on SDs, or any other combatants.

2 forces of SDs or SDPs, Red and Blue. Blue is chasing Red in hyperspace, and is out of energy range and missile range (either out of range because of distance, or because of being in a gravity wave where missiles don't work). Red has standard military hyper drive, Blue has the streak drive. Both have the same acceleration capability (inertial compensator, impellers, mass). Both are at the maximum speed their particle shielding can withstand, so Blue can't close with Red without using the streak drive to go to higher hyper bands.

Blue divides its forces into 2 sections, Blue1 and Blue2. Blue1 stays in the same hyper band that Red is in, keeping Red under observation. Blue2 uses the streak drive to go to higher hyper bands, loosing speed during the translation. Blue2 then accelerates in the highest hyper band to maximum speed, and uses the increased velocity multiplier of the higher hyper band to move ahead of Red.

Blue2 then translates back down to the hyper band Red is in, loosing speed during the translation. Blue2 is now ahead of Red, and the range is closing due to Red traveling faster than Blue2.

Red is now trapped between Blue1 and Blue2, with the range to Blue2 dropping to engagement range (either missile or energy).

Red cannot avoid combat with Blue2 by accelerating at 90 degrees to its base course because both forces have the same acceleration capability. (Whatever Red does, both Blue forces will mirror.)

The best hope for Red is to accept combat with Blue2 and hope that they can defeat or survive the encounter.

Red cannot avoid combat with Blue by changing its speed. The only way for Red to avoid running over Blue2 is by dumping enough speed to stay out of range of Blue2. With the higher base velocity of Red, and equal acceleration capability of both Red and Blue, this won't work. Not only would it not work, but if Red decelerates, it closes the range to Blue1, eventually to engagement range. This gives Red the worst tactical situation, being caught between 2 closing forces.

Red cannot avoid combat with Blue by going to a higher band in hyperspace because it doesn't have the streak drive.

Red cannot avoid combat with Blue by going to a lower band in hyperspace because both Blue forces will do the same, except slightly differently.

Blue2 will drop to the lower band and Red will still be closing to engagement range towards Blue2 with Red still at a higher speed than Blue2 in the lower band.

Blue1 will drop to the lower band as well, but will not do so immediately. Instead it will wait for a short period of time before translating down, taking advantage of the higher velocity multiplier of the hyper band it is in (compared to Red's lower velocity multiplier of the band it dropped into) and the fact that Red lost speed when it dropped to a lower band while Blue1 maintained speed. Blue1 is now either in engagement range of Red, or has at least closed the range significantly.

Blue1 and Blue2 can switch roles until one or both bring Red into engagement range. If Red accepts the engagement with Blue2 and survives (presumably heavily damaged), Blue can repeat the engagement with Blue1, and any Blue2 SDs that are still combat-worthy following the first engagement (assuming they are not needed for search-and-rescue).



A variation of this technique was almost certainly used at 2nd Hancock in Echoes of Honor, where the PRH (Red) forces were almost completely destroyed by the RMN (Blue) forces after the PRH forces scattered, allowing the RMN Shrikes to take down an alpha node (and thus a Warshawski sail) on the PRH battleships. Since we found out in Ashes of Victory during Oliver Diamoto's mental review of the battle that Hancock lay in a gravity wave, this trapped the damaged PRH units in normal space.

The only differences were:

1) The PRH BBs had a higher acceleration than the RMN SDs.

2a) The PRH BBs were trapped in normal space, with a much greater sensor range than hyper space.

2b) The RMN SDs could use the Hancock FTL sensor net, as well as their own shipboard sensors to quickly determine the location and course of the PRH forces before and after popping up into hyper, accelerating, and then translating back down to normal space.

3) The RMN SDs faced PRH BBs. The combat disparity probably enabled the RMN SDs to take on the PRH BBs one-on-one to defeat the enemy in detail.



The obvious counter for Red is to mount the streak drive on its SDPs, letting it go as high in hyper space as Blue. Blue will then never be able to force Red into engagement range, and will eventually break off the pursuit.

Weird Harold wrote:It is entirely possible that early SDs did have civilian grade drives. But military hyper-generators aren't significantly different than civilian H-Gs; A streak drive is. Milspec generators are more robust and can stand the strain of an additional hyper-band, but otherwise they're the same technology.

crewdude48 wrote:Really? Do you have access to the tech bible that I don't? Please explain exactly how a milspec drive can access four hyper bands higher than a civilian generator does.

Weird Harold wrote:Aside from the tactical flaws others have pointed out, a single scenario is NOT sufficient to make any new technology viable.

Streak Drives have limited advantages for ships that do not, and have never, relied on speed to be effective. Being able to cover a wider volume for a nodal force "a week's travel" from its furthest responsibility, but that is only as advantageous as the speed of the messenger telling them they need to respond. That's why Streak Drives are more advantageous to smaller ships like couriers and scouts.

Weird Harold wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:Once again, if everything you said was ture, than SDs would have merchant class hyperdirves instead of millspec ones.

It is entirely possible that early SDs did have civilian grade drives. But military hyper-generators aren't significantly different than civilian H-Gs; A streak drive is. Milspec generators are more robust and can stand the strain of an additional hyper-band, but otherwise they're the same technology.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Streak Drives have limited advantages for ships that do not, and have never, relied on speed to be effective. Being able to cover a wider volume for a nodal force "a week's travel" from its furthest responsibility, but that is only as advantageous as the speed of the messenger telling them they need to respond. That's why Streak Drives are more advantageous to smaller ships like couriers and scouts.

Even SDs don't spend all their time statically defending systems.

And even those assigned to defend systems have to get rotated to the rear periodically for refit and maintenance. If you can cut the transit time you can have the ship back on station that much sooner. Not an overwhelming advantage, but nothing to ignore either.

And for ships on strategic raiding missions faster transit time equals a higher operational pace. You waste less time between targets so you can hit more targets.

Are these worth say a 5% decrease in combat power on an SD, probably not. Are they worth a 0.5% decrease, I'd say yes they are. But combat power isn't everything. If it turns out the streak drive requires so much additional maintenance (just as an example of some other downside) then that could offset the transit advantages getting to and from the repair station's system.


But like I said earlier we don't know what those tradeoffs are so we're all just

Weird Harold wrote:I was aware of the Tu-22, but I'm pretty sure it is (or was) classed as a medium bomber rather than a heavy.

Weird Harold wrote:Heavy bombers/Main Battle Tanks/Battleships are comparable to DNs and SDs -- war-load/combat capability is a higher priority than speed.

Weird Harold wrote:Cost is going to be a factor. Not as much of a factor as it would be for a civilian design, but any Navy is going to buy as much combat capability as it can afford -- spending too much on the hyper-drive will reduce the budget for combat power.

Tenshinai wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Cost is going to be a factor. Not as much of a factor as it would be for a civilian design, but any Navy is going to buy as much combat capability as it can afford -- spending too much on the hyper-drive will reduce the budget for combat power.

No. Unless the drive requires some EXTREMELY problematic materials or insanely complex manufacturing process, cost isn´t going to be part of the decision.

If it was, the Keyhole platforms would never have been developed as they were. Or the advanced recon drones, or the Apollo control missiles.

How much it affects combat ability is what will determine if they become the next standard or not.

Tenshinai wrote:How much it affects combat ability is what will determine if they become the next standard or not.

pokermind wrote:Hi All

Could Streak Drive be used on the Honorverse's largest military ships the SDPs? Or is there a size limit.

A fleet of such ships could sucessfuly attack an enemy held wormhole terminus. But I seem to remember a size limit on Streak Drive ships somewhere. Help!

Poker