New passive defense system

BrigadeΔ wrote:I think i remember something like this in one of the anthologies, beginings maybe? But it was the technodyne funded takeover of the manticore system and the ship with the main character on it, a brand new CL, was stuck on the wrong side of the attack force, they had 9 missiles, 6 attack and 3 practice, they fired all of the attack missiles and used one of the practice ones to take a BC's broadside to cross the T on it and destroy it with energy torpedoes, also why a drone and not just change the Impeler wedge to a buble, it would have the same problem as the bow wall and would blind you but you could then not have MAD in any battle with SD(P)'s in it

The warships of the Travis Long/Stephanie Harrington era don't really have much in common with what's viable in 1920 PD or so. A lot of the offensive and defensive systems that are routine in OBS are either very primitive or do not exist at all in that era. Which means quite a few tactics that work for Travis & co. would be suicidal if Honor tried them.

lyonheart wrote:Hi BrigadeA,

Welcome to the forums, enjoy your favorite simulated beverage on the simulated forums.

I don't recall such a story, NTM it wouldn't work in the honorverse, since missiles even practice missiles don't have the power for energy torpedoes, PDLC's etc.

Missiles don't have the power for double wedges either.

Honorverse navies are a big believer in KISS, even the RMN tests thoroughly before accepting some new whiz-bang.

Keep trying to come up with good ideas, it only gets easier.

L

BrigadeΔ wrote:I think i remember something like this in one of the anthologies, beginings maybe? But it was the technodyne funded takeover of the manticore system and the ship with the main character on it, a brand new CL, was stuck on the wrong side of the attack force, they had 9 missiles, 6 attack and 3 practice, they fired all of the attack missiles and used one of the practice ones to take a BC's broadside to cross the T on it and destroy it with energy torpedoes, also why a drone and not just change the Impeler wedge to a buble, it would have the same problem as the bow wall and would blind you but you could then not have MAD in any battle with SD(P)'s in it

Sounds like it might have been a garbled memory of 'A Call to Arms' Timothy Zahn's short story about Travis Long in the 6th anthology Beginnings.

The light cruiser HMS Casey (a high-tech showpiece ship for Manticore) did end up squared off against a battlecruiser. Her sidewall was down and the engagement geometry was such that both would get a clear shot virtually simultaneously; but the BC's laser would be able to fire a 1/2 second sooner than Casey's energy torpedo, destroying Casey before she could get her shot off. (But if she somehow missed Casey could fire and gut her before the laser could recharge)

Travis managed to position a practice missile such that when it lit off it's wedge on the low acceleration setting (3500g) that wedge was interposed between HMS Casey and the BC for 3/4 of a second - the BC wasted its laser shot on the impenetrable missile wedge and HMS Casey's energy torpedoes blew it apart before it could get another shot off, or even get out of the way.


But this was some really ancient tech compared to the Havenite wars. A missile's low accel (50%) setting was over 10 times that by Honor's time. Couldn't pull that same trick off now, the weapons cycle too quickly and the missiles wouldn't block the shot long enough. Plus combat doesn't happen at such pitifully short ranges than you can slowly drift across the open sides of a ship's impeller bands. (If it did then you could use a modern recon drone to try the same trick; but that that range PDLCs could rip your ship apart and those fire many times a second so a brief window of invulnerability is unlikely to provide the same advantage.
This seems to be one of those tricks that relies on exactly the tech balance of that era to pull off.

BrigadeΔ wrote:I think i remember something like this in one of the anthologies, beginings maybe? But it was the technodyne funded takeover of the manticore system and the ship with the main character on it, a brand new CL, was stuck on the wrong side of the attack force, they had 9 missiles, 6 attack and 3 practice, they fired all of the attack missiles and used one of the practice ones to take a BC's broadside to cross the T on it and destroy it with energy torpedoes, also why a drone and not just change the Impeler wedge to a buble, it would have the same problem as the bow wall and would blind you but you could then not have MAD in any battle with SD(P)'s in it

There was one of the "Charles" stories where the Andermani use a LAC wedge to shield their main combatant from a down the throat shot from a stealthed mine dropped by a Peep-captured ship pretending to still be under control of Manticore. I do not remember the story. I do not believe the LAC was inside the wedge of the larger ship.

However we know for a fact that wedges work within other wedges so long as their wedge effects do not intersect. That's how wedge driven missiles originally damaged other ships. Before there were sidewalls, missiles were simply wedge drives, and in order for them to actually damage other ships, they had to hit the other ships with their wedges.

Since we know how Honorverse wedge missiles originally worked before sidewalls, we know with no room for doubt that wedges can exist inside wedges. Wedge drones could provide protection to ships with far more potency than sidewalls, and little risk to the ship being protected because the drones would be outside the sidewalls.