Accuracy of missiles against wedgeless targets?

SharkHunter wrote:The wedge-less target dies a quick death, not just because the wedge is 50% of the armor, but because it is also it's own "smokescreen", same with the sidewalls. First reason is that without the wedge, the target ship can't change speed or direction. Makes it pretty easy to find if you've already spotted a ship under impeller drive and in motion. Which is why ships try to set up ambushes where they're either not moving or already moving before the opp force shows up. Then ships play games with decoys, drones, etc. to try to get lost among the faked impeller targets, asteroids, or any convenient celestial bodies, etc.

Next problem is that it takes the wedge time to form. You can't just flick it on and have it at 100% power taking all that nasty energy away from the ship. So you gotta have it up to stop ANYTHING. Once it's up, however, we read about the Wedge being impenetrable by any form of energy, and warships have 'a wedge inside a wedge" that keeps an enemy from reading through a single wedge to localize the ships, which don't have to sit right smack dab in the middle of the wedges that they generate.

In OBS, Honor is frustrated because about all CL-56 Fearless can do to avoid Sirius' missiles is to squirm around inside the wedge, which gives the PN ship WAY too good of an opportunity to take her out. Why? because by "this point in time", the laserhead's gravitic mirror plus "missile head aiming computers" is accurate enough to get an 'energy blast shot' capable of destroying the ship or at least maiming it at fractional C speeds. Even then, it wasn't easy, right?

Given that it's supposed to be about a 300:1 guess volume wise within a wedge as to where a warship ship is actually sitting that's why a "down the throat" or "up the kilt" shot is so valuable, the missile's targeting computers don't have to guess. So, no wedge = no guesswork required. No defense against the energy output of the laser head.

Dead ship.

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 3 wrote:A single data code blinked angry scarlet amid the massive Aggressor formation in Honor's display, and she grinned. She didn't know if Admiral D'Orville's spies (unofficial and strictly against the rules, of course) had penetrated the security screen around Fearless, but Admiral Hemphill's spies had penetrated his own security. Not very deeply, but far enough to ID his flagship. That was one of the great potential weaknesses in any Fleet maneuver; each side had complete files on the electronic signatures of the other side's units.
The chrono sped downward, and she raised her head to glance at McKeon and Lieutenant Venizelos.
"All right, gentlemen," she said.
"Sir! We've got a new bogey, bearing—"
Captain Lewis's frantic warning was far too late, and the range was far too short to do anything about it. Admiral D'Orville had barely begun to turn towards him when a crimson light glared on King Roger's main status board, and damage alarms screamed as the vastly understrength grav lance smashed into the superdreadnought's port sidewall. It was far too weak to inflict actual generator damage, but the computers noted it and obediently flashed their failure warning—just as an incredible salvo of equally understrength energy torpedoes exploded against the theoretically nonexistent sidewall.
The admiral jerked upright in his command chair while the visual display flickered and glared with the energy torpedoes' fury. Then the display went blank, and his strangled, incredulous curse echoed across the hushed flag bridge as every weapon and propulsive system shut down.
* * *
"Direct hit, Ma'am!" Venizelos screamed, and Honor permitted herself a fierce grin of triumph as the Aggressor flagship went ballistic. Other ships peeled out of formation to maintain safe separation, but King Roger was "dead," locked down by her own computers to simulate her total destruction at the hands of a lowly light cruiser! It was almost worth being Horrible Hemphill's handpicked hatchet woman just to see it.
But there was still the little matter of Fearless's own survival.
"Bring the wedge up now!" Honor's soprano was a bit higher than usual, if far calmer than her tac officer's voice, and Engineering's response was instantaneous. Lieutenant Commander Santos had been standing by for over an hour; now she closed the final circuit and Fearless's impeller wedge sprang to life.
"Helm, execute Sierra Five!"
"Sierra Five, aye," the helmsman replied, and Fearless rolled madly on her gyros and attitude thrusters. She flipped up on her side relative to the Aggressor wall of battle, interposing her belly impeller bands just as the first Aggressor energy weapons began to fire. Incredulous fire control officers poured laser and graser fire at the tiny target which had suddenly materialized on their displays, but they were too late. The impeller bands bent and splattered their fire harmlessly, and Honor felt a huge smile transform her strong features.
"All right, Chief Killian." She allowed herself an airy gesture at the forward visual display. "That away—full military power."
"Yes, Ma'am!" the helmsman replied with an equally huge grin, and HMS Fearless leapt to an instant acceleration of five hundred and three standard gravities.

Vince wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:The wedge-less target dies a quick death, not just because the wedge is 50% of the armor, but because it is also it's own "smokescreen", same with the sidewalls. First reason is that without the wedge, the target ship can't change speed or direction. Makes it pretty easy to find if you've already spotted a ship under impeller drive and in motion. Which is why ships try to set up ambushes where they're either not moving or already moving before the opp force shows up. Then ships play games with decoys, drones, etc. to try to get lost among the faked impeller targets, asteroids, or any convenient celestial bodies, etc.

Next problem is that it takes the wedge time to form. You can't just flick it on and have it at 100% power taking all that nasty energy away from the ship. So you gotta have it up to stop ANYTHING. Once it's up, however, we read about the Wedge being impenetrable by any form of energy, and warships have 'a wedge inside a wedge" that keeps an enemy from reading through a single wedge to localize the ships, which don't have to sit right smack dab in the middle of the wedges that they generate.

In OBS, Honor is frustrated because about all CL-56 Fearless can do to avoid Sirius' missiles is to squirm around inside the wedge, which gives the PN ship WAY too good of an opportunity to take her out. Why? because by "this point in time", the laserhead's gravitic mirror plus "missile head aiming computers" is accurate enough to get an 'energy blast shot' capable of destroying the ship or at least maiming it at fractional C speeds. Even then, it wasn't easy, right?

Given that it's supposed to be about a 300:1 guess volume wise within a wedge as to where a warship ship is actually sitting that's why a "down the throat" or "up the kilt" shot is so valuable, the missile's targeting computers don't have to guess. So, no wedge = no guesswork required. No defense against the energy output of the laser head.

Dead ship.

Actually the wedge normally takes about 45 minutes or so to come up from cold nodes. Hot nodes will reduce the time it takes by about 15 minutes. And if the wedge is already up at standby it takes only a minute or less to bring it up to full power.

But sometimes, you can bring the wedge up, even to full power, at the speed of plot:

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 3 wrote:A single data code blinked angry scarlet amid the massive Aggressor formation in Honor's display, and she grinned. She didn't know if Admiral D'Orville's spies (unofficial and strictly against the rules, of course) had penetrated the security screen around Fearless, but Admiral Hemphill's spies had penetrated his own security. Not very deeply, but far enough to ID his flagship. That was one of the great potential weaknesses in any Fleet maneuver; each side had complete files on the electronic signatures of the other side's units.
The chrono sped downward, and she raised her head to glance at McKeon and Lieutenant Venizelos.
"All right, gentlemen," she said.
"Sir! We've got a new bogey, bearing—"
Captain Lewis's frantic warning was far too late, and the range was far too short to do anything about it. Admiral D'Orville had barely begun to turn towards him when a crimson light glared on King Roger's main status board, and damage alarms screamed as the vastly understrength grav lance smashed into the superdreadnought's port sidewall. It was far too weak to inflict actual generator damage, but the computers noted it and obediently flashed their failure warning—just as an incredible salvo of equally understrength energy torpedoes exploded against the theoretically nonexistent sidewall.
The admiral jerked upright in his command chair while the visual display flickered and glared with the energy torpedoes' fury. Then the display went blank, and his strangled, incredulous curse echoed across the hushed flag bridge as every weapon and propulsive system shut down.
* * *
"Direct hit, Ma'am!" Venizelos screamed, and Honor permitted herself a fierce grin of triumph as the Aggressor flagship went ballistic. Other ships peeled out of formation to maintain safe separation, but King Roger was "dead," locked down by her own computers to simulate her total destruction at the hands of a lowly light cruiser! It was almost worth being Horrible Hemphill's handpicked hatchet woman just to see it.
But there was still the little matter of Fearless's own survival.
"Bring the wedge up now!" Honor's soprano was a bit higher than usual, if far calmer than her tac officer's voice, and Engineering's response was instantaneous. Lieutenant Commander Santos had been standing by for over an hour; now she closed the final circuit and Fearless's impeller wedge sprang to life.
"Helm, execute Sierra Five!"
"Sierra Five, aye," the helmsman replied, and Fearless rolled madly on her gyros and attitude thrusters. She flipped up on her side relative to the Aggressor wall of battle, interposing her belly impeller bands just as the first Aggressor energy weapons began to fire. Incredulous fire control officers poured laser and graser fire at the tiny target which had suddenly materialized on their displays, but they were too late. The impeller bands bent and splattered their fire harmlessly, and Honor felt a huge smile transform her strong features.
"All right, Chief Killian." She allowed herself an airy gesture at the forward visual display. "That away—full military power."
"Yes, Ma'am!" the helmsman replied with an equally huge grin, and HMS Fearless leapt to an instant acceleration of five hundred and three standard gravities.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Hey, it was the first book, and the tech bible probably hadn't solidified yet. I suspect if he wrote that scene today, he would have handled it differently.

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 26 wrote:"Yes, Ma'am. I caught the last little bit of your conversation. And I've got something to add, too. Lieutenant Cardones and I have determined that Sirius's nodes are hot."
It was Honor's turn to feel her eyebrows rise. "Could it be a systems test?"
"I don't think so, Ma'am. We're reading a full standby load on all the alpha and beta nodes on this side of her hull, fore and aft both. A systems test would probably run up just the alphas or the betas, not both. And why should they test both the forward and after nodes simultaneously? Besides, the power level's held steady for over ten minutes now."
Honor leaned back to regard him pensively and saw her own thoughts flicker behind his gray eyes. There was no regulation against a ship's holding her impeller drive at standby in parking orbit, but it was almost unheard of. Power was relatively cheap aboard a starship, but even the best fusion plant needed reactor mass, and impeller energy demands were high, even at standby. Maintaining that sort of load when you didn't need to was a good way to run up your overhead. Nor was it good for the equipment. Your engineers couldn't carry out routine maintenance while the drive was hot, and the components themselves had limited design lives. Holding them at standby when you didn't need to would certainly reduce their life spans, and that, again, ran up overhead.
All of which meant no freighter captain would hold his drive at standby without a very compelling reason. But a warship's captain might. It took almost forty minutes to bring your impeller wedge up from a cold start; by starting with hot nodes, you could reduce that to little more than fifteen minutes.

***Snip***

"Keep a close eye on Sirius, but see if you can determine whether or not the courier's nodes are hot, too," she went on. "I think we've pretty definitely established that something strange is going on out here, and that Haven is at the bottom of it, but we still don't know what. I want to know that, Exec. I want to catch them with their hands dirty and nail them in front of God and everybody."
"Yes, Ma'am." McKeon's puzzlement had turned to understanding, and Honor nodded.
"In the meantime, I want Fearless held on standby for impeller, as well. If either of those two start going anywhere, I want to be able to go in pursuit. Clear?"
"Clear, Ma'am."
"Good." She turned back to her com officer. "Mr. Webster, I need a secure link to Dame Estelle."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. I'll get right on it."
Honor watched her two subordinates return to their stations and leaned back, rubbing Nimitz and looking back down at the frozen imagery of Sirius's impeller node with distant eyes.
"You're right, Honor. They're definitely up to something." Dame Estelle looked tired on the com screen, and Honor wondered if she'd gotten back to sleep at all after their midnight conversation.
"I don't think there's any doubt," Honor agreed. "Especially not now that we've confirmed the courier boat's drive is hot, too. I hate to say it, Dame Estelle, but I really don't like that."

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 26 wrote:"Ma'am, I thought you should know—we copied some message traffic from an NPA skimmer about fifteen minutes ago. They said they were under fire from Stilties and going down. Then they went off the air. Air Control is still trying to raise them, but we're not getting anything back."
"Was it Major Isvarian's patrol?" Honor's voice was suddenly sharper, despite her self-control.
"Yes, Ma'am, I believe it was. And—" Stromboli broke off and looked away for a few seconds as someone said something from off-screen, then he turned back to Honor. "Ma'am, I don't know if it's connected—I don't see how it could be—but that Havenite freighter, the Sirius, just started to move out of orbit, and she sure didn't clear it with us."
Stromboli looked more puzzled than concerned by his latest datum as he gazed into his own com screen at his captain, but Honor felt her skin twitch. The same humming certainty that filled her as she grappled with a complex tactical maneuver filled her now as all the pieces snapped instantly and intuitively into place. It couldn't be. The whole idea was preposterous! Yet it was also the only answer that even began to fit the known data.
Stromboli flinched back from his com as her eyes hardened in sudden understanding. She noted his reaction and made herself smile at him.
"Thank you, Lieutenant. You did well. I'll take it from here."
She cut the circuit and flipped up a clear plastic shield on the side of her terminal. Only the captain's cabin terminal had that shield, and she jammed her thumb down on the big, red button it had covered.
The ululating scream of Fearless's battle stations alarm wailed through the light cruiser's hull. Crewmen rolled out of their bunks, dropped cups of coffee, jumped up from mess tables, threw down playing cards and book readers, and bolted for their stations. That shrill, electric sound was brutal, designed to get inside a person's bones and snarl there, and only a dead man could have ignored it.
Honor let the alarm shriek and punched the intercom for the bridge. Panowski was officer of the watch, and his eyes were wide and stunned as he recognized her.
"Bring the drive up—now, Lieutenant!" she snapped.

***Snip***

"Status?"
"All stations manned, Captain," the exec said crisply. "Impeller wedge coming up—we should have movement capability in another ten minutes. Sirius has been underway for six-point-eight minutes . . . at four hundred and ten gees."
He paused, and Honor's jaw clenched. That was low for most warships, but impossibly fast for a freighter, and it confirmed Santos's deduction. Only military impellers could have produced that kind of acceleration for a ship Sirius's size . . . and only a military grade inertial compensator could allow her crew to survive it.
"The courier boat?" Her voice was sharp, and McKeon frowned.
"She started powering her wedge just after we did, Ma'am."

***Snip***

"How long for impeller now?" she asked without looking up.
"Four minutes, twenty seconds," McKeon said tightly, and Honor nodded to herself. She could do it. Probably. She fed McKeon's readiness numbers into her display, and a time-to-execution readout began to blink its way steadily downward.

***Snip***

"Impellers in three minutes, Ma'am," McKeon reported.

***Snip***

"Time to impellers, Exec?"
"Forty-three seconds."
"Thank you." She punched in the new estimate, a corner of her mind noting that Dominica Santos was shaving whole seconds off her original numbers. The time-to-execution display flickered to a new value, then resumed its steady downward march. "Chief Killian?"
"Aye, Captain?" The coxswain's shoulders were tight, but his voice was calm.
"Come to three-five-seven by one-seven-one, Chief Killian. On my command, I want three hundred gravities acceleration on that heading for ten seconds. Then come directly to two-seven-four by zero-niner-three true and go to maximum military power."

***Snip***

"Impeller wedge up and nominal, Ma'am," McKeon rasped, and Honor kept her eyes glued to her maneuvering display, watching the time display tick downward.
"Is that course laid in, Chief?"
"Ah, yes, Ma'am. Three-five-seven one-seven-one. Acceleration three-zero-zero gravities for one-zero seconds. Course change to two-seven-four zero-niner-three true also laid in, Captain."
"Thank you." Honor felt McKeon's tension at her shoulder, but there was no time to deal with that. "Courier boat time to impeller readiness?" she snapped.
"Thirty-six seconds, Ma'am," Lieutenant Cardones said in a small voice.
"Very well." She paused for just a beat, and then the timer hit zero. "Execute, Chief Killian!"
"Executing," the coxswain said in an almost prayerful voice, and HMS Fearless leapt instantly forward and "down" at an acceleration of just over twenty-nine hundred MPS2.
Honor's hands tightened on her chair's arms, but she didn't even blink as her eighty-eight-thousand-ton command screamed down into the very heart of Medusa's orbital traffic. She'd laid in that vector by eye, without the careful calculations and double-checking The Book required, but there was no time for that, and her mind was still in that odd overdrive. She knew it was correct, with an absolute certainty that admitted no doubt, and Fearless rode the invisible rail she'd nailed down in space as her speed mounted by almost three kilometers per second with every second that passed.
The Havenite courier boat loomed directly ahead of her on Honor's visual display, impeller nodes beginning to glow as they started to come up, but they weren't on line yet. Vapor spewed from the boat's emergency maneuvering thrusters as her skipper tried frantically to avoid Fearless's mad charge, yet those thrusters were far too weak to move the boat more than a few meters in the time they had, and the light cruiser stooped upon the eggshell courier like a vengeful falcon.
Breath hissed as her officers tensed for the inevitable, suicidal impact, but Honor's face was carved stone as the edge of Fearless's drive field slashed past the courier at less than two kilometers, far inside its drive safety perimeter. Vaporized alloy burst from the smaller vessel's stern as the cruiser's vastly more powerful impeller wedge blew her after nodes to incandescent gas; then Fearless was past, and the starscape slewed crazily in the visual display as she shot up and away from the planet in a mad skew turn and went instantly to full emergency power, accelerating at five hundred and twenty gravities.
"My God!" someone gasped as Fearless streaked past an orbiting four-million-ton freighter at a bare ten kilometers' separation. Honor didn't even turn her head. Her eyes were already reaching out for the scarlet light dot of the fleeing Sirius.
"Captain?" Webster sounded as shaken as anyone.
"Yes, Samuel?" Honor asked absently.
"Captain, I have an incoming message from that courier boat. They sound pretty upset, Ma'am."
"I imagine they do." Honor surprised herself with a grin and sensed the sudden release of her bridge crew's tension. "Put them on my screen."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Her screen lit with the image of a very young officer in the green and gray of the People's Navy. He wore a lieutenant's insignia, and his face was a curious, mottled blend of furious red and terrified white.
"Captain Harrington, I protest your reckless, illegal shiphandling!" the youngster shouted. "You almost destroyed my ship! Our entire after—"
"I'm very sorry, Captain," Honor interrupted in her most soothing tone. "I'm afraid I wasn't watching where I was going."
"Weren't watching wh—?!" The Havenite lieutenant strangled his exclamation and gritted his teeth. "I demand you heave to and assist my command in dealing with the damage you've inflicted!" he snarled instead.
"I regret that that's impossible, Captain," Honor said.
"Under the interstellar convention of—" the lieutenant began again, but she cut him off with a pleasant smile.
"I realize I'm technically in the wrong about this, Captain," she said in that same, soothing tone, "but I'm sure Her Majesty's Resident Commissioner will be able to provide any assistance you require. In the meantime, we're a little too busy to stop. Good-bye, Captain."
She switched off the com, killing the lieutenant's protest in mid splutter, and leaned back in her chair.
"My, that was a little sloppy of me, wasn't it?" she murmured.
Her crew gawked at her for just a second, and then a chorus of relieved laughter ran around the bridge. She smiled, but when she looked up at McKeon, his face was grim, and there was no humor in his eyes.

crewdude48 wrote:There is probably some give in the wedge activation sequence at the end, where you can have it ready for instant activation for at least a few minutes. Honor and her bridge crew were watching the opposition fleet closing on their position at a constant acceleration for quite a while. They could have said to Eng, "It looks like they will be here in 35 minutes. Have the wedge ready to go in 33, and stand by at ready." Holding it at that point for to long probably does bad things to your energy budget, but it would only make sense to build that ability into a war ship.