Logic behind splitting Lacoon?

SharkHunter wrote:I just had an interesting thought that fits here as well as anywhere else [any bc(p) thread, for example], but all the way back in Honor of the Queen we read that Warshawski sails DRAW power to the ship, meaning that a ship on station "in Hyper" doesn't have to use it's fusion bunkerage a whole lot if at all.

So, Laccoon II wise, you're a Sag-C captain with your accompanying DDs and the dropped off LACs on station out there in the wormhole boondocks a long way from home, which is enough to give just about any medium to large FF formation the mother of all headaches if they try to take it back. Meanwhile, bring in ONE bc(p) and park it just outside the hyper limit /resonance zone in that system.

330 pods * 14 Mark-16-G missiles, plus what the Sag C and destroyers add to the mix. Now you're likely up to taking out 10-20 SDs, let alone FF battle cruiser task group size formations. Yes/no?

1) Hyper does not work that way on Warshawki sails. Sails and hyper do not mix. Requires a grav wave to pull power.

2) Sure, this is essentially what they are already doing.

To clarify further, the Warshawski sails provide power if they are in hyperspace and inside a grav wave.

SWM wrote:To clarify further, the Warshawski sails provide power if they are in hyperspace and inside a grav wave.

Hmm. We know that you can (have to) use Warshawski for the final approach to a wormhole.

You'd be completely vulnerable, but could you hold position right there in that departure "lane"? And if so would you be able to draw power from the sails, even though you're in n-space?


It's be military pointless, since you give up almost your entire offensive and defensive capabilities. But, as an admittedly fairly pointless technical trick, I wonder if you could...

Jonathan_S wrote:

SWM wrote:You'd be completely vulnerable, but could you hold position right there in that departure "lane"? And if so would you be able to draw power from the sails, even though you're in n-space?

Don't think so. There's a limited amount of time to get the ship's sails configured and then it's through, or the wormhole's stresses will tear the ship's nodes to bits.

Jonathan_S wrote:

SWM wrote:To clarify further, the Warshawski sails provide power if they are in hyperspace and inside a grav wave.

Hmm. We know that you can (have to) use Warshawski for the final approach to a wormhole.

You'd be completely vulnerable, but could you hold position right there in that departure "lane"? And if so would you be able to draw power from the sails, even though you're in n-space?


It's be military pointless, since you give up almost your entire offensive and defensive capabilities. But, as an admittedly fairly pointless technical trick, I wonder if you could...

Hypothetically, you probably could. From On Basilisk Station:

The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.

So, the sails do draw power from a wormhole just like any other grav wave. You don't have to move forward.

SWM wrote:So, the sails do draw power from a wormhole just like any other grav wave. You don't have to move forward.

How about a tie on this one? Wayfarer at the Junction, 1st time...

Honor Among Enemies wrote:...at this velocity there was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way before the grav wave's interference would blow Wayfarer's after nodes...

Jonathan_S wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:I just had an interesting thought that fits here as well as anywhere else [any bc(p) thread, for example], but all the way back in Honor of the Queen we read that Warshawski sails DRAW power to the ship, meaning that a ship on station "in Hyper" doesn't have to use it's fusion bunkerage a whole lot if at all.

So, Laccoon II wise, you're a Sag-C captain with your accompanying DDs and the dropped off LACs on station out there in the wormhole boondocks a long way from home, which is enough to give just about any medium to large FF formation the mother of all headaches if they try to take it back. Meanwhile, bring in ONE bc(p) and park it just outside the hyper limit /resonance zone in that system.

330 pods * 14 Mark-16-G missiles, plus what the Sag C and destroyers add to the mix. Now you're likely up to taking out 10-20 SDs, let alone FF battle cruiser task group size formations. Yes/no?

To clarify, a Warshawski sails draws power when the ship is in a grav wave.
Most inhabited systems don't lie directly within a grav wave, so simply popping up into hyper wouldn't let you shut down your reactors.

(And warships probably wouldn't want to do a reactor cold shutdown anyway because there might be delays getting them back online if an emergency came up and you had to pounce down into n-space)

And even if the system did lie in a gravity wave, the alpha nodes (the same applies to beta nodes, but they aren't used for Warshawski sails, just the impeller wedge) have limited lifetimes.

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 26 wrote: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.

Boldface text is my emphasis.

SharkHunter wrote:

SWM wrote:So, the sails do draw power from a wormhole just like any other grav wave. You don't have to move forward.

How about a tie on this one? Wayfarer at the Junction, 1st time...

Honor Among Enemies wrote:...at this velocity there was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way before the grav wave's interference would blow Wayfarer's after nodes...

But the ship doesn't have to continue moving forward at that velocity. Reread that citation--the ship was drawing enough power from the wormhole to provide movement. In principle, the ship could use that to provide acceleration in the opposite direction, and bring the ship to a stop, rather than continuing forward.

So, theoretically, a ship could sit stationary on the edge of the wormhole, drawing power from it. In practice, I would never want to do it, because too many things could go wrong and blow your nodes or possibly the whole ship.

SWM wrote:But the ship doesn't have to continue moving forward at that velocity. Reread that citation--the ship was drawing enough power from the wormhole to provide movement. In principle, the ship could use that to provide acceleration in the opposite direction, and bring the ship to a stop, rather than continuing forward.

So, theoretically, a ship could sit stationary on the edge of the wormhole, drawing power from it. In practice, I would never want to do it, because too many things could go wrong and blow your nodes or possibly the whole ship.

To take this tangent off on another tangent -

If you're drawing a net positive amount of power with the sails under these conditions, could you have some unit there - likely built just for this, since it's got a very, very simple job - just to draw power out of hyperspace and beam it elsewhere for, oh, industry, agriculture, tanning booths, keeping a forum server running?

JeffEngel wrote:

SWM wrote:But the ship doesn't have to continue moving forward at that velocity. Reread that citation--the ship was drawing enough power from the wormhole to provide movement. In principle, the ship could use that to provide acceleration in the opposite direction, and bring the ship to a stop, rather than continuing forward.

So, theoretically, a ship could sit stationary on the edge of the wormhole, drawing power from it. In practice, I would never want to do it, because too many things could go wrong and blow your nodes or possibly the whole ship.

To take this tangent off on another tangent -

If you're drawing a net positive amount of power with the sails under these conditions, could you have some unit there - likely built just for this, since it's got a very, very simple job - just to draw power out of hyperspace and beam it elsewhere for, oh, industry, agriculture, tanning booths, keeping a forum server running?

Hypothetically. But that industry would need to be pretty close to the wormhole. We know the Honorverse has efficient beamed power from orbital satellites, with is probably further than the towed decoys (or donkeys) receive beamed power. But I doubt it's any good at a couple lightminutes (much less the lighthours most termini are from the hyperlimit)

And you'd be running through the limited lifetime of the alpha nodes (admittedly it's at least a few years worth of time; but still, those things aren't cheap). And, being a navigation hazard the wormhole outbound 'lane'. And if anything went wrong your power-ship would be a crumpled wreck.

But that said, I do suspect you theoretically could.
But I also suspect it's not worth the complexity and risk just to save the (dirt cheap) fuel for a couple fusion reactors. (We know you can draw enough power to run a freighter, or possibly even a warship, but there's no evidence you can draw noticeably more that that, and that level of power can be provided by 1-3 fusion reactors)