SD as pirate vessel

The E wrote:

Torlek wrote:stealthy as in hiding in plain sight.

Doesn't work, though. A pirate needs a military impeller in order to catch prey, and refitting a merchie with one is incredibly obvious

My first thought that even a pinnace's guns could threaten a merchant. So a slow freighter could use those to do the actual catching of their prey.

But then I realized that, without the breakthroughs in impeller design that gave Manticore quicker LACs, that pinnaces probably also topped out a significantly below the accel of most warship, or possibly even many merchies. (After all there had to be a reason pirates weren't already increasing their in-system reach by deploying pinnaces)


While OBS does say that pinnaces were specifically designed to board ship's under weigh, SVW gives an accel of "over two hundred gravities of acceleration" in a situation where they were in a bit of a hurry; while Jaynes doesn't like the Mk28's accel. OTOH IEH has the pinnaces moving across the rift from Alvarez to Prince Adrian at "well over four hundred gravities"
On the gripping hand IEH is after the first fruits of the improved node tech (Series 282 LACs) rolled out in HAE; so it's possible that the GSN had rolled out upgraded pinnaces by this point...

Weird Harold wrote:

The E wrote:Doesn't work, though. A pirate needs a military impeller in order to catch prey, and refitting a merchie with one is incredibly obvious.

Nope, a pirate just needs a better inertial compensator than its prey. Even a single layer civilian wedge can theoretically accelerate faster than any inertial compensator built can handle.

The components might not be up to it.

Renumber that we've seen one clear case of wedges insufficiently strong to max out a (military) compensator; old-style LACs.
House of Steel give the acceleration of the 11,250 ton Highlander-class LAC as 409.3g (slower than a contemporary SD).
But based on tonnage it would have been expected to make around 545g

Also, if a military compensator is all that's needed to make a merchant accelerate like a warship, why did the Peeps go to the risk and trouble of building semi-retractable (larger) military drive nodes, and the larger mil-spec grav coil in the Q-ship Sirius?
Unlike those components a compensator is deeply buried in the hull and not subject to external visual inspection. And the Peeps were clearly worried about visual observation or they wouldn't have bothered with the elaborate mechanisms they used to hide the military drive nodes. If just a compensator upgrade could have bought them the higher accel without doing that don't you think they've have taken that route?

Jonathan_S wrote:Also, if a military compensator is all that's needed to make a merchant accelerate like a warship, why did the Peeps go to the risk and trouble of building semi-retractable (larger) military drive nodes, and the larger mil-spec grav coil in the Q-ship Sirius?

Because PNS Sirius was a merchant raider rather than a simple q-ship -- essentially a warship with a merchant hull-form. PNS Sirius had military grade everything except the hammerhead design, but as HMAMC Wayfarer demonstrated that was overkill for a Q-Ship design.

Ambuscade and Pirate's Bane are somewhere between those extremes as far as impeller and compensator tech is concerned. PRN Sirius and HMAMC Wayfarer were also greatly overarmed for a pirate's needs; Both had BC or greater combat capability. Ambuscade and Pirate's Bane are only armed comparable to a DD or CK, which is more than sufficient for intimidating unarmed merchants.

Torlek wrote:As for using a DD. The same argument I used against using a SD still apply albeit on a smaller scale.

Going by what we know of pirates from the books, they seem to disagree with you.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Also, if a military compensator is all that's needed to make a merchant accelerate like a warship, why did the Peeps go to the risk and trouble of building semi-retractable (larger) military drive nodes, and the larger mil-spec grav coil in the Q-ship Sirius?

Because PNS Sirius was a merchant raider rather than a simple q-ship -- essentially a warship with a merchant hull-form. PNS Sirius had military grade everything except the hammerhead design, but as HMAMC Wayfarer demonstrated that was overkill for a Q-Ship design.

But Wayfarer was slow 153.6g flat out, with no safety margin. If a simple compensator swap could have fixed that (even if it couldn't have provided the full accel of an SD her size) why wouldn't the conversion have done that?

Rebuilding the nodes and impeller rooms is a major operation, but I don't think swapping the compensator is. At least not in a merchant hull where you don't have armored bulkheads to deal with.

IEH tells us "A ship's maximum acceleration rate depended upon three factors: its impeller strength, its inertial compensator's efficiency, and its mass. Like impellers, military-grade compensators were more powerful than the far cheaper installations merchantmen mounted, and the Caravan-class were the size of many superdreadnoughts." I suspect that civilian nodes and drive rooms simply can't handle significantly higher power (greater impeller strength) that you'd need to really take advantage of a more efficient compensator.

Jonathan_S wrote:But Wayfarer was slow 153.6g flat out, with no safety margin. If a simple compensator swap could have fixed that (even if it couldn't have provided the full accel of an SD her size) why wouldn't the conversion have done that?

Money.

HMAMC Wayfarer was a merchant ship converted to a (Podlaying) Q-Ship on a tight budget -- It would have cost more to add military drives or compensator to a ship that wasn't expected to survive its first encounter with a pirate.

The E wrote:

Torlek wrote:As for using a DD. The same argument I used against using a SD still apply albeit on a smaller scale.

Going by what we know of pirates from the books, they seem to disagree with you.

Which particular Pirates are you referring to? The Pirate in Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington, was a genuine privateer supported boy some revolutionary movement and the Andys. No profit motive there. Neither had the PLN. They had proper warships and could not keep them ruining on piracy I mean commerce raiding, until the got Mesan support. Warnecke in Honor Among Enemies was a warlord. Presumably his main source was the planet he controlled.
The only real pirate we ever encounter was the one in the beginning of Honor Among Enemies, which surrended as soon as Wayfarer rolled out it's guns. That one was classified 55,000 tons (a Roland is 188750 tons) and the local governor wanted to use it as a "customs sloop". I would say that was not a destroyer.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But Wayfarer was slow 153.6g flat out, with no safety margin. If a simple compensator swap could have fixed that (even if it couldn't have provided the full accel of an SD her size) why wouldn't the conversion have done that?

Money.

HMAMC Wayfarer was a merchant ship converted to a (Podlaying) Q-Ship on a tight budget -- It would have cost more to add military drives or compensator to a ship that wasn't expected to survive its first encounter with a pirate.

I think its more likely that civilian drives don't have the excees power capability to handle higher accelerations even if the compensator was up to it.


In my previous post I'd also forgotten the example of the early Mars-class CAs; which were built with overpowered nodes. The "new Mars-class heavy cruisers have more brute impeller strength than their compensators can handle anyway" [EoH CH33].
That was because Haven hoped to acquire or duplicate the better compensators; but at least in the short term all it means was that they could tow more pods, or lose more nodes, before their acceleration started to degrade.

Even on military ships compensators are best when matched to the max impeller strength. It's just that military ships are also build with excess impeller strength (though normally not as much as the Mars had) in order to absorb lost nodes without excessive drop in acceleration.
So dropping in just a new compensator could use some of that 'reserved' power to increase the ships accel.

But, unless you rebuilt the nodes and impeller rooms as well, I assume the trade-off would be that your higher accel would start degrading sooner from towing pods or from battle damage.




However I don't see why a merchant ship would have a real reason to spend money on excess impeller power. Which brings me back to my suspicion that their nodes are very tightly matched to their compensator and a higher efficiency compensator would add very little usable accel. That, like the old LACs, they wouldn't have the impeller strength to utilize the new compensator.


But I admit this is all inference from the books; not a clear infodump from RFC.

Aaron Storm wrote:I have to reply to this. As a vessel to chase down merchant ships and such a SD would be hugely inefficient and a huge target for actual navy ships. But there are three factors here that I think are important.

First as a base of operations or as a vessel to attack entire planets a SD would be very useful for pirates. In fact there seems to be some talk in various honorverse books that mention pirate fleets that would attack planets. If you read Manticore ascendant it's part of the reason they had a powerful but mothballed fleet in that book. Just in case a group of pirates became active in the area.

Second there are more than just pirates that may want those SD's. For instance warlords operating outside of the solarian league. Or the transtellars may want some also.

Third and I think most importantly it's possible that someone may get the brainstorm to give those ships to pirates operating in or near the area Manticore controls. Historically this is how a lot of pirates did operate, they were paid to attack certain nations ships. Although we don't really think of them as pirates but technically they were since they weren't part of a nations formal navy.

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Aaron --
Welcome to the board -- first virtual beverage of choice is on the house. The denizens don't bite or flame too often.

As to your comment, The SD's as pirate vessels are useful only as planet-takers. DD / CL / CA sized vessels are more useful for the traditional pirate activities.
As a matter of fact, the Havenite DuQuesque Plan was essentially piracy writ large.
The post-SL breakup Warlords will likely have Scientist SD's for their initial planetary conquests with CA's / BC's and smaller as more mobile units.

-- Stewart

PNS Sirius' more powerful impeller nodes also contribute to more powerful sidewalls.

That's why the first generation Shrikes were so deadly, not just due to surprise, but their beta-squared nodes were nearly as powerful as Alpha nodes. While HMAMC Wayfarer, and her Trojan sisters, only got the basic sidewall generators upgraded.

So if you compared the two Q-ships, Sirius was vastly tougher and faster with cruiser weapons, while Wayfarer was slow as a pig, and relied totally on surprise, but once she fires it's game over for the target.

Jonathan_S wrote:

The E wrote:
Doesn't work, though. A pirate needs a military impeller in order to catch prey, and refitting a merchie with one is incredibly obvious

My first thought that even a pinnace's guns could threaten a merchant. So a slow freighter could use those to do the actual catching of their prey.

But then I realized that, without the breakthroughs in impeller design that gave Manticore quicker LACs, that pinnaces probably also topped out a significantly below the accel of most warship, or possibly even many merchies. (After all there had to be a reason pirates weren't already increasing their in-system reach by deploying pinnaces)


While OBS does say that pinnaces were specifically designed to board ship's under weigh, SVW gives an accel of "over two hundred gravities of acceleration" in a situation where they were in a bit of a hurry; while Jaynes doesn't like the Mk28's accel. OTOH IEH has the pinnaces moving across the rift from Alvarez to Prince Adrian at "well over four hundred gravities"
On the gripping hand IEH is after the first fruits of the improved node tech (Series 282 LACs) rolled out in HAE; so it's possible that the GSN had rolled out upgraded pinnaces by this point...

Well look at what happened during the events in Spindle, when Terekhov was busy over in Monica. The Samothrace superdreadnought, which was what around 50 years old and so old it was doubtfully upgraded much. It was still capable of outrunning her pinnaces, when Khumalo broke orbit basically on the spot when he found out about Monica.

At the time the Samothrace was built, it had a maximum 416 G acceleration, and I think pinnaces were capable of upto 600 by AAC.