SD as pirate vessel

Torlek wrote:
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.

You really can't use the Roland-class as benchmarks for destroyer tonnage, since they're bigger than most people's light cruisers - that may change, assuming the destroyer role survives at all in an era of MDMs and LACs. 55 ktons is small for a destroyer by modern (pre-Roland) standards, though, that one was probably a frigate.

Somtaaw wrote: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.

Which prompted me to go look at the freighter intercept scene in SoS; where Ms Hearns uses Hexapuma's pinnaces, in conjunctions with Nuncial LACs.

"Hawk-Papa Flight continued decelerating hard. The pinnaces' velocity fell by almost six kilometers per second every second"; so her brand new Mark 30 Condors do back up your recollection of ~600g for new RMN LACs




But also there's something surprising about Nuncio's LACs; their high acceleration. "LACs' maximum deceleration rate was five hundred gravities.". And that was a LAC that massed "barely fifteen thousand tons". 500g doesn't sound that high for 1920 PD, but keep in mind that Nuncio should have had access to Manticoran or Havenite LAC tech yet.

[For the older LAC classes, prior to those Honor took to Silesia, we only know of 4 SCN's Mazur-class, RMN's Highlander-class, GSN's Faith-class, and PN's Program 13-class. Those ranged between 10,250 and 12,250 tons and could pull between 409.6 and 409.1g]


So a LAC that's presumably using the same old tech, but masses 22% more while simultaneously having 22% more accel is surprising. (Though it's still below the 544.4g the accel curve formula says a full warship's drive could provide to that tonnage)

Jonathan_S wrote:But also there's something surprising about Nuncio's LACs; their high acceleration. "LACs' maximum deceleration rate was five hundred gravities.". And that was a LAC that massed "barely fifteen thousand tons". 500g doesn't sound that high for 1920 PD, but keep in mind that Nuncio should have had access to Manticoran or Havenite LAC tech yet.

[For the older LAC classes, prior to those Honor took to Silesia, we only know of 4 SCN's Mazur-class, RMN's Highlander-class, GSN's Faith-class, and PN's Program 13-class. Those ranged between 10,250 and 12,250 tons and could pull between 409.6 and 409.1g]


So a LAC that's presumably using the same old tech, but masses 22% more while simultaneously having 22% more accel is surprising. (Though it's still below the 544.4g the accel curve formula says a full warship's drive could provide to that tonnage)

I think we have to suppose that Nuncio's LAC's had compensator technology better than the old Highlander et al standard - maybe what leaked out over the last couple decades from what the rest of the universe figured out about marrying Grayson compensator approaches to modern technology.

That's a surprise, certainly - I just think we have to swallow some surprise or another here and that's the least unlikely possibility.

JeffEngel wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But also there's something surprising about Nuncio's LACs; their high acceleration. "LACs' maximum deceleration rate was five hundred gravities.". And that was a LAC that massed "barely fifteen thousand tons". 500g doesn't sound that high for 1920 PD, but keep in mind that Nuncio should have had access to Manticoran or Havenite LAC tech yet.

[For the older LAC classes, prior to those Honor took to Silesia, we only know of 4 SCN's Mazur-class, RMN's Highlander-class, GSN's Faith-class, and PN's Program 13-class. Those ranged between 10,250 and 12,250 tons and could pull between 409.6 and 409.1g]


So a LAC that's presumably using the same old tech, but masses 22% more while simultaneously having 22% more accel is surprising. (Though it's still below the 544.4g the accel curve formula says a full warship's drive could provide to that tonnage)

I think we have to suppose that Nuncio's LAC's had compensator technology better than the old Highlander et al standard - maybe what leaked out over the last couple decades from what the rest of the universe figured out about marrying Grayson compensator approaches to modern technology.

That's a surprise, certainly - I just think we have to swallow some surprise or another here and that's the least unlikely possibility.

It's not the comp holding old LACS back, it's the impeller strength - most LACS aren't built with Alpha nodes. Alpha nodes are just too heavy and no LACs need sails, so they just mount 24 beta nodes.

If Nuncio had a heavier class of LACS that had Alpha nodes (an extra cost, but still cheaper and smaller than a full up frigate.), they probably could reach speeds closer to the comp's max.

Theemile wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:I think we have to suppose that Nuncio's LAC's had compensator technology better than the old Highlander et al standard - maybe what leaked out over the last couple decades from what the rest of the universe figured out about marrying Grayson compensator approaches to modern technology.

That's a surprise, certainly - I just think we have to swallow some surprise or another here and that's the least unlikely possibility.

It's not the comp holding old LACS back, it's the impeller strength - most LACS aren't built with Alpha nodes. Alpha nodes are just too heavy and no LACs need sails, so they just mount 24 beta nodes.

If Nuncio had a heavier class of LACS that had Alpha nodes (an extra cost, but still cheaper and smaller than a full up frigate.), they probably could reach speeds closer to the comp's max.

My first though was that they might have been able to build it with just bigger, more powerful, beta nodes. (After all that's basically what the Beta-squared nodes did for Mantidcore)

But now I'm wondering if they might have been able to use 48 beta nodes instead. After all the extra node size and complexity needed to generate sails is still wasted on a LAC. Would it be possible to mount additional Beta rings where Alphas would go on a starship? It'd still cost you extra volume/mass (potentially explaining why these LACs are 22% bigger than the others we've seen) but not as much as installing Alpha nodes there. And that wouldn't take any real tech breakthroughs; just a willingness to design a LAC with a much higher fraction of its displacement dedicated to propulsion.


[Side note, elsewhere in SoS it mentions that the Dromedary-class freighter can only pull 130g without it's Alpha nodes, compared to 210 with them. That's 61.9% power w/o Alphas. But I don't think that's a universal constant, since the HoS entry for Series 282 specifically says it was "was the first LAC to mount an impeller ring powerful enough to accelerate it to the limits of its inertial compensator"; but it didn't even mount Beta-squared nodes; much less Alpha nodes. So clearly a beta only design can max out a compensator; if you've got powerful enough (or possibly just numerous enough) nodes.]

Somtaaw wrote:"Jonathan_S"]"The E"]

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...
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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.[/quote]


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I think it might be more accurate to saw the pinnaces were racing to catch up with Hercules. The pinnaces started from planetary surface, and after leaving atmosphere had a higher accel, but Hercules was already moving. They still had a considerable distance to make up.

-- Stewart

stewart wrote:
I think it might be more accurate to saw the pinnaces were racing to catch up with Hercules. The pinnaces started from planetary surface, and after leaving atmosphere had a higher accel, but Hercules was already moving. They still had a considerable distance to make up.

-- Stewart

That's my thought - not that the pinnaces couldn't out-accelerate Hercules if she went to full power, just that if she did, with the head start she had, the pinnaces couldn't overhaul her before she reached the hyper limit. There's no point putting the stress on the nodes and compensator of a full-power run if you've got to sit and wait at the end of it - better to run at lower power, let the pinnaces catch up and be able to translate as soon as you're over the limit.