Cap'n Roderick wrote:...Admiral Hemphill?
One of the things I've always enjoyed in this whole series is the interesting counter-strategies and technologies employed by both Haven and Manticore throughout the various wars. Especially the cunning little tactical doctrines I, for one, would never have thought of in the same situation, and these are in many cases originated by Admiral Foraker, as ways to get around the technological advantage of the SKM.
So, as a bit of wish-listing, what do all you Honorverse tech-heads think Shannon might be able to come up with to give the League's thousand-waller fleets a bowel problem if/when she gets some playtime with BuWeaps and the cutting edge of Manticoran technology?
Hemphill+Foraker, a heaven-made match! ^_^
Hmm lets see, Manticore just got their big R&D places shredded, by an enemy that snuck in with far far too much knowledge about where to hit, so where can they put them back to work again, in safety?
Oh yeah, there´s that little hideout that Haven has managed to keep extremely well hidden, and both heads of state insists on total cooperation, so maybe let those valuable R&D folks relocated to Bolthole, at least until Manticore has a new, and above all else secure, location for them?
As for what the horribly dynamic duo could come up with?
Practically anything i would say. The two should compliment each other about as perfectly as Cachat and Zilwicki.
An obvious development from the Apollo-system, especially for Haven as they´re unlikely to suddenly be able to build them, would be one where you drop the FTL ability of the control missile, but instead increase its computer-power(and other EW systems) even more, significantly more, and thereby reduce the amount of control channels needed for the firing ships as well as greatly increasing the ability for each pack of missiles to attack autonomously or at extreme range.
Using not quite Keyhole style platforms to deploy missile defense weapons outside of ships to allow vastly better fields of fire, even while turning the wedge towards the enemy, and to put the point defense slightly closer to incoming weapons while also possibly allowing them "flank shots" and/or an extra "axis of attack" at incoming missiles, making it harder for such to avoid point defense fire.
Couple these and other kind of platforms with the Havenite "Mules" and you can potentially create a shell of several/many more or less specialised deployable platforms around ships... Adding extra EW, sensors, point defense and whatever else you might come up with should be a nice little bonus, also allowing additional redundancy to shipboard systems.
Combine the Mesa Spider drive with ever more improved Sidewalls and you probably have a ship that can still maneuver while being "shields up" in ALL directions.
As they would still be using a wedge, the acceleration restrictions faced by the Mesan ships shouldnt be a problem.
Could the normal drive run side by side with a Spider drive or not? If they can... Similar advantages as real-life CODLAG setup, except better still.
The description of the Spider drive also gives me a few other ideas, like seeing if you can make a "temporary tunnel" through H-space via which you could deliver a Graser shot for example; or how about messing with the boundaries of N and H-space to create shielding to compliment sidewalls with?
And then of course, most things involving the transfer of energy can be weaponised, so, how do you turn a Spider drive into a weapon? Into an (almost?) instahit superlongranged beam weapon perhaps?
Oh, and of course, effectively being able to manipulate gravity as well as they can do by now, to me that just screams gravityprojection based weapons.
It should also potentially allow some additional ways for transstellar travel, if the author wants to make one of the current theories for such work in his universe (noone knows if they truly will work so its anyones guess if they do).
And then, the combination of the Spider drive and gravity pulsing, well that sounds like it has potential for something like the HPG, HyperPulseGenerator, type of superlongrange communication devices from the Battletech universe. The powerusage for this would likely be in the extreme so not a chance to put it in missiles, drones or perhaps even ships, but allowing planet-to-planet communication to be almost instant or at the very minimum a tiny fraction of the time that a shipboard message would take, the advantages from this could be huge. Many of the early screwups by the peeps could have been mitigated or even completely avoided by such, just as a single example.
And it would severely trash the advantage that Mesa gets from the Streak drive.