Leonard Detweiler SD size

Re utility of bubble walls on LD's - It's worth noting too that they wouldn't be strictly cut off from accelerating with one up. Rather, they couldn't use the spider to do it. They could still use reaction thrusters. It would eat up reaction mass like no one's business, so it wouldn't be something they could keep up a whole lot. But a lot of that volume could be for that reaction mass and ridiculously powerful thrusters, and the grav plating they need already for the spider would mean they could handle plenty of thrust that way in stride, in terms of crew comfort and function under reaction thruster acceleration.

So it's a presumed technical possibility that may or may not be actualized with the LD's.

drothgery wrote:There's absolutely no textev or Word of RFC for this.

Kytheros wrote:There's (at minimum) indirect Word of Weber that spider drive cannot be used while a bubble sidewall is active that can be taken as implying the Lenny Dets will have bubble sidewalls. You loose most stealth and effectively all maneuverability when you active the bubblewall, though, and you're basically operating like a fort at that point.

drothgery wrote:It would seem to me that confirming you can't use the spider and a bubble sidewall at the same time is more likely an argument against spider ships having a bubble sidewall than for one....

I believe that the implication is that something has both spider drive and bubble sidewall generators. Lenny Dets are the top candidate for it.
Forts can't use impeller drive while their bubble sidewall is up either, yet they have both. Lenny Dets are likely the size of forts or larger, and have similar acceleration profiles. And, let's be honest here, Lenny Dets have crap maneuverability, and without an active wedge to interpose, their 150g spider drive accel is almost certainly of less defensive value than a bubble sidewall would be.

That might or might not be a size limiting factor on the Lenny Dets/spider drive ships - how big can you make a bubble sidewall?

JeffEngel wrote:Re utility of bubble walls on LD's - It's worth noting too that they wouldn't be strictly cut off from accelerating with one up. Rather, they couldn't use the spider to do it. They could still use reaction thrusters. It would eat up reaction mass like no one's business, so it wouldn't be something they could keep up a whole lot. But a lot of that volume could be for that reaction mass and ridiculously powerful thrusters, and the grav plating they need already for the spider would mean they could handle plenty of thrust that way in stride, in terms of crew comfort and function under reaction thruster acceleration.

So it's a presumed technical possibility that may or may not be actualized with the LD's.

I think it's safe to say that reaction thrusters on a Lenny Det eat up ungodly amounts of reactor mass at even low accelerations. Reactor mass storage likely takes up a fair percentage of the space on Lenny Dets too.

Kytheros wrote:That might or might not be a size limiting factor on the Lenny Dets/spider drive ships - how big can you make a bubble sidewall?

Honor of the Queen wrote:"I don't think they could have turned Blackbird into any kind of real fortress," Matthews said quickly. "Not unless they can generate a sidewall bubble around a moon eight thousand kilometers in diameter." He looked questioningly at Honor, and she shook her head.

Well we know 100% that they could not bubble Uriel's moon, site of Blackbird Base during HotQ. And we also know none of Hades' moons with their moon-side missile launchers got bubbles either.

So more or less guaranteed, there won't be any of the "Dahak" style planetoid ships in Honorverse, at least for a few thousand years beyond the current technology. But that still leaves exactly how big the bubble can get, and we have no empirical data on where larger spherical bubbles are weaker than smaller ones. Or we'd have data on more fort sizes, bigger forts for the Manticore Junction, smaller for where it goes, etc.

Somtaaw wrote:

Kytheros wrote:That might or might not be a size limiting factor on the Lenny Dets/spider drive ships - how big can you make a bubble sidewall?

Honor of the Queen wrote:"I don't think they could have turned Blackbird into any kind of real fortress," Matthews said quickly. "Not unless they can generate a sidewall bubble around a moon eight thousand kilometers in diameter." He looked questioningly at Honor, and she shook her head.

Well we know 100% that they could not bubble Uriel's moon, site of Blackbird Base during HotQ. And we also know none of Hades' moons with their moon-side missile launchers got bubbles either.

So more or less guaranteed, there won't be any of the "Dahak" style planetoid ships in Honorverse, at least for a few thousand years beyond the current technology. But that still leaves exactly how big the bubble can get, and we have no empirical data on where larger spherical bubbles are weaker than smaller ones. Or we'd have data on more fort sizes, bigger forts for the Manticore Junction, smaller for where it goes, etc.

Well, if if you could bubble something the size of a moon, you'd still have difficulties if you wanted to move it, and building a ship half the size would still take forever.

However ... I think there's textev somewhere that implies that Hephaestus/Vulcan/Weyland had (bubble) sidewall generators. Although, I'm not entirely sure when that bit is from, so who knows how big they were at the time.

Still, the limits on bubble sidewall generation are probably not the primary size constraints on Lenny Dets (presuming they have bubble sidewall capability).

Kytheros wrote:Well, if if you could bubble something the size of a moon, you'd still have difficulties if you wanted to move it, and building a ship half the size would still take forever.

However ... I think there's textev somewhere that implies that Hephaestus/Vulcan/Weyland had (bubble) sidewall generators. Although, I'm not entirely sure when that bit is from, so who knows how big they were at the time.

Still, the limits on bubble sidewall generation are probably not the primary size constraints on Lenny Dets (presuming they have bubble sidewall capability).

Grayson, pre-Alliance couldn't put bubbles on its asteroid mining bases. And they had (bad) sidewalls on their ships, so it's not just building generators that are slightly different from sidewall generators.

So spherical bubbles, I think are loosely connected with impeller beta nodes, and not just having a a sidewall generator facing every direction. That's also why the Mars-class Terekhov encountered during Shadow of Saganami with Goshawk-III was known to be 'low-threat', otherwise they'd have changed the reactor and changed the beta nodes.

Beta nodes + generators = sidewall, whether directional, or spherical.

munroburton wrote:I'm wondering if it's some kind of sieging/raiding unit designed to cross the hyper limit at a high fraction of C, tuck behind its bubble, active defenses and armour, on a ballistic course, engaging naval assets and orbital infrastructure as they come into range.

Unless the MAlign has made other breakthroughs in hyper physics this isn't going to be possible.

From the 'Effective Speed by Hyper Band' table we know the transition over the Alpha wall bleeds away 92% of your velocity. So even if you're flying along at 0.6c the drop into n-space slows you to a measly 0.048c (or 14,390 km/s; barely a crawl by Honorverse interplanetary terms).


Plus the faster your transit the more visible your hyperspace emergence signal; so you're slow and made a very noisy entrance

Jonathan_S wrote:

munroburton wrote:I'm wondering if it's some kind of sieging/raiding unit designed to cross the hyper limit at a high fraction of C, tuck behind its bubble, active defenses and armour, on a ballistic course, engaging naval assets and orbital infrastructure as they come into range.

Unless the MAlign has made other breakthroughs in hyper physics this isn't going to be possible.

From the 'Effective Speed by Hyper Band' table we know the transition over the Alpha wall bleeds away 92% of your velocity. So even if you're flying along at 0.6c the drop into n-space slows you to a measly 0.048c (or 14,390 km/s; barely a crawl by Honorverse interplanetary terms).


Plus the faster your transit the more visible your hyperspace emergence signal; so you're slow and made a very noisy entrance

Right. I was thinking they'd make a sneaky entrance similar to how OB started, then use what time they have before being detected or coming into effective weapons range(remember, the MA never planned for MDMs) to build velocity. No need for crash translations.

munroburton wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Unless the MAlign has made other breakthroughs in hyper physics this isn't going to be possible.

From the 'Effective Speed by Hyper Band' table we know the transition over the Alpha wall bleeds away 92% of your velocity. So even if you're flying along at 0.6c the drop into n-space slows you to a measly 0.048c (or 14,390 km/s; barely a crawl by Honorverse interplanetary terms).


Plus the faster your transit the more visible your hyperspace emergence signal; so you're slow and made a very noisy entrance

Right. I was thinking they'd make a sneaky entrance similar to how OB started, then use what time they have before being detected or coming into effective weapons range(remember, the MA never planned for MDMs) to build velocity. No need for crash translations.

Ah. Yeah you said hyper limit and somehow I processed that as hyper wall.
Starting a long way out and building up a stealthy head of steam might work. But I wonder how stealthy you are once you're forced to put up a bubble sidewall.


Bubble sidewalks are nice; but but stacks of system defense pods can ruin the day of anybody they can see. And even a fast ballistic pass by a planet gives a lot of time trapped within the hyper limit to get shot up. But maybe I'm overly worried, especially if they can use recon platforms and graser torps to find and prepare to cripple the system defense infrastructure if/when they're detected.

Hancock Station has a spherical sidewall, according to SVW, Ch. 29.

Jonathan_S wrote:Ah. Yeah you said hyper limit and somehow I processed that as hyper wall.
Starting a long way out and building up a stealthy head of steam might work. But I wonder how stealthy you are once you're forced to put up a bubble sidewall.


Bubble sidewalks are nice; but but stacks of system defense pods can ruin the day of anybody they can see. And even a fast ballistic pass by a planet gives a lot of time trapped within the hyper limit to get shot up. But maybe I'm overly worried, especially if they can use recon platforms and graser torps to find and prepare to cripple the system defense infrastructure if/when they're detected.

No worries, common mistake. I've made it myself on occasion.

A bubble sidewall can be very tough, implied by the fact that impeller wedge forts are equipped with them. Or this may have been due to nobody inventing bow/stern walls to protect the open throat and kilt - a slow and heavy fort is going to maneuver too poorly to keep the enemy from targeting those weak areas, so it may benefit from a bubble more than it does from a wedge.

And sidewalls on a ship with an active wedge can be activated very quickly and likely shut down as quickly. A bubble might take a bit more time to generate, but as long as the LD isn't doing a cold start-up and keeps the system on standby...

Ach, hard to say without better information.