Call to Arms

Jonathan_S wrote:
A quick flip through HotQ turned up at least Masadan missile specs - "His missiles were slower than Thunder of God’s. Their drives would burn out in less than a minute, and their maximum acceleration was barely thirty thousand gravities" - but that's still vastly in excess of the acceleration (and therefore range) of the Volsung's 1,300g missiles.

The Grayson's hyper units were capable of roughly 500g at full accel. A bit less than HMS Fearless (CA), and from smaller ships, but vastly more than anything involved in that first Battle of Manticore.


Courvosier indirectly rates their pre-contact CLs as roughly 1/3 to 1/4 as effective as the DD HMS Madrigal "They weren’t even in shouting range of Madrigal’s systems, and the destroyer could take any three Grayson—or Masadan—light cruisers in a stand-up fight."
Seems to me we'd need to find something even less capable to make it a fair fight


But back to munroburton's suggestion how about a new Mark 30 Condor-class pinnace against the Volsung?
Its impeller head missiles would need a clean down the throat shot, and it doesn't carry many. After than it's got accel (600g) and maneuverability, plus a 5cm laser (and probably some heavy pulser guns designed for ground attack) How bad is the armor of that era and how does a 5cm laser ("with significantly improved gravitic lensing") stack up to one carried on a Destroyer of that day?
That's probably overmatched against the entire Volsung fleet - though it could certainly run away.

Roguevictory wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But back to munroburton's suggestion how about a new Mark 30 Condor-class pinnace against the Volsung?
Its impeller head missiles would need a clean down the throat shot, and it doesn't carry many. After than it's got accel (600g) and maneuverability, plus a 5cm laser (and probably some heavy pulser guns designed for ground attack) How bad is the armor of that era and how does a 5cm laser ("with significantly improved gravitic lensing") stack up to one carried on a Destroyer of that day?
That's probably overmatched against the entire Volsung fleet - though it could certainly run away.

Do we even know the caliber of ship lasers used in the Call to Arms Era?

cthia wrote:Is "A Call to Arms" and "A Call to Duty" spoiler-free fresh meat?

I don't recall anyone posting anything from.

Vince wrote:

cthia wrote:Is "A Call to Arms" and "A Call to Duty" spoiler-free fresh meat?

I don't recall anyone posting anything from.

The rule here in the forums is that a post about a book that has been out less than a month should have Spoiler in the title of the post or the body, or both, if the post mentions significant events in the book that would spoil the book for a reader who hasn't read the book yet.

Since A Call to Arms has been out only since the first week of October, posts should include Spoiler until the first week of November.

Note that Baen's Bar has a much longer time on marking posts as Spoiler. IIRC, posts there should be marked Spoiler until 6 months after the paperback is released, except in the Snerkers forum.

Roguevictory wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But back to munroburton's suggestion how about a new Mark 30 Condor-class pinnace against the Volsung?
Its impeller head missiles would need a clean down the throat shot, and it doesn't carry many. After than it's got accel (600g) and maneuverability, plus a 5cm laser (and probably some heavy pulser guns designed for ground attack) How bad is the armor of that era and how does a 5cm laser ("with significantly improved gravitic lensing") stack up to one carried on a Destroyer of that day?
That's probably overmatched against the entire Volsung fleet - though it could certainly run away.

Do we even know the caliber of ship lasers used in the Call to Arms Era?

Jonathan_S wrote:Forgot to post until now. I was chatting with Tom Pope briefly at Honorcon and asked him how the Volsung-era lasers stacked up against 'modern' ships and pinnace lasers.
He didn't have a definitive answer but said, more or less, that they're less powerful that modern ship lasers but still stronger than modern pinnace (or laser-head) lasers.

That implies that in this silly scenario a pinnace would have to close to dangerously close range to be a threat to a Volsung's sidewalls. Maybe not the 50,000 km of a modern laser head, but far closer than the normal 400,000 km of energy range.