questions about Honor among enemies.

first of all before anyone flames me I am not criticising. I love everyone of Mr. Webers books. but I have been trying to wrap my mind around some things that I can't seem to work out in the final battle in Honor among enemies. I am sure there are some simple explanations but I can't seem to figure it out.

first of all the passenger liner Artemis It appears they are traveling in Hyper space and that they could not do a crash translation due to damage to the hyper generator.


Honor was however able to send her LACS out as well as pinnaces to transfer people to Artemis. So obviously LACS can operate within Hyper space. so when they say they are not hyper capable, I am assuming what is meant is that they are not capable of transitioning between bands or N-space. is this correct?

secondly when a ship is damaged to the point that the hyper generators and all propulsion systems are off line while in Hyper space it appears they are then stuck in hyper space and can't transition back to N-space? is it possible for space suited people to work on a ships hull in hyperspace?

and finally I am unable to figure out why they were in hyper to begin with. I thought the whole reason Honor was looking for pirates in the rift was because they had to be in N space.

"The major interstellar routes had been worked out to avoid the wider rifts. It added a bit of length to several such routes, but that was considered well worthwhile in terms of safety and cost efficiency. The Selker Rift, however, was impossible to avoid. There simply was no way around it for vessels bound from the Empire to Silesia. And just to make things worse, it was also home to the rogue grav wave known as the Selker Shear.

Most grav waves were "locked," part of a web of mutually anchored and anchoring stress patterns which forced its strands to retain fixed relationships to one another. They moved over the years, but slowly and gradually, as a whole and in predictable fashion.

Rogue waves didn't. Rogue waves were spurs or flares thrown off by locked waves; they weren't part of the web.
They could appear and disappear without warning or shift position with incredible speed, and while most hyper-physicists believed rogue waves were, in fact, cyclical phenomena whose timing could be predicted once enough data had been accumulated, accumulating data on them was exactly what merchant skippers were most eager to avoid. But the Selker Rift couldn't be avoided, and so ships moving between the Empire and Confederacy crossed it under impeller drive at extremely low velocities, on the order of .16 c, in order to be sure they could dodge if the Selker Shear suddenly appeared on their detectors. It meant they took over five days just to cross the Rift, but it also meant they made it alive.

again sorry for my ignorance these questions just bugged me so I thought I would ask the experts.

mustangman wrote:first of all before anyone flames me I am not criticising. I love everyone of Mr. Webers books. but I have been trying to wrap my mind around some things that I can't seem to work out in the final battle in Honor among enemies. I am sure there are some simple explanations but I can't seem to figure it out.

If you're genuinely confused and ask your questions in a respectful manner as you have here, I highly doubt anyone will jump on you. (At least, not maliciously. Can't discount simple enthusiasm from some here! ^^)

So obviously LACS can operate within Hyper space. so when they say they are not hyper capable, I am assuming what is meant is that they are not capable of transitioning between bands or N-space. is this correct?

Yes, this is correct. LACs do not have hyper generators, so they are incapable of making hyper *translations* between bands or between hyper and n-space. If you're already in hyperspace, though, you don't need a hyper generator simply to fly around, since the *environment* within hyperspace is still sufficiently similar to normal space for things like impeller drives, etc to work.

secondly when a ship is damaged to the point that the hyper generators and all propulsion systems are off line while in Hyper space it appears they are then stuck in hyper space and can't transition back to N-space? is it possible for space suited people to work on a ships hull in hyperspace?

If the hyper generator fails while in hyper, then yes the ship would be stuck there unless they could fix it. (You may be interested in this response Weber once gave on the topic of hyper generator failures.) However there's nothing keeping people from attempting repairs to a ship in hyper, including working on the outside of it in spacesuits, since the actual physical environment within hyperspace is still similar to realspace. (Hyper has things like grav waves, the distortion effects that limit maximum sensor range, etc, but it's not like you're in a completely different universe where *all* of the laws of physics are thrown out the window.) The one possible exception to exterior hull repairs being safe might be within a grav wave, although I'm not aware of Weber having given any evidence one way or the other on that particular detail. (Edit: though this particular sub-question would obviously be contingent on *only* having the hyper generator fail but having the Warshawski sails still be functional, since a ship in a gravity wave will instantly be torn to shreds if its sails fail, at which point hull repairs would of course be a moot point!)

and finally I am unable to figure out why they were in hyper to begin with. I thought the whole reason Honor was looking for pirates in the rift was because they had to be in N space.

I think you're slightly mis-interpreting what Weber means by a 'hyperspace rift'. As it's put a few paragraphs earlier, ""Rifts" were volumes of hyper-space between gravity waves" (emphasis mine). The critical point there is that a rift is just a region of hyper space where there aren't any convenient grav waves - but it's still *in hyperspace*.

All that the Selker Rift is, is a big chunk of hyperspace between the Andermani Empire and Silesia where there don't happen to be any (static) grav waves. Because there aren't any grav waves, you can't ride one through the rift, but there's no reason why you'd *drop out* of hyper. Even if you're not in a grav wave, you're still moving at faster-than-light speeds just by being in hyperspace to begin with. If you dropped to normal space, it'd literally take you years to cross the rift. (The text says it takes 5 days to cross it at 0.16c *in hyper*, which means that it's over 2 light years across in realspace assuming that's a delta-band speed.) So, merchantmen are still crossing the Selker Rift in hyperspace, they're just doing so much more slowly than they would otherwise cross the same distance.

MuonNeutrino wrote:

mustangman wrote:first of all before anyone flames me I am not criticising. I love everyone of Mr. Webers books. but I have been trying to wrap my mind around some things that I can't seem to work out in the final battle in Honor among enemies. I am sure there are some simple explanations but I can't seem to figure it out.

If you're genuinely confused and ask your questions in a respectful manner as you have here, I highly doubt anyone will jump on you. (At least, not maliciously. Can't discount simple enthusiasm from some here! ^^)

So obviously LACS can operate within Hyper space. so when they say they are not hyper capable, I am assuming what is meant is that they are not capable of transitioning between bands or N-space. is this correct?

Yes, this is correct. LACs do not have hyper generators, so they are incapable of making hyper *translations* between bands or between hyper and n-space. If you're already in hyperspace, though, you don't need a hyper generator simply to fly around, since the *environment* within hyperspace is still sufficiently similar to normal space for things like impeller drives, etc to work.

secondly when a ship is damaged to the point that the hyper generators and all propulsion systems are off line while in Hyper space it appears they are then stuck in hyper space and can't transition back to N-space? is it possible for space suited people to work on a ships hull in hyperspace?

If the hyper generator fails while in hyper, then yes the ship would be stuck there unless they could fix it. (You may be interested in this response Weber once gave on the topic of hyper generator failures.) However there's nothing keeping people from attempting repairs to a ship in hyper, including working on the outside of it in spacesuits, since the actual physical environment within hyperspace is still similar to realspace. (Hyper has things like grav waves, the distortion effects that limit maximum sensor range, etc, but it's not like you're in a completely different universe where *all* of the laws of physics are thrown out the window.) The one possible exception might be within a grav wave, although I'm not aware of Weber having given any evidence one way or the other on that particular detail.

and finally I am unable to figure out why they were in hyper to begin with. I thought the whole reason Honor was looking for pirates in the rift was because they had to be in N space.

I think you're slightly mis-interpreting what Weber means by a 'hyperspace rift'. As it's put a few paragraphs earlier, ""Rifts" were volumes of hyper-space between gravity waves" (emphasis mine). The critical point there is that a rift is just a region of hyper space where there aren't any convenient grav waves - but it's still *in hyperspace*.

All that the Selker Rift is, is a big chunk of hyperspace between the Andermani Empire and Silesia where there don't happen to be any (static) grav waves. Because there aren't any grav waves, you can't ride one through the rift, but there's no reason why you'd *drop out* of hyper. Even if you're not in a grav wave, you're still moving at faster-than-light speeds just by being in hyperspace to begin with. If you dropped to normal space, it'd literally take you years to cross the rift. (The text says it takes 5 days to cross it at 0.16c *in hyper*, which means that it's over 2 light years across in realspace assuming that's a delta-band speed.) So, merchantmen are still crossing the Selker Rift in hyperspace, they're just doing so much more slowly than they would otherwise cross the same distance.

It's also mentioned in Shadows of Saganami (Sos) that regions of hyperspace have different "weather" conditions in various bands. For example, in a specific rift, random grav sheres could be in bands above the delta band in a certain area, limiting you to the lower bands for safety, Or a grav wave might exist only in certain bands, and may not always be traveling in the direction you want to travel.

This means that hyper travel is rarely a straight line for a safe or minimum time course. To pass a grav wave traveling the wrong way, you may need to tack with it for awhile to meet another wave in a different band going the right(ish) direction ... OR change bands and travel across it's breadth at a slower (or faster) speed.

In major sectors these abberations are known and least time courses are well known, plotted and traveled. In the Verge, getting from point A to point B quickly may take a little computer power... and several double checks, to find an optimal course.

While I am not an old hand on this forum compared to others I'll do my best to answer your questions.

mustangman wrote:first of all the passenger liner Artemis It appears they are traveling in Hyper space and that they could not do a crash translation due to damage to the hyper generator

Honor was however able to send her LACS out as well as pinnaces to transfer people to Artemis. So obviously LACS can operate within Hyper space. so when they say they are not hyper capable, I am assuming what is meant is that they are not capable of transitioning between bands or N-space. is this correct?

Your correct here. Hyper-capable actually means a ships has the size, sophistication, and power requirements to carry a hyper-generator. Whilst we have never got a straight description of how this tech works, the best summary I can make is that it creates an energy bubble around the ship that then makes it flip into another dimension i.e. hyperspace. Small ships typically do not have the power plants to power this device (or are not large enough to share it with everything else they need). LACs/Shuttles/Pinnaces etc are not big enough for this so they need some kind of carrier ship to carry them across they wall. Once there, they can operate but not in any long distance manner, since they also are not big, powerful enough to carry Alpha nodes and so create Warshawski sails for long range movements. They can create impeller fields in hyper, although this is much risker due to the presence of grav waves. In fact a rift is one of the safest places to use impellers in hyper since they are less likely to encounter small grav eddies (any grav wave would be a big rough wave anyway).

mustangman wrote:secondly when a ship is damaged to the point that the hyper generators and all propulsion systems are off line while in Hyper space it appears they are then stuck in hyper space and can't transition back to N-space? is it possible for space suited people to work on a ships hull in hyperspace?

I do not believe that question has ever been addressed directly in any of the books i have read. Hyperspace has been described as filled with random energy waves and looking something like "frozen lightening". Personally I suspect that people can (and in some cases may need to) go for a space walk while the ship is in hyper but the risk is much greater. Much like how its possible to go walking around outside during a thunderstorm, you can do it fairly easily but it wouldn't be comfortable or particularly safe. Others might correct me on that one though.

mustangman wrote:and finally I am unable to figure out why they were in hyper to begin with. I thought the whole reason Honor was looking for pirates in the rift was because they had to be in N space.

I am afraid you have misunderstood things here. The Selker Rift is basically a vast region of hyperspace where there is no true directed grav wave that the ships can latch onto to travel across it. It is like a region of ocean with no prevailing winds or main currents. Ships would not really want to cross it but the location of colonized trading planets, wormhole networks, and other grav waves mean that quite a lot of Andermani, Silesian, and Manticoran merchant ships had to cross it to reach their customers. Since even with the massive accelerations possible under impeller drive would take likely years to cross the distance in real space (i dont know how long exactly but miltiple solar systems worth of space at least), they have to be in hyperspace to make the trip. They could only cross at a certain speed though (about 0.16c i believe) in order to avoid crashing into the unpredictable rogue grav wave called the Selker Shear.

Because merchant ships were moving more slowly that usual for quite a long time in the Rift, they would be very vulnerable to pirates while crossing this area. A small squadron of Havenite commerce raiders (at least 2 battlecruisers and several cruisers, likely a lot more spread out at various points) lay in wait within this area because their intended prey was even more vulnerable here than normal. Also because of the natural distortion of hyperspace and their powerful stealth and EW abilities they could ambush their prey even more effectively.

Hope this answers all of your questions.

MuonNeutrino wrote:

mustangman wrote:So obviously LACS can operate within Hyper space. so when they say they are not hyper capable, I am assuming what is meant is that they are not capable of transitioning between bands or N-space. is this correct?

Yes, this is correct. LACs do not have hyper generators, so they are incapable of making hyper *translations* between bands or between hyper and n-space. If you're already in hyperspace, though, you don't need a hyper generator simply to fly around, since the *environment* within hyperspace is still sufficiently similar to normal space for things like impeller drives, etc to work.

I'd like to highlight something that's probably implicit from a later part of your post, but just wanted to make sure didn't get overlooked by the original poster.

Because LACs do not have alpha nodes, they cannot generate Warshawski sails. So like a ship that lost its sails, they'd be ripped apart instantly if they tried to enter or operate within a grav wave.
So in addition to being unable to transition between hyperspace bands they are also restricted to operating only within rifts in hyperspace. (Of course most of hyperspace is rift, not 'wave, even if the most traveled parts are waves)

Also LACs would have no need to mount dedicated Warshawski grav wave detectors or hyperlogs (inertial navigators) so you wouldn't want to fly them far from a full starship unless it was an emergency

Theemile wrote:In major sectors these abberations are known and least time courses are well known, plotted and traveled. In the Verge, getting from point A to point B quickly may take a little computer power... and several double checks, to find an optimal course.

And the safest route, the fastest route, and the least fuel required routes may be significantly different answers (Though safest and least fuel probably both require minimizing total cumulative time between grav waves; even at the expense of increasing total transit time. The difference is that safest would also keep you to lower hyper bands, whereas least fuel only cares about staying in waves were the wave powers you and out of rifts were you have to run the reactor to power the ship and wedge)

yes that answers most of my questions. I believe my problem was that I was thinking impeller drive implied N-space but I went back and read some of the earlier books regarding that and I see my error. part of my confusion also came from earlier books that indicated how difficult it would be for pirates to attack ships in hyper due to the vast spaces so they waited in areas where ships came out of Hyper. so I made the mistake of interpreting that as it was not possible for pirates to intercept ships in hyper. again I see my error now. thanks for the help. now I can finish the series again without that nagging aggravation in my mind. I sure hope the next book comes out soon. I am almost through the series again and I would really like to have that new book. the greed knows no bounds I guess.

mustangman wrote:yes that answers most of my questions. I believe my problem was that I was thinking impeller drive implied N-space but I went back and read some of the earlier books regarding that and I see my error. part of my confusion also came from earlier books that indicated how difficult it would be for pirates to attack ships in hyper due to the vast spaces so they waited in areas where ships came out of Hyper. so I made the mistake of interpreting that as it was not possible for pirates to intercept ships in hyper. again I see my error now. thanks for the help. now I can finish the series again without that nagging aggravation in my mind. I sure hope the next book comes out soon. I am almost through the series again and I would really like to have that new book. the greed knows no bounds I guess.

Glad we were able to help.

And it's not like there aren't one or two real inconsistencies hiding in Honor Among Enemies... The part where Atimis observed Hawkwing bring up sidewalls and deploy missile decoys, and then missile while in a grav wave comes to mind. Oops.

I seem to recall later printing of the paperback cleared up some of this; switch Hawkwing from launching missiles to firing energy weapons; but still left the erronious raising sidewalls and deploying decoys. I know you can't do the former in the 'wave, and I'm pretty sure the later would be torn apart by grav shere almost immediately. But my ebook reference still has her launching missiles; another impossible feat in a grav wave.

mustangman wrote:yes that answers most of my questions. I believe my problem was that I was thinking impeller drive implied N-space but I went back and read some of the earlier books regarding that and I see my error. part of my confusion also came from earlier books that indicated how difficult it would be for pirates to attack ships in hyper due to the vast spaces so they waited in areas where ships came out of Hyper. so I made the mistake of interpreting that as it was not possible for pirates to intercept ships in hyper. again I see my error now. thanks for the help. now I can finish the series again without that nagging aggravation in my mind. I sure hope the next book comes out soon. I am almost through the series again and I would really like to have that new book. the greed knows no bounds I guess.

You are quite right on the Pirates, but there are actually 2 reasons.

1) as you mentioned, detectability. In grav eddies and rifts, you can intercept other ships - if you are close enough to detect them... which, as shown, is very rare.

2) Merchants attempt to spend most of their time in grav waves. Grav wave = zero fuel use, so even if you have to fly 2x as far and spend a couple extra days in transit, merchant skippers will spend as much as their time riding the grav waves as possible to mimimize their time plodding through the rifts. So most of the time, the most probable place a Merchant will be in hyper is a Grav wave, where they cannot be boarded.

However, this behavior in turn leads to another condition friendly to the pirate - Merchants usually enter systems on known, least time courses to the planet in the system. All a pirate needs to do is stalk this hyper entrance volume and they can bag a merchant.

Conversely, a system with a powerful enough navy and the will to use it, just needs to routinely patrol these volumes, and life becomes very expensive (and short) for any pirate. In Silensia, where a few dollars and a handshake used to make a Silly Destroyer captain act on his intelligance and watch "the other" entrance loci in the system, this traditionally allowed pirates free reign - but not anymore.

Theemile wrote:

mustangman wrote:yes that answers most of my questions. I believe my problem was that I was thinking impeller drive implied N-space but I went back and read some of the earlier books regarding that and I see my error. part of my confusion also came from earlier books that indicated how difficult it would be for pirates to attack ships in hyper due to the vast spaces so they waited in areas where ships came out of Hyper. so I made the mistake of interpreting that as it was not possible for pirates to intercept ships in hyper. again I see my error now. thanks for the help. now I can finish the series again without that nagging aggravation in my mind. I sure hope the next book comes out soon. I am almost through the series again and I would really like to have that new book. the greed knows no bounds I guess.

You are quite right on the Pirates, but there are actually 2 reasons.

1) as you mentioned, detectability. In grav eddies and rifts, you can intercept other ships - if you are close enough to detect them... which, as shown, is very rare.

2) Merchants attempt to spend most of their time in grav waves. Grav wave = zero fuel use, so even if you have to fly 2x as far and spend a couple extra days in transit, merchant skippers will spend as much as their time riding the grav waves as possible to mimimize their time plodding through the rifts. So most of the time, the most probable place a Merchant will be in hyper is a Grav wave, where they cannot be boarded.

However, this behavior in turn leads to another condition friendly to the pirate - Merchants usually enter systems on known, least time courses to the planet in the system. All a pirate needs to do is stalk this hyper entrance volume and they can bag a merchant.

Conversely, a system with a powerful enough navy and the will to use it, just needs to routinely patrol these volumes, and life becomes very expensive (and short) for any pirate. In Silensia, where a few dollars and a handshake used to make a Silly Destroyer captain act on his intelligance and watch "the other" entrance loci in the system, this traditionally allowed pirates free reign - but not anymore.

There's another issue with intercepting ships most places in hyper - and that's that everybody tends to spend the majority of their time at full speed (0.5c for merchants and 0.6c for warships). Especially in a grav wave where you get roughly a 10x acceleration boost compared to n-space or hyperspace rifts.

Intercepting someone, in poor sensor conditions, who's already traveling almost as fast as your top speed is non-trivial. By the time you detect them there isn't usually time to match vectors before they disappear off the far side of your sensors. (At which point relatively minor course changes, or even hopping bands makes running the target back down nearly hopeless).

You can try to catch them by jumping into a higher band, and using the additional spacial compression to get ahead of them but the energy (velocity) drop from doing that makes it tricky. At the very best you emerge close enough ahead that they have no choice but to run through your weapons range, but you just scrubbed off anywhere from 72-85% of your velocity dropping down into the target's band again.

Hunting where ships are forced to go slow (in rifts subject to rouge waves or a n-space exit [92% velocity bleed-off]) lets your acceleration advantage work quickly enough to run down the target before they disappear over the (sensor) horizon.

Jonathan_S wrote:

mustangman wrote:yes that answers most of my questions. I believe my problem was that I was thinking impeller drive implied N-space but I went back and read some of the earlier books regarding that and I see my error. part of my confusion also came from earlier books that indicated how difficult it would be for pirates to attack ships in hyper due to the vast spaces so they waited in areas where ships came out of Hyper. so I made the mistake of interpreting that as it was not possible for pirates to intercept ships in hyper. again I see my error now. thanks for the help. now I can finish the series again without that nagging aggravation in my mind. I sure hope the next book comes out soon. I am almost through the series again and I would really like to have that new book. the greed knows no bounds I guess.

Glad we were able to help.

And it's not like there aren't one or two real inconsistencies hiding in Honor Among Enemies... The part where Atimis observed Hawkwing bring up sidewalls and deploy missile decoys, and then missile while in a grav wave comes to mind. Oops.

I seem to recall later printing of the paperback cleared up some of this; switch Hawkwing from launching missiles to firing energy weapons; but still left the erronious raising sidewalls and deploying decoys. I know you can't do the former in the 'wave, and I'm pretty sure the later would be torn apart by grav shere almost immediately. But my ebook reference still has her launching missiles; another impossible feat in a grav wave.

If I recall correctly, and am pretty sure I do, up until that door jammed, Wayfarer was rolling pods and launching missiles. She took out that first BC with a missile launch... So please clarify...

Don

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