Honorverse ramblings and musings

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:
While KZT is correct, The Honorverse explanation is petty much this:

The Fission plant created out of Grayson fission technologies and Manticore's technology updates, slots in between the small laser fusion power plants which power pinnances and small craft and the Grav pinched fusion plant which powers starships.

The smallest Grav pinched power plant is sufficient to power all the power needs of a CA. Traditionally this same plant was installed in a LAC - leaving very little room for other hardware and fuel.

The fission plant provides barely enough power to run a LAC - but it produces a consistent power output with no fuel needs (the fuel is replaced every 18 months). When coupled with several large supercapacitor rings, it provides enough power to run the LAC systems. (It pulls power off the rings for peak power and slowly refills the capacitors when peak power is not needed.

It would require multiple fission plants/supercapacitor ring systems to supplant 1 fusion plant, and the fission systems would weigh more than the fusion plant per unit output. Because of this, the fission plant systems are not the proper power systems for all up starships.

And throw in some fan speculation about grav-pinch fusion scaling issues leading to catastrophically poor efficiency when dialed down to the power level of a LAC. (Something like consuming 90+% of the generated energy just to run the reactor).

And we don't know what type of containment / ignition the microfusion plants in missiles and drones use; just that it's miniaturized enough to squeeze into such a tiny form factor. IIRC RFC said they're poorly shielded as they don't need to keep from irradiating nearby humans. (And most likely they've only a operational lifetime, between major rebuilds, of no more than a week or so)

It just seems odd that if fission tech allows LAC's to wield grasers with the power output of the much bigger battleceuisers, then battlecruisers should have, at the very least, closed the distance between their graser output and that of the SDs.

"Sounds good on paper anyways," as my mom was fond of saying.

cthia wrote:Why were any of Haven's LACs ever able to compete against any Manty LAC? Haven's LAC's had no benefit of the new fission tech therefore were much larger and targetable along with the lack of bow walls on the Shrikes. But even w/o the Shrikes, beam for beam any Manty LAC should have been superior. Compounded by better Manty TOP GUN training. No?

I can't recall why Havenite LAC's were even marginally competitive.

One of the reasons the new Manty "super" LACs were so effective was simple design principles - older LACs were designed like starships - with internal maintenance spaces, spare parts, and hammerheads protecting the nodes for combat in a grav-wave. The new LACs eschewed all that and focused on combat power. Maintenance tasks would be the job of the basing site so could be external, with minimal spares. The LACS were viewed as attrition units - they weren't expected to shake off a hit that made it through the sidewalls, so armor and redundancy could be thrown out the windows, and you focus on making the simpliest fighting machine. The Fission reactor, just made it easier.

The Havenites, seeing the problem started the other way - with the minimum space machine possible - the pinnance/shuttle and engineered up. They knew they couldn't match the flexibility the fission pile gave, so they accepted a grav-pinched fusion reactor - and 96 hours of fuel. They made the same maintenance considerations the Manties made and made the same (or even more through) decisions about attrition. They made their birds even bigger than the Manties (>25,000 tons) and gave them better active defenses than any LAC (other than a Manty) had ever seen, then used the only weapon they could that would hurt a Manty LAC - standard ranged missiles.

Then they built their doctrine around jumping Manty LACS with a 2+:1 ratio, using formations much larger than Manties used.

The original Cimmeterres were minimialist machines made with off the shelf technology focused on doing a job, with the expectation that numbers would be needed.to do so.

cthia wrote:It just seems odd that if fission tech allows LAC's to wield grasers with the power output of the much bigger battleceuisers, then battlecruisers should have, at the very least, closed the distance between their graser output and that of the SDs.

"Sounds good on paper anyways," as my mom was fond of saying.

It was the fission reactor AND the advanced Superconducting Ring that allowed the Graser to be used. The Graser fed directly from the Ring - the Fission pile didn't produce enough power per unit time by itself to run the Graser.

Ever play Star Wars Xwing or Tie fighter? it's the same concept, the fighter's engine only produced so much power, and you could either go fast, or charge up the shields or lasers. In the game you usually chose a moderate approach speed to your target, and bled the extra engine energy to slowly charge up both the lasers and all the shield banks. Once in combat you could shift energy from lasers to shields to engines as needed, but you could easily get to the point where all your capacitor banks were drained, and your only recourse was putting 90% of your engine power into an escape vector and the last 10% used to keep your aft shield barely alive until you were out of range.

In EoH, there was a comment made by the guys adding the aft sidewall to the Shrike A that says it all - They tied the aft-wall into both the rings powering the Graser and bow-wall to provide the aft-wall with power. The comment was roughly if it's so bad that you've bled all the power out of both rings, you need to get out of dodge anyway.


Hope that helps.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:Why were any of Haven's LACs ever able to compete against any Manty LAC? Haven's LAC's had no benefit of the new fission tech therefore were much larger and targetable along with the lack of bow walls on the Shrikes. But even w/o the Shrikes, beam for beam any Manty LAC should have been superior. Compounded by better Manty TOP GUN training. No?

I can't recall why Havenite LAC's were even marginally competitive.

One of the reasons the new Manty "super" LACs were so effective was simple design principles - older LACs were designed like starships - with internal maintenance spaces, spare parts, and hammerheads protecting the nodes for combat in a grav-wave. The new LACs eschewed all that and focused on combat power. Maintenance tasks would be the job of the basing site so could be external, with minimal spares. The LACS were viewed as attrition units - they weren't expected to shake off a hit that made it through the sidewalls, so armor and redundancy could be thrown out the windows, and you focus on making the simpliest fighting machine. The Fission reactor, just made it easier.

The Havenites, seeing the problem started the other way - with the minimum space machine possible - the pinnance/shuttle and engineered up. They knew they couldn't match the flexibility the fission pile gave, so they accepted a grav-pinched fusion reactor - and 96 hours of fuel. They made the same maintenance considerations the Manties made and made the same (or even more through) decisions about attrition. They made their birds even bigger than the Manties (>25,000 tons) and gave them better active defenses than any LAC (other than a Manty) had ever seen, then used the only weapon they could that would hurt a Manty LAC - standard ranged missiles.

Then they built their doctrine around jumping Manty LACS with a 2+:1 ratio, using formations much larger than Manties used.

The original Cimmeterres were minimialist machines made with off the shelf technology focused on doing a job, with the expectation that numbers would be needed.to do so.

Thanks Theemile. Numbers is one thing that I was missing.

But the Peep doctrine of LAC attrition of 2+:1 had to be initially, with their first designs against Manty first designs.

What do you suppose the effective kill rate of Shrikes vs. Cimmeterres was? 3:1 at least? 6:1 vs. non Cimmeterres?

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:It just seems odd that if fission tech allows LAC's to wield grasers with the power output of the much bigger battleceuisers, then battlecruisers should have, at the very least, closed the distance between their graser output and that of the SDs.

"Sounds good on paper anyways," as my mom was fond of saying.

It was the fission reactor AND the advanced Superconducting Ring that allowed the Graser to be used. The Graser fed directly from the Ring - the Fission pile didn't produce enough power per unit time by itself to run the Graser.

Ever play Star Wars Xwing or Tie fighter? it's the same concept, the fighter's engine only produced so much power, and you could either go fast, or charge up the shields or lasers. In the game you usually chose a moderate approach speed to your target, and bled the extra engine energy to slowly charge up both the lasers and all the shield banks. Once in combat you could shift energy from lasers to shields to engines as needed, but you could easily get to the point where all your capacitor banks were drained, and your only recourse was putting 90% of your engine power into an escape vector and the last 10% used to keep your aft shield barely alive until you were out of range.

In EoH, there was a comment made by the guys adding the aft sidewall to the Shrike A that says it all - They tied the aft-wall into both the rings powering the Graser and bow-wall to provide the aft-wall with power. The comment was roughly if it's so bad that you've bled all the power out of both rings, you need to get out of dodge anyway.


Hope that helps.

It helps aplenty, though I've never played Xwing or Tie Fighter.

Your post also eases another thought I've always had of why there were never any incidences, IIRC, of Honorverse ships transferring power from one system to another -- like in Star Trek. "Divert all available power to the port grasers?"

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:It just seems odd that if fission tech allows LAC's to wield grasers with the power output of the much bigger battleceuisers, then battlecruisers should have, at the very least, closed the distance between their graser output and that of the SDs.

"Sounds good on paper anyways," as my mom was fond of saying.

It was the fission reactor AND the advanced Superconducting Ring that allowed the Graser to be used. The Graser fed directly from the Ring - the Fission pile didn't produce enough power per unit time by itself to run the Graser.

And that means that even though a Shrike can fire a Graser as powerful as most older BCs it can fire it far less frequently.

Which, given their attack tactics is fine. The Shrike comes in at an angle, pops up its bow wall, then uses reaction thrusters to shove the nose around onto target. Then it angles away, drops the bow wall and zips away. So the scissoring attacks give time (probably a couple minutes) to charge up the capacitors for the next shot. A BC would be firing that same mount multiple times a minute.

Also the Shrike can fire a BC weight graser not because of any breakthrough in miniaturizing graser technology, but because it's literally wrapped around the graser mount of a BC. So there's no size decrease or power increase tech breakthrough to propagate to other ships; if you want a more powerful graser you have to install a physically larger one.
However all that said, the newer BCs do mount larger (yet slightly fewer) graser - bringing them up towards what at least DNs used to mount. The Graysons started that design trend; but again it wasn't a tech breakthrough just a different design tradeoff.

Theemile wrote:The Havenites, seeing the problem started the other way - with the minimum space machine possible - the pinnance/shuttle and engineered up. They knew they couldn't match the flexibility the fission pile gave, so they accepted a grav-pinched fusion reactor - and 96 hours of fuel. They made the same maintenance considerations the Manties made and made the same (or even more through) decisions about attrition. They made their birds even bigger than the Manties (>25,000 tons) and gave them better active defenses than any LAC (other than a Manty) had ever seen, then used the only weapon they could that would hurt a Manty LAC - standard ranged missiles.

Right, the Manties were trying to build LACs that could chew up DDs - BCs. Haven was trying to build LACs that could blunt Shrikes and Ferrits strikes.
But even then, by At All Costs they had the Cimeterre Alpha and Cimeterre Beta designs that did have fission plants and bow walls making them much more competative in an anti-escort role (with the Alphas having a probably CL or CA strength spinal laser, and the betas remaining missile birds but with bow walls and improved endurance)

cthia wrote:It helps aplenty, though I've never played Xwing or Tie Fighter.

Your post also eases another thought I've always had of why there were never any incidences, IIRC, of Honorverse ships transferring power from one system to another -- like in Star Trek. "Divert all available power to the port grasers?"

1) Honorverse starships have gobs of power - the smallest Grav pinched fusion reactor can power all the needs of a CA, yet every warship has at least 2 reactors (Bigger CAs and above have more).

2) Ships have super capacitor rings to get enough energy to start up the wedge and help at other peak times.

3) Every energy mount has it's own superconducting ring to provide power for the weapon without spiking the central power grid - the ring is large enough for a shot or more after disconnection from the Grid, in the event the weapon has to go into local mode due to battle damage.

Pretty much you would need to take out most of the central energy grid to be in the condition you are discussing. But work parties on the most heavily damaged ship should be able to find enough power scattered around to run life support and other essentials for a period of time.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:It just seems odd that if fission tech allows LAC's to wield grasers with the power output of the much bigger battleceuisers, then battlecruisers should have, at the very least, closed the distance between their graser output and that of the SDs.

"Sounds good on paper anyways," as my mom was fond of saying.

It was the fission reactor AND the advanced Superconducting Ring that allowed the Graser to be used. The Graser fed directly from the Ring - the Fission pile didn't produce enough power per unit time by itself to run the Graser.

And that means that even though a Shrike can fire a Graser as powerful as most older BCs it can fire it far less frequently.

Which, given their attack tactics is fine. The Shrike comes in at an angle, pops up its bow wall, then uses reaction thrusters to shove the nose around onto target. Then it angles away, drops the bow wall and zips away. So the scissoring attacks give time (probably a couple minutes) to charge up the capacitors for the next shot. A BC would be firing that same mount multiple times a minute.

Also the Shrike can fire a BC weight graser not because of any breakthrough in miniaturizing graser technology, but because it's literally wrapped around the graser mount of a BC. So there's no size decrease or power increase tech breakthrough to propagate to other ships; if you want a more powerful graser you have to install a physically larger one.
However all that said, the newer BCs do mount larger (yet slightly fewer) graser - bringing them up towards what at least DNs used to mount. The Graysons started that design trend; but again it wasn't a tech breakthrough just a different design tradeoff.

Theemile wrote:The Havenites, seeing the problem started the other way - with the minimum space machine possible - the pinnance/shuttle and engineered up. They knew they couldn't match the flexibility the fission pile gave, so they accepted a grav-pinched fusion reactor - and 96 hours of fuel. They made the same maintenance considerations the Manties made and made the same (or even more through) decisions about attrition. They made their birds even bigger than the Manties (>25,000 tons) and gave them better active defenses than any LAC (other than a Manty) had ever seen, then used the only weapon they could that would hurt a Manty LAC - standard ranged missiles.

Jonathan_S wrote:Right, the Manties were trying to build LACs that could chew up DDs - BCs. Haven was trying to build LACs that could blunt Shrikes and Ferrits strikes.
But even then, by At All Costs they had the Cimeterre Alpha and Cimeterre Beta designs that did have fission plants and bow walls making them much more competative in an anti-escort role (with the Alphas having a probably CL or CA strength spinal laser, and the betas remaining missile birds but with bow walls and improved endurance)

****** *

Thanks for the info Jonathan. The LACs can match the battlecruiser's graser output but not its firing rate. That makes sense -- being that a LAC would lack the available volume to support the graser as would a battlecruiser.

I apologize for missing that the Cimeterres had fission plants. My research team missed that important fact. But it begs to question how the RHN achieved the breakthrough so quickly. We know that Manticore received the tech from Grayson -- and I seem to recall that textev gave evidence of Grayson's fits and starts with the tech themselves over a significant period of time in its evolution.

So how would Haven have come up with an efficient, safe and reliable enough design? As busy as Sonja kept Shannon.

I suppose that a more advanced -- than Graysonn -- planet like Haven, once their eyes have been turned toward the idea of the tech, can engineer it much faster than the Graysons were able to. Having access to more modern methods, tools, tech and materials.

Especially if someone else has already proved the tech to be feasible.

>shrugs<

cthia wrote:But it begs to question how the RHN achieved the breakthrough so quickly. We know that Manticore received the tech from Grayson -- and I seem to recall that textev gave evidence of Grayson's fits and starts with the tech themselves over a significant period of time in its evolution.

I think I already answered that question up thread....

cthia wrote:Thanks for the info Jonathan. The LACs can match the battlecruiser's graser output but not its firing rate. That makes sense -- being that a LAC would lack the available volume to support the graser as would a battlecruiser.

I apologize for missing that the Cimeterres had fission plants. My research team missed that important fact. But it begs to question how the RHN achieved the breakthrough so quickly. We know that Manticore received the tech from Grayson -- and I seem to recall that textev gave evidence of Grayson's fits and starts with the tech themselves over a significant period of time in its evolution.

So how would Haven have come up with an efficient, safe and reliable enough design? As busy as Sonja kept Shannon.

I suppose that a more advanced -- than Graysonn -- planet like Haven, once their eyes have been turned toward the idea of the tech, can engineer it much faster than the Graysons were able to. Having access to more modern methods, tools, tech and materials.

Especially if someone else has already proved the tech to be feasible.

>shrugs<

Well it's specifically the improved, second generation Havenite LACs that have fission. You were correct that the original Cimeterre designs did not.

As to how Haven quickly made the jump to those 2nd gen designs? See this quote from AAC

At All Costs: Ch 66 wrote:Cimeterre Alpha and Cimeterre Beta birds, built around the new fission power plants and improved capacitors Shannon Foraker and her technical crews had been able to produce after the windfall of technical data from Erewhon.