What will Admiral Higgins' next command be?

Somtaaw wrote:

isaac_newton wrote:pokes head above parapet and peers around cautiously ...

Technically speaking - did people actually get to shoot directly at him?

well, not yet anyways. But only because he had the brains to know that "pulling a Pavel Young" is the right thing to do, and not cowardice.

*flees from the wrath of rose*

kytheros wrote:Don't be ridiculous. He didn't pull a Pavel Young.

Young wouldn't've destroyed the shipyards ... or pulled out as many technical experts as Higgins managed, if any. Or Young would've tried to flatten everything, yards and habitat sections without an evacuation.

The E wrote:

darrell wrote:who said hemphill was no longer in charge of weapons bureau?

since weapons bureau was at wayland which no longer exists, it has to move somewhere. Why not move weapons bureau to bolthole lock, stock and barrel.

Because no matter how chummy Haven and the SEM are right now, moving your principal military R&D establishment to a place that you can't control isn't a very good strategy.

Not to mention that I'm pretty sure one of the reasons why Manty R&D worked so well is because they're at the heart of the SEM, able to work with and through any number of Manticoran companies and universities, plus all the quick access to what's happening in Solarian space granted by the wormhole junction.

kytheros wrote:Agree on both counts.
There may be some joint workspaces, probably quite a few, actually, at Bolthole, but Manticoran military R&D is going to remain centered in Manticoran controlled space.

And, I believe that it's been stated, either as a Word of God, or in the House of Steel short story, or both, that Manticore was fully exploiting the wormhole network to get the best information and new research advances it could lay hands on from everywhere it could.
This makes me wonder just how the hell standard SLN deployed missile impellers are better than 1920 Manticoran deployed missile impellers. Not in terms of run time, but in terms of acceleration.
I don't see how standard SLN missiles have better accel than current Manticoran missiles after the decades of R&D, and Weber only knows much money, Manticore poured into the subject. I could maybe see SLN missiles having a bit better accel than pre-war RMN missiles ... but now? No way in hell does that make any kind of sense to me.

I don't recall Young ever making any sort of a military decision. All of his decisions were of the self-preservation or backseat driver type. His decision to abandon Harrington during the Battle of Hancock and scatter before ordered was not a military decision. It was an ass-saving decision.

Young would not have made any decisions regarding the shipyards or personnel. His fear would have been chokingly debilitating by then. His MO was to flee. And flee fast!

I still think Higgens was a hero. He made the right, hard, big call. Was he ever commended for his decision?

By implication, yes. Apparently, Janacek tried to scapegoat him, but it's clear from the commands he's held since that not only did the Board that would have been held on Grendelsbane eventually endorse his actions, so did the new management that was in place at the Admiralty by the time it reported.

cthia wrote:
I don't recall Young ever making any sort of a military decision. All of his decisions were of the self-preservation or backseat driver type. His decision to abandon Harrington during the Battle of Hancock and scatter before ordered was not a military decision. It was an ass-saving decision.

Young would not have made any decisions regarding the shipyards or personnel. His fear would have been chokingly debilitating by then. His MO was to flee. And flee fast!

I still think Higgens was a hero. He made the right, hard, big call. Was he ever commended for his decision?

cthia wrote:I still think Higgens was a hero. He made the right, hard, big call. Was he ever commended for his decision?

Command of Home Fleet is a commendation in itself. But even not to be cashiered or beached permanently says a lot about how his situation was regarded.

Anything more than that is difficult to justify - you can't exactly give someone a medal or knighthood when they pulled the trigger on scores of your own ships, even to keep them out of enemy hands.

Historically, there's two ways this kind of thing went. See Admirals Jean de Laborde and Ludwig von Reuter. De Laborde narrowly avoided being executed for treason after the war(ie, by the pro-Allies regime), whilst von Reuter was celebrated(although he never again assumed command).

Manticore was fielding much faster missiles at one point, then dropped the accel levels back a bit. I suspect that the trade-off that has Kytheros scratching his head was actually for component size. For example, OpAn may have found that the extra acceleration wasn't really paying off, but that more compact missiles would. I can't recall seeing anything saying this, but it's certainly a reasonable choice, and we do know that after the jump to the first MDM, BuWeaps has been pulling missile and pod size back as much as possible to increase magazine capacity.

Kytheros wrote:I don't see how standard SLN missiles have better accel than current Manticoran missiles after the decades of R&D, and Weber only knows much money, Manticore poured into the subject. I could maybe see SLN missiles having a bit better accel than pre-war RMN missiles ... but now? No way in hell does that make any kind of sense to me.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
That's an engineering choice. Just as half-power doubles run-time and range; acceleration is a trade-off with run-time and range. Manticore chose a different balance of those factors than the SLN chose.

Well Manticore put their focus into extending drive runtimes (ERM, LERM, MK31 CM/Viper) or 'the baffle' to enable true MDMs.
But the SLN Javelins have the same runtimes as any other normal SDM, 60 or 180 seconds; depending on power setting. Which means their slightly higher acceleration gives them slightly more, not less, range than Manticore's remaining SDMs.

It's possible that if Manticore had focused on higher accel for the same range, rather than greatly increased endurance for the same accel that they'd have even faster SDMs; but that's hard to know. But within the SDM design space higher accel doesn't seem like a trade-off...

The two men faced vastly different political situations, neither of which corresponded particularly well to Higgins', although von Reuter's was certainly closer. In fact, you can safely bet that if the Brits _could_ have shot von Reuter, they would have, for the same reason that the Gaullistes nearly shot de Laborde: he took ships away from them that they wanted. de Labord simply compounded the offence by being on the losing side of a civil war.

munroburton wrote:

cthia wrote:I still think Higgens was a hero. He made the right, hard, big call. Was he ever commended for his decision?

Command of Home Fleet is a commendation in itself. But even not to be cashiered or beached permanently says a lot about how his situation was regarded.

Anything more than that is difficult to justify - you can't exactly give someone a medal or knighthood when they pulled the trigger on scores of your own ships, even to keep them out of enemy hands.

Historically, there's two ways this kind of thing went. See Admirals Jean de Laborde and Ludwig von Reuter. De Laborde narrowly avoided being executed for treason after the war(ie, by the pro-Allies regime), whilst von Reuter was celebrated(although he never again assumed command).

Louis R wrote:Manticore was fielding much faster missiles at one point, then dropped the accel levels back a bit. I suspect that the trade-off that has Kytheros scratching his head was actually for component size. For example, OpAn may have found that the extra acceleration wasn't really paying off, but that more compact missiles would. I can't recall seeing anything saying this, but it's certainly a reasonable choice, and we do know that after the jump to the first MDM, BuWeaps has been pulling missile and pod size back as much as possible to increase magazine capacity.

Do you remember where that was mentioned? I'd love to get the numbers and add them to my spreadsheet of missile performance.

I know the RMN missile performance climbed from SVW to the end of the 1st war - from about 85000g/42500g to 92000g/46000g. (Which appears to still be the velocity of the ERMs, Mk16s, and Mk23s). Vipers are faster of course, but like I said if you can remember where we saw a faster RMN missile please point me in that direction so I can improve my spreadsheet. Thanks

Jonathan_S wrote:

Louis R wrote:Manticore was fielding much faster missiles at one point, then dropped the accel levels back a bit. I suspect that the trade-off that has Kytheros scratching his head was actually for component size. For example, OpAn may have found that the extra acceleration wasn't really paying off, but that more compact missiles would. I can't recall seeing anything saying this, but it's certainly a reasonable choice, and we do know that after the jump to the first MDM, BuWeaps has been pulling missile and pod size back as much as possible to increase magazine capacity.

Do you remember where that was mentioned? I'd love to get the numbers and add them to my spreadsheet of missile performance.

I know the RMN missile performance climbed from SVW to the end of the 1st war - from about 85000g/42500g to 92000g/46000g. (Which appears to still be the velocity of the ERMs, Mk16s, and Mk23s). Vipers are faster of course, but like I said if you can remember where we saw a faster RMN missile please point me in that direction so I can improve my spreadsheet. Thanks

We need this spreadsheet on a shared Google Docs or something, so we can all benefit from it's presence Think they can be locked, so only a few can actually manipulate it; if you're one of those types who use formula's and only a few key spots where changing a value gives a different result.

Somewhere in the HAE - EoH range, IIRC, there's a mention of birds with 48/96,000g acceleration. Maybe the first MDMs used in AoV, but I'm not sure about that. I recall being surprised by the solid numbers for later MDMs being so much lower, but, as I said, on reflection it's simple to account for the change.

It's not even a retcon, it's a detail that didn't happen to be infodumped - even Himself can't shoehorn _everything_ into the books

Jonathan_S wrote:

Louis R wrote:Manticore was fielding much faster missiles at one point, then dropped the accel levels back a bit. I suspect that the trade-off that has Kytheros scratching his head was actually for component size. For example, OpAn may have found that the extra acceleration wasn't really paying off, but that more compact missiles would. I can't recall seeing anything saying this, but it's certainly a reasonable choice, and we do know that after the jump to the first MDM, BuWeaps has been pulling missile and pod size back as much as possible to increase magazine capacity.

Do you remember where that was mentioned? I'd love to get the numbers and add them to my spreadsheet of missile performance.

I know the RMN missile performance climbed from SVW to the end of the 1st war - from about 85000g/42500g to 92000g/46000g. (Which appears to still be the velocity of the ERMs, Mk16s, and Mk23s). Vipers are faster of course, but like I said if you can remember where we saw a faster RMN missile please point me in that direction so I can improve my spreadsheet. Thanks

Weird Harold wrote:

Kytheros wrote:I don't see how standard SLN missiles have better accel than current Manticoran missiles after the decades of R&D, and Weber only knows much money, Manticore poured into the subject. I could maybe see SLN missiles having a bit better accel than pre-war RMN missiles ... but now? No way in hell does that make any kind of sense to me.

That's an engineering choice. Just as half-power doubles run-time and range; acceleration is a trade-off with run-time and range. Manticore chose a different balance of those factors than the SLN chose.

exactly. What percentage of the missile do you put into engines? what percentage do you put into warhead and guidance?

Manticore puts more of the missile into better seekers and more powerful laserheads than the SL, so their range was a few percent lower, but they get more hits and heavier hits.

Although some research has gone int missile engines, much more research has gone into warheads, to the point that RMN BC warheads are now more powerful than SL SD warheads.

Somtaaw wrote:We need this spreadsheet on a shared Google Docs or something, so we can all benefit from it's presence

It needs some serious clean-up and editing before it's ready for that; but it's not a bad idea if I get time to get it in shape...

(There's abandoned work in progress cruft, evidence that needs to be better documented, reorganization to do, guestimates to be better highlighted, etc)

Louis R wrote:Somewhere in the HAE - EoH range, IIRC, there's a mention of birds with 48/96,000g acceleration. Maybe the first MDMs used in AoV, but I'm not sure about that. I recall being surprised by the solid numbers for later MDMs being so much lower, but, as I said, on reflection it's simple to account for the change.

It's not even a retcon, it's a detail that didn't happen to be infodumped - even Himself can't shoehorn _everything_ into the books

Thanks, even just the numbers you remembered were enough to do a text search and find it. It was in Ashes of Victory

Ashes of Victory: Ch 35 wrote:"Agreed. Agreed." White Haven rubbed his chin some more. The final—or currently "final"—version of the long-range missiles could reach 96,000 gravities of acceleration, four thousand more than the ones Alice Truman had deployed at Basilisk. That gave them a powered attack range from rest of almost fifty-one light-seconds at maximum acceleration. By stepping the drives down to 48,000 g, endurance could be tripled, however, and that upped the maximum powered envelope to well over three and a half light-minutes and a terminal velocity of .83 c. That was crowding the very limits of the fire control technology available even to the Royal Manticoran Navy, however.

Also, I'm embarrassed to say my spreadsheet was disorganized enough I'd missed that I already had one higher acceleration entry. There was a quote in Echoes of Honor (When 8th fleet mousetraps the 2nd arm of the Peeps at Basilisk) about missiles with 95,000g acceleration.

Finally I'd note that the internal numbers of that quote don't quite work out. Whether you're using 9.8 m/s or 10 m/s for 1g the terminal velocity for half power is higher than 0.83c (I get 0.847c or 0.865c; assuming it has the normal 540 second burn time)

Also I noticed that Alice Truman wasn't, as far as I could tell, with 8th Fleet at Basilisk (And 8th fleet had the higher accel missiles anyway), so I think RFC meant Hancock in that quote. Though weren't the strike at Hancock and Basilisk both part of Operation Icarus? So it looks like the GSN deployed higher accel MDMs into their SD(P)s than HMS Minotaur presumably had. (Unless the 4,000g part of the quote was also in error and Minotaur had quicker MDMs than originally discussed in IEH)
Though that means that the GSN's SD(P)s had better accelerating MDMs than the RMN's first CLAC - despite the