Honorverse system destroyer

MAD-4A wrote:Forts don't have "impeller" rings (per-say) they have an all-round 'sidewall'. As far as I know, they cant produce a full-up impeller band an move. the tech for [producing impellers and sidewalls are the same though so any ability or restriction of one would apply to the other.

MAD-4A wrote:...the tech for [producing impellers and sidewalls are the same ...

MAD-4A wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And finally I don't know if forts are usually single impeller ring or double impeller ring.

(Wow, that was a long way of saying that I'm not sure if the within 20% and well within the maximum beam limits apply to forts)

Forts don't have "impeller" rings (per-say) they have an all-round 'sidewall'. As far as I know, they cant produce a full-up impeller band an move. the tech for [producing impellers and sidewalls are the same though so any ability or restriction of one would apply to the other.

runsforcelery wrote:It should be remembered both that fortresses are not truly immobile and that their hull forms are significantly different from those of hyper-capable warships. Because they aren't hyper-capable, they don't require Warshawski sails, which means they don't require the "double-ended spindle" design of a superdreadnought. If they choose to drop the impeller wedges which give them mobility, they have an enormously greater field of fire than any superdreadnought, protected by sidewall bubble generators (and a few additional neat tricks the Manties have developed in the last few years), even though those wedges remain available if needed for protection as well as movement. Among other things, this gives them vastly more effective direct-fire anti-missile capability

On Basilisk Station wrote:Nonetheless, heavy losses could be anticipated in the inner fortress ring under the best possible circumstances, so the "forts" in the outer rings had to be able to move to fill in the gaps and mass upon an attacker. Their maximum acceleration rates were low, well under a hundred gravities

Jonathan_S wrote:

MAD-4A wrote:Forts don't have "impeller" rings (per-say) they have an all-round 'sidewall'. As far as I know, they cant produce a full-up impeller band an move. the tech for [producing impellers and sidewalls are the same though so any ability or restriction of one would apply to the other.

Um, both sidewalls and wedges are gravitation phenominon. But wedges are vastly stronger and are generated from impeller nodes; while the weaker sidewalls are generated from sidewall generators.

It's true that conventional sidewalls have to "tie into" a wedge, but they're not generated from the impeller rooms. (There are occasional scattered references in the books about sidewall generators - for example House of Steel mentions that the Star Knight-class CA mounted "more powerful sidewall generators")

Somtaaw wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Um, both sidewalls and wedges are gravitation phenominon. But wedges are vastly stronger and are generated from impeller nodes; while the weaker sidewalls are generated from sidewall generators.

It's true that conventional sidewalls have to "tie into" a wedge, but they're not generated from the impeller rooms. (There are occasional scattered references in the books about sidewall generators - for example House of Steel mentions that the Star Knight-class CA mounted "more powerful sidewall generators")

Earlier on, I pointed out to him that impeller nodes do, loosely, tie into the gravitational sidewalls. That textev was when we first saw LACs, how their beta-squared nodes helped produce much more powerful wedge and sidewalls.

But I also pointed out that the primary generator for sidewalls is the dedicated sidewall generators, and the impeller nodes are responsible primarily for the invulnerable wedge generation.

Jonathan_S wrote:Um, both sidewalls and wedges are gravitation phenominon. But wedges are vastly stronger and are generated from impeller nodes; while the weaker sidewalls are generated from sidewall generators....not generated from the impeller rooms.And forts have bubble sidewall generator which do not require a wedge to tie into...

Jonathan_S wrote:As for forts being immobile here's an excerpt from a post David made several years ago, in a thread "Defending a Wormhole Junction/Terminus", contradicting that...There are other tidbits he's dropped elsewhere, which are eluding me at the moment, saying they usually have a single ring of Beta nodes, that they don't carry a compensator because at their size grav plates are more effective, and therefore they're top speed is below 100g

Actually even in the first book it mentioned they can move at low velocities.

MAD-4A wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Um, both sidewalls and wedges are gravitation phenominon. But wedges are vastly stronger and are generated from impeller nodes; while the weaker sidewalls are generated from sidewall generators....not generated from the impeller rooms.And forts have bubble sidewall generator which do not require a wedge to tie into...

Yes, that wasn't what I meant, I didn't say they were generated in the impeller room, I said they are produced by the same technology. A sidewall generator is basically a smaller, directed version of the impeller generator. it is designed to project a weaker gravity field to a specific area relative to it's location on the ship. they have to do this so it can be switched on-&-off quickly (<seconds) to allow the ships own weapons to fire out without firing threw it's own field and then popping back on quickly (hopefully) before enemy fire pours back in the hole. That's why side walls are generated separate and weaker, hot a fundamental difference in the tech used, only a reduced version to allow pop-on-offs. The "tie-in-to" just means that the upper/lower edges of the sidewall fields become part of the wedge itself and there isn't a gap between the two to allow enemy fire in.

MAD-4A wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Um, both sidewalls and wedges are gravitation phenominon. But wedges are vastly stronger and are generated from impeller nodes; while the weaker sidewalls are generated from sidewall generators....not generated from the impeller rooms.And forts have bubble sidewall generator which do not require a wedge to tie into...

Yes, that wasn't what I meant, I didn't say they were generated in the impeller room, I said they are produced by the same technology. A sidewall generator is basically a smaller, directed version of the impeller generator. it is designed to project a weaker gravity field to a specific area relative to it's location on the ship. they have to do this so it can be switched on-&-off quickly (<seconds) to allow the ships own weapons to fire out without firing threw it's own field and then popping back on quickly (hopefully) before enemy fire pours back in the hole. That's why side walls are generated separate and weaker, hot a fundamental difference in the tech used, only a reduced version to allow pop-on-offs. The "tie-in-to" just means that the upper/lower edges of the sidewall fields become part of the wedge itself and there isn't a gap between the two to allow enemy fire in.

MAD-4A wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:As for forts being immobile here's an excerpt from a post David made several years ago, in a thread "Defending a Wormhole Junction/Terminus", contradicting that...There are other tidbits he's dropped elsewhere, which are eluding me at the moment, saying they usually have a single ring of Beta nodes, that they don't carry a compensator because at their size grav plates are more effective, and therefore they're top speed is below 100g

Actually even in the first book it mentioned they can move at low velocities.

Again, I didn't mean that they were somehow built atop giant concrete pillars and unable to move at all. They are floating in space, of-course they can be moved, duh. They don't have accel-comps and can't maneuver like warships. I wasn't aware of any references to a ring of beta nodes for a mini-wedge but if you say so, they are still effectively immobile for combat purposes.

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 5 wrote:HMS Fearless decelerated smoothly towards a stop as she passed the inner perimeter of the Junction defenses. She was just under one day out of Manticore orbit, and Manticore System's G0 primary and its G2 companion were dim behind her, reduced to two more stars amid millions, for the Junction lay almost seven light-hours from them.
The duty watch manned their stations alertly, and a stranger on Fearless's bridge might not have recognized the air of gloom which clung to them. But a stranger, Honor thought, reaching up to rub Nimitz's jaw absently, wouldn't have lived with these people for weeks now. A stranger wouldn't recognize their humiliation at being condemned to Basilisk Station, or the way they'd withdrawn ever deeper into their shells until the duties they performed were all they really had in common with their captain.
She leaned back, hiding her desire to sigh sadly behind a calm face, and watched the tactical display. Fearless's projected vector stretched across it, terminating right on the half light-second outbound departure threshold of the Junction. The light cruiser's green bead tracked steadily down the thin line, threading its way through the mammoth defenses, and even in her own depression, Honor felt a familiar tingle at the firepower ringing the invisible doorway between the stars.
The smallest fortress out there massed close to sixteen million tons, twice as much as a superdreadnought, and its weapons-to-mass ratio was far higher. The forts weren't hyper-capable, for they used mass a warship might have devoted to its hyper generators and Warshawski sails to pack in still more firepower, but they were far more than immobile weapon platforms. They had to be.
Each of those forts maintained a stand-by battle watch and a 360º sidewall "bubble" at all times, but no one at this end of the Junction could know anyone was coming through it until they arrived, and no one could remain eternally vigilant. Thus a sneak attack—from, say, Trevor's Star—would always have the advantage of surprise; the attacker would arrive ready for battle, already seeking out targets for his weapons, while the defenders were still reacting to his arrival in their midst.
That was why no defensive planner placed his permanent defenses closer than a half million kilometers or so to a junction. If a hostile task force emerged within energy weapon range of the defenses, those defenses would be destroyed before they could reply, but ships transiting a wormhole junction arrived with a normal-space velocity of barely a few dozen kilometers per second, far too little for a high-speed attack run. With the closest forts so far from him and too little speed for a quick run-in to energy weapon range, any attacker must rely on missiles, and even impeller-drive missiles would require almost thirty-five seconds to reach them. Thus the forts' duty watches—in theory, at least—had time to reach full readiness while the weapons accelerated towards them. In practice, Honor suspected, most of them would still be coming on-line when the missiles arrived, which was why their point defense (unlike their offensive weaponry) was designed for emergency computer override even in peacetime.
In time of war, the forts would be augmented by thickly seeded remote laser platforms—old-fashioned, bomb-pumped laser satellites—much closer in and programmed to automatically engage anything not positively identified as friendly, but such measures were never used in peacetime. Accidents could always happen, and the accidental destruction of a passenger liner whose IFF wasn't recognized could be embarrassing, to say the very least. An attacker would still have sufficient surprise advantage for his energy batteries to kill a lot of satellites before they could respond, but enough of them would survive to handle him very roughly indeed.
Nonetheless, heavy losses could be anticipated in the inner fortress ring under the best possible circumstances, so the "forts" in the outer rings had to be able to move to fill in the gaps and mass upon an attacker. Their maximum acceleration rates were low, well under a hundred gravities, but their initial positions had been very carefully planned. Their acceleration would be enough to intercept attacking forces headed in-system, and their engines were sufficiently powerful to generate impeller wedges and sidewalls to protect them.