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kzt wrote:You guys have heard of the great resizing, right? Where David and Bu9 reset the density of honorverse ships to 0.25 tons per cubic meter? Instead of the density of cigar smoke?

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Did this refer to warships only, or to both warships and freighters?

The reason I ask is that most of the volume in a warship is committed to stuff; they don't have huge open volumes for general cargo. That average density makes sense for a warship, at least once it's got a full load of munitions and stores.

As you've been pointing out at length, it does not make sense for a freighter.

JohnRoth wrote:

kzt wrote:You guys have heard of the great resizing, right? Where David and Bu9 reset the density of honorverse ships to 0.25 tons per cubic meter? Instead of the density of cigar smoke?

...

Did this refer to warships only, or to both warships and freighters?

The reason I ask is that most of the volume in a warship is committed to stuff; they don't have huge open volumes for general cargo. That average density makes sense for a warship, at least once it's got a full load of munitions and stores.

As you've been pointing out at length, it does not make sense for a freighter.

Yes, the specs of freighters was worked out for SITS along with warships.

Remember freighters, like warships, are just as spry empty, as full.

Given that compensators are a work or fail device, could max mass be the same?
That you're OK until you exceed the limit then you're cactus?


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Annachie wrote:Given that compensators are a work or fail device, could max mass be the same?
That you're OK until you exceed the limit then you're cactus?


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We haven't seen any evidence of that. The compensator appears to negate acceleration on a volume, independent of the actual mass inside it. When adding extra items like external pods to existing ships, the only mentioned limitation was space inside the compensated field.

The reason why mass is still used to define ships is mass was the most common reference to ships prior to the great resizing, so that was the common size definition kept afterwards, with all linear dimensions tossed.

Annachie wrote:Given that compensators are a work or fail device, could max mass be the same?
That you're OK until you exceed the limit then you're cactus?

I'd guess not - if they still pay attention to mass I'd expect exceeding the mass to work more like exceeding the volume (reduces acceleration) rather than exceeding the acceleration (total failure).

The one, maybe, data-point we have is the new LACs. We know they're substantially denser than normal warships. (Half the length yet twice the mass of the Highlander-class) and applying my acceleration curves they look like they might be about 7% slower that a starship with the same generation compensator. (At introduction they were roughly 117.2% of base accel while ships of the same era were most like 125.5% of base accel)
And that's comparing their tonnage (20,000-ish tons) to startship tonnage; not their volume. (They'd be much slower if you adjusted them to the standard .25 density before running the comparison)

Of course there's all kinds of things that might screw that up as a comparison -- we've no assurance that same years in HoS equate to same compensator generation (and in a few cases they clearly don't). The LAC's have all Beta-Squared nodes, no Alpha nodes; which might affect accel a little. There aren't a lot of data-points on ships that small so the best-fit curve might be iffy.

Still it hints that there may be a crossover point where excess density causes accel to drop to below what a (larger) ship of that tonnage at standard density would be.


I point it out because it's the one place we've got solid acceleration numbers for something we know isn't the normal warship density of the Great Resizing.

You are perhaps forgetting that the freighters/transports with interstellar capability fall into a very broad range of sizes.

The truly large ships, which you MIGHT compare to the so-called "Supertankers" for oil or gas transport, massive container ships and massive bulk cargo (think grain, coal, or any bulk cargo you care to choose) are only a small percentage of the actual ships.

There are lots of small to medium ships that are plying the sea lanes with much lesser numbers of shipping containers or moving things "in bulk" but in smaller quantities. Sometimes you have ocean-going ferries which are carrying people, vehicles, commercial trucks (with trailers or shipping containers).

There is also the question of what is economical for any given route (between two point or in a circuit of multiple points) on a regular schedule moving a mixed manifest of cargo of many kinds and volumes.

What do these individual ships cost or operate or what volume of cargos do they need to carry over X distances do they need to remain profitable. We could infer that the transhipment networks and opportunities to get space for Y amoung of widgets or some food products exists such that you can send a cargo out from planet/system 123 and it ends up at ZZY months or perhaps a year later and it probably gets moved on and off several ships in that time, also spending time in warehouses/bonded facilities either near planets (without wormholes) or near at the same type of facilites near wormhole termini or junctions.

Smaller ships make a lot of sense when you are running scheduled service out in the Verge or in Silesia where you are getting paid to carry "stuff" from point A to point Z and several places in between. Sure, there are going to be ships dedicated to larger shipments under contract as well as smaller shipments. You could make money carrying only a couple of product types from the G system to such a interchange/warehouseing location and bringing back a wide variety of items to that same G system. It depends on the volumes of goods, price and what variations in the shipping levels (and fluctuating prices) can you make a profit on.

It comes back to "it depends".

Brigade XO wrote:You are perhaps forgetting that the freighters/transports with interstellar capability fall into a very broad range of sizes.

The truly large ships, which you MIGHT compare to the so-called "Supertankers" for oil or gas transport, massive container ships and massive bulk cargo (think grain, coal, or any bulk cargo you care to choose) are only a small percentage of the actual ships.

Not in the Honorverse. David has flatly said that there are virtually no merchant ships smaller than 2mt, a fair number at 4mt, and the most common size is 6-8mt. The crew required to run a 8MT ship is nearly the same as that needed for a 2mt ship. The expensive part of the ship is the hyperdrive, fusion plant and impeller drive, and it's apparently a moderate cost difference between the cost of the gear needed for a 2mt ship and that needed for an 8mt ship. Or between a 200KT ship and a 6MT ship.

The price (and cost) of shipping per ton carried per LY is very low, low enough that shipping iron ore or grain light years makes financial sense to both the shipper and the carrier. So if you want to make money you need to ship lots and lots of cargo.

Let us look at some current cargo ships.

ULCC (Ultra Large Crude Carrier) can carry 550,000 tons of Crude oil.

Maersk Triple E class container ship can carry 165,000 tons of containerized cargo.

Chinamax class bulk carrier can carry 400,000 tons of bulk cargo.

Cargo
The world production of wheat is about 729 million tons per year.

US production of beef is nearly 12 million tons per year.

Ports
The Port of Los Angele deals with about 165 million tons of cargo a year.

Suddenly 8 million ton space freighters do not seem unreasonable. It would take 21 of them just to deliver what the Port of LA deals with.

kzt wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:You are perhaps forgetting that the freighters/transports with interstellar capability fall into a very broad range of sizes.

The truly large ships, which you MIGHT compare to the so-called "Supertankers" for oil or gas transport, massive container ships and massive bulk cargo (think grain, coal, or any bulk cargo you care to choose) are only a small percentage of the actual ships.

Not in the Honorverse. David has flatly said that there are virtually no merchant ships smaller than 2mt, a fair number at 4mt, and the most common size is 6-8mt. The crew required to run a 8MT ship is nearly the same as that needed for a 2mt ship. The expensive part of the ship is the hyperdrive, fusion plant and impeller drive, and it's apparently a moderate cost difference between the cost of the gear needed for a 2mt ship and that needed for an 8mt ship. Or between a 200KT ship and a 6MT ship.

The price (and cost) of shipping per ton carried per LY is very low, low enough that shipping iron ore or grain light years makes financial sense to both the shipper and the carrier. So if you want to make money you need to ship lots and lots of cargo.

We know that couriers, in reality mail ships, are 40k tons.

We had the Atlas Cruise liners at around 1 mton.

SITS, has the Pegasus, a standard people mover, at 250ktons, holding 5000 people.

The Hailie Sowle, a nondescript tramp freighter, was just over a megaton iirc.

So there are alot of ships under 2 mtons, but like cargos oftoday, bulk cargo moves cheapest on the massive freighters.

Theemile wrote:
We know that couriers, in reality mail ships, are 40k tons.

We had the Atlas Cruise liners at around 1 mton.

SITS, has the Pegasus, a standard people mover, at 250ktons, holding 5000 people.

The Hailie Sowle, a nondescript tramp freighter, was just over a megaton iirc.

So there are alot of ships under 2 mtons, but like cargos of today, bulk cargo moves cheapest on the massive freighters.

As with cargo today how much are you willing to pay to ship it to its destination and how fast dos it need to be there? Cheap and fast are mutually exclusive when it comes to shipping.