Honorverse ramblings and musings

n7axw wrote:IIRC, bow and stern walls developed in two stages. The first completely sealed up the end (bow or stern). Oversteegen had the earlier stage when he was at Refuge with Abby. He had to cut power to use the stern wall. But the newer stuff, the Rolands, the Sag Cs and up all have the later stage wall which permitted the vessel to continue accelerating with the wall activated. These walls cover most of the bow or stern but leave enough open to allow the vessel to move under power. Conceivably a laser could slip past this wall, but the possibility of it doing so is low.

Don

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n7axw wrote:

IIRC, bow and stern walls developed in two stages. The first completely sealed up the end (bow or stern). Oversteegen had the earlier stage when he was at Refuge with Abby. He had to cut power to use the stern wall. But the newer stuff, the Rolands, the Sag Cs and up all have the later stage wall which permitted the vessel to continue accelerating with the wall activated. These walls cover most of the bow or stern but leave enough open to allow the vessel to move under power. Conceivably a laser could slip past this wall, but the possibility of it doing so is low.

Don

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Theemile wrote:

n7axw wrote:

IIRC, bow and stern walls developed in two stages. The first completely sealed up the end (bow or stern). Oversteegen had the earlier stage when he was at Refuge with Abby. He had to cut power to use the stern wall. But the newer stuff, the Rolands, the Sag Cs and up all have the later stage wall which permitted the vessel to continue accelerating with the wall activated. These walls cover most of the bow or stern but leave enough open to allow the vessel to move under power. Conceivably a laser could slip past this wall, but the possibility of it doing so is low.

Don

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Another point is either design (Bow wall or Buckler)requires a complete redesign (and thus complete rebuild) of the impeller room to accommodate these changes, including new, modified nodes. And if you want a more powerful impeller - you need to rebuild both rooms.

In short, retrofitting in a bow wall isn't a simple, or even routine procedure. it is probably easier to redesign a ship and build from scratch.

Theemile wrote:

n7axw wrote:

IIRC, bow and stern walls developed in two stages. The first completely sealed up the end (bow or stern). Oversteegen had the earlier stage when he was at Refuge with Abby. He had to cut power to use the stern wall. But the newer stuff, the Rolands, the Sag Cs and up all have the later stage wall which permitted the vessel to continue accelerating with the wall activated. These walls cover most of the bow or stern but leave enough open to allow the vessel to move under power. Conceivably a laser could slip past this wall, but the possibility of it doing so is low.

Don

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Another point is either design (Bow wall or Buckler)requires a complete redesign (and thus complete rebuild) of the impeller room to accommodate these changes, including new, modified nodes. And if you want a more powerful impeller - you need to rebuild both rooms.

In short, retrofitting in a bow wall isn't a simple, or even routine procedure. it is probably easier to redesign a ship and build from scratch.

Jonathan_S wrote:
Yep. It was only easy to shoehorn a field expedient stern wall into the Shrike because it's beta squared nodes (and impeller hardware) were already compatible with the latest toys - high repetition rate FTL signalling, bow wall, extra power (compared to 'conventional' beta nodes)

What would be interesting to know if how difficult it would be to back fit the 2 stage bow wall into a ship like the Saganami-B CA which was built with the slightly older single stage version. Are there additional impeller node/room mods needed to upgrade to the newer more flexible version? (Though depending on when it was invented the later flights of Sag-Bs might have have had 2-stage walls as factory standard; but at least the initial batch seem to be single-stage only)

Theemile wrote:
What's most important to note, is what is capable from the SLN perspective - Which is not much.

The hordes of current BCs and CAs in the field (and reserve) cannot be upgraded with this tech easily or economically, even if the SLN acquires the tech tomorrow. It will require entire new builds of new designs, of hardware that does not exist yet.

So to build a Sag-C combatant (as far as the sidewalls, impellers, and FTL communications, the SLN will need to research/ steal the tech, design a new ship , then build it. That will be several years to build a pier ship at the very least.

pappilon wrote:

Theemile wrote:
What's most important to note, is what is capable from the SLN perspective - Which is not much.

The hordes of current BCs and CAs in the field (and reserve) cannot be upgraded with this tech easily or economically, even if the SLN acquires the tech tomorrow. It will require entire new builds of new designs, of hardware that does not exist yet.

So to build a Sag-C combatant (as far as the sidewalls, impellers, and FTL communications, the SLN will need to research/ steal the tech, design a new ship , then build it. That will be several years to build a pier ship at the very least.

The real issue is that there are so many technical issues involved. From size of ships to far better targeted and longer ranging missiles to FTL communications to better shipboard controls of missiles, etc., the Sollies are really far behind.

Yes, they have a huge base to draw on but these are a lot of specialties and some might barely exist in the League.

Also, building new big ships takes years. And that assumes that the GA doesn't find out where you're building them and comes to destroy them.



Even with the specs, Haven had a rough time duplicating the Manty hardware. Not trying to downplay the SL tech advantage over the (New) republic of Haven, but 20 years of catch-up-or-die has a way of focusing one's attention. The Solarian league, by contrast may have larger pools to draw from but they still are facing an even larger relative missile tube than Haven did at Operation Buttercup.

ldwechsler wrote:
What's most important to note, is what is capable from the SLN perspective - Which is not much.

The hordes of current BCs and CAs in the field (and reserve) cannot be upgraded with this tech easily or economically, even if the SLN acquires the tech tomorrow. It will require entire new builds of new designs, of hardware that does not exist yet.

So to build a Sag-C combatant (as far as the sidewalls, impellers, and FTL communications, the SLN will need to research/ steal the tech, design a new ship , then build it. That will be several years to build a pier ship at the very least.

pappilon wrote:And to repeat, it is in the matter of DOCTRINE: The basic principles of ship design, weapons mix, mission, the compromises that are made, training etc., the entire mindset of the military beaurocracy where the SLN is so far behind the GA, the Andermani, and the MAlign.

kzt wrote:

pappilon wrote:And to repeat, it is in the matter of DOCTRINE: The basic principles of ship design, weapons mix, mission, the compromises that are made, training etc., the entire mindset of the military beaurocracy where the SLN is so far behind the GA, the Andermani, and the MAlign.

As was the USN behind the IJN in 1941. Which is why there were not many USN victories until US code breakers were able to provide critical help to the operational units.