Uncompromising Honor Snippet #12 (corrected from 13)

I think I must be reading this wrongly . . .

He shook his head. The Combat Information Center was as deeply buried as Flag Bridge. In fact, it was one deck farther down. It was also the only other compartment Ilkova could hope to reach that was fitted with the armored shafts through which a life pod could be launched. But getting there through this — the passage was clearly open to vacuum, judging by the thin haze of smoke racing along the overhead towards the hungry rents in Phantom’s hull, and God only knew what other damage there might be — would have been hard enough for someone who wasn’t encumbered and didn’t have a broken arm. Trying to drag him that far with only one working arm . . . .

I was under the impression that CIC and Flag Bridge were too deep in the bowels of the ship to launch pods from that location. CIC, I thought, is pretty much a tomb and not many get out. I was under the impression that pods are launched from near the skin of the ship. Either I'm wrong about all of that or I'm digesting the passage incorrectly. Which?

cthia wrote:The Enterprise doesn't need bow walls. NCC-1701 has shields.


.

Fox2! wrote:I don't think Federation shields are going to do any better against 100 Mk 23s than PN/RHN/SLN sidewalls. Then close to energy range, roll ship and present 20 SD class grasers.

cthia wrote:NCC-1701D has modulating shields to protect it against Borg cutter beams. Are grasers as powerful as Borg cutter beams?




At any rate, the Enterprise would win. You can't hit what you can't see. The Picard Maneuver. The Enterprise is too fast and maneuverable.

You thought Wolf 359 was bad against the Borg??

Ha! [he sneered magnificently]

The Borg were pikers compared to the Fifth Imperium. Wusses!

And the Death Star? Puh-leeeze!

I'll see your silly cube and raise you one Dahak II Asgerd-class planetoid : 3,000 kilometers diameter (14,226,750,000,000 cubic kilometers volume = 526,916,666,667 Borg cubes --- or, for that matter, 47,998 Death Star IIs); FTL speed under Enchanach drive = 800 c in normal space; in hyper, FTL speed = 3,200 c (Warp 9.95 gives Enterprise D a max speed of about 986 c); 50,000 hyper-missile tubes and 327,000 sublight launchers (multiple thousands of rounds per tube; warheads range from antimatter with yields of up to 12,000 megatons to artificial black hole generators) and 126,000 energy mounts which induce fission in any target they hit (versus Enterprise D's 12 phaser arrays, 2 torpedo launchers, and 250 rounds for said launchers); two concentric shields, each capable of sustaining and defeating over a dozen sequenced 12,000 megaton warheads and capable of instant reset following local shield failure (versus deflector shields); and I can't even count all of Dahak II's point defense systems.

BTW, the best calculation I've found yet for Trek's "isoton" was derived from the DS9 Tech Manual as approximately 3.7 megatons, and the baddest Trek torpedo we have yet seen used, the Prototype Long-Range Torpedo from "Into Darkness," had a stated yield of 320 isotons, which would make it about 1,184 megatons . . . just under 10% of one of Dahak's warheads. (Of which, he can send 50,000 your way, through hyper, with a velocity of 9,000 c, which would make it kinda hard to outrun them at Warp 9.95. And even if Enterprise had point defense, it can't engage a hyper missile till it drops back into normal space (or into phase with the target in hyper space) at the end of its run and detonates.)

Comb that out of your beard, O Enterprise!!


(Somewhere around here I have a cartoon someone did for me that shows Dahak meandering across the cosmos transmitting "Here, Death Star! Heeeere, Death Star!")

I'm going to assume that the news of Hadju pointing his middle finger at the bulkheads and firing on helpless men and women while abandoning ship is the one particular news that reached Harrington and caused her inner reactor to operate one control rod short. LOL

cthia wrote:I think I must be reading this wrongly . . .

He shook his head. The Combat Information Center was as deeply buried as Flag Bridge. In fact, it was one deck farther down. It was also the only other compartment Ilkova could hope to reach that was fitted with the armored shafts through which a life pod could be launched. But getting there through this — the passage was clearly open to vacuum, judging by the thin haze of smoke racing along the overhead towards the hungry rents in Phantom’s hull, and God only knew what other damage there might be — would have been hard enough for someone who wasn’t encumbered and didn’t have a broken arm. Trying to drag him that far with only one working arm . . . .

I was under the impression that CIC and Flag Bridge were too deep in the bowels of the ship to launch pods from that location. CIC, I thought, is pretty much a tomb and not many get out. I was under the impression that pods are launched from near the skin of the ship. Either I'm wrong about all of that or I'm digesting the passage incorrectly. Which?

You are wrong,

The core hulls of most warships incorporate vertical, heavily armored shafts reaching from the central axis of the ship (as well as to launch points closer to the skin in larger ships) to the ventral and dorsal surfaces of the hull (i.e., those sections protected from battle damage by the wedge) capped by scabs of armor and equipped to launch at least one life pod each. (Some serve multiple pod "bays" near critical systems very deep inside the ship.) There are enough of them (in theory) to allow at least 90% of a ship's company to evacuate. In practice, the percentages from a ship destroyed in action are much lower than that.

Small combatants may dispense with life pod tubes and rely on evacuation through the boat bay simply because it's structurally simpler and offers an escape mode which is effectively as fast (in those smaller combatants) as pods.

runsforcelery wrote:

cthia wrote:The Enterprise doesn't need bow walls. NCC-1701 has shields.


.

Fox2! wrote:I don't think Federation shields are going to do any better against 100 Mk 23s than PN/RHN/SLN sidewalls. Then close to energy range, roll ship and present 20 SD class grasers.

cthia wrote:NCC-1701D has modulating shields to protect it against Borg cutter beams. Are grasers as powerful as Borg cutter beams?




At any rate, the Enterprise would win. You can't hit what you can't see. The Picard Maneuver. The Enterprise is too fast and maneuverable.

You thought Wolf 359 was bad against the Borg??

Ha! [he sneered magnificently]

The Borg were pikers compared to the Fifth Imperium. Wusses!

And the Death Star? Puh-leeeze!

I'll see your silly cube and raise you one Dahak II Asgerd-class planetoid : 3,000 kilometers diameter (14,226,750,000,000 cubic kilometers volume = 526,916,666,667 Borg cubes --- or, for that matter, 47,998 Death Star IIs); FTL speed under Enchanach drive = 800 c in normal space; in hyper, FTL speed = 3,200 c (Warp 9.95 gives Enterprise D a max speed of about 986 c); 50,000 hyper-missile tubes and 327,000 sublight launchers (multiple thousands of rounds per tube; warheads range from antimatter with yields of up to 12,000 megatons to artificial black hole generators) and 126,000 energy mounts which induce fission in any target they hit (versus Enterprise D's 12 phaser arrays, 2 torpedo launchers, and 250 rounds for said launchers); two concentric shields, each capable of sustaining and defeating over a dozen sequenced 12,000 megaton warheads and capable of instant reset following local shield failure (versus deflector shields); and I can't even count all of Dahak II's point defense systems.

BTW, the best calculation I've found yet for Trek's "isoton" was derived from the DS9 Tech Manual as approximately 3.7 megatons, and the baddest Trek torpedo we have yet seen used, the Prototype Long-Range Torpedo from "Into Darkness," had a stated yield of 320 isotons, which would make it about 1,184 megatons . . . just under 10% of one of Dahak's warheads. (Of which, he can send 50,000 your way, through hyper, with a velocity of 9,000 c, which would make it kinda hard to outrun them at Warp 9.95. And even if Enterprise had point defense, it can't engage a hyper missile till it drops back into normal space (or into phase with the target in hyper space) at the end of its run and detonates.)

Comb that out of your beard, O Enterprise!!


(Somewhere around here I have a cartoon someone did for me that shows Dahak meandering across the cosmos transmitting "Here, Death Star! Heeeere, Death Star!")

Um, in Wolf 359's defense, those ships weren't the Enterprise. You do recall what happened after NCC-1701D arrived, don't you? There aren't any logically handicapped Solarians in that Sol-ar system.

****** *

OMG!

This has got to be one of the funniest posts you ever delivered unto us Celerians David. Do you have any earthly idea what you have done?

In my circle of friends, colleagues, geeks and acquaintances, there are always these type of conversations - we've come to call them Sci-Fi pissing contests! We've long come to the conclusion that not all Trekkies are Harrington fans. But all Harrington fans are Trekkies. And this conversation always comes up. It's the right of passage of Honorverse/Trekkie fans.

And you, oh great Wizard, have waved your wand and delivered unto the masses an Honorverse broadside delivered by himself, himself!

I'm framing this baby! If I can get you to sign it. . .

Dahak 'eh! I'm interested in that series now! See whatcha done did? This one post of yours will probably pull-in many more fans. I can't wait!

Please try to produce that cartoon. That is simply too hilarious to be legal. That's a real federal offense!

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:The Enterprise doesn't need bow walls. NCC-1701 has shields.


.

Fox2! wrote:I don't think Federation shields are going to do any better against 100 Mk 23s than PN/RHN/SLN sidewalls. Then close to energy range, roll ship and present 20 SD class grasers.

cthia wrote:NCC-1701D has modulating shields to protect it against Borg cutter beams. Are grasers as powerful as Borg cutter beams?




At any rate, the Enterprise would win. You can't hit what you can't see. The Picard Maneuver. The Enterprise is too fast and maneuverable.

runsforcelery wrote:You thought Wolf 359 was bad against the Borg??

Ha! [he sneered magnificently]

The Borg were pikers compared to the Fifth Imperium. Wusses!

And the Death Star? Puh-leeeze!

I'll see your silly cube and raise you one Dahak II Asgerd-class planetoid : 3,000 kilometers diameter (14,226,750,000,000 cubic kilometers volume = 526,916,666,667 Borg cubes --- or, for that matter, 47,998 Death Star IIs); FTL speed under Enchanach drive = 800 c in normal space; in hyper, FTL speed = 3,200 c (Warp 9.95 gives Enterprise D a max speed of about 986 c); 50,000 hyper-missile tubes and 327,000 sublight launchers (multiple thousands of rounds per tube; warheads range from antimatter with yields of up to 12,000 megatons to artificial black hole generators) and 126,000 energy mounts which induce fission in any target they hit (versus Enterprise D's 12 phaser arrays, 2 torpedo launchers, and 250 rounds for said launchers); two concentric shields, each capable of sustaining and defeating over a dozen sequenced 12,000 megaton warheads and capable of instant reset following local shield failure (versus deflector shields); and I can't even count all of Dahak II's point defense systems.

BTW, the best calculation I've found yet for Trek's "isoton" was derived from the DS9 Tech Manual as approximately 3.7 megatons, and the baddest Trek torpedo we have yet seen used, the Prototype Long-Range Torpedo from "Into Darkness," had a stated yield of 320 isotons, which would make it about 1,184 megatons . . . just under 10% of one of Dahak's warheads. (Of which, he can send 50,000 your way, through hyper, with a velocity of 9,000 c, which would make it kinda hard to outrun them at Warp 9.95. And even if Enterprise had point defense, it can't engage a hyper missile till it drops back into normal space (or into phase with the target in hyper space) at the end of its run and detonates.)

Comb that out of your beard, O Enterprise!!


(Somewhere around here I have a cartoon someone did for me that shows Dahak meandering across the cosmos transmitting "Here, Death Star! Heeeere, Death Star!")

Um, in Wolf 359's defense, those ships weren't the Enterprise. You do recall what happened after NCC-1701D arrived, don't you? There aren't any logically handicapped Solarians in that Sol-ar system.

****** *

OMG!

This has got to be one of the funniest posts you ever delivered unto us Celerians David. Do you have any earthly idea what you have done?

In my circle of friends, colleagues, geeks and acquaintances, there are always these type of conversations - we've come to call them Sci-Fi pissing contests! We've long come to the conclusion that not all Trekkies are Harrington fans. But all Harrington fans are Trekkies. And this conversation always comes up. It's the right of passage of Honorverse/Trekkie fans.

And you, oh great Wizard, have waved your wand and delivered unto the masses an Honorverse broadside delivered by himself, himself!

I'm framing this baby! If I can get you to sign it. . .

Dahak 'eh! I'm interested in that series now! See whatcha done did? This one post of yours will probably pull-in many more fans. I can't wait!

Please try to produce that cartoon. That is simply too hilarious to be legal. That's a real federal offense!

I warn you: do not get me started on Enterprise D and the cube! That single episode underscored most of the problems I have with Trek. Mind you, there are a lot of things they got right over the course of the series and the movies, but they got bunches of stuff wrong, too, and perhaps my biggest beef with the series is the way it has to squirm around the internal logical and consequences of its own tech. There are many a cringe-worthy moment from the perspective of a military historian, as well, but those are part and parcel of the conceptual underbrush of the original series which, in its defense, never claimed to be military science fiction in the first place.

But "The Best of Both Worlds" was probably the episode(s) which best underscored the fundamental problem of logical conclusions. Every writer (including screenwriters) occasionally falls into the same sort of hole, but this was . . . egregious. The Borg personal shields reset against phaser fire when they send boarding parties to try to rescue Picard, right? Ok. Got that. I would have loved to see them reset against a couple of kilos of antimatter beamed aboard, instead. A single "isoton" explosion inside a 3-kilometer on a side cube? End of story.

And, yes, I realize they were trying to get Picard back, but really? Wolf 359's just trashed all the rest of Star Fleet, the Borg is in the freaking Solar System, and they're separating saucer and main hull to engage in a desperate last-ditch defense, and nobody thinks of the transporter and the antimatter in the warp cores?

AS I remember Picard used a 45 caliber Thompson machine gun and blew the snot out of the Borg warriors... shields what shields?

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:The Enterprise doesn't need bow walls. NCC-1701 has shields.


.

Fox2! wrote:I don't think Federation shields are going to do any better against 100 Mk 23s than PN/RHN/SLN sidewalls. Then close to energy range, roll ship and present 20 SD class grasers.

cthia wrote:NCC-1701D has modulating shields to protect it against Borg cutter beams. Are grasers as powerful as Borg cutter beams?




At any rate, the Enterprise would win. You can't hit what you can't see. The Picard Maneuver. The Enterprise is too fast and maneuverable.

runsforcelery wrote:You thought Wolf 359 was bad against the Borg??

Ha! [he sneered magnificently]

The Borg were pikers compared to the Fifth Imperium. Wusses!

And the Death Star? Puh-leeeze!

I'll see your silly cube and raise you one Dahak II Asgerd-class planetoid : 3,000 kilometers diameter (14,226,750,000,000 cubic kilometers volume = 526,916,666,667 Borg cubes --- or, for that matter, 47,998 Death Star IIs); FTL speed under Enchanach drive = 800 c in normal space; in hyper, FTL speed = 3,200 c (Warp 9.95 gives Enterprise D a max speed of about 986 c); 50,000 hyper-missile tubes and 327,000 sublight launchers (multiple thousands of rounds per tube; warheads range from antimatter with yields of up to 12,000 megatons to artificial black hole generators) and 126,000 energy mounts which induce fission in any target they hit (versus Enterprise D's 12 phaser arrays, 2 torpedo launchers, and 250 rounds for said launchers); two concentric shields, each capable of sustaining and defeating over a dozen sequenced 12,000 megaton warheads and capable of instant reset following local shield failure (versus deflector shields); and I can't even count all of Dahak II's point defense systems.

BTW, the best calculation I've found yet for Trek's "isoton" was derived from the DS9 Tech Manual as approximately 3.7 megatons, and the baddest Trek torpedo we have yet seen used, the Prototype Long-Range Torpedo from "Into Darkness," had a stated yield of 320 isotons, which would make it about 1,184 megatons . . . just under 10% of one of Dahak's warheads. (Of which, he can send 50,000 your way, through hyper, with a velocity of 9,000 c, which would make it kinda hard to outrun them at Warp 9.95. And even if Enterprise had point defense, it can't engage a hyper missile till it drops back into normal space (or into phase with the target in hyper space) at the end of its run and detonates.)

Comb that out of your beard, O Enterprise!!


(Somewhere around here I have a cartoon someone did for me that shows Dahak meandering across the cosmos transmitting "Here, Death Star! Heeeere, Death Star!")

Um, in Wolf 359's defense, those ships weren't the Enterprise. You do recall what happened after NCC-1701D arrived, don't you? There aren't any logically handicapped Solarians in that Sol-ar system.

****** *

OMG!

This has got to be one of the funniest posts you ever delivered unto us Celerians David. Do you have any earthly idea what you have done?

In my circle of friends, colleagues, geeks and acquaintances, there are always these type of conversations - we've come to call them Sci-Fi pissing contests! We've long come to the conclusion that not all Trekkies are Harrington fans. But all Harrington fans are Trekkies. And this conversation always comes up. It's the right of passage of Honorverse/Trekkie fans.

And you, oh great Wizard, have waved your wand and delivered unto the masses an Honorverse broadside delivered by himself, himself!

I'm framing this baby! If I can get you to sign it. . .

Dahak 'eh! I'm interested in that series now! See whatcha done did? This one post of yours will probably pull-in many more fans. I can't wait!

Please try to produce that cartoon. That is simply too hilarious to be legal. That's a real federal offense!

runsforcelery wrote:I warn you: do not get me started on Enterprise D and the cube! That single episode underscored most of the problems I have with Trek. Mind you, there are a lot of things they got right over the course of the series and the movies, but they got bunches of stuff wrong, too, and perhaps my biggest beef with the series is the way it has to squirm around the internal logical and consequences of its own tech. There are many a cringe-worthy moment from the perspective of a military historian, as well, but those are part and parcel of the conceptual underbrush of the original series which, in its defense, never claimed to be military science fiction in the first place.

But "The Best of Both Worlds" was probably the episode(s) which best underscored the fundamental problem of logical conclusions. Every writer (including screenwriters) occasionally falls into the same sort of hole, but this was . . . egregious. The Borg personal shields reset against phaser fire when they send boarding parties to try to rescue Picard, right? Ok. Got that. I would have loved to see them reset against a couple of kilos of antimatter beamed aboard, instead. A single "isoton" explosion inside a 3-kilometer on a side cube? End of story.

And, yes, I realize they were trying to get Picard back, but really? Wolf 359's just trashed all the rest of Star Fleet, the Borg is in the freaking Solar System, and they're separating saucer and main hull to engage in a desperate last-ditch defense, and nobody thinks of the transporter and the antimatter in the warp cores?

Woe there Scotty! What you got against the Enterprise A, B, C or bloody D? LOL

Actually, I thought of beaming the core over or several photon torpedoes as well. What I got was that the Borg would see that as a threat and beam it back. Oops!

cthia wrote:I think I must be reading this wrongly . . .

He shook his head. The Combat Information Center was as deeply buried as Flag Bridge. In fact, it was one deck farther down. It was also the only other compartment Ilkova could hope to reach that was fitted with the armored shafts through which a life pod could be launched. But getting there through this — the passage was clearly open to vacuum, judging by the thin haze of smoke racing along the overhead towards the hungry rents in Phantom’s hull, and God only knew what other damage there might be — would have been hard enough for someone who wasn’t encumbered and didn’t have a broken arm. Trying to drag him that far with only one working arm . . . .

I was under the impression that CIC and Flag Bridge were too deep in the bowels of the ship to launch pods from that location. CIC, I thought, is pretty much a tomb and not many get out. I was under the impression that pods are launched from near the skin of the ship. Either I'm wrong about all of that or I'm digesting the passage incorrectly. Which?

runsforcelery wrote:You are wrong,

The core hulls of most warships incorporate vertical, heavily armored shafts reaching from the central axis of the ship (as well as to launch points closer to the skin in larger ships) to the ventral and dorsal surfaces of the hull (i.e., those sections protected from battle damage by the wedge) capped by scabs of armor and equipped to launch at least one life pod each. (Some serve multiple pod "bays" near critical systems very deep inside the ship.) There are enough of them (in theory) to allow at least 90% of a ship's company to evacuate. In practice, the percentages from a ship destroyed in action are much lower than that.

Small combatants may dispense with life pod tubes and rely on evacuation through the boat bay simply because it's structurally simpler and offers an escape mode which is effectively as fast (in those smaller combatants) as pods.

Far from it for me to disagree with the First Space Lord runsforcelery, but this guy named David Weber seems to disagree with you regarding the numbers, capacity and positioning of life pods of combatant star ships in the Honorverse, when he wrote copyright (2005) :

At All Costs, Chapter 37 wrote:"Both boat bays are trashed, Honor. The Bosun says she thinks she can get the after bay cleared, but it's going to take at least a half-hour. Without that—" Henke shrugged, and Honor bit the inside of her lip so hard she tasted blood.
Without at least one functional boat bay, small craft couldn't dock with Ajax to take her crew off. There were emergency personnel locks, but trying to lift off a significant percentage of her crew that way would take hours, and the battlecruiser carried enough emergency life pods for little more than half her total complement. There was no point carrying more, since only half her crew's battle stations were close enough to the skin of the hull to make a life pod practical.
And her flag bridge was not among the stations which fell into that category.

Italics are the author's, boldface, underlined and colored text is my emphasis.

And he wrote it again (copyright 2009 AD) :

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 2 wrote:They looked at one another for several seconds, neither of them willing to say what they both knew. Without at least one functional boat bay, small craft couldn't dock with Ajax to take her crew off, and she carried enough emergency life pods for a little more than half her total complement. There wasn't much point in carrying more than that, since only half her battle stations were close enough to the skin of her hull to make a life pod practical.
And her flag bridge was far too deeply buried to be one of them.

Italics are the author's, boldface, underlined and colored text is my emphasis.

Thanks Vince. I'm not the uppity fan this time RFC.

I thought I remembered that textev Vince. We covered just about every aspect of the subject in How to Abandon Ship. We even had a few appearances by MaxxQ.