Graser Quesions

Jonathan_S wrote:

Hegemon wrote:I would like to ask you a question on ship-mounted grasers versus laser heads:

In Short Victorious War you have a scene where a HMS Bellerophon's sidewall and armor shrugs off the massed fire of ship-mounted lasers and grasers from 4 Havenite BCs and then proceeds to casually destroy them using its own (much more powerful) ship-mounted weapons.
(BTW, I love the chapter's ending: "A quarter-second later, Battlecruiser Divisions 141 and 142 of the People's Navy ceased to exist.")

I don't know the broadside of the Sultan-class, but supposing that it is the same as the newer Warlord-class (6 Grasers and 6 Lasers per broadside), it would mean 24 Grasers and 24 Lasers shrugged off with minimal damage by a DN's sidewalls and armor. However, the same DN (or its bigger SD cousin) can only take ~250 MDM laser heads (each with ~9 lasing rods) before being destroyed. So the obvious question is how is it possible that a MDM laser head that weights maybe 50 tons seem to be in the same destructiveness ballpark as a ship-mounted Graser (even it is only a BC-size Graser) that weights maybe 1000-2000 tons and has access to the enormous energy stored in the ship's capacitors.

Thank you very much for your time.

From a physics standpoint this doesn't make a lot of sense - TFLYTSNBN covered how the energy gets lost or spread by distance, but in the Honorverse that seems to happen much more quickly than you'd expect; giving the firing range of the energy weapon is fired a massive influence over its effectiveness.

So a BC broadside laser fired at 500,000 km seems to have less effective impact than a bomb-pumped laserhead which goes off at no more than 30,000 km (in SVW. By WoH some had improved their standoff range to 50,000 km).
(I think there's even a mention that a DD's energy weapons can't normally penetrate the sidewall of an SD unless she gets really close)


The energy weapons probably shouldn't be dissipating power that quickly over those ranges - but in the novels they seem to.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Weber's high frequency lasers and grasers might not be capable of near diffraction limited beam collimiation
More importantly, Weber's warships can acccellerate at hundreds of gees. Include an erratic component in the accelleration and the lightspeed time lag will result in the target ship not being where it was when the attacking ship fires.

kzt wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Weber's high frequency lasers and grasers might not be capable of near diffraction limited beam collimiation
More importantly, Weber's warships can acccellerate at hundreds of gees. Include an erratic component in the accelleration and the lightspeed time lag will result in the target ship not being where it was when the attacking ship fires.

I'll bet that Honorverse computers can very accurately predict where the centeroid of a 200 km long orbital station will be in say 21 minutes. Just saying...

Jonathan_S wrote:From a physics standpoint this doesn't make a lot of sense - TFLYTSNBN covered how the energy gets lost or spread by distance, but in the Honorverse that seems to happen much more quickly than you'd expect; giving the firing range of the energy weapon is fired a massive influence over its effectiveness.

So a BC broadside laser fired at 500,000 km seems to have less effective impact than a bomb-pumped laserhead which goes off at no more than 30,000 km (in SVW. By WoH some had improved their standoff range to 50,000 km).
(I think there's even a mention that a DD's energy weapons can't normally penetrate the sidewall of an SD unless she gets really close)


The energy weapons probably shouldn't be dissipating power that quickly over those ranges - but in the novels they seem to.

Hegemon wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:From a physics standpoint this doesn't make a lot of sense - TFLYTSNBN covered how the energy gets lost or spread by distance, but in the Honorverse that seems to happen much more quickly than you'd expect; giving the firing range of the energy weapon is fired a massive influence over its effectiveness.

So a BC broadside laser fired at 500,000 km seems to have less effective impact than a bomb-pumped laserhead which goes off at no more than 30,000 km (in SVW. By WoH some had improved their standoff range to 50,000 km).
(I think there's even a mention that a DD's energy weapons can't normally penetrate the sidewall of an SD unless she gets really close)


The energy weapons probably shouldn't be dissipating power that quickly over those ranges - but in the novels they seem to.

In SVW it says "A quarter-second later, Battlecruiser Divisions 141 and 142 of the People's Navy ceased to exist." 1/4 light-second means the RMN DN's return fire happened at 75.000 km, so the 4 BCs must have fired from a similar distance, and they did score "half a dozen minor hits".

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I said target ship, not target station.

kzt wrote:I'll bet that Honorverse computers can very accurately predict where the centeroid of a 200 km long orbital station will be in say 21 minutes. Just saying...