Just how big IS a hyper drive

Jonathan_S wrote:I doubt the outsized docking ring and munitions handling equipment take up a dozen or more meters on the inboard end of the bay. There's only a max off 44 meters between the noses of LAC docked in opposite broadsides and some of that room is needed for CLAC ship systems and passageways. [Beam of a Hydra-class CLAC 188 meters, length of a pair of LACs 144 meters]

And frankly the issue with dispatch boats is buying and manning enough in the first place. If you've got them there's no need to stick them inside a CLAC as they're more than capable of tagging along with any fleet they've been assigned to. At most you might need to transfer them some fuel from time to time.

Perhaps this sort of thing would be limited to Havenite carriers, which are SD sized and have a bit more beam to play with. Or would just be entirely impractical on that basis.

It's probably just head-canon for me at this point, but I'm looking at the dimensions of LACs and assuming the inside of the pressure hulls look a lot like a WW2 submarine in terms of living space (albeit with a crew of 10 instead of 70). Most of the hull volume is filled with weapons, drive systems, power plant, and life support, with living space for the crew at a bare minimum. Dispatch boats can't have much more free space and have larger crews (20ish?). I guess the frame of reference I'm looking at it from is long-term crew quality of life for an "emergency" dispatch boat assigned to, say, a terminus picket somewhere in Solarian space.

The arrangement for the long term DB at Hades is what leads me to believe living 6 months at a time on one of these boats is not conducive to crew morale. Tolerable if they're constantly in motion but bad if they're just sitting on standby. Basically the equivalent of requiring a submarine crew to live on board even when the boat is tied up along shore between deployments. Being able to get out of the tin can - even if it is only onto a larger tin can - would be a positive thing for the crew.

Galactic Sapper wrote:I guess the frame of reference I'm looking at it from is long-term crew quality of life for an "emergency" dispatch boat assigned to, say, a terminus picket somewhere in Solarian space.

The arrangement for the long term DB at Hades is what leads me to believe living 6 months at a time on one of these boats is not conducive to crew morale. Tolerable if they're constantly in motion but bad if they're just sitting on standby. Basically the equivalent of requiring a submarine crew to live on board even when the boat is tied up along shore between deployments. Being able to get out of the tin can - even if it is only onto a larger tin can - would be a positive thing for the crew.

But at Hades or at Basilisk, the crew did not have to be cooped up on board; they could and did come down in shifts to the planet surface to stretch their legs. I do not know if there are stationary bikes or rowing machines on board, but I would expect some exercise machines.
Unless they are a assigned as support to a fleet, they do not make long cruises. Normally they move from station to station and at a station can use the recreational facilities.
So the utility of carrying a DB (or several) on another ship would depend on how often they assigned to a fleet; compared to their normal duties.

Galactic Sapper wrote:
Perhaps this sort of thing would be limited to Havenite carriers, which are SD sized and have a bit more beam to play with. Or would just be entirely impractical on that basis.

It's probably just head-canon for me at this point, but I'm looking at the dimensions of LACs and assuming the inside of the pressure hulls look a lot like a WW2 submarine in terms of living space (albeit with a crew of 10 instead of 70). Most of the hull volume is filled with weapons, drive systems, power plant, and life support, with living space for the crew at a bare minimum. Dispatch boats can't have much more free space and have larger crews (20ish?). I guess the frame of reference I'm looking at it from is long-term crew quality of life for an "emergency" dispatch boat assigned to, say, a terminus picket somewhere in Solarian space.

The arrangement for the long term DB at Hades is what leads me to believe living 6 months at a time on one of these boats is not conducive to crew morale. Tolerable if they're constantly in motion but bad if they're just sitting on standby. Basically the equivalent of requiring a submarine crew to live on board even when the boat is tied up along shore between deployments. Being able to get out of the tin can - even if it is only onto a larger tin can - would be a positive thing for the crew.

Though fleets don't exactly go on routine 6+ month transits. If the fleet was picketing a friendly / occupied star system then only a few of the units would be a high alert at any given time. The DB crew could take 'liberty' on an SD or CLAC without having to dock inside it (have a shuttle or pinnace pick the off-duty dispatch boat crew up and ferry them over). Or if an inhabited friendly system you can take shore leave on a station or the planet.


Even Honor's deep raids were IIRC only a few weeks each way in transit. About the only really long deployment we've seen was the PRH forces dispatched to hold pending an attack on Marsh. But most of that time was spend orbiting around an uninhabited system - so any attached dispatch boats could again take "shore leave" on one of the bigger ships but shuttling over.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though fleets don't exactly go on routine 6+ month transits. If the fleet was picketing a friendly / occupied star system then only a few of the units would be a high alert at any given time. The DB crew could take 'liberty' on an SD or CLAC without having to dock inside it (have a shuttle or pinnace pick the off-duty dispatch boat crew up and ferry them over). Or if an inhabited friendly system you can take shore leave on a station or the planet.


Even Honor's deep raids were IIRC only a few weeks each way in transit. About the only really long deployment we've seen was the PRH forces dispatched to hold pending an attack on Marsh. But most of that time was spend orbiting around an uninhabited system - so any attached dispatch boats could again take "shore leave" on one of the bigger ships but shuttling over.

And the Havenite force (not PRH, because this was after the restoration of the Constitution) was using destroyers for communication. Perhaps if they had used DB's instead, they would not have drawn the attention of Bachfisch.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though fleets don't exactly go on routine 6+ month transits. If the fleet was picketing a friendly / occupied star system then only a few of the units would be a high alert at any given time. The DB crew could take 'liberty' on an SD or CLAC without having to dock inside it (have a shuttle or pinnace pick the off-duty dispatch boat crew up and ferry them over). Or if an inhabited friendly system you can take shore leave on a station or the planet.


Even Honor's deep raids were IIRC only a few weeks each way in transit. About the only really long deployment we've seen was the PRH forces dispatched to hold pending an attack on Marsh. But most of that time was spend orbiting around an uninhabited system - so any attached dispatch boats could again take "shore leave" on one of the bigger ships but shuttling over.

And the Havenite force (not PRH, because this was after the restoration of the Constitution) was using destroyers for communication. Perhaps if they had used DB's instead, they would not have drawn the attention of Bachfisch.

Another thought here is that there are different DBs. The Havenite Fracture is only 37Ktons, while Honor's Tankersly (a Star Falcon corporate hypership/courier) is ~45Ktons. On that extra ~8 Ktons are several luxury staterooms for the owner, corporate advisors and guests, and room for a small amount of physical cargo, as well as space for a medium sized staff (Honor's Armsmen, her handmaiden, personal steward, et al), and room to move around comfortably.


I would expect long duration couriers would be more of the mold of the Star Falcon (if not a variation of the design), with larger crew personnel quarters, a somewhat larger crew, and more amenities. Meanwhile, a NAVY mail courier like the fracteur would be a minimalist design, more focused on outcomes, than amenities.

Theemile wrote:
Another thought here is that there are different DBs. The Havenite Fracture is only 37Ktons, while Honor's Tankersly (a Star Falcon corporate hypership/courier) is ~45Ktons. On that extra ~8 Ktons are several luxury staterooms for the owner, corporate advisors and guests, and room for a small amount of physical cargo, as well as space for a medium sized staff (Honor's Armsmen, her handmaiden, personal steward, et al), and room to move around comfortably.


I would expect long duration couriers would be more of the mold of the Star Falcon (if not a variation of the design), with larger crew personnel quarters, a somewhat larger crew, and more amenities. Meanwhile, a NAVY mail courier like the fracteur would be a minimalist design, more focused on outcomes, than amenities.

It is the first time I hear of a dispatch boat class.
Can you tell where was the Havenite Fracture class dispatch boat mentioned ?
Thank you.

Hegemon wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Another thought here is that there are different DBs. The Havenite Fracture is only 37Ktons, while Honor's Tankersly (a Star Falcon corporate hypership/courier) is ~45Ktons. On that extra ~8 Ktons are several luxury staterooms for the owner, corporate advisors and guests, and room for a small amount of physical cargo, as well as space for a medium sized staff (Honor's Armsmen, her handmaiden, personal steward, et al), and room to move around comfortably.


I would expect long duration couriers would be more of the mold of the Star Falcon (if not a variation of the design), with larger crew personnel quarters, a somewhat larger crew, and more amenities. Meanwhile, a NAVY mail courier like the fracteur would be a minimalist design, more focused on outcomes, than amenities.

It is the first time I hear of a dispatch boat class.
Can you tell where was the Havenite Fracture class dispatch boat mentioned ?
Thank you.

It was in the Jayne's Intelligence Review, Vol. 2: - The Havenite Republican Navy book that was put together to as a kind of "in-universe" item around the old Saganami Island Tactical Simulator (SITS) table-top Honorverse ship combat simulation wargame.
(Distinct from the ship books of that game which included some of the same material but also the gameplay specific information and various damage/status tracking sheets)

The ship books and Jaynes included information on some ships from the Peeps, the Andermani, and Silesia. Those aren't in House of Steel because it focuses on Manticore and Grayson, but will presumably be included in additional companion books that do cover Haven, Silesia, the Andermani, etc.

Let's see, if I didn't screw up my cheat sheet the ships from those that aren't in HoS are:
Jaynes only
- Triumphant-class BB (RHN)
- Roughneck-class Fast Attack Transport (RHN)
- Facteur-class Courier Boat (RHN)

SITS ship-books only
- Silesia-class BC (SCN)
- Mendelssohn-class (IAN)
- Jarmon-class CA (SCN)
- Emden-class CA (IAN)
- Telmach-class CA (SCN)
- Nachtschatten-class CL (IAN)
- Wroclaw-class CL (SCN)
- Dolch-class DD (IAN)
- Joachim Cheslav-class DD (SCN)
- Gryf-class FF (SCN)
- Mazur-class LAC (SCN)
- Pegasus-class passenger liner
- Starhauler-class modular freighter

Listed in both
- Sultan-class BC (RHN)
- Tiger-class BC (RHN)
- Mars-A-class CA (RHN)
- Sword-class CA (RHN)
- Conqueror-class CL (RHN)
- Charles Wade Pope-class CL (RHN)
- Brilliance-class CL (RHN)
- Liberator-class CL (LIF)
- Desforge-class DD(RNH)
- Bastogne-class DD (RHN)
- Program 13-class LAC (RHN)
- Astra-class Armed Merchant Cruiser (RHN)


The Facteur-class is a Havenite courier boat that was introduce in 1872; 294 meters long, 38,000 tons, with a flat out (0% safety margin) acceleration of 535.7 gees and (unsurprisingly) carries no weapons or point defense.

Thank you very much for your answer, Jonathan_S.