Spider drive ships and technical limitations

Maldorian wrote:

As he'd told Gail, he'd always relized that something like Darius Gamma had to exist, if only to build the warships towards which so much of their research had been directed. (Shadow of Victory e-ARC, Kindle edition, loc. 13777)


So he's a physicist, and works on the MAlign's warships, but not on the weapons. Again, that leads me to believe that he works on the spider drive.

It is possible that he work on the spider drive, but it is also possible, that he is an expert for the cloaking device , or sensors, computers, or, or........

I wonder if the Alignement does all their research themself! Maybe some not critical research like sensors or computers, things with multiple uses, militaray and civil, could be done by technodyne or any other solarian companies.

I think that anything that gives the MA an edge would never be built or researched outside the onion.

Maldorian wrote:
As he'd told Gail, he'd always relized that something like Darius Gamma had to exist, if only to build the warships towards which so much of their research had been directed. (Shadow of Victory e-ARC, Kindle edition, loc. 13777)


So he's a physicist, and works on the MAlign's warships, but not on the weapons. Again, that leads me to believe that he works on the spider drive.


It is possible that he work on the spider drive, but it is also possible, that he is an expert for the cloaking device , or sensors, computers, or, or........

I wonder if the Alignement does all their research themself! Maybe some not critical research like sensors or computers, things with multiple uses, militaray and civil, could be done by technodyne or any other solarian companies.

I think that anything that gives the MA an edge would never be built or researched outside the onion.

I am not talking about targeting computers or else. I am talking about computer chips for targeting computers, maybe super sharp holoscreens. Things that doesn´t matter if someone else used it (holosreens) or that is so specific that the researcher doesn´t know for what it is.

kzt wrote:R^2 kills you. You have to know where it is to get enough energy back to find it. And the return is light speed, so at a light minute you low where it was a minute ago and you missiles will take x minutes to get there, so no, not going to work.

Readers should recall that radar is 1/R^4, not 1/R^2 .

Maldorian wrote:It is possible that he work on the spider drive, but it is also possible, that he is an expert for the cloaking device , or sensors, computers, or, or........

Well, he is a physicist so he probably doesn't work on the computers but he might well work on the theoretical underpinnings of the warships' sensors or whatever they use for stealth, sure.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Potato wrote:Why do you think they do not have alpha nodes?

While it's not specifically stated they do not have alpha nodes, it is specifically stated that they lack inertial compensators. They rely on the internal gravity plates to counteract acceleration and could not survive using gravity waves even if they could generate sails.

It takes a little extrapolation, but RFC established that the shape of the Warshawki-equipped ships is determined by the nodes, and the need for them to have a certain geometrical relationship to each other.

Spider Drive ships are noted as looking "wrong", the hull-form is incompatible with the nodes and wedges/sails.

Have a feeling it might have been AAC, when the Spider Drive ships were first described in detail.

Potato wrote:Why do you think they do not have alpha nodes?

Galactic Sapper wrote:While it's not specifically stated they do not have alpha nodes, it is specifically stated that they lack inertial compensators. They rely on the internal gravity plates to counteract acceleration and could not survive using gravity waves even if they could generate sails.

WLBjork wrote:It takes a little extrapolation, but RFC established that the shape of the Warshawki-equipped ships is determined by the nodes, and the need for them to have a certain geometrical relationship to each other.

Spider Drive ships are noted as looking "wrong", the hull-form is incompatible with the nodes and wedges/sails.

Have a feeling it might have been AAC, when the Spider Drive ships were first described in detail.

I found two descriptions of spider drive ships; one in chapter 40 of Storm from the Shadows and the other in chapter 28 of Mission of Honor (the most recent book that I am able to search). But remember that I do not have information on the full up warships they were building, only on the scouts that had to transported in freighters. I find it difficult to believe that the Lenny Dets will need to be transported when operational.

I did search the forum for spider and checked to see what RFC had written, but found no mention of the capabilities of the Lenny Dets; so need to repeat that it would make no sense to build a normal sized warship that needed to be transported through hyperspace. With regard to that; the shape of a regular warship is determined by the wedge, not by sails. It has been proved earlier in this thread that in hyper the inertial compensator can use the sails (obvious when you think about it, since that is all you have): see the post by Vince at the end of page 2.
So the Lenny Det can have an inertial compensator for use in hyperspace, provided that it can generate sails. Do not judge what a Lenny Det can do based on what we have seen from the scout vessels.

tlb wrote:I found two descriptions of spider drive ships; one in chapter 40 of Storm from the Shadows and the other in chapter 28 of Mission of Honor (the most recent book that I am able to search). But remember that I do not have information on the full up warships they were building, only on the scouts that had to transported in freighters. I find it difficult to believe that the Lenny Dets will need to be transported when operational.

I did search the forum for spider and checked to see what RFC had written, but found no mention of the capabilities of the Lenny Dets; so need to repeat that it would make no sense to build a normal sized warship that needed to be transported through hyperspace. With regard to that; the shape of a regular warship is determined by the wedge, not by sails. It has been proved earlier in this thread that in hyper the inertial compensator can use the sails (obvious when you think about it, since that is all you have): see the post by Vince at the end of page 2.
So the Lenny Det can have an inertial compensator for use in hyperspace, provided that it can generate sails. Do not judge what a Lenny Det can do based on what we have seen from the scout vessels.

A few little things.
First just a clarifying reminder that most of hyperspace is rifts between grav waves. Spider ships can unquestionably travel in those areas using their spider drive. Sails are only needed in wormholes and grav waves. IF a Lenny Det can generate sails that opens up more routes, but even if they can’t they can still (carefully) use most of hyperspace.

Second IIRC RFC did once post basically “what makes you think a Lennard Detwiller-class can’t use a wormhole?” That hints that likely they can produce sails using some kind of Alpha node.

However that doesn’t necessarily imply they carry a compensator. AFAIK there’s no need for a compensator to go through a wormhole. And remember how sharply acceleration a compensator can handle falls off once you exceed 8.5 megatons. A Lenny Det might be massive enough that, even with the roughly 10x acceleration advantage a grav wave gives over a wedge, a compensator can’t give better acceleration that she can manage on her grav plates - so why waste the space. (That’s why AFAIK there’s no reason to put a compensator on a fort even though it can move slowly under a wedge. A standard grav plate gives better results at that mass)

tlb wrote:I did search the forum for spider and checked to see what RFC had written, but found no mention of the capabilities of the Lenny Dets; so need to repeat that it would make no sense to build a normal sized warship that needed to be transported through hyperspace. With regard to that; the shape of a regular warship is determined by the wedge, not by sails. It has been proved earlier in this thread that in hyper the inertial compensator can use the sails (obvious when you think about it, since that is all you have): see the post by Vince at the end of page 2.
So the Lenny Det can have an inertial compensator for use in hyperspace, provided that it can generate sails. Do not judge what a Lenny Det can do based on what we have seen from the scout vessels.

Jonathan_S wrote:A few little things.
First just a clarifying reminder that most of hyperspace is rifts between grav waves. Spider ships can unquestionably travel in those areas using their spider drive. Sails are only needed in wormholes and grav waves. IF a Lenny Det can generate sails that opens up more routes, but even if they can’t they can still (carefully) use most of hyperspace.

Second IIRC RFC did once post basically “what makes you think a Lennard Detwiller-class can’t use a wormhole?” That hints that likely they can produce sails using some kind of Alpha node.

However that doesn’t necessarily imply they carry a compensator. AFAIK there’s no need for a compensator to go through a wormhole. And remember how sharply acceleration a compensator can handle falls off once you exceed 8.5 megatons. A Lenny Det might be massive enough that, even with the roughly 10x acceleration advantage a grav wave gives over a wedge, a compensator can’t give better acceleration that she can manage on her grav plates - so why waste the space. (That’s why AFAIK there’s no reason to put a compensator on a fort even though it can move slowly under a wedge. A standard grav plate gives better results at that mass)

You are right, but until RFC/MaxxQ give us more information on the Leonard Detweiler class we will not know what design decisions were made.
You are also right that it depends upon the mass, there are remarks that the spider drive does not have a weight limitation.

Peregrinator wrote:

Maldorian wrote:It is possible that he work on the spider drive, but it is also possible, that he is an expert for the cloaking device , or sensors, computers, or, or........

Well, he is a physicist so he probably doesn't work on the computers but he might well work on the theoretical underpinnings of the warships' sensors or whatever they use for stealth, sure.

Keep in mind that learning SOME things about a technological advance can provide a huge number of hints about others. For example, if he knows what the propulsion system is, it would not be nearly as difficult to find a way to track it.

Spider drives are not cloaked; they work in different ways from the regular ones being used. Honor used a trick like that in the Battle of Cerberus.

If you know what to look for, it is far easier to find it. Also, it could cut years off development time to reverse engineer the drives and perhaps use them on MAlign ships.

Maldorian wrote:It is possible that he work on the spider drive, but it is also possible, that he is an expert for the cloaking device , or sensors, computers, or, or........

Peregrinator wrote:Well, he is a physicist so he probably doesn't work on the computers but he might well work on the theoretical underpinnings of the warships' sensors or whatever they use for stealth, sure.

ldwechsler wrote:Keep in mind that learning SOME things about a technological advance can provide a huge number of hints about others. For example, if he knows what the propulsion system is, it would not be nearly as difficult to find a way to track it.

Spider drives are not cloaked; they work in different ways from the regular ones being used. Honor used a trick like that in the Battle of Cerberus.

If you know what to look for, it is far easier to find it. Also, it could cut years off development time to reverse engineer the drives and perhaps use them on MAlign ships.

Reverse engineering works better, I believe, if you have a sample of the technology and work out what and why it does what it does. Having the ideas of how it might work and producing a functional model is more an example of normal engineering.
But in any case, the Malign engineers who know exactly what it is and how it works can only barely detect it in operation. Perhaps by having an idea of how it might work the GA scientists could come up with a radically new way to detect it, like the Graysons did with their compensator design.