In light of a possible on-rush of newer posters, I want to ask again if we want to place a sticki topic of "Dead-Horse" subjects to point newbs to. I brought this up before, and it want no where - several people thought it was a good idea, but no one wanted to assist and we even argued whether some items (Like the recently mentioned Corvette) should be on the list.
If we did such a list, the first post should have a explanation that this is a list of long-discussed dead-horse topics, any new readers are recommended to find out more on any subject by going to the Pearls (with a link), or by searching the Forum, and it is recommended to do so before posting on the board. below would be the list of "Major Dead-horse topics" and a list to individual posts on the subjects. the topic should be locked so it stays nice and clean.
While we were discussing it, I wrote up drafts for a couple posts - like the one everyone can agree on - The Weapon That Should Never Be Named - The Grav Lance.
Conversation Topic: Grav Lances - aka The Weapon That Should Never Be Named (TWTSNBN)
Common Post: Posters are positing new uses for a Grav Lances or advanced Grav Lances
Discussion Outcome: David has been inundated by so many ideas for Grav Lances over the years that the device has pretty much been dropped from the series.
The use of the Grav Lance on the Courageous was not new, the device already had existed for years and normally was installed on Capital ships which had the spare mass to carry a system like the Grav Lance which had little chance of being used. The new concept was to mount it on a small hull, which could turn the ship into a Capital ship killer. In production, this was intended to be a CA, but the only available test bed at the time was the soon to be retired CL, the Courageous. Unfortunately, the tests showed that the idea was a 1 trick pony – after it worked the first time, any possible light ship which looked like it was about to attempt such a maneuver was hammered by every opposing capital ship.
It must be noted, the Grav Lance is not a weapon system. It is an engineering system that uses a ship's wedge to temporarily destabilize and drop the sidewall of an opposing ship. An additional weapons system must then be used to damage/destroy the opposing ship – in the case of the Courageous, this was an array of energy torpedoes, which otherwise would have been useless against sidewalls.
The Grav Lance requires the drive system of a hull of about 85 Ktons at a minimum to function – it cannot work without all the hardware necessary to generate the ship’s wedge. It also has a max range of less than 125,000 KM –less than 1/3 the range of an energy torpedo, 1/4rd the range of Lasers, 1/8th the range of Grasers. Any ship attempting to use them had to survive through missile range and 85% of energy range to do so. In Honorverse Naval terms, this is the equivalent of knife fighting in a (small) coat closet.
Manticorian miniaturization and research since 1900 has not overall affected the above stats. It cannot be placed on a significantly smaller hull, it cannot have a noticeably longer range, it will never do physical damage on its own, it will never drop a warship’s wedge. Manticore did not launch the intended CA class with the Lance, did not install lances in any SD(p) classes and removed the lances from some of the existing capital ship classes in refits over the years as it simply was never used as energy battles became rarer and rarer in combat.
Because of the above, The Grav Lance will never be placed on an economical mine, will never be placed in a reasonably sized missile, and will never be mounted on a LAC. It will never destroy ships on it’s own. It will never have millions of KM’s of range. It probably will never be used in combat again.
Links to David’s Wisdom:
, the Manticore Ascendant series is set in a time before the WH junction was discovered and all times/dates were therefore local to Manticore.