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Re: ?
Post by Duckk   » Thu May 14, 2020 1:25 pm

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The appendix in More Than Honor details the development of various gravitic technologies. Indeed, artificial gravity generation post-dates the compensator by 118 years (1384 vs 1502 PD).
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Re: ?
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Thu May 14, 2020 2:38 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Galactic Sapper wrote:They could use the same grav plate compensation Honor used under reaction thrusters at Cerberus but that would have significant negative effects on crew efficiency while they were moving.
Depends on how fast they're moving. Yes, at 150g the crew is subjected to 5g which will have a negative effect on their efficiency. But IIRC the grav plate's effects are somewhat non-linear and below 50 g I seem to recall that they can hold the felt acceleration to 1g. (And even in the worst case, if their 30x reduction applied linearly, they do could so a 30g and below)

So as long as the forts stick to well under 100 g of acceleration there shouldn't be much, if any, impact on crew efficiency. (And probably not coincidentally we're told that they're restricted to well under 100g of acceleration)

Fair enough point. Looking back at The Universe of Honor Harrington in More than Honor, a compensator is completely ineffective above 10 million tons (9.something, anyway). So all these 20 million ton forts wouldn't bother carrying one.

cthia wrote:Redundancy in compensator design isn't practical because it would still be subject to the technology. Technology operates on a time factor. Any time it would take for the auxillary system to kick in would be way too much.


Correct. Even if they had a backup compensator a 0.01 second delay in activation at 600g means everyone has either already hit a bulkhead (less than 0.3 m away) or is headed at one at better than 200 km/h (greater than 0.3 m away). Or if they were strapped in, their necks snapped as their heads tried to hit the nearest bulkhead without the rest of their body following.
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Re: ?
Post by kzt   » Thu May 14, 2020 2:49 pm

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Duckk wrote:Forts do not have compensators. They rely on grav plates to reduce the felt acceleration, but that limits them to 100-150 Gs

Unless the MAN have started to sell their new grav plates on the open market I think it’s lower than that?
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Re: ?
Post by Duckk   » Thu May 14, 2020 3:00 pm

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MoH describes the limits of the old grav plates versus the Alignment’s improved ones. “Old” grav plate technology is capable of reducing acceleration at better than 99% efficiency such that the felt acceleration is 1 G.
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Re: ?
Post by cthia   » Thu May 14, 2020 6:11 pm

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tlb wrote:
Captain Golding wrote:Is the Position of the Alpha Nodes driven by the geometry of the Wedges or the Sails? When the BC's were broken up for the Patrol Service each half only had a single set of Alpha nodes but could still generate a wedge. 1 Half had a Hypergenerator as well so could travel in Hyperspace as well but we don't know if it could survive a Grav Wave (not local to MC) or a WH (not known about either!).

LAC's don't have W. Sails and are not Hypercapable.

From the Pearls, the Alpha nodes need to be at the very ends to generate sails. But the sails do not otherwise affect the shape of the ship (in my understanding), it is the wedge that places some restrictions on the shape. Also I think one sail is possible, but two give much better control.

I thought the sails had to be located at the ends, which means the Alpha nodes has to follow. Which I presumed is part of what the Captain meant.

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Re: ?
Post by tlb   » Thu May 14, 2020 6:24 pm

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Captain Golding wrote:Is the Position of the Alpha Nodes driven by the geometry of the Wedges or the Sails? When the BC's were broken up for the Patrol Service each half only had a single set of Alpha nodes but could still generate a wedge. 1 Half had a Hypergenerator as well so could travel in Hyperspace as well but we don't know if it could survive a Grav Wave (not local to MC) or a WH (not known about either!).

LAC's don't have W. Sails and are not Hypercapable.

tlb wrote:From the Pearls, the Alpha nodes need to be at the very ends to generate sails.

cthia wrote:I thought the sails had to be located at the ends, which means the Alpha nodes has to follow. Which I presumed is part of what the Captain meant.

Yes, that is my reading of what the Pearls says.
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Re: ?
Post by Joat42   » Thu May 14, 2020 6:25 pm

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cthia wrote:Redundancy in compensator design isn't practical because it would still be subject to the technology. Technology operates on a time factor. Any time it would take for the auxillary system to kick in would be way too much.

If it was possible I guess we would have seen ships with redundant compensators.

But as you say, if it's feasible to have 2 compensators on a ship - if there is even a slight delay in the backup kicking in everything will be subject to 100's of gees for a very short period. I do wonder how meatbags would react to those forces, even for a couple of microseconds.

But it's entirely possible that the physics behind compensators doesn't allow for redundancy.

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Re: ?
Post by tlb   » Thu May 14, 2020 7:12 pm

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cthia wrote:Redundancy in compensator design isn't practical because it would still be subject to the technology. Technology operates on a time factor. Any time it would take for the auxillary system to kick in would be way too much.

Joat42 wrote:If it was possible I guess we would have seen ships with redundant compensators.

But as you say, if it's feasible to have 2 compensators on a ship - if there is even a slight delay in the backup kicking in everything will be subject to 100's of gees for a very short period. I do wonder how meatbags would react to those forces, even for a couple of microseconds.

But it's entirely possible that the physics behind compensators doesn't allow for redundancy.

From earlier in this thread:
Jonathan_S wrote:I don't think a multi-compensator designs been asked about enough to be a dead horse. But RFC has indicated that no you can'd do that. Nor can you stack the effects of compensators and grav plates, not any other tricks anybody's thought to ask to get around the grav plate / compensator limits.

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Re: ?
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Thu May 14, 2020 7:17 pm

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Galactic Sapper wrote:Evidence seems to suggest the compensator is a single unit mounted somewhat centrally similar to the hyper generator. There's never been an incident of a partial compensator failure, where say the bow of a ship failed but the crew in the stern survived. It's always all-or-nothing and can result from relatively minor damage to the ship, such as Kusak's flagship in BoM.

Evidence also suggests it's impossible or at least highly impractical to have any sort of redundancy in the system. If having multiple units provided some sort of protection against the all-or-nothing failure of such a vital system, warships would do it. Even being split fore-and-aft would mean half the crew would survive and be able to continue fighting the ship with remote systems. This doesn't happen, so we have to assume it's a single unit covering the entire ship.


I didn't mean redundancy, as in multiple independent systems that make compensation work. I meant as a single system with distributed emitters throughout the ship. Emitters failing is not a compensator failure. But if the compensator generator / gravity sump accommodator or whatever the central piece is called fails, the entire system fails.

But I don't think that's it, though. Even though we talk about mass, it appears the limit to compensation is volume. If you could have distributed emitters, then volume shouldn't be an issue.
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Re: ?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu May 14, 2020 7:21 pm

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kzt wrote:
Duckk wrote:Forts do not have compensators. They rely on grav plates to reduce the felt acceleration, but that limits them to 100-150 Gs

Unless the MAN have started to sell their new grav plates on the open market I think it’s lower than that?

At Cerburus Honor's little fleet pulled 150g for "half an hour" (to get the velocity and range stated, more like 35 minutes) and the grav plates cut that 30 fold (down to 5g).

Now a fort probably wouldn't be comfortable to ride in at 3 - 5g; so their normal accel is probably lower. But lying down or in a half decent acceleration seat 5g is perfectly survivable.

Still your combat effectiveness is likely impaired since (unlike a fighter jet) they probably wouldn't be optimized for combat under g-load.
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