Did the MBS corner the market on trade?

tlb wrote:You are wrong about not being able to move, because forts can move.

Galactic Sapper wrote:The thing would not be able to move under its own power, or even be towed, at greater than whatever it's grav plates could compensate.

The second half of that sentence was included for a reason.

There's a reason Manticore builds modular forts to assemble on site rather than building forts that can then be carried through the junction with something even larger. Forts are just not built with Alpha nodes (probably) and a hyperdrive generator (definitely).

Both are definitely missing, as the only two uses for alpha nodes are in a grav wave and during a wormhole transit and both of those require a hyper generator.

But grav plates just limit the max acceleration, not the max size. An SD need not be the largest hyper capable vessel. We are not completely sure how big the Leonard Detweiler clas is going to be. The Pearls even make a brief mention that not all cargo ships have compensators, but do not mention if that is due to size or cost. It is possible that the forts were built in modules, because they wanted to use existing cargo ships; not necessarily because they could not build a transporter.

Galactic Sapper wrote:What's missing here is that the compensated level of acceleration changes in a grav wave. Your grav plate ships would be accelerating at 50g at max even in a wave, while the conventional ships competing with it would be rocketing away at 5000+g.

Galactic Sapper wrote:What's missing here is that the compensated level of acceleration changes in a grav wave. Your grav plate ships would be accelerating at 50g at max even in a wave, while the conventional ships competing with it would be rocketing away at 5000+g.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Can you control the grav wave acceleration in the first place? That is, can you give it a smaller sail or tack the wave or something?

How do compensators compensate 5000 gravities?

Or maybe this is like aeroplanes' air speed: ground speed is irrelevant, only the speed against the surrounding air is relevant. So the acceleration is measured against something not in the wave, but locally nothing changes. That way, both compensator and grav-plate ships can accelerate equally when entering a grav wave.

cthia wrote:I wonder if it would be practical to couple freighters together, like triple-trailored semis. That way, you'd only pay for one transit. It should be cheaper.

Someone is always trying to buck the system.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I wonder if it would be practical to couple freighters together, like triple-trailored semis. That way, you'd only pay for one transit. It should be cheaper.

Someone is always trying to buck the system.

No - not coupled together. That'd make the geometry all wrong.

Now if Astro Control will allow it you could do a simultaneous transit. It's riskier than a solo transit, and takes some more preparation, but it's not that risky.

Mind you they'd probably still charge you per ship so it wouldn't help.

Also it doesn't help with transit times. Even if we take a pair of small 4.5 mton ships (around the size of the JNMTC fast freighters Honor was escorting during 'In Enemy Hands') their minimum transit time normally would be 125 seconds (32.5 second lockdown each + 60 second minimum permitted separation). If they instead did a simultaneous transit their combined 9 mtons would lock the route down for 129.6 seconds.
(And of course most freighters are larger than that, which makes the time impact even worse)

George J. Smith wrote:I would think the 60 second gap between transits would normally include the lockdown period, at least for ships of a size which would not result in a longer lockdown period.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:What's missing here is that the compensated level of acceleration changes in a grav wave. Your grav plate ships would be accelerating at 50g at max even in a wave, while the conventional ships competing with it would be rocketing away at 5000+g.

Can you control the grav wave acceleration in the first place? That is, can you give it a smaller sail or tack the wave or something?

How do compensators compensate 5000 gravities?

Or maybe this is like aeroplanes' air speed: ground speed is irrelevant, only the speed against the surrounding air is relevant. So the acceleration is measured against something not in the wave, but locally nothing changes. That way, both compensator and grav-plate ships can accelerate equally when entering a grav wave.

On Basilisk Station wrote:Honor bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, but somehow she kept the sickness from her face. Fearless had just dropped to half power, which was bad enough, but the loss of the alpha node could be disaster. Despite the loss in acceleration, she was continuing to close the range on Sirius, if more slowly, for her velocity was almost fifteen hundred KPS higher than the Q-ship's. But Sirius was now out-accelerating her by almost 1.5 KPS2. Unless Santos could restore the forward nodes, the range would start opening up again in less than seventeen minutes.

Yet that was the least of Honor's worries. She stared into the visual display, watching it sparkle and flash as Fearless's over-strained point defense beat aside the missiles coming in at shorter and shorter intervals, and fought her despair.

Without the alpha node, Fearless couldn't reconfigure her forward impellers for Warshawski sail. If Sirius broke through into hyper space and reached the Tellerman, she would run away from Fearless at over ten times the cruiser's maximum acceleration...and Honor couldn't follow her into the wave on impellers alone, anyway.

She had forty-three minutes to destroy the Q-ship; otherwise, it had all been for nothing.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I wonder if it would be practical to couple freighters together, like triple-trailored semis. That way, you'd only pay for one transit. It should be cheaper.

Someone is always trying to buck the system.

No - not coupled together. That'd make the geometry all wrong.

Now if Astro Control will allow it you could do a simultaneous transit. It's riskier than a solo transit, and takes some more preparation, but it's not that risky.

Mind you they'd probably still charge you per ship so it wouldn't help.

Also it doesn't help with transit times. Even if we take a pair of small 4.5 mton ships (around the size of the JNMTC fast freighters Honor was escorting during 'In Enemy Hands') their minimum transit time normally would be 120 seconds (they'd each lock it down for 32.5 seconds, but the Junction has a 60 second separation as a minimum permitted interval). If they instead did a simultaneous transit their combined 9 mtons would lock the route down for 129.6 seconds.

(And of course most freighters are larger than that, which makes the time impact even worse)

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:No - not coupled together. That'd make the geometry all wrong.

Now if Astro Control will allow it you could do a simultaneous transit. It's riskier than a solo transit, and takes some more preparation, but it's not that risky.

Mind you they'd probably still charge you per ship so it wouldn't help.

Also it doesn't help with transit times. Even if we take a pair of small 4.5 mton ships (around the size of the JNMTC fast freighters Honor was escorting during 'In Enemy Hands') their minimum transit time normally would be 120 seconds (they'd each lock it down for 32.5 seconds, but the Junction has a 60 second separation as a minimum permitted interval). If they instead did a simultaneous transit their combined 9 mtons would lock the route down for 129.6 seconds.

(And of course most freighters are larger than that, which makes the time impact even worse)

Geometry all wrong? Like an ugly monstrosity trying to prevent wedge fratricide? It would only be for a short time. Linked up just prior to transiting.

But. If it COULD be accomplished, Manticore would have to allow it if it could be effected in the same time-frame as one transit. And it should be cheaper, saving the cost of a transit. It should also help the MBS move more traffic as well.