Wormhole Assault: MA Style

cthia wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I knew the probes did not mount sails. But I wasn't sure about a hypergenerator, even a small one. That's why I asked.

The text also shows the probes survived, without sail, up until the point of the wormhole interface. That means it survived in the transit lane.

That part seems intuitive. The probe survived right up until the moment it hits a wall - a wall of focused grav waves - the point where the transit lane begins to bite.

I suppose it is a fair question of whether simply a hyper generator can at least get objects to transit, but not survive. In which case the exit lane at the destination would simply spew out debris?



P.S. We are beginning to be slack again about attributes. A few times in this thread and elsewhere. We should all be experts by now.

Jonathan_S wrote:Actually the text only says the probes don't mount a hyper generator. I couldn't find anything that said one way of the other about them mounting sails.

And what I termed the transit lane "bite" is when ships first have to transition to sail because it's the point the transit lane's grav strength just become high enough for the sail to provide thrust (and stabilizatino). WoH says the probes were destroyed when they reached the "interface of the terminus itself". I presume that's the point near/at which ships have to transit into the wormhole; which in the case of the Junction seems to be about 90,000 km down the lane from the point they have to transition to sails.

So from that text it appears that the probes survived crossing at least some of the lane (though it's possible that a ship under sail launched them from much closer to the interface than the far end of the lane; or maybe they were launched in from the side where they'd have to cover less grav turbulent area, or maybe they do have a sail to stabilize them. We just don't know)

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:A ship cannot survive in hyper without sails, nor a canoe without a paddle, nor a surfer without a board. A ship cannot enter hyper without a hyper generator. Yet, textev gives us a point where the transit lane begins to bite. "Bite," as my guess, is when the intensity of the grav waves becomes formidable (akin to a jetfighter reaching the correct speed for liftoff).

You probably just misspoke - but ships can absolutely survive in hyper just fine without sails. They just need to avoid grav waves. (Which is how exploration ships exploited hyper for about 5 centuries prior to the invention of the Warshawski sail in 1273 PD)

Hence how the Manticore Trust, when they launched the sub-light colony ship Jason (about 50 years after then invention of the first hyper drive), already had first hand data exploration data on the Manticore system planets. One of those very early hyper capable (but pre-sail) scout ships had visited the system, performed an initial survey, and then the system with survey data was sold to a prospective colony expedition. (But Jason herself wouldn't reach Manticore for about 6.5 centuries)

But you're right that you can't enter hyper without a hyper generator. (Though, as we've seen, it doesn't have to be a hyper generator aboard your ship; a ship in close formation could extend its hyper field and bring you with it into hyper. Or a larger hyper ship could bring along some externally docked smaller hyper capable ships; using only the larger ship's hyper generator)

cthia wrote:Not that I know one way or the other, but personally I wouldn't guess that the probe was launched from the side, possibly entering the turbulence at a perpendicular angle. I would imagine that would destroy it immediately. But I'm only guessing. In the raging rapids, a canoe must "merge" with the waves as a car merges with traffic to keep from capsizing. Or a sailboat. As I always envisioned ships do when entering the WH. I always imagine ships must have some forward velocity when the sails catches the waves, but, I could certainly be wrong. I certainly favor your explanation even better.

To be fair to that notion Jonathan, I suppose a ship's bearing could be outside the lane, thus launching from the general direction of "the side." And also have an angle a lot less than perpendicular. But if we take into consideration that the lane is wide enough to fit a mass transit in parallel, then that angle is not going to be optimal, as far as encountering the least amount of turbulence from the interaction with the waves. Think of the proper angle of reentry of Earth's atmosphere by spacecraft.

Another problem is that the turbulence is a very big area near the WH. If the transit lane alone is wide enough to stack a mass transit in parallel, the rest of the turbulent zone has to be many more additional lanes across. Only the most accommodating zones are used for transit. Which implies that a probe launched from "the side" may not only have to hit the turbulence zone at a dangerous angle, but it most likely has to cross many more lanes - in this multi-lane hwy - to get to the transit lane. Lanes that are much more dangerous to cross, even for properly equipped ships.

It may even have to cross the outbound (exit) lane, where it has to head down a one way street into "traffic." Traffic being outbound grav waves. Like a baby salmon swimming upstream.

War of Honor Ch.34 wrote:Nothing smaller than a starship could mount a hyper generator, and only something with a hyper generator could hope to pass through a wormhole junction terminus. The scientists' probes had reported faithfully right up to the moment they encountered the interface of the terminus itself, at which point they had simply ceased to exist.

Sounds like confirmation that after a Spider in a nest has pounced on its prey, it can indeed use the terminus for vehicular suicide to ensure there is nothing left of it but constituent atoms.

Wiki wrote:The sail was an adaptation of the usual gravitic node used in the impeller drive. It was an extended force field at the bow and stern of a starship perpendicular to the axis of the ship. It served as a way to control the forces which gravity waves produced in hyperspace and thus greatly increase safety. It extended several hundred of kilometers and coruscated colorfully with the energies it handled. The sail was ineffective in normal space, but invaluable in hyperspace. Additionally, the sail could tap into the large energy fluxes in hyperspace and so provide enough power to essentially run the entire ship during its time in hyperspace. This reduced fuel expense considerably, making star transport, even of large masses, economically feasible.

1. Does textev say anywhere what percentage of nominal power that actually is? What percentage of power does a warship have while in the transit lane?

2. Is it possible that a Spider in hyperspace can actually tap into more of that energy and have an advantage in hyperspace combat?

3. I recall crash translations in storyline. Is it possible to carry a maximum amount of speed thru the junction?

Do forgive late edit.

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cthia wrote:1. Does textev say anywhere what percentage of nominal power that actually is? What percentage of power does a warship have while in the transit lane?

I don't think that's said anywhere. All we know is the section you highlighted above: in a grav wave, the sail can generate more power than the ship needs. But I don't see how this could help in any way, since the ship isn't supposed to stay long in the transit lane. Or the exit lane, for that matter. So it may generate a lot of power, but not a lot of energy.

2. Is it possible that a Spider in hyperspace can actually tap into more of that power and have an advantage in hyperspace battles?

Unknown. But I don't think it matters because a ship in a grav wave must have a sail or it will be destroyed. If it has a sail, then it has energy, power and propulsion. The spider is irrelevant.

Or are you asking if a spider could replace the sail and therefore render the ship undetectable? If that's what you're asking, we have no answer, but I'd speculate the answer is "no we'd have been told if it could."

3. I recall crash translations in storyline. Is it possible to carry a maximum amount of speed thru the junction?

Junction transitions are not translations. So we don't have data to say for sure. We do know that all ships transiting do so very slowly and they must time the raising of their sails very well. From that, I speculate that there is as speed limit.

I mean, computers and AI could probably time it down to the nanosecond, but HV lore says that this isn't automated a lot... despite RFC saying that there are AIs and they do a lot of the heavy lifting in running the ship.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:1. Does textev say anywhere what percentage of nominal power that actually is? What percentage of power does a warship have while in the transit lane?

I don't think that's said anywhere. All we know is the section you highlighted above: in a grav wave, the sail can generate more power than the ship needs. But I don't see how this could help in any way, since the ship isn't supposed to stay long in the transit lane. Or the exit lane, for that matter. So it may generate a lot of power, but not a lot of energy.

2. Is it possible that a Spider in hyperspace can actually tap into more of that power and have an advantage in hyperspace battles?

Unknown. But I don't think it matters because a ship in a grav wave must have a sail or it will be destroyed. If it has a sail, then it has energy, power and propulsion. The spider is irrelevant.

Or are you asking if a spider could replace the sail and therefore render the ship undetectable? If that's what you're asking, we have no answer, but I'd speculate the answer is "no we'd have been told if it could."

3. I recall crash translations in storyline. Is it possible to carry a maximum amount of speed thru the junction?

Junction transitions are not translations. So we don't have data to say for sure. We do know that all ships transiting do so very slowly and they must time the raising of their sails very well. From that, I speculate that there is as speed limit.

I mean, computers and AI could probably time it down to the nanosecond, but HV lore says that this isn't automated a lot... despite RFC saying that there are AIs and they do a lot of the heavy lifting in running the ship.

In my opinion, the passage seems to imply that only nominal power is available in hyperspace. Enough power to "run" the ship, but not necessarily enough to "fight" the ship, i.e., an extended energy weapons engagement. If that is the case then perhaps the nature of the Spider - seemingly more naturally designed to handle gravity - may have an energy budget advantage in hyperspace. Just a thought.

And of course, I wonder if a sitting duck in the lane has enough power on tap to fire energy weapons.

If a computer can handle micro-millisecond transit time differences between ships in a mass transit, I don't see why it couldn't time the sails perfectly of a ship at speed during transit, allowing the ship to carry a lot of velocity upon exit. This unexpected velocity may catch defenders off balance. And since transits are instantaneous, nausea may be nonexistent in this case.

cthia wrote:In my opinion, the passage seems to imply that only nominal power is available in hyperspace. Enough power to "run" the ship, but not necessarily enough to "fight" the ship, i.e., an extended energy weapons engagement. If that is the case then perhaps the nature of the Spider - seemingly more naturally designed to handle gravity - may have an energy budget advantage in hyperspace. Just a thought.

And of course, I wonder if a sitting duck in the lane has enough power on tap to fire energy weapons.

If a computer can handle micro-millisecond transit time differences between ships in a mass transit, I don't see why it couldn't time the sails perfectly of a ship at speed during transit, allowing the ship to carry a lot of velocity upon exit. This unexpected velocity may catch defenders off balance. And since transits are instantaneous, nausea may be nonexistent in this case.

We've no evidence that a spider drive's overpowered tractor beam can harvest power from a grav wave like a sail can, or from the hyperwall like a wedge can (though the wedge seems to only use that extra power to accelerate; unlike a sail it doesn't seem to be able to feed excess electricity back into the ship).

OTOH from a combat perspective I'm not sure it matters. Warships routinely carry at least one extra reactor (giving them somewhere between 25-100% more power generation than required), so they can remain combat effective despite battle damage. Presumably the Lenny Det designers didn't forgo that basic requirement; and thus when they're undamaged they'd already be capable of producing more power than they can consume. An additional energy source might save them some fuel, but it wouldn't let them expend any more energy.


The only possible advantage I can see is if the spider can harvest energy and it's more efficient at doing so than a fusion reactor then, and only then using it instead of the ship's fusion reactors would produce less waste heat and thereby reduce the thermal signature you have to beam out the stealth hole in the stealth field.


OTOH to do so while hiding at the ranges you've been suggesting in this thread means having an active drive at well inside energy range; when the MAlign knows they can detect their drive at 6 times energy range. Having the drive on is probably a bigger hit to stealth than any thermal savings you might theoretically get from siphoning power from hyper instead of ramping up your reactors.

A ship in a wormhole transit lane has all the power available to it from its reactors- minus what the usual environmental and other normal systems are using. In Shadow of Saganami, Hexapuma is initially accelerating at 15g and later 25g just before entering the threshold of the wormhole It's sails are rigged at that point but it wasn't slamming along under 150+ g acceleration. They are using "enough" to keep the ship running normally and the sails functioning (the impellers are now not providing thrust).
That doesn't count whatever is in various capacitors for energy mounts, defense systems and things powered up related to the missile systems in normal course of crusing.
And, once through the wormhole and having unrigged the sails and put the impellers back on-line, they still have the compleat capaistiy of their power systems.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:In my opinion, the passage seems to imply that only nominal power is available in hyperspace. Enough power to "run" the ship, but not necessarily enough to "fight" the ship, i.e., an extended energy weapons engagement. If that is the case then perhaps the nature of the Spider - seemingly more naturally designed to handle gravity - may have an energy budget advantage in hyperspace. Just a thought.

And of course, I wonder if a sitting duck in the lane has enough power on tap to fire energy weapons.

If a computer can handle micro-millisecond transit time differences between ships in a mass transit, I don't see why it couldn't time the sails perfectly of a ship at speed during transit, allowing the ship to carry a lot of velocity upon exit. This unexpected velocity may catch defenders off balance. And since transits are instantaneous, nausea may be nonexistent in this case.

We've no evidence that a spider drive's overpowered tractor beam can harvest power from a grav wave like a sail can, or from the hyperwall like a wedge can (though the wedge seems to only use that extra power to accelerate; unlike a sail it doesn't seem to be able to feed excess electricity back into the ship).

OTOH from a combat perspective I'm not sure it matters. Warships routinely carry at least one extra reactor (giving them somewhere between 25-100% more power generation than required), so they can remain combat effective despite battle damage. Presumably the Lenny Det designers didn't forgo that basic requirement; and thus when they're undamaged they'd already be capable of producing more power than they can consume. An additional energy source might save them some fuel, but it wouldn't let them expend any more energy.


The only possible advantage I can see is if the spider can harvest energy and it's more efficient at doing so than a fusion reactor then, and only then using it instead of the ship's fusion reactors would produce less waste heat and thereby reduce the thermal signature you have to beam out the stealth hole in the stealth field.


OTOH to do so while hiding at the ranges you've been suggesting in this thread means having an active drive at well inside energy range; when the MAlign knows they can detect their drive at 6 times energy range. Having the drive on is probably a bigger hit to stealth than any thermal savings you might theoretically get from siphoning power from hyper instead of ramping up your reactors.

25-100% is too wide a range. It would need to be pinpointed nearly exactly to become useful to the equation. At any rate, if there is an extra reactor for redundancy, it seems that that reactor isn't a factor, or else the entire passage becomes a non sequitur, or even illogical. Unless the extra reactor alone isn't enough to supply power and it is augmented by the sails. At any rate, and again, if the reactor alone is enough, then the passage is illogical.

Is it a given the Spider doesn't have sails? If it isn't, then the Spider may be able to harness power in addition to the sails. The RMN has repeatedly proven what a bloated power budget can do for combat. ECM for the Ghost Rider program. Energy weapons for LACs. I was thinking that if the Spider can gain a significant advantage in hyper, then it could usher in a new age of hyper combat on its own.

I have always assumed that the MA was able to detect the Spider because it knew where and what to look for, with its own tech. And, it knew it was out there.

Not having maps of the WH, I am not certain what ranges a nest would imply. Also, "sneaking in" to a nest can be achieved slowly, in an area that shouldn't be looking for an enemy warship to be. Once in place the drive can be shut down.

Brigade XO wrote:A ship in a wormhole transit lane has all the power available to it from its reactors- minus what the usual environmental and other normal systems are using. In Shadow of Saganami, Hexapuma is initially accelerating at 15g and later 25g just before entering the threshold of the wormhole It's sails are rigged at that point but it wasn't slamming along under 150+ g acceleration. They are using "enough" to keep the ship running normally and the sails functioning (the impellers are now not providing thrust).
That doesn't count whatever is in various capacitors for energy mounts, defense systems and things powered up related to the missile systems in normal course of crusing.
And, once through the wormhole and having unrigged the sails and put the impellers back on-line, they still have the compleat capaistiy of their power systems.

Good point, and I understand that. I am just not sure it is a given for whatever reason. Or else why would a ship need to rely on harnessing more energy from the sails while in hyper?

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:We've no evidence that a spider drive's overpowered tractor beam can harvest power from a grav wave like a sail can, or from the hyperwall like a wedge can (though the wedge seems to only use that extra power to accelerate; unlike a sail it doesn't seem to be able to feed excess electricity back into the ship).

OTOH from a combat perspective I'm not sure it matters. Warships routinely carry at least one extra reactor (giving them somewhere between 25-100% more power generation than required), so they can remain combat effective despite battle damage. Presumably the Lenny Det designers didn't forgo that basic requirement; and thus when they're undamaged they'd already be capable of producing more power than they can consume. An additional energy source might save them some fuel, but it wouldn't let them expend any more energy.


The only possible advantage I can see is if the spider can harvest energy and it's more efficient at doing so than a fusion reactor then, and only then using it instead of the ship's fusion reactors would produce less waste heat and thereby reduce the thermal signature you have to beam out the stealth hole in the stealth field.


OTOH to do so while hiding at the ranges you've been suggesting in this thread means having an active drive at well inside energy range; when the MAlign knows they can detect their drive at 6 times energy range. Having the drive on is probably a bigger hit to stealth than any thermal savings you might theoretically get from siphoning power from hyper instead of ramping up your reactors.

25-100% is too wide a range. It would need to be pinpointed nearly exactly to become useful to the equation. At any rate, if there is an extra reactor for redundancy, it seems that that reactor isn't a factor, or else the entire passage becomes a non sequitur, or even illogical. Unless the extra reactor alone isn't enough to supply power and it is augmented by the sails. At any rate, and again, if the reactor alone is enough, then the passage is illogical.

The point of the passage is that you can save fuel by throttling down your reactors and drawing power instead from the sails. That generally a good thing; delays need to refuel and running the reactors at lower output should give longer intervals before maintenance. Plus if the ship normally cruised on 2 reactors you could potentially shut one down entirely.

Somewhere I seem to recall the text saying that sometimes merchants even shut down their sole reactor while in a wave; drawing 100% of their power from the sails. But warships weren't normally willing to do that.

Plus ships are almost never at combat within the grav wave so their power demands while cruising are far below their maximum combat power demands.


But that 25% - 100% range can't be narrowed down; as it varies by warship size and design. The drastic variation is driving by the apparent inability to economically scale their GRAVMAK reactors down below a certain peak output. So in OBS

On Basilisk Station Ch. 31 wrote:Fearless could move and fight on a single reactor. She only had two for the security of redundancy, and that was also why they were at opposite ends of the hull

DDs and CLs have more excess power because they can't mount 1.25 reactors; and it isn't efficient to swap out 2 reactors for 3 of half the output (which would give better redundancy but less of a silly amount of excess power available). One starship reactor is plenty of power for anything they need; but they need at least one spare for redundancy and so end up with 100% excess power generation.

Actually I'd forgotten, but the Star Knights, like the 2nd Fearless were even more redundant than that!

Short Victorious War Ch. 6 wrote:Like Honor's last ship, Nike had three fusion plants, yet her energy requirements were huge compared to a heavy cruiser's. HMS Fearless could have operated on a single plant, but Nike needed at least two, which gave her only one backup.

So apparently the Star Knight CAs had 3 reactors and with 2 there just for redundancy (so seemingly 200% excess power!!). For what it's worth SITS (don't have my Jayne's handy) gives all the other listed CAs just 2 reactors: Manticore's Warrior, Broadsword, Crusader, & Prince Consort classes; Haven's Sword, Mars A, & Mars B classes; and Silesia's Telmach & Jarmon classes)

SITS in fact says "One of the most controversial design choices is the installation of a third reactor as opposed to the normal two found on most ship of this size. While there are benefits in redundancy, only a single reactor is required to power the ship and the additional volume could have been used to mount a heavier broadside."


The far larger Reliance class BC Nike carried only 3 but needed 2 giving her just 50% redundancy. DNs and SDs carry 5 reactors, but I think they need 4 of them to be fully combat operational so I believe they're only able to produce ~25% excess power.


So you can see why the excess power varied so much, with mostly the smaller ships that need less power ending up with massive surpluses. Because they needed at least one extra reactor for redundancy; but there weren't lower output reactors capable of letting a DD - CA mount several smaller reactors instead of a pair each capable of independently powering the entire ship.

A Lenny Det, as a truly massive ship, is presumably on the lower end of the excess power range, as 1 excess reactor seems to be the norm but if a (much smaller) SD normally carries 5 then an LD might carry 6 or 7. If only one of those is fully redundant then it might "only" have the ability to produce 16-20% more power than it can consume. But that's rampant speculation.
(In no small part because we don't know what the power draw and/or power siphon for the spider drive is (or the power demands for the overpowered grav plates). If its propulsion is far more power hungry than a wedge then it might have lots more reactors than a conventional warship; we've simply no way to make even an informed guess.

cthia wrote:Good point, and I understand that. I am just not sure it is a given for whatever reason. Or else why would a ship need to rely on harnessing more energy from the sails while in hyper?

It doesn't "need to" it "gets to"; to be more cost effective.
Here's a related quote from MtH

More Than Honor: The Universe of Honor Harrington - (I) Background wrote:Not only that, but the interface between sail and natural grav wave produced an eddy of preposterously high energy levels which could be "siphoned off" to power the starship. Effectively, once a starship "set sail" it drew sufficient power to maintain and trim its sails and also for every other energy requirement and could thus shut down its onboard power plants until the time came to leave hyper-space. A Warshawski Sail hypership thus had no need for reaction mass, required very little fuel mass, and could sustain high rates of acceleration indefinitely, which meant that the velocity loss associated with "cracking the wall" between hyper bands could be regained and that use of the upper bands was no longer impractical.

As you can see, the power generated by the sail isn't needed in addition to the output of its fusion plant(s); it can be used instead of its fusion plant(s); allowing for very cost effective cruises of extreme distances.

(Though I seem to recall it mentioned elsewhere that a warship would normally keep at least one fusion reactor active; even when under sail, for redundancy and in case of emergencies)