Wormhole Assault: MA Style

Michael Everett wrote:Just as a note, i believe that the resident Mad Wizard (who sprints for a certain edible salad plant) noted that should a Spidercraft generate a spherical sidewall, the drive would not be able to work through the shield, thus rendering it effectively unable to maneuver.
I don't remember where the thread it was discussed in was, but the idea of multiple and potentially-overlapping or elongated oval-shaped buckler-type shields (bow, stern and between the Drive-areas on each of the three sides) was put forwards on the basis that even relatively small shields are far better than none at all.

I recall storyline pointing out that ships couldn't maneuver with bow and stern walls unless enough space was left open to allow the drive to work?

Surely Forts don't have an inherent weakness when they move, or an invisible enemy with invisible weaponry can easily exploit that. I seem to recall some sort of a similar hiccup with one of the walls deployed on one of the LAC designs. Dunno which.

Dauntless wrote:Sidewalls blunt attacks they are not, even fortress class, impenetrable. only Impeller wedges are impenetrable.

Hit the Spider with the fortress sidewall, assuming that they are willing to make the sacrifices to mount one, with enough firepower, be it laser heads, contact nukes, or grasers SOME of that energy is getting through. The bleed through energy will likely be enough to cause some serious damage.

And the bubble sidewall itself is visible on grav sensors, so - far from being invisible - a spider that activated one would be essentially "decloaking".

Doing that while in the middle of shells of Junction forts, all of which mount equivalent sidewalls and collectively out mass and out gun the spider ship by many dozens of times, is just a quick way to commit suicide. No sidewall can stand up for long to the level of firepower the Junction forts can collectively dish out at short range.


(Admittedly being far weaker that a wedge or sails a bubble sidewall wouldn't be visible from as great a distance. But, in space combat terms, the area of the Junction is tiny. "Both wormholes and stars had hyper limits, within which no ship could enter or leave hyper. For junctions, the limit was, less than a million kilometers" [OBS Ch.5]. The defensive forts are more than 500,000 km from the terminus but still within the Junction's hyper limit; so each fort would be within 2 million km of any point in the entire Junction. Meaning they're close enough they'd definitely see any sidewalls activating within the volume of the Junction's hyper limit)

Jonathan_S wrote:

Dauntless wrote:Sidewalls blunt attacks they are not, even fortress class, impenetrable. only Impeller wedges are impenetrable.

Hit the Spider with the fortress sidewall, assuming that they are willing to make the sacrifices to mount one, with enough firepower, be it laser heads, contact nukes, or grasers SOME of that energy is getting through. The bleed through energy will likely be enough to cause some serious damage.

And the bubble sidewall itself is visible on grav sensors, so - far from being invisible - a spider that activated one would be essentially "decloaking".

Doing that while in the middle of shells of Junction forts, all of which mount equivalent sidewalls and collectively out mass and out gun the spider ship by many dozens of times, is just a quick way to commit suicide. No sidewall can stand up for long to the level of firepower the Junction forts can collectively dish out at short range.


(Admittedly being far weaker that a wedge or sails a bubble sidewall wouldn't be visible from as great a distance. But, in space combat terms, the area of the Junction is tiny. "Both wormholes and stars had hyper limits, within which no ship could enter or leave hyper. For junctions, the limit was, less than a million kilometers" [OBS Ch.5]. The defensive forts are more than 500,000 km from the terminus but still within the Junction's hyper limit; so each fort would be within 2 million km of any point in the entire Junction. Meaning they're close enough they'd definitely see any sidewalls activating within the volume of the Junction's hyper limit)

Thanks. I was wondering about that, because of the discussions in the "...extreme makeover for tv series" thread. Anyway, in a battle against a few warships (while all snug in a nest), an LD sporting a spherical sidewall should tip the scales in its favor quite admirably. Junctions in other systems aren't as solidly defended.

Something has been in the back of my mind for quite some time. It resurfaced during our recent talks in this thread about sails siphoning energy from all of the extra energy found in grav waves.

At any rate, I wondered if that was possible in the midst of battle during our discussions about all of the energy a sidewall must dissipate during attacks. We were discussing how much energy must be released against sidewalls if the RMN starts using orphaned 23-E missiles, dazzlers and dragons teeth as kamakazis. At any rate, instead of dissipating all of that energy, I wonder if it could be harnessed.

Are the sails the only way to collect free energy? And is the free energy in grav waves the only kind of energy that can be collected?

Dauntless wrote:Sidewalls blunt attacks they are not, even fortress class, impenetrable. only Impeller wedges are impenetrable.

Hit the Spider with the fortress sidewall, assuming that they are willing to make the sacrifices to mount one, with enough firepower, be it laser heads, contact nukes, or grasers SOME of that energy is getting through. The bleed through energy will likely be enough to cause some serious damage.

Aye. Most descriptions of sidewalls I recall describe them as attempting to bend incoming fire into the impeller wedges, where they can be spent harmlessly.

I don't believe we've ever seen a spherical sidewall in combat, but it does seem to be seriously inferior to more conventional arrangements, especially with bow/stern walls now closing off the weakest points of less agile wedge-driven vessels.

cthia wrote:I recall storyline pointing out that ships couldn't maneuver with bow and stern walls unless enough space was left open to allow the drive to work?

Surely Forts don't have an inherent weakness when they move, or an invisible enemy with invisible weaponry can easily exploit that. I seem to recall some sort of a similar hiccup with one of the walls deployed on one of the LAC designs. Dunno which.

The throat and kilt of a fort's impeller wedge were as completely open as any other wedge. The sheer mass of these forts meant they couldn't possibly rotate quickly enough to prevent more agile opponents from exploiting those open aspects, especially the wider one.

So they were given bubble sidewalls in case of such circumstances - which also required arming and armouring the ventral and dorsal broadsides as heavily as port/starboard.

cthia wrote:Thanks. I was wondering about that, because of the discussions in the "...extreme makeover for tv series" thread. Anyway, in a battle against a few warships (while all snug in a nest), an LD sporting a spherical sidewall should tip the scales in its favor quite admirably. Junctions in other systems aren't as solidly defended.

Yes, at less defended wormhole (or junctions) a Lenny Det seems like it would have a good chance of sneaking into position to surprise and kill the static defenses, plus prevent anybody from transiting the wormhole with word that it's fallen. At that point, with nothing in-system to threaten it, it could act like a fort and shred any ships making transit.

And if it does have a bubble sidewall, then it can exploit it to remain in its immunity zone (roughly 500,000 to 1,000,000 km) where sidewalls provide complete protection from energy weapons but those same weapons are still effective again targets without sidewalls. At that range from the terminus a newly arrived ship is totally incapable to harming the LD (unless/until it clears the arrival lane and can switch to missile combat and sidewall protection) but is itself vulnerable.

(Though sooner or later word that that terminus has fallen will get out and targets will stop presenting themselves. Then, depending on its importance, a relief force might be dispatched through hyper to regain control of it.)

Jonathan_S wrote: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!!).
[...]

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."

Maybe when she was designed, the designers expected the power requirements over its service lifetime to increase sufficiently to require two reactors to run without having to make compromises. The power requirements will invariably increase, with more powerful lasers, grasers, and ECM. Experience over the last few decades would have told the RMN how much power increased for ships and they might have estimated that the Star Knight was too close to that limit. For example, 10% every decade, and if a single reactor could power everything installed on the HMS Star Knight running at 85%.

More interesting would be to see if the Saganamis had three reactors too. But this is post-Grayson, so even if they have only two reactors, it might be because the reactor technology improved sufficiently that two sufficed.

Or, they really were expecting a much more power-or energy-intensive system to be installed aboard heavy cruisers, like a weapon. That shall not be named.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:More interesting would be to see if the Saganamis had three reactors too. But this is post-Grayson, so even if they have only two reactors, it might be because the reactor technology improved sufficiently that two sufficed.

Yes, that would be interesting. Unfortunately I can't think of a way to determine that.

The Saganami classes of CAs are too new to be listed in SITS or Jaynes, while HoS omits some details (including power plant info) compared to those older documents. I did skim through its entries on the Sag classes to see if any mentioned their reactors; but without any luck. I also tried a text search of the ebooks for "Fusion Three" to see if it was used in conjunction with any of them also without luck (it only occurs in SVW and then only in reference to Nike's engineering casualty). And finally I searched through the text of the 3 relevant combats I could think of, to see if reactor count or damage was mentioned: HMS Gauntlet (Sag-A), HMS Jessica Epps (Sag-[edit]A[/edit]), and HMS Hexapuma (Sag-C).
Gauntlet mentions Fusion Two being damaged; but nothing I saw that indicates if that's 1/2 or 1/3 of her reactors.

So I've come up with nothing. (Though by Sag-C, at over 50% larger than an SK, I wouldn't be surprised if 2 reactors were now required to cover combat loads; and so a 3rd would be needed to achieve any redundancy)


Oh, and I should have checked HoS for the Star Knight before this. It also mentions the controversy in the quote from SITS; and provides some additional details.

House of Steel: Star Knight-class heavy cruiser wrote:Despite this class’ exemplary performance compared to its contemporaries, combat experience has shown that insufficient volume was allocated to offensive systems. This lack was largely due to one of the most controversial design choices: installation of a third fusion reactor as opposed to the normal two found on most ships of this size. Only a single reactor is required to carry the ship’s combat load and the additional volume could have been used to mount a heavier broadside but, unable to find any way to mount ejectable GRAVMAK reactors and not entirely certain that their passive armor scheme could possibly protect the core hull from laser head strikes, the designers opted for increased power system redundancy.

Jonathan_S wrote:And finally I searched through the text of the 3 relevant combats I could think of, to see if reactor count or damage was mentioned: HMS Gauntlet (Sag-A), HMS Jessica Epps (Sag-B?), and HMS Hexapuma (Sag-C).
Gauntlet mentions Fusion Two being damaged; but nothing I saw that indicates if that's 1/2 or 1/3 of her reactors.

The Wiki doesn't list which flight of the Saganamis Jessica Epps was, but I always thought original. Honor's force wasn't very big and she wasn't in good standing with the Janacek Admiralty, so I've always thought she was given older ships.

BTW, who was Jessica Epps? Are we going to see her in Travis' time?

House of Steel: Star Knight-class heavy cruiser wrote:Despite this class’ exemplary performance compared to its contemporaries, combat experience has shown that insufficient volume was allocated to offensive systems. This lack was largely due to one of the most controversial design choices: installation of a third fusion reactor as opposed to the normal two found on most ships of this size. Only a single reactor is required to carry the ship’s combat load and the additional volume could have been used to mount a heavier broadside but, unable to find any way to mount ejectable GRAVMAK reactors and not entirely certain that their passive armor scheme could possibly protect the core hull from laser head strikes, the designers opted for increased power system redundancy.

Well... if the SK had had a bigger offensive punch, she might have actually needed the second reactor for full combat load.

Do we actually know the shape of a bubble sidewall anyway? Anytime I've heard about them I envision more a icosahedron (20 sided dice for role players) than a perfect sphere. After all we know flat planes can be projected. What I don't recall we've ever seen is an actual curved gravity field.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:And finally I searched through the text of the 3 relevant combats I could think of, to see if reactor count or damage was mentioned: HMS Gauntlet (Sag-A), HMS Jessica Epps (Sag-B?), and HMS Hexapuma (Sag-C).
Gauntlet mentions Fusion Two being damaged; but nothing I saw that indicates if that's 1/2 or 1/3 of her reactors.

The Wiki doesn't list which flight of the Saganamis Jessica Epps was, but I always thought original. Honor's force wasn't very big and she wasn't in good standing with the Janacek Admiralty, so I've always thought she was given older ships.

The only reason I'd suspected she might have been a -B is that the combat range between her and Hellbard seem to require extended range missiles (ERMs); like the RMN's CA-weight Mk14.

My (apparently now incorrect) understanding is that the Sag-As carried the same Mk13 single drive missiles as the Star Knights (not to mention many of the RMN's other CAs and BCs).

I'd thought the Sag-Bs to be where the longer ranged, and somewhat larger, Mk14 ERM came in.

And we all know that Sag-C is when the Mk16 DDM came in and really changed things up.


But it seems I may have gotten it wrong in my head; and Manticore went to the Mk14 with the original Edward Saganami-class ships (or maybe in Flight II of the original).


I say that because I just rediscovered the WoH Ch 17 text "The ship they were pursuing massed no more than fifty thousand tons, little more than twelve percent of an Edward Saganami-class cruiser like Jessica Epps". 50k tons would be 11.8% of a Sag-B's 422,750 tons; but it's 12.7% of a Sag-A's 393,000 tons. So from the text and the math this appears to make the Epps the older, and smaller variant. Oops. (Well, at least I'd stuck a "?" on it )

(I found that looking for a scene I thought I remembered; with Michelle Henke shortly after she received command HMS Edward Saganami where she talked about it being the the first cruiser with a bow wall; but I can't seem to find that text. If Eddy also had extended range missiles I'd have thought they'd have been brought up. Still that leaves open the possibility that they came in with the Sag-A flight IIs; which is also where HoS says the bow wall first got applies to Sags. But it probably got retrofitted, as time allowed, into the older Flight I ships)