cthia wrote:You are judging the LD by the same paradigms which govern wedge powered ships. This is a consistent mistake made on the forum. Made even when considering an LD's tactics.* I may be in error for doing so, but I am allowing for the fact that submarines had a significantly lower power demand than carriers and other warships. Especially under battle conditions. Heck, a sub spends most of its time hiding and going dark. where many systems are shut down. Granted, an LD is mostly related to nuclear subs but they still may operate at minimal power levels at most times than their GA counterparts.
It's the only metre stick we have. Anything else is pure speculation, even more so than the speculation that we can compare to a regular warship's power consumption. You're right that we don't know and we won't know until we see them in battle (speculation: not until the end of the book after this year's).
I don't get the feeling that GA ships are designed for extended energy battles. Nor do they expect energy battles to last very long. The capacitors would be quickly depleted even if the graser could withstand constant fire. They would discharge very quickly against an enemy whose invisibility generates a lot of misses. There is only going to be a very limited amount of energy stored in the mains powering energy weapons.
I'd expect the capacitors are drained after a single shot. That's why they are capacitors. They are recharged from the reactor between shots, so the ammo for energy weapons is just the reactor fuel: if it can generate power, it can fire.
Modulo battle damage and its own lifetime issues. A graser mount might be rated for 1000 shots between heavy servicing. So if the ship is firing them once every 2 seconds, it's risking damage from using the mount after roughly 2000 seconds (that's just over 30 minutes). So it's probably more than 1000 shots, probably an order of magnitude more.
- The hyper generator and it's supporting capacitors must be kept charged at all times. And these super capacitors may have to be constantly topped off if they have any kinship to modern analogues. Especially during battle.
LDs have hyper generators. Their generators are probably MUCH less efficient than an RMN equivalent, for two reasons: first, the RMN has the tech edge and second, the LD is probably using streak drive generators. So at best this is a wash.
- Sidewalls. I have always posited that Sidewalls must be gluttonous energy hogs. Any tech that can create a (focused area of gravity?) that can attenuate energy weapons simply has to require copius amounts of energy. Personally, I wouldn't expect Sidewalls to be any more frugal than Star Trek's shields. "We need more power to the shields Scotty!"
In contrast, a Spider may not have Sidewalls. Hopefully it has a spherical sidewall. But, this sidewall won't be active during battle stations. Unlike GA ships where all of the hogs are always slopping up energy at the trough during battle.
I agree that they are probably energy hogs. But we don't know if they are powered for free from the wedge or if they consume reactor power. If the former, it's a wash. If the latter, then the ship with no sidewalls is very much ahead in power needs and therefore emission, but also much more vulnerable.
The bubblewalls are irrelevant, even if the LD has them, as you said.
- PDLCs firing like a laser show at a rave club!
- Missile launchers threatening to overheat.
So long as it has remained undetected, sure, the PDLCs won't be firing. But to keep PDLCs and CM launchers powered down? That's sloppy operation. What if you suddenly need them? "Oops, we screwed up, see you next life."
Missile launchers would be powered down, because just like the side- or bubblewalls, it means you're already in trouble. Maybe a last-ditch effort if someone did stumble on you, though.
But the torpedo launch rails would be active and that would be of comparable energy consumption as an SD(P)'s rear door launcher. Multiplied by as many tubes this thing has.
- Max engines.
- Compensator. Pour on the accel, raise the power consumption. The LD should save on its energy bill here as well.
The engines are free, once powered up. At worst, we can talk about the reactors keeping the capacitors used for bringing the wedge up again always charged, in case the wedge does go down due to battle damage.
The compensators use the gravity sump of the wedge, so like the sidewalls they could be powered off the wedge too, thus free. We don't know. But even assuming they aren't, the LD is running a power-draining 150-gravity grav plate, which the GA ships aren't.
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Rad shields. Energy usage increases with speed and accel. An SD has 4-6 reactors and thousands of capacitor rings storing plasma powering both the mains and subsystems. It is just a plain old energy hog. It burns more "fuel" than my brother's 1970 'Cuda!
LD must also have rad shields, so again a wash.
But, an LD is always crawling, tip-toeing and creeping. Compared to GA ships whose deflection system simply has to be an energy hog during high accels (frankly, I've always considered that this tech must have a very high demand for concentrated handwavium).
Low accel does not mean low speeds. It just takes longer to reach a high speed. And that's what I predict its preferred strategy will be: high speed pass through the battle zone, doing as much damage to stationary targets as possible before any defenders can mobilise and get to speed. By the time they do, the trail to the LD is cold and it's hypered out.
Over in the debris thread, I posited that the capacitors are constantly kept at a full charge and that the reactor is constantly at work trying to keep them charged, especially under the heavy load of battle conditions.
I agree, see above.
It may be different for the LD. The LD may have almost no drain on the reactor in comparison to the high demand of GA ships.
I completely disagree. Some of its systems will draw even more power than an equivalent GA ship. The only one I'll give you is the hyper generator in the case of a suicide mission: if the crew plans on dying anyway, then it can keep that powered down. Defence must be powered up so it has better chances of completing the mission, in case of accidental discovery (don't ignore Murphy!).
Plus, if there is an insignificant demand on the reactor, even under battle conditions then there is a lot of surplus energy available from the reactor which can power other systems. Like a hellishly powerful complement of WTF! energy weapons.
Pushing more power through a system not rated for it will just fry it sooner or make a big boom. On the other hand, if their graser mounts have the ability to handle more power, that means they were designed for that. And if so, the designers would have put reactors that can push that much power to all of the grasers.
Notes: The MA could design quick-start reactors, and close to instant charge capacitors. I don't think instant charge capacitors are possible because it would allow the development of a perpetual energy source. God territory.
That's not how capacitors and energy work, but the conclusion is the same.
If you could charge a capacitor instantly, that means you are delivering to it all the energy it can store in that instant (meaning the power transfer is very high, near infinite). If you have a power source that can produce that much power, you don't need the capacitor in the first place: just power the system directly from the reactor.
Heat dissipation. Consider that a Spider's irregular shape could have turned out to be fortuitous in its effort to dissipate heat. Modern heatsink technology has found specific shapes to be more efficient in dissipating heat.
Hmm... possible: because of its triangular cross-section, instead of a circle, the area/enclosed volume ratio is higher for the LD than a traditional cigar-shaped ship. The circle is the shape that has the smallest perimeter/area ratio (of regular shapes, anyway), after all.
However, all those overpowered tractors not only block emission, they also generate heat of their own. So we can't come to a conclusion on this.
In any case, we have not been told that the surface of the LD is corrugated to increase emission area.
* Tactics: I still think the MA should develop a missile which achieves enormously unprecedented velocities launched from kissing distances. No other navy has had cause or motivation to develop such a missile which shoots its wad very quickly!
It should also develop a nova bomb, a cheap antimatter generator, and a time-travel device. FTL communication over long distances would also come in handy.
ALL navies have the motivation to develop faster missiles.
I always thought an LD can take on a Fort and win, if it fires first discharging massive energy weapons from whatever passes as an LD's knife-fighting range. In fact, imagine an LD which manages to tip-toe inside the concentric shell of Forts. It may be able to take out several Forts at once, from such close ranges in a surprise attack. Sidewalls will fall easily from such close attacks.
All those that don't have sidewalls up, yes. Then the LD dies from those that did.
Sidewalls can fall and are definitely not impenetrable. But it takes time to get through one, not to mention that the shots that do penetrate may not do sufficient damage to take the fort out of commission. A single fort outmasses the LD (likely) and has no reason to keep its emissions down. So it will heavily outgun the LD. Which in turn has no sidewalls up. So the LD dies on the first counter battery fire.
