cthia wrote:1. Graser mains might actually be quickly recharged after a single shot.
But if they are recharged after each shot, then they are totally reliant upon being recharged after each shot. Which means they are totally useless while sitting in orbit. So, when the LD announces itself in orbit, GA ships are going to be caught with cold impellers and cold mains. And the wedge needs everything ALL of the reactors can produce. Which begs the question of whether charging the wedge can be paused and resumed where it left off. If not, all is lost in orbit. You may argue that that would be a moot point anyway. But it doesn't have to be if mains didn't totally discharge after a single shot.
Correct. If the grasers aren't powered up when an enemy announces itself, they need to be charged. Given that they can be fired every 2 seconds, the charging time from zero must be less than 2 seconds. If 2 seconds is the sustainable rate of fire, I posit that the largest time factor is not the charging rate, but heat dissipation. Either way, it's 2 seconds or less.
This is supported by Honor's musings on the forts, from the textev above: defensive weapons on the forts were kept charged and on automatic computer control at all times, but offensive ones weren't.
We know from
A Call to Duty that an interrupted wedge bring-up causes it to crash all the way back to start. Technology has progressed to the point it takes much less than the 45 minutes that we observed during that time, but we haven't heard anything contradicting the need to start from scratch.
But I dispute "cold impellers and cold mains". That's not an active warship, that's a mothball or, at best, a ship under maintenance with a skeleton crew. The only time we've ever heard of an active warship shutting down its impellers was the trio of Roland-class DDs under Commodore Ray Chatterjee during the New Tuscany Incident. They only did that because Byng it was a condition to entering orbit of a non-aligned system at the same time Byng was there. In normal circumstances, a ship may not have an active wedge (and won't in close proximity to inhabited planets and stations), but its impellers will be hot. How long it takes to form a wedge from there is unknown.
We also don't know if it takes all the reactors' output to bring up the wedge, from either state. Given that N-1 reactors are sufficient for "full combat load," I suspect that bringing the wedge up with hot impellers takes nowhere near the full output of those reactors.
At any rate, if you are correct, it plays into the notion of much more powerful grasers mounted on an LD quite well. If an LD has 6-7 reactors, and if I'm right that it only needs a single reactor, then 5-6 reactors are available to feed enormous power into hellfire energy weapons. Which brings me to ...
I cannot agree yet that a single reactor is sufficient to power all the spider tractors, all the computer systems, environmental, active stealth, etc..
But I will agree that the more volume you have, the more reactors you can mount and therefore the more energy they can produce to feed energy guzzlers like grasers. So I will agree that the LD can have sufficient power production capability to power as many grasers as it can mount.
This is one area I can envision where the GA's smaller reactors would be a boon to MA stealth. Smaller reactors allow them to be installed much closer to whatever they feed, which allows for shorter power cables between the reactors and main capacitors (MAINS). Shorter cables would eliminate a lot of the leakage from heat, as power cables are usually one of the biggest culprits. They also account for less efficiency. So you'd have to consider that the MA has somehow managed to achieve their undecedented stealth without the smaller powerplants.
All that you said above is quite logical: shorter power conductors means less dissipation due to Ohm's Law (even superconductors dissipate, albeit very little); smaller with smaller volume may be more efficient. But we simply don't know whether it's the case. For all we know, the smaller reactor is
less efficient in converting fuel into usable electrical energy, it just happens to be overall useful because it frees volume for other things.
The volume is another aspect that helps in redundancy: it's far easier to mount a 13th reactor of size X than to mount a 4th reactor of size 3X.
Munroburton has also brought up another significant point in that safety decreases with additional reactors. But I posited a looooong time ago that the MA would undoubtedly be willing to take far greater risks in ship design than their GA counterparts. Sacrificing pawns is for the Honor of the King. 'OUCH'
Indeed and if they are, then mounting 3 big and efficient reactors with no redundancy is better than 12 smaller ones with the 13th for redundancy.
Though I'm not convinced the MAN is as reckless as you may them to be (which is what this whole thread is about). A 12-million-tonne ship is a huge investment and they don't grow in trees, even if you control the entire Darius planetary system and don't have an economy to speak of. It's an investment of raw material, of time, and especially of trained personnel, which we
do know takes time, even with Manpower-provided rapid learning. Each of those ships is going to have 8,000 people inside, who are not slaves and are instead members of the Darius society and have family there.
I'm all for breaking some eggs to make an omelet. And I do get that the Inner Onion has very little regard for life that is not their own, so I can readily see them cutting some corners. But I have yet to see the pay off for any of the strategies you keep outlining.
Also, do recall that I posit quick-start reactors, which would minimize the time an LD has to generate so much excess heat.
You can't give the MAN that without allowing the RMN the same.
My point is that the MA has already achieved a game changing 3-second firing gtorp, which implies that centuries of research may have gone into the attempt. Certainly they have learned something from the endeavor. Moreover, we cannot assume that the 3-second firing gtorps aren't a byproduct of longer firing shipboard grasers. It could turn out to be a simple... which came first, the chicken or the egg.
It's possible that a 3-second firing gtorp is a result of figuring out how to fire a ship-mounted graser for 0.5 seconds, indeed.
Additionally, we cannot dismiss the possibility that the gtorps slag after firing is an intentional design element to preserve certain secrets.
No, we can actually assume that it is intentional. All missiles self-immolate when firing. They did slag themselves to prevent recovery of any parts of the spider drive. The fact that they were going to do so is an aspect that allowed them to fire for 3 seconds.
If you're trying to suggest that the slagging was not caused by the 3-second graser, we'll need some extraordinary proof. I can't quote the text right now, but I'm pretty sure it hinted the exact opposite.
I totally agree. It is the human element. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year nothing happens.
That's why the defensive systems were on automatic.
Launching LACs to intercept wreckage was not pre-programmed.
In close encounters just like a Spider, I wonder if the LD's angle of attack matters. She may be more stealthy approaching prey from certain vectors, inasmuch as her disturbances (ripples in gravity) may be more detectable in the same plane with her on long range insertions.
That depends. If the LD is firing graser torps, the angle does not matter, so it'll present the angle least likely to lead to detection, by any force in possible detection range.
If it's firing grasers, then it's broadside to the opponent. Even if that compromised stealth before the first graser was fired.
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