When you're a hammer: MAlign blind spots

Relax wrote:There is no reason at all for trilateral design if you are pulling yourself along. Something does not add up. You only need one point at the nose and ability to flip/slew/rotate. Or if you truly have to "fix" yourself in space then it is not trilateral design which is required but rather 4 pts AKA a Tetrahedron. Or maybe 6 points for a fore/aft orientation of a triangle cylinder which is what he is calling trilateral design.
If a tetrahedron, only need 4 spiders to "fix" ones position so all directions can be easily moved in without flipping the ship around. Assuming each "spider" pull point can operate in a ~60 degree cone(120deg max).

Anyone else had this NIT bothering them?

Not to me, no. I reasoned out an explanation. I might be wrong, but this is what made my peace with them:

We do know that the longer the ship, the greater the acceleration it has. To me, that implies that the more tractors operating at the same time, the more it can pull against the Alpha wall. So you want to have as many tractors as possible, not 3 or 4.

When I hear "triangular shape," I understand "roughly triangular cross-section," in the sense of a prism with a (roughly) triangular base. Other bases could have been possible, allowing even more mounts per section: squares, hexagons, or even circles (that is, a cylindrical ship). So why aren't they? My guess is that the tractors must be sufficiently separated from one another and/or sensitive portions of the ship's hull, and the triangular cross-section is the best trade-off.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The reason I even brought impellers on LDs up was the discussion about their being eggshells. I was thinking about the fact that the LD's must rely on active defence (missiles, CMs, ECM, evasive manoeuvres) while using the spider drive is running. So if its stealth is penetrated, such as having been hit and now venting plasma, then incoming missiles can attack from any aspect.

If they do not have sidewalls, then any RD, missile, or LAC's wedge can vaporize the entire ship by just running their wedges through the LD.... They have to have a sidewall of some sort for when they are found.

As for mentality, all comes down to the brass top hats: WHEN or even IF, lower ratings will be allowed to ACT without authorization. True of every military organization for even the best of them. Rigid rigid rigid and usually requires multiple EMBARASSMENTS of epic proportions to get their fingers out of the pie. Maybe they have the Japanese problem from WWII... overly complex instructions from eggs & braid requiring precise maneuvering which almost never works in reality outside of a sneak attack.

All up to RFC to decide how he wants to swing that plot rattler around.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
We do know that the longer the ship, the greater the acceleration it has.

Where? I recall no quote, not saying it does not exist, but I recall no such quote in any of the books.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Three sails (with one in the middle) is unheard of. There's no way to speculate here if this is possible or not, and if so if it has a benefit. I don't think this is going to come up. As big as the LD is going to be, it's not likely to be that much longer than 9-million tonne SD(P)s.

When I envisioned a possible three-sail configuration, I wasn't thinking of the third one being in the middle, like a three-master of old. Rather, there would be one regular sail projected directly forward and two angled sails projected behind and to the sides of the ship. Instead of 180 degrees between two sails, they have 120 between three.

Or maybe I've overthought the triple-skeg thing. If alpha nodes are as flexible as I think they are, they don't need to put a third sail anywhere for balance. They just put the forward sail on a skeg and the aft sail between the other two skegs. Oh well.

Joat42 wrote:
Another factor that also plays in, why wouldn't they have impeller rings? Why gimp the ship? It wouldn't make sense at all if they lacked impellers.

The next line in the quote I posted last night from RFC, is him saying that it takes 40ish minutes to fire up an impeller drive. you can't just switch from 1 drive system to the other - you need to 100% shut one down, then slowly bring up the other. In that time in-between stages, you are helpless.

Theemile wrote:it takes 40ish minutes to fire up an impeller drive. you can't just switch from 1 drive system to the other - you need to 100% shut one down, then slowly bring up the other. In that time in-between stages, you are helpless.

Just because you have warm impellers does not mean you can't operate the Spider and vice versa. Now maybe for STEALTH reasons you would not do so... now THAT I could see being a deal breaker, but otherwise I see no problem other than handwavium interference physics which RFC can introduce whenever he wishes to limit tech. Currently he has not done so.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Relax wrote:There is no reason at all for trilateral design if you are pulling yourself along. Something does not add up. You only need one point at the nose and ability to flip/slew/rotate. Or if you truly have to "fix" yourself in space then it is not trilateral design which is required but rather 4 pts AKA a Tetrahedron. Or maybe 6 points for a fore/aft orientation of a triangle cylinder which is what he is calling trilateral design.
If a tetrahedron, only need 4 spiders to "fix" ones position so all directions can be easily moved in without flipping the ship around. Assuming each "spider" pull point can operate in a ~60 degree cone(120deg max).

Anyone else had this NIT bothering them?

Not to me, no. I reasoned out an explanation. I might be wrong, but this is what made my peace with them:

We do know that the longer the ship, the greater the acceleration it has. To me, that implies that the more tractors operating at the same time, the more it can pull against the Alpha wall. So you want to have as many tractors as possible, not 3 or 4.

When I hear "triangular shape," I understand "roughly triangular cross-section," in the sense of a prism with a (roughly) triangular base. Other bases could have been possible, allowing even more mounts per section: squares, hexagons, or even circles (that is, a cylindrical ship). So why aren't they? My guess is that the tractors must be sufficiently separated from one another and/or sensitive portions of the ship's hull, and the triangular cross-section is the best trade-off.

Remember the textev about the spider-drive? It says it consists of insanely powerful tractors/pressors.

My take on the trilateral design is that the tractors try to pull the ship while the pressors push, and to balance the forces the simplest geometry is trilateral. And as you say, it's probably possible to perhaps have other multilateral designs but there are physics/engineering constraints that preclude them.

Relax wrote:As for mentality, all comes down to the brass top hats: WHEN or even IF, lower ratings will be allowed to ACT without authorization. True of every military organization for even the best of them. Rigid rigid rigid and usually requires multiple EMBARASSMENTS of epic proportions to get their fingers out of the pie. Maybe they have the Japanese problem from WWII... overly complex instructions from eggs & braid requiring precise maneuvering which almost never works in reality outside of a sneak attack.

That's again my point in this thread: if it takes catastrophic losses and major embarrassments to change, then they're not seeing the potential of the asset they have and they won't be using them militarily. But they will be fighting a war.

Plus, they're not good at changing either.

munroburton wrote:When I envisioned a possible three-sail configuration, I wasn't thinking of the third one being in the middle, like a three-master of old. Rather, there would be one regular sail projected directly forward and two angled sails projected behind and to the sides of the ship. Instead of 180 degrees between two sails, they have 120 between three.

Or maybe I've overthought the triple-skeg thing. If alpha nodes are as flexible as I think they are, they don't need to put a third sail anywhere for balance. They just put the forward sail on a skeg and the aft sail between the other two skegs. Oh well.

When I envision a sail, I imagine it as a fully circular, 360°, around the ship, emanating from the node rings, and fully perpendicular to the direction of acceleration. Since the sails can generate negative grab factors without turning, there doesn't seem to be a reason to have non-perpendicular sails.

Besides, if there were a benefit in having a three-sail configuration for ships regardless of size, it would have been used. The only possibility here is that it's only useful for really massive ships, because as I said, length won't change much: if the LD is 2x as massive as a 9-million tonne SD, each linear direction is only 2^(1/3) = 1.259x more.

Joat42 wrote:My take on the trilateral design is that the tractors try to pull the ship while the pressors push, and to balance the forces the simplest geometry is trilateral. And as you say, it's probably possible to perhaps have other multilateral designs but there are physics/engineering constraints that preclude them.

How would that work? Remember the ship is accelerating longitudinally. I imagine the tractors not projected perpendicular to the hull, but projected forward, then pulling the ship along.

Like a row boat.

And the more rows and rowers you have, the faster you can accelerate.