Attacking Darius:

tlb wrote:I am fairly certain (but not absolutely positive) that to produce any sort of sidewall (including a spherical one) requires Beta nodes and all the interior equipment that it would take to also produce a wedge. Couple that with the Alpha nodes needed to create sails, it seems to me that any spider drive ship which can also produce sails for hyperspace travel and sidewalls for defense is effectively a hybrid ship capable of both a spider drive and a wedge drive. Does that seem correct?

It does. We're assuming it has capability to create bubblewalls, though.

However, that capability isn't the pressing need. The requirement to create Warshawski Sails and to mount Warshawskis to detect grav waves is. So they must have alpha nodes in the first place and they must have an impeller ring. So if they have that, they may as well mount betas. Unless, of course, the geometry of those impeller rings makes it possible to create sails but not wedges. RFC would have to tell us.

But it's possible they can create full wedges and sidewalls if they wanted to. They probably don't want to, though. Since they are too big for compensators to compensate (even assuming they have them, which they may not), they're still limited to the same 150 gravities. Bringing those nodes up is going to light a beacon on them a long time before the wedge forms and protects the ship from incoming fire, so it's of limited tactical use.

One thing I think is certain, is that sidewalls register on the same detectors that search for wedges, except for being weaker. However, is it possible that the wedges connects to the alpha wall and a sidewall does not (in normal use it only connects to the wedge)? I assume the reason RFC talked about the need for much more armor on a spider drive ship, was that those particular ships did not have sidewalls (without denying that a hybrid drive ship could be created).

The passage was actually talking about them having no wedge under normal circumstances, not sidewalls. With no wedge floor and roof to block the ventral and dorsal aspects, those needed to be armoured.

cthia wrote:And we should expect them to succeed because they stated how close they were to solving FTL in one of the previous books, and voila, we saw the fruits of their labor at Galton.

That doesn't follow from the premise. As Jonathan said, success in one endeavour does not mean success in all.

But also because the Galton evidence isn't a convincing case of success either. Their transmitters were the size of a minor space station and could not be missed even by the laziest sensor watch once they started transmitting. The Galton defenders knew that too, which is why they had three of them and were going to use one at a time for tactically-valuable situations.

There was nothing in the Galton arsenal that even came close to the Havenite LAC-based transmitters at the start of the second war in Operation Thunderbolt, much less close to the Ghost Rider that the Detweilers were talking about.

That doesn't mean Darius hadn't made progress, though. There's very little chance this late-stage research was fed back to Galton.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The passage was actually talking about them having no wedge under normal circumstances, not sidewalls. With no wedge floor and roof to block the ventral and dorsal aspects, those needed to be armoured.

Yes, that is true; but since Cthia was talking about using sidewalls to replace some of the armor and I was replying to that suggestion, I wrote sidewall instead of wedge. From the point of view of a spider drive ship, since you need Beta nodes to generate either a wedge or a sidewall (is that correct?), then you can generate a sidewall only if and only if you can generate a wedge.

If what I am saying about sidewalls, wedges and Beta nodes is not correct, then I will be happy to be given better information. Note also that I include bubblewalls in this, because a bubblewall is just a spherical sidewall to the best of my knowledge.

tlb wrote:If what I am saying about sidewalls, wedges and Beta nodes is not correct, then I will be happy to be given better information. Note also that I include bubblewalls in this, because a bubblewall is just a spherical sidewall to the best of my knowledge.

But if it's spherical, it wouldn't connect to a wedge, would it? In that case, there would be no need to have a wedge in the first place.

We're given to understand that a bubblewall is extremely tough, as they're used in forts and in the Volsungs' space station that Travis and Basaltberg attacked in ACTV. However, wedges are tougher. And if forts don't need to accelerate, they could block the kilt and throat too with fore- and aftwalls. So why don't they?

On the other hand, in Galton, their forts did use wedges.

What are we missing?

tlb wrote:If what I am saying about sidewalls, wedges and Beta nodes is not correct, then I will be happy to be given better information. Note also that I include bubblewalls in this, because a bubblewall is just a spherical sidewall to the best of my knowledge.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But if it's spherical, it wouldn't connect to a wedge, would it? In that case, there would be no need to have a wedge in the first place.

We're given to understand that a bubblewall is extremely tough, as they're used in forts and in the Volsungs' space station that Travis and Basaltberg attacked in ACTV. However, wedges are tougher. And if forts don't need to accelerate, they could block the kilt and throat too with fore- and aftwalls. So why don't they?

On the other hand, in Galton, their forts did use wedges.

What are we missing?

Yes, a spherical sidewall does not connect to the wedge; I am not sure that you can raise a wedge with the bubble-wall in place. So presumably you could have regular sidewalls up without a wedge; but there would be no point in doing that (except possibly in a spider), because the wedge is a much stronger defense. My guess is that the connection to the Alpha wall is what makes the wedge so much stronger than any kind of sidewall.

Forts can use both wedges and a bubble-wall (but not at the same time, I do not think); the forts have a wedge in order to shift position. I am guessing that the strengths go like this: wedge > spherical sidewall (aka bubble-wall) > regular sidewall >= fore or aft-walls. Excluding the wedge, some of the strength might simply be due to power ratings of the generators.

No, the reason why energy range fights are short is they, like knife fights in phone booths. are decisive. Ships just get ripped apart by Graser fire through their sidewalls. You can try to interpose the wedge, but that only works is the opponent is willing to let you or is a single ship. Capital ships don’t maneuver fast enough to allow that to work as they close.

kzt wrote:No, the reason why energy range fights are short is they, like knife fights in phone booths. are decisive. Ships just get ripped apart by Graser fire through their sidewalls. You can try to interpose the wedge, but that only works is the opponent is willing to let you or is a single ship. Capital ships don’t maneuver fast enough to allow that to work as they close.

To which particular statement are you saying "NO"? I understand that a graser can burn through a sidewall. Are you asserting that a bubble-wall is different in kind from a sidewall (not just by being somewhat stronger)?

tlb wrote:Yes, a spherical sidewall does not connect to the wedge; I am not sure that you can raise a wedge with the bubble-wall in place. So presumably you could have regular sidewalls up without a wedge; but there would be no point in doing that (except possibly in a spider), because the wedge is a much stronger defense. My guess is that the connection to the Alpha wall is what makes the wedge so much stronger than any kind of sidewall.

Actually we're told a few times that normal sidewalls must tie into the wedge in order to form; that they cannot work without it.
Bubble (aka spherical) sidewalls do work without a wedge (and I assume cannot work with a wedge).

tlb wrote:And if forts don't need to accelerate, they could block the kilt and throat too with fore- and aftwalls. So why don't they?

Because they can't. Yes, you can close off either the bow or the stern aspect with a wall; as long as you don't want to accelerate. But to quote AoV " the Ferret's "sternwall" closed off the rear of the wedge. Power requirements and the physics of the wedge meant only one aspect, bow or stern, could be closed at any given moment"

So if a fort doesn't want to maneuver it'd be better of switching back to its powerful bubble sidewall, which does provide all aspect coverage, rather than going wedge, sidewalls, and only covering the throat or kilt of the wedge. (Though you might be able to use a full bow wall plus a buckler sternwall; or vice versa -- but a buckler wall only protects from fire within a couple of degrees of dead ahead/astern; so it leave large arcs unprotected from inbound laserhead fire)

Plus a fort is designed far more spherically, and to engage enemies coming from any aspect. So without the wedge in the way additional CM tubes and PDLC mounts on its dorsal and ventral aspects should be able to come into play. (Another reason they'd prefer to fight from within their bubble sidewall except when it's strictly necessary to tactically maneuver during an engagement)

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:No, the reason why energy range fights are short is they, like knife fights in phone booths. are decisive. Ships just get ripped apart by Graser fire through their sidewalls. You can try to interpose the wedge, but that only works is the opponent is willing to let you or is a single ship. Capital ships don’t maneuver fast enough to allow that to work as they close.

To which particular statement are you saying "NO"? I understand that a graser can burn through a sidewall. Are you asserting that a bubble-wall is different in kind from a sidewall (not just by being somewhat stronger)?

The argument was that energy range fights were short because the ships were moving very fast past each other. Nope. It's because the energy range weapons are stupidly lethal. Even at relative 20% of light speed you have going to be in effective range of each other for over several seconds. And when you exit energy range at least one of those forces will have been severely damaged if at least one side really wants a fight.

David once mentioned that he'd never described an actual energy range SD fight, the one in FiE was much tamer than an actual SD on SD fight.

I have no real idea how effective a bubble is vs a typical sidewall. The fact that the most formidable of combat platforms have them suggests that they have been shown to be significantly enough more effective than SD grade sidewalls with wedge (when you are tactically immobile at least) that they are worth the noted mass and volume penalty. Whether that is 20% or 250% is not exactly something that David has taken pains to make clear.

To a certain extent I think David has treated forts more as plot devices than warships. But only David (and possibly another dozen people) really know.

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:No, the reason why energy range fights are short is they, like knife fights in phone booths. are decisive. Ships just get ripped apart by Graser fire through their sidewalls. You can try to interpose the wedge, but that only works is the opponent is willing to let you or is a single ship. Capital ships don’t maneuver fast enough to allow that to work as they close.

To which particular statement are you saying "NO"? I understand that a graser can burn through a sidewall. Are you asserting that a bubble-wall is different in kind from a sidewall (not just by being somewhat stronger)?

kzt wrote:The argument was that energy range fights were short because the ships were moving very fast past each other. Nope. It's because the energy range weapons are stupidly lethal. Even at relative 20% of light speed you have going to be in effective range of each other for over several seconds. And when you exit energy range at least one of those forces will have been severely damaged if at least one side really wants a fight.

David once mentioned that he'd never described an actual energy range SD fight, the one in FiE was much tamer than an actual SD on SD fight.

I have no real idea how effective a bubble is vs a typical sidewall. The fact that the most formidable of combat platforms have them suggests that they have been shown to be significantly enough more effective than SD grade sidewalls with wedge (when you are tactically immobile at least) that they are worth the noted mass and volume penalty. Whether that is 20% or 250% is not exactly something that David has taken pains to make clear.

To a certain extent I think David has treated forts more as plot devices than warships. But only David (and possibly another dozen people) really know.

That is my take on it as well. Energy battles are very lethal, therefore they are not expected to last very long.

Remember when Honor faced Theisman... in the Endicott system? Theisman reversed engines to come back for round two, because he correctly assessed Honor's damages and weaknesses and knew she was bluffing.

What did Honor do? Well, first she said something akin to "Let's see if wars are still fought by human beings."

What she did was offer Theisman an out since a People's Commissioner was riding herd on him. But Honor offered him an energy duel because she was coming in wedge first. That is all she could do.

The offer was MAD. Mutual Assured Destruction.

"No thanks Milady. This isn't a good day to die."

But Theisman had to defer to the Commissioner. It was because of the Commissioner that he had to reverse engines, or be taken to task when he got back home when the after action analysis came out. But, of course, the People's Commissioner didn't want to die either.

There can't be anything scarier in the HV than a kamikaze Harrington offering up an energy duel. Honor don't tend to lose duels.