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Jonathan_S wrote:I'm not seeing anything that says his yacht, Genesis, has a spider drive. It pretty clearly has a streak drive. And it's explicitly stated that it's heavily armed. But nothing I can see about its drive system.

However, given that it took Detweiler from Mesa to Darius, I'd think they'd want a somewhat more normal looking ship to blend in around civilian traffic. And it does make a point of the yacht's speed -- and a spider drive powered ship is going to be slower than an impeller powered one (assuming both have the improved hyper generators of a streak drive). They'll have the same top speed, and be able to access the same hyper bands, but the impeller ship will be able to get out of a system and into hyper quicker, and to accelerate up to its top speed more quickly as well (either at the beginning of the journey, if forced to change hyper bands mid-journey, or if having to change heading in hyper) -- and so shave off some (usually small) fraction of the total transit time.

So lacking evidence (at least that I could find) that the yacht has a spider drive I'd assume that in fact it had a conventional impeller drive (and thus a conventional hull form)

I remember some text that the ship (MANS Genesis) had a shape that made it stand out visually from other ships because of the drive - but like you, I can't find it in a quick search of HH12 (MoH).

The Wiki says that it had the spider drive, not that that means anything...

Jonathan_S wrote:So lacking evidence (at least that I could find) that the yacht has a spider drive I'd assume that in fact it had a conventional impeller drive (and thus a conventional hull form)

Theemile wrote:I remember some text that the ship (MANS Genesis) had a shape that made it stand out visually from other ships because of the drive - but like you, I can't find it in a quick search of HH12 (MoH).

The Wiki says that it had the spider drive, not that that means anything...

I consider it extremely unlikely that it had a spider drive, because it was on display at Mesa. Remember that even Galton did not know about the spider drive, so it has to be a secret confined to Darius.

The only possibility on the other side would be if it was hidden at some secret, barren spot and Detweiler changed from the ship that would take him from and back to Mesa.

tlb wrote:I consider it extremely unlikely that it had a spider drive, because it was on display at Mesa. Remember that even Galton did not know about the spider drive, so it has to be a secret confined to Darius.

The only possibility on the other side would be if it was hidden at some secret, barren spot and Detweiler changed from the ship that would take him from and back to Mesa.

But going back to what Jonathan said, what's the point of a stealth yacht? Unusual hull shape because it's maybe hiding weapons or has some secret compartments for the Detweilers to hide in or hide stuff in? Sure. I'm sure ships of all shapes exist, weirder in proportion to the wealth of its owner and compensating for some physical or psychological lack. But a yacht is not going to skulk around in hostile systems. It's not a scout either, it's a luxury passenger ship.

What would make sense is the reverse: the MAN repurposed a scout as the royal yacht. But that would still be a weird choice, because why would the Detweilers want to be limited to 150 gravities?

tlb wrote:I consider it extremely unlikely that it had a spider drive, because it was on display at Mesa. Remember that even Galton did not know about the spider drive, so it has to be a secret confined to Darius.

The only possibility on the other side would be if it was hidden at some secret, barren spot and Detweiler changed from the ship that would take him from and back to Mesa.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But going back to what Jonathan said, what's the point of a stealth yacht? Unusual hull shape because it's maybe hiding weapons or has some secret compartments for the Detweilers to hide in or hide stuff in? Sure. I'm sure ships of all shapes exist, weirder in proportion to the wealth of its owner and compensating for some physical or psychological lack. But a yacht is not going to skulk around in hostile systems. It's not a scout either, it's a luxury passenger ship.

What would make sense is the reverse: the MAN repurposed a scout as the royal yacht. But that would still be a weird choice, because why would the Detweilers want to be limited to 150 gravities?

Because the Detweilers like sneaking around? Since it is armed (?), it is in effect a warship. If it also has a compensator for use in hyperspace, then it is only slow in normal space (where it is stealthy).

Otherwise I totally agree that there is no good reason.

The Wraith and G-Torps are not carrying people and so aren't limited to the amount of g-force that the crewed ships are. Think of the difference (and that is because of the capacitors offsetting the g forces) between a BC and a MDM missile. The BC has a crew and a max "safe" acceleration of X (80% of the the compensation for g force) were an MDM (or a Ghost Rider recon drone although they don't usually use anywhere the amount of acceleration in their mission profile) can accelerate massively faster because there are soft and squishy humans inside,


A Streak Drive ship is uses an impeller drive system but has various requirements for the Streak so that it is at least subtly differnt in its external configuration from a normal impeller drive ship.
Firebrand, I think, commented on not only the relative speed (he noticed it took less time to get to destinations than was normal) on the special ships and something about the exterior of the ship.

On the other hand, the freighter that brought the Silver Bullets to Beowulf was also a streak drive ship and apparently didn't draw any interest from anybody. That could be because it was built with various modifications that disguised the Streak Drive. There must be a range of what appears normal or perhaps just a bit eccentric as far as commercial ships (and that would include yachts) will look like, mostly you are going to need a competent inspection to discover there was something unusual about a Streak Drive ship other than some size and a bit of configuration. These are usually not warships- which tend to be much more configured for weapons and sensors in obvious ways- Q ships excepted.

Brigade XO wrote:The Wraith and G-Torps are not carrying people and so aren't limited to the amount of g-force that the crewed ships are. Think of the difference (and that is because of the capacitors offsetting the g forces) between a BC and a MDM missile. The BC has a crew and a max "safe" acceleration of X (80% of the the compensation for g force) were an MDM (or a Ghost Rider recon drone although they don't usually use anywhere the amount of acceleration in their mission profile) can accelerate massively faster because there are soft and squishy humans inside,


A Streak Drive ship is uses an impeller drive system but has various requirements for the Streak so that it is at least subtly differnt in its external configuration from a normal impeller drive ship.
Firebrand, I think, commented on not only the relative speed (he noticed it took less time to get to destinations than was normal) on the special ships and something about the exterior of the ship.

On the other hand, the freighter that brought the Silver Bullets to Beowulf was also a streak drive ship and apparently didn't draw any interest from anybody. That could be because it was built with various modifications that disguised the Streak Drive. There must be a range of what appears normal or perhaps just a bit eccentric as far as commercial ships (and that would include yachts) will look like, mostly you are going to need a competent inspection to discover there was something unusual about a Streak Drive ship other than some size and a bit of configuration. These are usually not warships- which tend to be much more configured for weapons and sensors in obvious ways- Q ships excepted.

It's true that an unmanned platform doesn't need to worry about the g-limits of puny humans. Which is in part why we've seen a Ghost Rider RD pull 20,000 g[1]; though it more often restricts itself to about 5,000 gees in order to stealth its wedge (at least from distant sensors)

OTOH we're told that the g-torps is small enough that it can't fit an especially quick spider drive anyway "It was simply impossible to fit a spider drive capable of more than a few hundred gravities’ acceleration into something small enough to make a practical weapon" [MoH]

Now, since a Wrath RD is bigger it might also have been able to mount a higher acceleration spider drive. We've no way to know at this time.

As to the Streak drive, I thought it's major tell was that it was sufficiently larger than a normal hyper generator that it couldn't be squeezed into the normal hull of a courier / dispatch boat. You had to use a slightly larger hull, which might make people wonder why you were apparently building boats bigger than they needed to be. (And of course any boarding / inspection party that happens to see your hyper generator is going to immediately notice it's about twice as big as it should be) But once you're talking about a ship the size of a freighter the extra volume needed for the double-size hyper generator wouldn't be externally apparent -- and I don't think there are any other hull design or external equipment 'tells' for a streak drive. You're just giving up internal cubage that could have been used for other things (larger cargo bays, magazines, workshops, crew facilities, etc. etc.)

---
[1] That's derived from the accel I calculated was necessary to pull of the stated flight profile at Mobius in SoF. But the highest GR accel I think was explicitly stated in the text was 10,000 gees (in SoV).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:The intended premise, is that all of the available research on a piece of technology, falls into enemy hands. Perhaps the Honorverse equivalent of a high capacity thumb drive

For the MAlign, it would definitely be the spider drive. The spider drive is the MAlign's only technological asset that others don't anyway. I don't expect the GA to actually use them, not unless they're given 20 years of R&D to design a hybrid impeller-spider drive ship. Instead, the worst outcome for the MAlign is that the GA can figure out a way to detect the spider drive at a distance.

Of course, there's one piece of information that would be even worse: the location of Darius.

From pg. 2 of thread.

I would tend to think that the spider drive would be a significant improvement upon the GA's own stealthy platform technology. Can we imagine a spider driven Mycroft Platform anybody? How well can the MA detect their own spider drives.

penny wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:For the MAlign, it would definitely be the spider drive. The spider drive is the MAlign's only technological asset that others don't anyway. I don't expect the GA to actually use them, not unless they're given 20 years of R&D to design a hybrid impeller-spider drive ship. Instead, the worst outcome for the MAlign is that the GA can figure out a way to detect the spider drive at a distance.

Of course, there's one piece of information that would be even worse: the location of Darius.

From pg. 2 of thread.

I would tend to think that the spider drive would be a significant improvement upon the GA's own stealthy platform technology. Can we imagine a spider driven Mycroft Platform anybody? How well can the MA detect their own spider drives.

No, no I can't imagine that. A Mycroft platform just orbits - it doesn't need a powerful drive.

An with the drive down a Spider drive is no stealthier than a wedge.

Now the stealth coating the MAlign developed and put on their Ghosts (and presumably on the Sharks, g-torps, Wraiths, etc.) applied to a Mycroft platform might make it a bit harder to detect. But that has nothing to do with the drive -- totally different tech.

penny wrote:How well can the MA detect their own spider drives.

You should know, because it is the one light-second distance that you have mentioned multiple times. From Mission of Honor:

Chapter 28 wrote:All of that was true,and all of it constituted indisputably significant disadvantages. But the spider also had one overwhelming advantage: it was effectively undetectable by any sensor system deployed by any navy (including the MAN itself) at any range much beyond a single light-second. Even for the MAN, it was damnably hard to detect; for someone who didn't even know what to look for, the task was about as close to outright impossible as challenges came. For all intents and purposes, a spider-drive ship's drive field was invisible, and it was actually the drive signature of a ship for which virtually all long-range passive sensors searched.

penny wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:For the MAlign, it would definitely be the spider drive. The spider drive is the MAlign's only technological asset that others don't anyway. I don't expect the GA to actually use them, not unless they're given 20 years of R&D to design a hybrid impeller-spider drive ship. Instead, the worst outcome for the MAlign is that the GA can figure out a way to detect the spider drive at a distance.

Of course, there's one piece of information that would be even worse: the location of Darius.

From pg. 2 of thread.

I would tend to think that the spider drive would be a significant improvement upon the GA's own stealthy platform technology. Can we imagine a spider driven Mycroft Platform anybody? How well can the MA detect their own spider drives.

Jonathan_S wrote:No, no I can't imagine that. A Mycroft platform just orbits - it doesn't need a powerful drive.

An with the drive down a Spider drive is no stealthier than a wedge.

Now the stealth coating the MAlign developed and put on their Ghosts (and presumably on the Sharks, g-torps, Wraiths, etc.) applied to a Mycroft platform might make it a bit harder to detect. But that has nothing to do with the drive -- totally different tech.

Not a more powerful drive. A stealthier drive.