Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

Jonathan_S wrote:That said, only a limit about of its atmosphere should leak out. Even in a freighter there should be automatic pressure doors that'll slam closed if one area gets too much of a pressure drop. And on a warship many airtight hatches would be routinely closed except when someone is actively passing through them (even more should move to that status if they've gone to battle stations) So if the ship is leaking atmo for a prolonged time then you've probably battered it quite heavily, significantly raising the chances that you've also damaged its propulsion.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Question. If a freighter, any ship even, is damaged and it is leaking atmosphere, does that affect acceleration? If vital systems aren't damaged then acceleration shouldn't be affected. No? But is it possible to damage a ship so badly that it is leaking atmosphere without damaging/affecting the compensation? I suppose I'm overthinking it.

It is possible and that might be indeed what sets the Manticore-built freighters more rugged. Those won't be dedicating any more mass to hull than precisely what's needed to keep atmosphere in and radiation out, so even a cheap pirate's laser could breach them. Therefore, any freighter could be leaking atmosphere after some shots from popguns. That's not dangerous to the crew, in general, if they'd been wearing shipsuits when the pirate actually took the shots. Fixing hull holes isn't very difficult.

But if those shots went through engineering spaces? Yeah, then they could ruin the ship's day. They could affect internal gravity, compensators, impeller rings, or hypergenerator. Solarian-built ships, with their equipment all on the outside, would be more vulnerable, while a Manticore-built ship with those all on the inside (except for impeller rings, which can't be) could just shrug off, leak atmosphere, water, or hydrogen, and keep running for the hyperlimit or towards a friendly LAC.

The passage above was out of context, but it must have been discussing how Manticore-built freighters do dare to tread where Solarian ones don't.

penny wrote:Again, I'm probably overthinking it, but I'm visualizing a ship that has a chunk torn out of it and it is simply dangling on precariously.

Baggage from StartTrek when Reliant's Warp Nacelle was damaged and part of it was hanging on making the silhouette of the ship look handicapped. That would mean the shape of the compensator field would have to be altered in some cases. I think that is possible even though it may sound counterintuitive. It goes to motive why I said there must be varying thresholds of compensator fields.

Jonathan_S wrote:Given that a wedge spreads over 100 times as wide as the ship I don't think you're going to need to worry about any partially detached chunks sticking out far enough to affect the compensator field.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Question. If a freighter, any ship even, is damaged and it is leaking atmosphere, does that affect acceleration? If vital systems aren't damaged then acceleration shouldn't be affected. No? But is it possible to damage a ship so badly that it is leaking atmosphere without damaging/affecting the compensation? I suppose I'm overthinking it.

It is possible and that might be indeed what sets the Manticore-built freighters more rugged. Those won't be dedicating any more mass to hull than precisely what's needed to keep atmosphere in and radiation out, so even a cheap pirate's laser could breach them. Therefore, any freighter could be leaking atmosphere after some shots from popguns. That's not dangerous to the crew, in general, if they'd been wearing shipsuits when the pirate actually took the shots. Fixing hull holes isn't very difficult.

But if those shots went through engineering spaces? Yeah, then they could ruin the ship's day. They could affect internal gravity, compensators, impeller rings, or hypergenerator. Solarian-built ships, with their equipment all on the outside, would be more vulnerable, while a Manticore-built ship with those all on the inside (except for impeller rings, which can't be) could just shrug off, leak atmosphere, water, or hydrogen, and keep running for the hyperlimit or towards a friendly LAC.

The passage above was out of context, but it must have been discussing how Manticore-built freighters do dare to tread where Solarian ones don't.

Theemile wrote:
Most freighters don't pressurize their cargo bays - they may contain pressurized containers, but the bays themselves are usually in vacuum. So on an 8Mton freighter, <<10% of the ship is a shirt sleeve environment - most weapons fire could go in one side and out the other without causing an issue as long as the few vitals are not hit.

The biggest issue on a freighter is the lack of redundancy. where most items on a warship have a redundant (or hardened ) system, Freighter parts usually have no redundancy and are built for economy, so as mentioned above - if the vitals are damaged, a freighter is usually dead in the water.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Most freighters don't pressurize their cargo bays - they may contain pressurized containers, but the bays themselves are usually in vacuum. So on an 8Mton freighter, <<10% of the ship is a shirt sleeve environment - most weapons fire could go in one side and out the other without causing an issue as long as the few vitals are not hit.

The biggest issue on a freighter is the lack of redundancy. where most items on a warship have a redundant (or hardened ) system, Freighter parts usually have no redundancy and are built for economy, so as mentioned above - if the vitals are damaged, a freighter is usually dead in the water.

Additionally we're told that freighter lack subdivision in their engineering spaces.

The example I remember is warships have heavy subdivision in their impeller rooms so if damage to one node causes it's internal support equipment to catastrophically fail there would be armored and blast absorbing bulkheads around it to prevent it from damaging adjacent impeller support equipment and cause a cascade failure. But freighters instead optimize their impeller rooms for easy monitoring and maintenance from smaller engineering crews so larger rooms that are easier to work in and give better visibility to the equipment (but if some bit of equipment failed catastrophically wouldn't have those separating bulkheads to catch the blast/debris.

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Additionally we're told that freighter lack subdivision in their engineering spaces.

The example I remember is warships have heavy subdivision in their impeller rooms so if damage to one node causes it's internal support equipment to catastrophically fail there would be armored and blast absorbing bulkheads around it to prevent it from damaging adjacent impeller support equipment and cause a cascade failure. But freighters instead optimize their impeller rooms for easy monitoring and maintenance from smaller engineering crews so larger rooms that are easier to work in and give better visibility to the equipment (but if some bit of equipment failed catastrophically wouldn't have those separating bulkheads to catch the blast/debris.

I thought the lion's share of a freighter is goods. And a freighter can be configured according to the goods it is carrying. You wouldn't want to mix one system’s goods with another's. So I always assumed that those partitions would double as blast doors. And in the case of heavy equipment such as tractors, automobiles etc., they should be anchored, thus helping to dampen a hit by soaking up damage.

A freighter should also be large enough to spare enough space to utilize some sort of a repulser system to stop or inhibit blasted debris.

penny wrote:I thought the lion's share of a freighter is goods. And a freighter can be configured according to the goods it is carrying. You wouldn't want to mix one system’s goods with another's. So I always assumed that those partitions would double as blast doors. And in the case of heavy equipment such as tractors, automobiles etc., they should be anchored, thus helping to dampen a hit by soaking up damage.

A freighter should also be large enough to spare enough space to utilize some sort of a repulser system to stop or inhibit blasted debris.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd have assumed that for nearly all freighters the cargo would all containerized. So you wouldn't need partitions between them any more than you would on a modern day container ship. The containers themselves are tracked and prevent intermingling.

Unloading a bulk-break 8 megaton freighter would probably take you months!

(The containers themselves are probably a lot larger than the modern 2 TUE (40 foot) shipping container. And if you've got something oversized an Honorverse freighter can probably handle oversized containers as long as the dimensions stick to multiples of the standard container dimensions; and they don't get insanely large).

That said, yes, all those containers (and their contents) would provide some impromptu protection against hits. Though a graser capable of punching through a heavy cruiser's highly optimized energy dissipating armor would probably punch straight through a freighter despite all the containers in it's way; especially since the freighter lacks sidewalls to help initially blunt the power of the graser.

And yes, the vast, vast, majority of a freighter's internal volume is cargo bays. But each impeller ring still need to be backed by a ring of impeller rooms, and just omitting all the armored subdivision a warship would carry to break up their impeller rooms would tend to make those pretty spacious in comparison; despite being a tiny fraction of the insane internal volume of a 4 - 8 megaton freighter.

tlb wrote:

penny wrote:I thought the lion's share of a freighter is goods. And a freighter can be configured according to the goods it is carrying. You wouldn't want to mix one system’s goods with another's. So I always assumed that those partitions would double as blast doors. And in the case of heavy equipment such as tractors, automobiles etc., they should be anchored, thus helping to dampen a hit by soaking up damage.

A freighter should also be large enough to spare enough space to utilize some sort of a repulser system to stop or inhibit blasted debris.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd have assumed that for nearly all freighters the cargo would all containerized. So you wouldn't need partitions between them any more than you would on a modern day container ship. The containers themselves are tracked and prevent intermingling.

Unloading a bulk-break 8 megaton freighter would probably take you months!

(The containers themselves are probably a lot larger than the modern 2 TUE (40 foot) shipping container. And if you've got something oversized an Honorverse freighter can probably handle oversized containers as long as the dimensions stick to multiples of the standard container dimensions; and they don't get insanely large).

That said, yes, all those containers (and their contents) would provide some impromptu protection against hits. Though a graser capable of punching through a heavy cruiser's highly optimized energy dissipating armor would probably punch straight through a freighter despite all the containers in it's way; especially since the freighter lacks sidewalls to help initially blunt the power of the graser.

And yes, the vast, vast, majority of a freighter's internal volume is cargo bays. But each impeller ring still need to be backed by a ring of impeller rooms, and just omitting all the armored subdivision a warship would carry to break up their impeller rooms would tend to make those pretty spacious in comparison; despite being a tiny fraction of the insane internal volume of a 4 - 8 megaton freighter.

There is some mention of reconfiguring the cargo space of a standard freighter in the books, but it is not clear what is meant by that. I also doubt that it extends to blast doors.

The cargo seems to be mostly, if not all, containerized and there must be tractors/repellers as part of the standard cargo handling equipment. However it is unlikely this gear would have the responsiveness and intelligence to immediately handle blast damage.