penny wrote:Brigade XO wrote:Byng was never portrayed as a tactical genius, just a well politically connected position after longish service with not screwing up sufficiently to force higher commands to be able to remove him for incompetence even in the SLN at the time. He was maneuvered into his last command by the Alignments agents in the SL/SLN and used as dupe to cause trouble with a FF fleet which was guaranteed to cause in-service problems and that he was expected to be dangerous to all concerned and hopefully do some damage to RMN in Talbot....that was successful and cost FF not only that fleet but it was a great goad to make that other stellar SLN Admiral Crandall make what ended up being a suicidal call. But I digress......
We know a Spider Drive can operate inside a hyper limit as the G-Torps were using Spider Drive to maneuver into position to attack the various orbital stations in the Manticore Binary System.
Since we don't know HOW a Spider Drive ship can enter, travel and exit hyperspace there are sort of two options. One is that the Spider Drive itself can be reconfigured -with using other equipment something -like an impeller wedge being rigged Sails. The other general option being that a Spider needs to cary the normal impeller/sail equipment or some equivalent and probably have to take the Spider drive off-line to go into hyper using the impeller drive.
Ability to generate enough power to have both systems -even with one needing to be warmed up and held on standby before engaging is going to require a significant amount of power generation (and the equipment and its space to do that).
That brings up an interesting question. How exactly did the Sharks "link up" to effectively appear as one object to go into hyperspace and then appear as one ghost of sensor reading all that distance from the MBS.........and that transition was still enough to be picked by the MBS long range scanners looking for things dropping out of hyperspace?
It gets mentioned from time to time that system scanners looking for impellers note when an impeller vanishes from their screens when an impeller ship goes into hyper- because the impeller signal can't been seen in n-space from a ship in hyper. When a ship exits hyperdrive in the Honorverse, the bleed off of every ship from even a very "low "speed in hyperspace creates a massive energy flair....possibly reads as some sort of point source even if a sensor net is only getting a read on ship numbers from the ships wedge drives as they engage.
But the Sharks were using Spider drive and they DID produce an effect that looked like a sensor ghost at....was it a light month? So is there more happening to anything that is exiting hyperspace that creates a detectable event in emissions?
I suspect the Sharks would have had to had to have been "linked" together quite a bit closer than any ships with Impeller/Sail based systems could be and avoid drive caused fratricide. And they all entered and exited out of hyper LINKED TOGETHER at the same places in a tight group that did NOT look like a multi-ship transition.
Is it possible that the Tractor fields that the Spiders use can be used to hold ships together as a group entering and exiting hyper? That raises the question of what happens when any Spider Tractor Beam from one ship either touched a second ship or a tractor of another ship.
I would expect some spectacular energy or "gravitational" event with one of both of the ships.
You know, caused by a tractor beam powerful to apparently move a ship by grabbing onto hyperspace and haul its ship along in n-space (if I recall the proper description). Just wondering.
No, Byng certainly was no tactical genius. Why the SLN didn't sacrifice him is beyond me. I wonder what his status is now. Still in the navy?
The Sharks linking up is interesting. Conventional warships reconfigure their wedge to form a fore and aft sail. But the wedge runs down the length of the ship top and bottom.
It might be that a spider ship's "gravity band created by the tractors" would be more concentrated or radiates in a single area from the ship. In that case, a spider ship might not be able to reconfigure but for one sail. Thus linking up with another ship to create a second sail aft. Interesting post!
Byng was a Neppo baby. For that matter, every single sr. leader in the SLN is a Neppo baby. It's a family business, and you can't sacrifice anyone without pissing off someone else - who may then throw your "special" nephew (you know, the one who's highest accomplishment to date is denying a village somewhere of their idiot) under some other bus.
