MASSIVE SPOILER about next book hardware

phillies wrote:At least they had failures that involved their retaining positive buoyancy, as opposed to reducing hull plate welding and fastening until something large falls off, as happened to another ship of another class.

We have not seen much of the RMN making any *bad* design decisions, other than the weapon of the accursed.

RMN seriously? I think someone is mixing universes. And if it is not please explain, if I'm wrong I apologize.

Charles83 wrote:

phillies wrote:At least they had failures that involved their retaining positive buoyancy, as opposed to reducing hull plate welding and fastening until something large falls off, as happened to another ship of another class.

We have not seen much of the RMN making any *bad* design decisions, other than the weapon of the accursed.

RMN seriously? I think someone is mixing universes. And if it is not please explain, if I'm wrong I apologize.

No, I think you're right... but I also think that was the point. He was making a bad joke about the weapon-whose-name-must-never-be-spoken-again from On Basilisk Station.

But despite the lunatics that inhabit the asylum over in the Honorverse forum, Weber is very good about coming up with MUCH better designs than certain lunatics are willing to give him credit for. And that was the point. Outside of that one mistake on his part, he's always come up with logical designs, and logical weapon systems, and logical weapon use strategies... and that despite years of effort on the part of said lunatics none of us are smart enough (or at least not well-enough versed in history + human psychology + physics + naval constraints + a few dozen other fields) to come up with better.

And the same applies to Safehold as well. Our problems with his designs here come from our lack of expertise, not his... and/or perhaps our lack of full details...

FriarBob wrote:

Charles83 wrote:

phillies wrote:At least they had failures that involved their retaining positive buoyancy, as opposed to reducing hull plate welding and fastening until something large falls off, as happened to another ship of another class.

We have not seen much of the RMN making any *bad* design decisions, other than the weapon of the accursed.

RMN seriously? I think someone is mixing universes. And if it is not please explain, if I'm wrong I apologize.

No, I think you're right... but I also think that was the point. He was making a bad joke about the weapon-whose-name-must-never-be-spoken-again from On Basilisk Station.

But despite the lunatics that inhabit the asylum over in the Honorverse forum, Weber is very good about coming up with MUCH better designs than certain lunatics are willing to give him credit for. And that was the point. Outside of that one mistake on his part, he's always come up with logical designs, and logical weapon systems, and logical weapon use strategies... and that despite years of effort on the part of said lunatics none of us are smart enough (or at least not well-enough versed in history + human psychology + physics + naval constraints + a few dozen other fields) to come up with better.

And the same applies to Safehold as well. Our problems with his designs here come from our lack of expertise, not his... and/or perhaps our lack of full details...

I dont think that the grav lance was a mistake in his part it was an idea that given the realities of war its useless, to give an example from today, a shotgun is a very good weapon but bringing a shotgun to an open field battle with rifles is stupid, so in little what he wanted to fulfill was that admiral sonja hemphill is a very imaginative scientist and a successful one but sometimes her ideas are not strategically sound in the military realities of the honorverse, here on safehold is different since RFC has been giving all of us classes of "Naval History 101" and "Weapon Development Through History 101", so for me personally I think that he hasnt made any mistake (at least any major one), I think he has thought everything and has put every single design and weapon in purpose for different reasons.

Oh and BTW I'm one of the residents of the Asylum of the honorverse.

Charles83 wrote:

FriarBob wrote:

Charles83 wrote:RMN seriously? I think someone is mixing universes. And if it is not please explain, if I'm wrong I apologize.

No, I think you're right... but I also think that was the point. He was making a bad joke about the weapon-whose-name-must-never-be-spoken-again from On Basilisk Station.

But despite the lunatics that inhabit the asylum over in the Honorverse forum, Weber is very good about coming up with MUCH better designs than certain lunatics are willing to give him credit for. And that was the point. Outside of that one mistake on his part, he's always come up with logical designs, and logical weapon systems, and logical weapon use strategies... and that despite years of effort on the part of said lunatics none of us are smart enough (or at least not well-enough versed in history + human psychology + physics + naval constraints + a few dozen other fields) to come up with better.

And the same applies to Safehold as well. Our problems with his designs here come from our lack of expertise, not his... and/or perhaps our lack of full details...

I don't think that the grav lance was a mistake in his part it was an idea that given the realities of war its useless, to give an example from today, a shotgun is a very good weapon but bringing a shotgun to an open field battle with rifles is stupid, so in little what he wanted to fulfill was that Admiral Sonja Hemphill is a very imaginative scientist and a successful one but sometimes her ideas are not strategically sound in the military realities of the Honorverse, here on Safehold is different since RFC has been giving all of us classes of "Naval History 101" and "Weapon Development Through History 101", so for me personally I think that he hasn't made any mistake (at least any major one), I think he has thought everything and has put every single design and weapon in purpose for different reasons.

Oh and BTW I'm one of the residents of the Asylum of the Honorverse.

You can be a resident and not be an inmate. Hopefully you're the former. I'm an ex-resident because I got sick of the inmates. Now I only visit very briefly, mainly only when I happen to go there in the pursuit of reading every single post Weber has written since the last time I scanned his post history... :)

And he called the weapon a mistake because of the intense insanity it provoked, not because there weren't valid storytelling elements that made its use actually semi-worthwhile. It was proof that Sonja, despite her undeniable brilliance, needed somebody riding herd on her to keep her from running off into outright insanity. For that matter, it was also very useful character development by giving proof that Honor wasn't perfect either, and that she needed to grow up from her initial "Horrible Hemphill" mantra to realizing that Sonja wasn't a lunatic after all, she was just occasionally wrong.

I'm sure Weber has made mistakes too, but like you I feel that whatever they are they are likely to be fairly trivial, especially with so much history of wet-navy warfare (of which he is undeniably an expert) upon which he can draw to base his ideas.

Like Charles83, I too would like to defend the tWTMNBN* as being neither a bad decision on Weber’s part, nor a bad design decision in-universe; iff one reads the early books, it is clearly (or rather was before the days of missile dominance) a valid weapons fit for capital ships of an navy that knew it might eventually find itself forced into an energy engagement against a superior weight of metal over its homeworld(s), aka the RMN. In light of that likely scenario, sacrificing a percent or two of the broadside armaments (which averaged heavier than the enemy’s on a per ship basis for their capital ships) for a chance to fill an inside straight draw on that fateful day, is not necessarily a bad decision.

Crippling a CL by pulling two thirds of its broadside loadout to fit a system that would only be usable in filling such a tactical inside straight, now that was a bad design decision … but Hemphill realized that after the first series of trials of the testbed. ;)

So the RMN’s use of this weapons system on their capital ships is a quite reasonable design compromise in light of the threat they expected to face during the Roger III buildup, and not a mistake on Weber’s part.

It cannot be his fault that various hordes have since repeatedly failed to internalize even the basic aspects of the strategic situation, options and operational experience available (or unavailable) to BuShips and the Admiralty at large, and yet have felt themselves expert enough to ride roughshod over the designs and tactics the RMN chose to build and adopt; that he in the end got fed up with explaining this particular point over and over does not invalidate his inclusion of the system in a story written at a time predating it becoming clear what the ratio of jerks to nerds on the internet would (d)evolve into in the years ahead. :-/

Just my two cents.

*But as we shouldn’t mention it, I will hold my tongue instead. ;)

FriarBob wrote:

Charles83 wrote:

FriarBob wrote:
No, I think you're right... but I also think that was the point. He was making a bad joke about the weapon-whose-name-must-never-be-spoken-again from On Basilisk Station.

But despite the lunatics that inhabit the asylum over in the Honorverse forum, Weber is very good about coming up with MUCH better designs than certain lunatics are willing to give him credit for. And that was the point. Outside of that one mistake on his part, he's always come up with logical designs, and logical weapon systems, and logical weapon use strategies... and that despite years of effort on the part of said lunatics none of us are smart enough (or at least not well-enough versed in history + human psychology + physics + naval constraints + a few dozen other fields) to come up with better.

And the same applies to Safehold as well. Our problems with his designs here come from our lack of expertise, not his... and/or perhaps our lack of full details...

I don't think that the grav lance was a mistake in his part it was an idea that given the realities of war its useless, to give an example from today, a shotgun is a very good weapon but bringing a shotgun to an open field battle with rifles is stupid, so in little what he wanted to fulfill was that Admiral Sonja Hemphill is a very imaginative scientist and a successful one but sometimes her ideas are not strategically sound in the military realities of the Honorverse, here on Safehold is different since RFC has been giving all of us classes of "Naval History 101" and "Weapon Development Through History 101", so for me personally I think that he hasn't made any mistake (at least any major one), I think he has thought everything and has put every single design and weapon in purpose for different reasons.

Oh and BTW I'm one of the residents of the Asylum of the Honorverse.

You can be a resident and not be an inmate. Hopefully you're the former. I'm an ex-resident because I got sick of the inmates. Now I only visit very briefly, mainly only when I happen to go there in the pursuit of reading every single post Weber has written since the last time I scanned his post history... :)

And he called the weapon a mistake because of the intense insanity it provoked, not because there weren't valid storytelling elements that made its use actually semi-worthwhile. It was proof that Sonja, despite her undeniable brilliance, needed somebody riding herd on her to keep her from running off into outright insanity. For that matter, it was also very useful character development by giving proof that Honor wasn't perfect either, and that she needed to grow up from her initial "Horrible Hemphill" mantra to realizing that Sonja wasn't a lunatic after all, she was just occasionally wrong.

I'm sure Weber has made mistakes too, but like you I feel that whatever they are they are likely to be fairly trivial, especially with so much history of wet-navy warfare (of which he is undeniably an expert) upon which he can draw to base his ideas.

Oops, sorry about the top post, I stand revealed before you as one of those inmates FriarBob mentioned.
:D

I'm a resident of the asylum and not an inmate because I know I'm crazy so its by my own decision that I'm in there, in another point thanks hvb you understood what I wanted to say, I hope that RFC continue providing us with more material so we can continue discussing strategy and tactics and logistics all over the series, I like all the discussions about what can charis do and how they can do it.

Here is the actual Standard Displacement clause from the

Washington Naval Treaty 1922
Chapter 2 PART 4
DEFINITIONS
For the purposes of the present Treaty, the following expressions are to be understood in the sense defined in this Part.
Capital ship: A capital ship, in the case of ships hereafter built, is defined as a vessel of war, not an aircraft-carrier, whose displacement exceeds 10,000 tons (10,160 metric tons) standard displacement, or which carries a gun with a calibre exceeding 8 inches (203 millimetres).
Aircraft-carrier: An aircraft-carrier is defined as a vessel of war with a displacement in excess of 10,000 tons (10,160 metric tons) standard displacement designed for the specific and exclusive purpose of carrying aircraft. It must be so constructed that aircraft can be launched therefrom and landed thereon, and not designed and constructed for carrying a more powerful armament than that allowed to it under Article IX or Article X as the case may be.

Standard displacement
The standard displacement of a ship is the displacement of the ship complete, fully manned, engined, and equipped ready for sea, including all armament and ammunition, equipment, outfit provisions and fresh water for crew, miscellaneous stores and implements of every description that are intended to be carried in war, but without fuel or reserve feed water on board.

The word "ton" in the present Treaty, except in the expression "metric tons", shall be understood to mean the ton of 2,240 pounds (1,016 kilos).
Vessels now completed shall retain their present ratings of displacement tonnage in accordance with their national system of measurement. However, a Power expressing displacement in metric tons shall be considered for the application of the present Treaty as owning only the equivalent displacement in tons of 2,240 pounds.
A vessel completed hereafter shall be rated at its displacement tonnage when in the standard condition defined herein.

As you can see they were quite specific and as indicated by RFC there was still room to cheat.

NOTE: The omission of fuel and reserve boiler water from the standard displacement value was put in place to avoid penalizing the British and especially the United States who needed ships with much longer operational ranges than did any of the continental powers. Fuel loads were commonly in excess of 6,000 tons on a 35,000 ton std ship for the UK and US.

Thus the two/three (if you include Japan) major players still slanted the treaty to their best interest with these exemptions

With steam engines being used now in the next book does anyone else think we will see a steam powered submarine? I was thinking something along the lines of the “Ictineo II”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ictineo_II

The benefits of such a sub are easy to grasp, such as moving men in and out of an bay/harbor quietly and stealthily. Attacking blockading ships at night. If they come up with some sort of torpedo, attacking shipping lanes like the German U-boats did. Though maybe nearly as effective since they would have to be steam powered, and not diesel /electric.

warchild wrote:With steam engines being used now in the next book does anyone else think we will see a steam powered submarine? I was thinking something along the lines of the “Ictineo II”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ictineo_II

The benefits of such a sub are easy to grasp, such as moving men in and out of an bay/harbor quietly and stealthily. Attacking blockading ships at night. If they come up with some sort of torpedo, attacking shipping lanes like the German U-boats did. Though maybe nearly as effective since they would have to be steam powered, and not diesel /electric.

No it would be a waste of resources, the only use that a submarine has is to negate the sea to an enemy and so far the ICN has done that work to perfection without U-Boats, so why build something who apart of being redundant require lot of maintenance and a huge amount of resources, that is literally shooting your own foot.

In other place steam engines could be best used at first in making better tools and weapons, and further down the road (1 or 2 years) introduce it as the engine for steel boats as the ironclad, making trucks or jeeps need a lot more experience and a lot more things to be made before it become a viable solution, you could start some of the process of making trucks by making suspension and axles and other stuff that can go in a wagon pulled by lizards.

Think small and big at the same time, right now is a perfect moment to put the advantage of the steam engine to build a better industrial advantage than to use the steam engine in direct military applications, so making hundreds of steam engines to make new tools that are better and stronger, to make the railroad, to liberate some manufacture capability so the civilians can have some basic and luxury goods that could have been scarce since the war started, well I think that the steam engines as a logistic enhancer is far more critical than as a front line tool, the one I think will be a very big advantage (in a purely military way) is when they start making modern vietnam era automatic rifles, and with steam engines it could be possible to start making those in 2 or 3 years.