What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

psy9o wrote:The problem with using MT to express ship classes is that some people confuse this with weight. This is incorrect, kg is a measurement for mass. 1L of water is one 1kg, doesn't matter whether your on earth or on a planet with ten times as much gravity this always stays true. Weight however is measured in Newton because this is a force. So a ship of 8.5 MT can vary in sizes depending on how much mass construction materials had and what the cargo is. So even if and SD(P) has a mass of 8.5 MT and you have a cargo ship of 8.5 MT the size both ships have can be different since an SD is probably going to be constructed with materials wich have a higher mass and the ship is going to have a lot less empty space then a cargo ship.

Funny thing about that...

You're familiar with the whole Great Resizing, right? I'm fairly certain (though I'm sure the more experienced posters will correct me if I'm wrong) that the 'tonnage' ratings in the Honorverse are actually a measurement of volume. 200 kg = 1 m^3 is a figure I seem to recall getting thrown around as the new average density. An empty 8 MT freighter may only mass 1 MT, but it doesn't go any faster. It still takes up the same volume, and thus still requires the same propulsive power.

As for why characters don't use cubic meters directly instead of some sort of odd mass-based shorthand, well, that's just a silly idea. Everyone knows that ships are measured by tons!

RandomGraysuit wrote:

psy9o wrote:The problem with using MT to express ship classes is that some people confuse this with weight. This is incorrect, kg is a measurement for mass. 1L of water is one 1kg, doesn't matter whether your on earth or on a planet with ten times as much gravity this always stays true. Weight however is measured in Newton because this is a force. So a ship of 8.5 MT can vary in sizes depending on how much mass construction materials had and what the cargo is. So even if and SD(P) has a mass of 8.5 MT and you have a cargo ship of 8.5 MT the size both ships have can be different since an SD is probably going to be constructed with materials wich have a higher mass and the ship is going to have a lot less empty space then a cargo ship.

Funny thing about that...

You're familiar with the whole Great Resizing, right? I'm fairly certain (though I'm sure the more experienced posters will correct me if I'm wrong) that the 'tonnage' ratings in the Honorverse are actually a measurement of volume. 200 kg = 1 m^3 is a figure I seem to recall getting thrown around as the new average density. An empty 8 MT freighter may only mass 1 MT, but it doesn't go any faster. It still takes up the same volume, and thus still requires the same propulsive power.

As for why characters don't use cubic meters directly instead of some sort of odd mass-based shorthand, well, that's just a silly idea. Everyone knows that ships are measured by tons!

Cargo ships are generally listed by the amount of cargo they carry, not the actual displacement of the ship. So that fully loaded 8 MT freighter would "mass" 8 MT + the mass of the ship & crew etc. Whereas an 8 MT SD would actually have a mass of 8 MT. Meaning that an 8 MT freighter is going to be larger dimensionally than an 8 MT SD.

Now MWW may be doing it differently, but unless he answers we don't know.

Thirdbase wrote:

RandomGraysuit wrote:

psy9o wrote:The problem with using MT to express ship classes is that some people confuse this with weight. This is incorrect, kg is a measurement for mass. 1L of water is one 1kg, doesn't matter whether your on earth or on a planet with ten times as much gravity this always stays true. Weight however is measured in Newton because this is a force. So a ship of 8.5 MT can vary in sizes depending on how much mass construction materials had and what the cargo is. So even if and SD(P) has a mass of 8.5 MT and you have a cargo ship of 8.5 MT the size both ships have can be different since an SD is probably going to be constructed with materials wich have a higher mass and the ship is going to have a lot less empty space then a cargo ship.

Funny thing about that...

You're familiar with the whole Great Resizing, right? I'm fairly certain (though I'm sure the more experienced posters will correct me if I'm wrong) that the 'tonnage' ratings in the Honorverse are actually a measurement of volume. 200 kg = 1 m^3 is a figure I seem to recall getting thrown around as the new average density. An empty 8 MT freighter may only mass 1 MT, but it doesn't go any faster. It still takes up the same volume, and thus still requires the same propulsive power.

As for why characters don't use cubic meters directly instead of some sort of odd mass-based shorthand, well, that's just a silly idea. Everyone knows that ships are measured by tons!

Cargo ships are generally listed by the amount of cargo they carry, not the actual displacement of the ship. So that fully loaded 8 MT freighter would "mass" 8 MT + the mass of the ship & crew etc. Whereas an 8 MT SD would actually have a mass of 8 MT. Meaning that an 8 MT freighter is going to be larger dimensionally than an 8 MT SD.

Now MWW may be doing it differently, but unless he answers we don't know.

I suspect that an 8.5 MT Freighter would be larger than an SD for the simple reason that so much of a freighter is made up of empty space (the cargo holds).

we know that after the Great Re-sizing RFC decided on an average density of around 0.25 for warships this is going to be much lower for cargo ships

if we use current existing ships

USS Nimitz (approx 100,000 displacement)
Length 332.8m
Beam 76.8m
Draught 11.3m

ULCC Seawise giant (apptox 82,000 displacement (empty) generally considered the largest ship ever built)
Length 458.45m
Beam 68.8m
Draught 24.61m

we can see that the military ship has quite a bit more displacement despite being quite a bit smaller (of course the displacement of the seawise giant is over 640,000 tons fully loaded)

I tried to find a similar size battleship but the biggest I could find (that was actually built) was the Yamato class
Displacement 72,000
Length 263m
Beam 38.9
Draught 10.4

and even then at only 10,000 tons lighter she was just over half the size of the Seawise Giant

Emo Otaku wrote:

Thirdbase wrote:

RandomGraysuit wrote: Funny thing about that...

You're familiar with the whole Great Resizing, right? I'm fairly certain (though I'm sure the more experienced posters will correct me if I'm wrong) that the 'tonnage' ratings in the Honorverse are actually a measurement of volume. 200 kg = 1 m^3 is a figure I seem to recall getting thrown around as the new average density. An empty 8 MT freighter may only mass 1 MT, but it doesn't go any faster. It still takes up the same volume, and thus still requires the same propulsive power.

As for why characters don't use cubic meters directly instead of some sort of odd mass-based shorthand, well, that's just a silly idea. Everyone knows that ships are measured by tons!

Cargo ships are generally listed by the amount of cargo they carry, not the actual displacement of the ship. So that fully loaded 8 MT freighter would "mass" 8 MT + the mass of the ship & crew etc. Whereas an 8 MT SD would actually have a mass of 8 MT. Meaning that an 8 MT freighter is going to be larger dimensionally than an 8 MT SD.

Now MWW may be doing it differently, but unless he answers we don't know.

I suspect that an 8.5 MT Freighter would be larger than an SD for the simple reason that so much of a freighter is made up of empty space (the cargo holds).

we know that after the Great Re-sizing RFC decided on an average density of around 0.25 for warships this is going to be much lower for cargo ships

if we use current existing ships

USS Nimitz (approx 100,000 displacement)
Length 332.8m
Beam 76.8m
Draught 11.3m

ULCC Seawise giant (apptox 82,000 displacement (empty) generally considered the largest ship ever built)
Length 458.45m
Beam 68.8m
Draught 24.61m

we can see that the military ship has quite a bit more displacement despite being quite a bit smaller (of course the displacement of the seawise giant is over 640,000 tons fully loaded)

I tried to find a similar size battleship but the biggest I could find (that was actually built) was the Yamato class
Displacement 72,000
Length 263m
Beam 38.9
Draught 10.4

and even then at only 10,000 tons lighter she was just over half the size of the Seawise Giant

Lets use current Honorverse ships. An 8M ton SD is maximum 1,500 M long, 200 M wide, 150 M tall. An oval cylindar would be 35.3 Million cubic meters. An SD is an illregular shape, so is probably somewhere between 25-30 Million cubic meters, which puts them less than 1/3 the density of water.

The shrike is 110 M long, about 15 M diameter, with the missile tubes 20 M in diameter. That puts them about 15,000-17,000 tons, or a density slightly higher than water.

There are two possibilities for this discrepency. I tend to think the most likely is the second. Also, Since the biggest Merchant ship with old compensators is 8.5M tons and the biggest SD is also 10M tons, I believe that the warship and the merchant are the same physical size for the tonnage.

1) In HOTQ they state that LAC's are even less combat capable than their tonnage might sugest. That could mean that non hyper ships measure size differently than hyper ships. That would mean that a 40K ton courrier boat has 4 times the volume of a 40K ton LAC.

2) Ship size measures something othe than mass or volume. (possibly compensator size.) That would mean that there is a gradual progression, and when you double the size rating of a ship, you increase the volume about 2.4 times.

Where are you getting your sizes from? You're off on the dimensions of a generic SD and Shrike LAC.

Ship tonnage is actually a rough measure of volume/size, not actual weight. Among other things, weight really doesn't matter for an impeller drive vessel.

As far back as On Basilisk Station, we had confirmation that the speed a ship can attain is based entirely on physical size of the ship:
Within the safety limits of its compensator, any accelerating or decelerating starship was in a condition of internal free-fall unless it generated its own gravity, but the compensator's efficiency depended on two factors: the area enclosed in its field and the strength of the grav wave serving as its sump. Thus a smaller ship, with a smaller compensator field area, could sustain a higher acceleration from a given wave strength, and the naturally-occurring and vastly more powerful grav waves of hyper-space allowed for far higher accelerations under Warshawski sail than could possibly be achieved under impeller drive in normal-space.

Ship 'mass' is actually a shorthand measure developed using a formula that only our Esteemed Author has. The Watsonian explanation would be that 'ship tonnage' has become an in-universe archaic unit used to measure compensator efficiency, physical size, etc, much as kilograms are used as a unit of weight today.

Duckk wrote:Where are you getting your sizes from? You're off on the dimensions of a generic SD and Shrike LAC.

I did the best estimate I could based on text and illistrations.

The SD is listed as 1.5Km long in the infodump, (after the great resizing) Every illistration of a hyper capable warship I have see shows it to be about 10 time longer than it is high, which would make it about 150 meters tall. There is multiple references that warships are wider than tall, so I guess at a 3:4 ratio, or 200 meters wide.

The shrike is listed as 110 meters long in echo's of honor. The illistration shows that the main body diameter (not counting the missile tubes) is about 1/7 the length, which would make the main body about 16 meters in diameter.

If I am so far off, where did I go wrong?

Well for one, the Shrike description in EoH is pre-Resizing. That's apples and oranges right there.

darrell wrote:

Duckk wrote:Where are you getting your sizes from? You're off on the dimensions of a generic SD and Shrike LAC.

I did the best estimate I could based on text and illistrations.

The SD is listed as 1.5Km long in the infodump, (after the great resizing) Every illistration of a hyper capable warship I have see shows it to be about 10 time longer than it is high, which would make it about 150 meters tall. There is multiple references that warships are wider than tall, so I guess at a 3:4 ratio, or 200 meters wide.

The shrike is listed as 110 meters long in echo's of honor. The illistration shows that the main body diameter (not counting the missile tubes) is about 1/7 the length, which would make the main body about 16 meters in diameter.

If I am so far off, where did I go wrong?

darrell wrote:1) In HOTQ they state that LAC's are even less combat capable than their tonnage might sugest. That could mean that non hyper ships measure size differently than hyper ships. That would mean that a 40K ton courrier boat has 4 times the volume of a 40K ton LAC.

Doubtful. When you use the bare minimum of passive and active sensors, targeting computers (which in the Honorverse are suspiciously large), EW suites, sidewall generators and missile control channels to qualify the above as 'military grade', and often have pitiful numbers or nothing in the way of PDLCs, countermissiles and armor, you get something that technically is a warship. Technically.

It has offensive weapons, it doesn't carry cargo, so it's a warship by default. Unfortunately, like conventional LAC box-launched missiles, technicalities are singularly ineffective in a real battle.

Duckk wrote:Well for one, the Shrike description in EoH is pre-Resizing. That's apples and oranges right there.

darrell wrote:

Duckk wrote:Where are you getting your sizes from? You're off on the dimensions of a generic SD and Shrike LAC.

I did the best estimate I could based on text and illistrations.

The SD is listed as 1.5Km long in the infodump, (after the great resizing) Every illistration of a hyper capable warship I have see shows it to be about 10 time longer than it is high, which would make it about 150 meters tall. There is multiple references that warships are wider than tall, so I guess at a 3:4 ratio, or 200 meters wide.

The shrike is listed as 110 meters long in echo's of honor. The illistration shows that the main body diameter (not counting the missile tubes) is about 1/7 the length, which would make the main body about 16 meters in diameter.

If I am so far off, where did I go wrong?

Which, with the cube square law would make the Shrike 8 times more dense, or about 10 times more dense than water, plus or minus 10%. Since solid lead has a density of 11.3 . . . . .