Frequently Asked Questions
Perhaps it is because of the nature of the books that David writes, perhaps it is because David Weber's fans are unusually dedicated and inquisitive... but it seems that everyone has a question! Here are a few that David finds he gets asked most often.
If you have a question that you would like to see considered as a FAQ, please e-mail us at faq@davidweber.net. Responses will be posted if and when David can get to them. We'd love to hear from you!
| Series |
Question |
Posted |
| Honorverse |
Is the contact nuke going to make a return now that Apollo makes penetrating defenses trivial? (Asked Mon Jul 16, 2012) |
January 2014 |
|
The only problem is that you won't get the hits in the first place, for a lot of reasons.
The biggest one, as I've mentioned several times, is that the vulnerable aspects of an Honorverse ship are extremely limited even when the ship in question isn't maneuvering radically to make things worse. You can't get a hit through the wedge; you can only hit it through the sides of the wedge, up the kilt, or down the throat, and Honorverse missiles aren't that maneuverable, especially at the ends of their runs when they have an enormous velocity.
Terminal velocity on a Mk 23 after a 9-munute run from rest is .81 cee, and you can't turn something moving at that velocity on a dime. But the sidewall is 10 kilometers from the side of the ship and roughly 140 kilometers from the outer edge of the wedge. Threading that narrow chink of vulnerability is tough even with a laser head's standoff range; it would be a lot tougher for a contact warhead. And even assuming you pull that off, without the right penetrator, a warhead's not getting through that, which automatically means a 10-km-plus standoff range for a "contact" nuke in an airless, noncompressible medium, against radiation and particle shielding that can handle incoming particles at .7 cee for days on end.
Of course, the target can deny you that angle by rolling ship as the missile comes in, and as noted above, there's only so much delta vee you can apply in the period in which your missile overruns the target. If I roll, your missile (or its wedge) is going to hit my wedge on the way in if you can generate a sharp enough turn to nip in between the edges of a 300-km-wide wedge in the first place. Same with "hooking" a contact nuke down the throat of a wedge or up the kilt, and the manuvering aspect of the geometry of the warhead's approach to contact completely ignores the active defenses, which are going to have a field day during the warhead's final approach.
The laser head has a vastly larger range basket, is far better suited to "snap shots" as it crosses the vulnerable aspect of an evading wedge, has a greater standoff range, and is a much more difficult target for the close in defenses. The percentage of hits you will score is much, much higher than even Apollo could possibly hope to score with contact warheads (especially against a peer warship with bow and stern walls), so even if each individual hit is less destructive, the damage budget is much larger for the same throw weight of missiles.
I can't see anything on the horizon that's likely to alter those fundamental limitations against an iumpeller drivfe vessel. |
| Honorverse |
How is impeller wedge power related to sidewall strength? (Asked Tue May 24, 2011) |
December 2013 |
|
The strength of the wedge does affect the effectiveness of the sidewall, but it isn't the decisive factor in sidewall strength. It's the sidewall generators which determine that.
A sidewall is basically a "plate" of focused gravitic energy, and the bigger (and stronger) its generator, the stronger and tougher the sidewall plate is going to be. The logical implication of this is that larger ships with more tonnage for generators and a larger energy budget can produce stronger sidewalls, and that's the real reason ships-of-the-wall, for example, have sidewalls so much tougher than a battlecruiser's or a destroyer's. It's also the reason the Nike-class battlecruisers have stronger sidewalls than the Agamemnons; the BC(L)'s designers devoted the tonnage and the power to generate them because toughness and survivability were higher priorities in the Nike's concept design stage.
Now, where the basic size and power of the ship's impeller wedge come in is in the "stitching" — the interface where the sidewall and the wedge come together. The sidewall is strongest at the center, with the strength (the gravitic "depth," if you will) of the "plate" dropping off proportionately as one approaches its boundaries. That means the upper and lower edges of the sidewall are the "sweet spot" where the attacker really wants his energy weapon shot to hit, and the stronger or "deeper" the impeller wedge is, the more its "shadow" protects that "seam" from incoming fire. The sidewall actually reaches up into the impeller wedge (where the two of them are tuned to interface and interlock), much as the impeller wedge reaches across the alpha wall to siphon in additional power to maintain the wedge once it's up. The effect in this case is much less noticeable in terms of power supply, but the interface also "bends" or slightly deforms the surface of the impeller wedge, pulling it "downward" to the edge of the sidewall plate, which is where the defensive "shadow" originates, and the stronger the impeller band, the stronger (tougher) that shadow becomes. In combination these factors significantly reinforce the strength of the sidewall edges where they are inherently weaker, which means that the same sidewall generator will produce a more effective sidewall when it has a stronger or "deeper" impeller wedge with which to interface. It's not that the sidewall itself is actually stronger, but rather that it is able to use its strength in a more inherently efficient fashion. This is only a factor for hits that would come in through that reinforced area, and the reinforcement itself is a small enough factor in the sidewall's overall power that this is not a significant element in the difference of sidewall strength between, say, a Nike and an Agamemnon. It would, however, be a very significant element in the difference between the strength of an SD's sidewall and that of a CA. |
