Honorverse ramblings and musings

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:
Regarding the Warshawski sails. Has textev given the time required to deploy the sails? Is it the same regardless of tonnage?

The only time I recall offhand where specific timing of sail rigging was mentioned was in OBS when Fearless is heading out the Junction.

On Basilisk Station wrote:"Rig foresail for transit."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Rigging foresail—now."
No observer would have noted any visible change in the cruiser, but Honor's instrumentation told the tale as Fearless's impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half-strength. Her forward nodes no longer generated their portion of the normal-space stress bands; instead, they had reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation that extended for over three hundred kilometers in every direction from the cruiser's hull. The Warshawski sail, useless in normal-space, was the secret of hyper travel, and the Junction was simply a focused funnel of hyper-space, like the eye of a hurricane frozen forever in normal-space terms.
"Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark," Honor murmured as Fearless continued to creep forward under the power of her aft-impellers alone. A new readout flickered to life, and she watched its numerals dance steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. There was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way, but no captain wanted to look sloppy in a maneuver like this, and—
The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.
"Rigging aftersail," the engineer replied, and Fearless twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull from the first.

But even that isn't clear if 15 seconds is the total window to rig the aft-sail, or if it's (say) 60 seconds +/- 7.5 seconds. It also doesn't cover whether there was prep-time before the order to rig them was given; since it was hardly a surprise that Fearless would need them. Nor does it touch on any possible differences due to tonnage (or due to merchant vs military drives)

However, the overall impression is that it doesn't take long at all (less than a minute?) to switch from wedge to sails. (Though obviously if you were sitting with cold nodes you'd have many minutes of delay bringing anything up)

Wow! Thanks for that passage Johnathan. Even if it's the max of 60 seconds, that's still much better that the several minutes (~ 5) I was thinking. Of course, I'm sure that even a minute can feel like an eternity when you're on the run! Especially the more fragile CLACs.

And of course, this doesn't take into account any delay brought on from internal power problems from damage incurred.

A thought. I wonder how many ships are lost from the nodes suddenly going out of tune during the 15 second safety margin? It doesn't seem like 15 seconds is enough time to abort. Is aborting that far into the maneuver even possible?

IIRC, the sails don't suddenly go out of tune (I learned that from OBS when the 'powers that be' toyed with Pavel Young), however, that is dependent upon a navy that adheres to recommended life expextancies of the entire system - which IIRC, the sails and nodes are normally replaced together. The implication is that I would NOT want to be aboard a Solarian warship about to translate! I'd feel safer dodging MDM's on a highwire in the wind.

One other related question. In case of bridge fatalities (and the astrogator is one of them), who else on the bridge is capable of filling in at astrogation? I know the captain is, or should be. But I wouldn't think she'd be the optimum choice under the conditions - she's needed in the command chair. (I'm not so sure putting that much pressure on Honor's math skills falls under the heading of a good idea either. )

And I wonder if the captain can complete the cycle, from beginning to end from her command chair?

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Regarding the Warshawski sails. Has textev given the time required to deploy the sails? Is it the same regardless of tonnage?

The only time I recall offhand where specific timing of sail rigging was mentioned was in OBS when Fearless is heading out the Junction.

On Basilisk Station wrote:"Rig foresail for transit."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Rigging foresail—now."
No observer would have noted any visible change in the cruiser, but Honor's instrumentation told the tale as Fearless's impeller wedge dropped abruptly to half-strength. Her forward nodes no longer generated their portion of the normal-space stress bands; instead, they had reconfigured to produce a circular disk of focused gravitation that extended for over three hundred kilometers in every direction from the cruiser's hull. The Warshawski sail, useless in normal-space, was the secret of hyper travel, and the Junction was simply a focused funnel of hyper-space, like the eye of a hurricane frozen forever in normal-space terms.
"Stand by to rig aftersail on my mark," Honor murmured as Fearless continued to creep forward under the power of her aft-impellers alone. A new readout flickered to life, and she watched its numerals dance steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. There was a safety margin of almost fifteen seconds either way, but no captain wanted to look sloppy in a maneuver like this, and—
The twinkling numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting eternally through the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply to Santos.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.
"Rigging aftersail," the engineer replied, and Fearless twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull from the first.

But even that isn't clear if 15 seconds is the total window to rig the aft-sail, or if it's (say) 60 seconds +/- 7.5 seconds. It also doesn't cover whether there was prep-time before the order to rig them was given; since it was hardly a surprise that Fearless would need them. Nor does it touch on any possible differences due to tonnage (or due to merchant vs military drives)

However, the overall impression is that it doesn't take long at all (less than a minute?) to switch from wedge to sails. (Though obviously if you were sitting with cold nodes you'd have many minutes of delay bringing anything up)

Yes, unfortunately that text does not really show how long it takes. While the text feels like it happens pretty quickly, David has also said elsewhere that the sails have to be up for a lot longer than you might think. It takes up to 3 minutes for a ship--with sails already up--to pass through the wormhole, and the text simply does not show that. The text depicts a compressed time frame, ignoring the tens of seconds of just sitting around between actions. Nor does the text show the 4 minutes it would take for a superdreadnought hyper generator to go from "ready to push the button" to "running and in hyperspace".

SWM wrote:Yes, unfortunately that text does not really show how long it takes. While the text feels like it happens pretty quickly, David has also said elsewhere that the sails have to be up for a lot longer than you might think. It takes up to 3 minutes for a ship--with sails already up--to pass through the wormhole, and the text simply does not show that. The text depicts a compressed time frame, ignoring the tens of seconds of just sitting around between actions. Nor does the text show the 4 minutes it would take for a superdreadnought hyper generator to go from "ready to push the button" to "running and in hyperspace".

True. And that's the problem trying to extrapolate from routine events (even before you start considering that parts might be omitted or compressed for readability and flow).

Too many of the delays that become critical in an emergency situation can be hidden by pipelining. The hyper generator delay gets lost because they simply hit the button 4 minutes before they want to jump - perfectly possible on a routing wormhole approach. There could certainly be other similar delays in rigging sails.


Even the other transit that I thought of later (8th fleet's emergency double transit from Trevor's Star to Basilisk) doesn't fully cover that.
We know the destroyers were coming through 10 seconds apart, and that they therefor had very little time to clear the exit. But again that doesn't show that they could convert from sails to wedge in under 10 seconds - just that they couldn't vary the total time by more than a few seconds without disaster.
It still could have taken 4 minutes (just for example; and I don't think it did). That would just mean that there were 24 DDs queued up sliding out the exit 'lane' in the middle of converting from sail to wedge.

cthia wrote:One other related question. In case of bridge fatalities (and the astrogator is one of them), who else on the bridge is capable of filling in at astrogation?

Any midshipman or other graduate of Saganami Island should be able to manage; We have several examples of Middies sweating through their rotation at astrogation.

cthia wrote:(I'm not so sure putting that much pressure on Honor's math skills falls under the heading of a good idea either. )

If you don't give her time to think about it, Honor is an intuitive navigator. Ref: her near miss of the Havenite courier when departing in pursuit of Sirius.

cthia wrote:And I wonder if the captain can complete the cycle, from beginning to end from her command chair?

Again, Ref: Honor departing Medusa in pursuit of Sirius; she didn't route the course through astrogation, she sent it directly to the Helmsman.

Also, ref: any of several midshipmen sweating through course calculations and worrying about the Captain (or Officer of the Watch) watching over their shoulder.

Jonathan_S wrote:

SWM wrote:Yes, unfortunately that text does not really show how long it takes. While the text feels like it happens pretty quickly, David has also said elsewhere that the sails have to be up for a lot longer than you might think. It takes up to 3 minutes for a ship--with sails already up--to pass through the wormhole, and the text simply does not show that. The text depicts a compressed time frame, ignoring the tens of seconds of just sitting around between actions. Nor does the text show the 4 minutes it would take for a superdreadnought hyper generator to go from "ready to push the button" to "running and in hyperspace".

True. And that's the problem trying to extrapolate from routine events (even before you start considering that parts might be omitted or compressed for readability and flow).

Too many of the delays that become critical in an emergency situation can be hidden by pipelining. The hyper generator delay gets lost because they simply hit the button 4 minutes before they want to jump - perfectly possible on a routing wormhole approach. There could certainly be other similar delays in rigging sails.


Even the other transit that I thought of later (8th fleet's emergency double transit from Trevor's Star to Basilisk) doesn't fully cover that.
We know the destroyers were coming through 10 seconds apart, and that they therefor had very little time to clear the exit. But again that doesn't show that they could convert from sails to wedge in under 10 seconds - just that they couldn't vary the total time by more than a few seconds without disaster.
It still could have taken 4 minutes (just for example; and I don't think it did). That would just mean that there were 24 DDs queued up sliding out the exit 'lane' in the middle of converting from sail to wedge.

So the ~ 5 minutes of my own original estimate isn't so far off? To make sure I understand, from the discussion it seems that the maximum amount of time 'for a desperately running ship' to hyper out of danger could be as high as 10 minutes give or take? And that doesn't include having to reverse engines and getting back to the hyper point. This sounds like a huge window of vulnerability far beyond what I imagined.

When Genevieve Chin ordered the fleet to hyper out when she finally realized that the newcomer was the Salamander sounded like it was just a matter of hitting reverse and getting the hell out. In fact, IIRC, storyline made it sound like it took her far more time for the epiphany of the Salamander having joined the battle to hit her, than it would have taken to translate back out had the order gone out in time. That was a bit confusing.

Unless, ships that have just translated in can almost immediately translate back out since everything is in place and ready? But Chin's ships had been in-system for awhile.

What's the process of reconfiguring for impeller drive and the time required? And can the process be aborted in mid stride - saving half the time required - in the reversing of the process? Or the complete sequence has to be begun again?

If this question sounds confusing, it's because its author is confused as well.

I should note that in the back of my mind is the image of Honor's strategy of hypering in and out of Peep systems for weeks before she actually hit one. It sounded like hypering in and hypering out was inconsequential.

"Now I'm in. Now I'm out. Now you see me, now you don't. In. Out. In. Out."

But then that could just be a matter of the same compressed time frame of the storyline as someone has already mentioned, as well.

And it seems that a safe strategy of hypering into a system would be to hyper in at a point far outside the time it would take missiles to reach you before you can hyper back out, lest confident in your wall of battle.

Which reminds me of battle plans that can include a built-in opportunity to hyper right back out from the original vector assumed, a tactic (or lack thereof) that gave at least one squadron's intention away to Honor.

.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:One other related question. In case of bridge fatalities (and the astrogator is one of them), who else on the bridge is capable of filling in at astrogation?

Any midshipman or other graduate of Saganami Island should be able to manage; We have several examples of Middies sweating through their rotation at astrogation.

cthia wrote:(I'm not so sure putting that much pressure on Honor's math skills falls under the heading of a good idea either. )

If you don't give her time to think about it, Honor is an intuitive navigator. Ref: her near miss of the Havenite courier when departing in pursuit of Sirius.

cthia wrote:And I wonder if the captain can complete the cycle, from beginning to end from her command chair?

Again, Ref: Honor departing Medusa in pursuit of Sirius; she didn't route the course through astrogation, she sent it directly to the Helmsman.

Also, ref: any of several midshipmen sweating through course calculations and worrying about the Captain (or Officer of the Watch) watching over their shoulder.

Thanks Harold. I should have reasoned this out too. Because I loved that maneuver. If ever Honor could have borrowed Shannon's Oops, was then.

The survivors of Filareters Folly & Crandalls Crazyness were interned as PsOW in the Manticore and Spindle systems respectively. What about the survivors of Bings Bashing?
If I recall they were instructed to land on New Tuscany, which is not part of the SKM or SEM, so what was to stop the New Tuscany administration repatriating the Sollies that were instructed to make landfall there?

[edit: had borked the quote tag, which made a mess of this; plus trimmed it down some. Hazards of posting from my phone while getting an oil change]

cthia wrote:So the ~ 5 minutes of my own original estimate isn't so far off? To make sure I understand, from the discussion it seems that the maximum amount of time 'for a desperately running ship' to hyper out of danger could be as high as 10 minutes give or take? And that doesn't include having to reverse engines and getting back to the hyper point. This sounds like a huge window of vulnerability far beyond what I imagined.

When Genevieve Chin ordered the fleet to hyper out when she finally realized that the newcomer was the Salamander sounded like it was just a matter of hitting reverse and getting the hell out. In fact, IIRC, storyline made it sound like it took her far more time for the epiphany of the Salamander having joined the battle to hit her, than it would have taken to translate back out had the order gone out in time. That was a bit confusing.

Unless, ships that have just translated in can almost immediately translate back out since everything is in place and ready? But Chin's ships had been in-system for awhile.

What's the process of reconfiguring for impeller drive and the time required? And can the process be aborted in mid stride - saving half the time required - in the reversing of the process? Or the complete sequence has to be begun again?

If this question sounds confusing, it's because its author is confused as well.

I should note that in the back of my mind is the image of Honor's strategy of hypering in and out of Peep systems for weeks before she actually hit one. It sounded like hypering in and hypering out was inconsequential.

"Now I'm in. Now I'm out. Now you see me, now you don't. In. Out. In. Out."

But then that could just be a matter of the same compressed time frame of the storyline as someone has already mentioned, as well.

And it seems that a safe strategy of hypering into a system would be to hyper in at a point far outside the time it would take missiles to reach you before you can hyper back out, lest confident in your wall of battle.

Which reminds me of battle plans that can include a built-in opportunity to hyper right back out from the original vector assumed, a tactic (or lack thereof) that gave at least one squadron's intention away to Honor.

.

First, as I mentioned in a previous post it's really uncommon for a ship to have to worry about the .3c speed limit to enter hyper. There just isn't enough room in the inner system to accelerate to that speed.
Second, RFC gave an infodump on hyper generators, and yes even from the highest readiness state there's a delay up to several minutes (depending on ship size) from when you hit the button and when you actually translate.

We actually saw as early as the peep BCs that ran into Bellepheron at Pointiers, in SVW, that the delay is even longer after you first hyper in (because the generator is discharged)


Now normally when running for the hyper limit this isn't a big deal because you can hit the button before you cross the limit so you hyper out about as soon as possible upon reaching it. It is an issue if you're outside the limit and want to use hyper to escape inbound missiles.

But based on prior scouting (or general caution) try to hyper in to an area known, or believed, to be far enough from system defense missiles to hyper out if they engaged. But in practice I don't know that it's all that beneficial to do so. To attack the system you have to come within range of their MDMs, and the enemy is unlikely to be foolish enough to throw away a launch against a target that might hyper out before the missiles hit.
Though I guess if you're bringing CLACs you might want to start far enough out to launch your LACs and hyper the CLACs clear before your formation is likely to take enemy fire. But otherwise make sure you're clear enough to have time to settle you anti missile networks and tracking; but if you have to face the fire there doesn't seem much point I delaying that moment.

cthia wrote:So the ~ 5 minutes of my own original estimate isn't so far off? To make sure I understand, from the discussion it seems that the maximum amount of time 'for a desperately running ship' to hyper out of danger could be as high as 10 minutes give or take? And that doesn't include having to reverse engines and getting back to the hyper point. This sounds like a huge window of vulnerability far beyond what I imagined.

When Genevieve Chin ordered the fleet to hyper out when she finally realized that the newcomer was the Salamander sounded like it was just a matter of hitting reverse and getting the hell out. In fact, IIRC, storyline made it sound like it took her far more time for the epiphany of the Salamander having joined the battle to hit her, than it would have taken to translate back out had the order gone out in time. That was a bit confusing.

Unless, ships that have just translated in can almost immediately translate back out since everything is in place and ready? But Chin's ships had been in-system for awhile.

You know, if you read the background material that David provides the Honorverse would be easier to understands.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/117/0

George J. Smith wrote:The survivors of Filareters Folly & Crandalls Crazyness were interned as PsOW in the Manticore and Spindle systems respectively. What about the survivors of Bings Bashing?
If I recall they were instructed to land on New Tuscany, which is not part of the SKM or SEM, so what was to stop the New Tuscany administration repatriating the Sollies that were instructed to make landfall there?

Nothing at all. The last we heard of them, they had landed on the planet and their ships had been seized and either disabled or taken away. But they weren't prisoners of either the NTs or the Manties. The Manties even delivered Adm. Sigbee's report on the debacle to Earth. You'd think they'd have somehow arranged transport back to Meyers -- at least a message to come pick them up -- but....