Spider drive ships and technical limitations

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Louis R wrote:Second, if you're going to go to the trouble of installing a massive set of alpha nodes in the first place, I wouldn't think that it would be a huge extra effort to install a compensator to go with them. And if you've done that, the whole problem goes away.

No wedge = no compensator, period.

Consider the battle of Cerberus. While Honor was sneaking in on thrusters she could not use her compensators despite having every bit of hardware required.

More Than Honor, The Universe of Honor Harrington, (1) Background (General) wrote:Then, in 1384 pd, a physicist by the name of Shigematsu Radhakrishnan added another major breakthrough in the form of the inertial compensator. The compensator turned the grav wave (natural or artificial) associated with a vessel into a sort of "inertial sump," dumping the inertial forces of acceleration into the grav wave and thus exempting the vessel's crew from the g forces associated with acceleration. Within the limits of its efficiency, it completely eliminated g force, placing an accelerating vessel in a permanent state of internal zero-gee, but its capacity to damp inertia was directly proportional to the power of the grav wave around it and inversely proportional to both the volume of the field and the mass of the vessel about which it was generated. The first factor meant that it was far more effective for starships than for sublight ships, as the former drew upon the greater energy of the naturally occurring grav waves of hyper-space, and the second meant it was more effective for smaller ships than for larger ones. The natural grav waves of hyper-space, with their incomparably greater power, offered a much "deeper" sump than the artificial stress bands of the impeller drive, which meant that a Warshawski Sail ship could deflect vastly more g force from its passengers than one under impeller drive. In general terms, the compensator permitted humans to endure acceleration rates approaching 550 g under impeller drive and 4-5,000 g under sail, which allows hyperships to make up "bleed-off" velocity very quickly after translation. These numbers are for military compensators, which tend to be more massive, more energy and maintenance intensive, and much more expensive than those used in most merchant construction. Military compensators allow higher acceleration—and warships cannot afford to be less maneuverable than their foes—but only at the cost of penalties merchant ships as a whole cannot afford.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

kzt wrote:R^2 kills you. You have to know where it is to get enough energy back to find it. And the return is light speed, so at a light minute you low where it was a minute ago and you missiles will take x minutes to get there, so no, not going to work.

I wouldn't consider it an impossible tactic.

Yes, in a ship to ship engagement r^2 makes it utterly useless. However, consider the Mistletoe system. While it's not going to do any good here lets look at something along these lines:

Take an Apollo pod. Half the birds are simply big booms--no rods, no targeting systems. The other half of the pod is pure sensor, no boom, no targeting. The control missile has some software changes.

You realize there's an enemy ship hiding--you know it's approximate location but not good enough to actually put rods on target. The first pod you fire is this special pod, the rest of the missiles are a bit behind.

When the birds reach the area the booms start going off. The guys hiding are going to have a very hard time maintaining stealth against the sensor birds--and when their location is revealed the attack birds are not far behind, they don't have time to slip away.

Of course the probe missiles are sitting ducks--but if the defenders fire on them it's the same thing--they just revealed their location.

Vince wrote:

Louis R wrote:Second, if you're going to go to the trouble of installing a massive set of alpha nodes in the first place, I wouldn't think that it would be a huge extra effort to install a compensator to go with them. And if you've done that, the whole problem goes away.

No wedge = no compensator, period.

Consider the battle of Cerberus. While Honor was sneaking in on thrusters she could not use her compensators despite having every bit of hardware required.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Delete the period and add an alternative. In the Honorverse, if you are in hyperspace (or are transiting a wormhole) and are in a gravity wave, and have raised Warshawski sails, the gravity wave acts as a much more powerful gravity sump for the inertial compensator to dump felt acceleration into:

More Than Honor, The Universe of Honor Harrington, (1) Background (General) wrote:Then, in 1384 pd, a physicist by the name of Shigematsu Radhakrishnan added another major breakthrough in the form of the inertial compensator. The compensator turned the grav wave (natural or artificial) associated with a vessel into a sort of "inertial sump," dumping the inertial forces of acceleration into the grav wave and thus exempting the vessel's crew from the g forces associated with acceleration. Within the limits of its efficiency, it completely eliminated g force, placing an accelerating vessel in a permanent state of internal zero-gee, but its capacity to damp inertia was directly proportional to the power of the grav wave around it and inversely proportional to both the volume of the field and the mass of the vessel about which it was generated. The first factor meant that it was far more effective for starships than for sublight ships, as the former drew upon the greater energy of the naturally occurring grav waves of hyper-space, and the second meant it was more effective for smaller ships than for larger ones. The natural grav waves of hyper-space, with their incomparably greater power, offered a much "deeper" sump than the artificial stress bands of the impeller drive, which meant that a Warshawski Sail ship could deflect vastly more g force from its passengers than one under impeller drive. In general terms, the compensator permitted humans to endure acceleration rates approaching 550 g under impeller drive and 4-5,000 g under sail, which allows hyperships to make up "bleed-off" velocity very quickly after translation. These numbers are for military compensators, which tend to be more massive, more energy and maintenance intensive, and much more expensive than those used in most merchant construction. Military compensators allow higher acceleration—and warships cannot afford to be less maneuverable than their foes—but only at the cost of penalties merchant ships as a whole cannot afford.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

noblehunter wrote:Maybe they can even get close enough to use a

Jonathan_S wrote:But with a LennyDet on emergency boost having something like 1/4 the acceleration of an Manticoran SD(P), and 1/33rd the accel of a Ghost Rider recon drone, providing even an approximate locus might be enough to get yourself hunted down and cornered. (Unless the ambush is from outside the hyper limit, in which case you can slip away before any response can pin you down)

Joat42 wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:R^2 kills you. You have to know where it is to get enough energy back to find it. And the return is light speed, so at a light minute you low where it was a minute ago and you missiles will take x minutes to get there, so no, not going to work.

I wouldn't consider it an impossible tactic.

Yes, in a ship to ship engagement r^2 makes it utterly useless. However, consider the Mistletoe system. While it's not going to do any good here lets look at something along these lines:

Take an Apollo pod. Half the birds are simply big booms--no rods, no targeting systems. The other half of the pod is pure sensor, no boom, no targeting. The control missile has some software changes.

You realize there's an enemy ship hiding--you know it's approximate location but not good enough to actually put rods on target. The first pod you fire is this special pod, the rest of the missiles are a bit behind.

When the birds reach the area the booms start going off. The guys hiding are going to have a very hard time maintaining stealth against the sensor birds--and when their location is revealed the attack birds are not far behind, they don't have time to slip away.

Of course the probe missiles are sitting ducks--but if the defenders fire on them it's the same thing--they just revealed their location.

runsforcelery wrote:Gosh. You went back and actually read the rule book. Have you no shame?!

ldwechsler wrote:..snip..
And remember that MAlign has to worry that if any ships are captured, everyone will become aware of Darius.

Remember that Haven used separate pilots to bring ships from Bolthole. They never got near the action. Darius is a key element in MAlign. They can't hide it that well.

Vince wrote:Delete the period and add an alternative. In the Honorverse, if you are in hyperspace (or are transiting a wormhole) and are in a gravity wave, and have raised Warshawski sails, the gravity wave acts as a much more powerful gravity sump for the inertial compensator to dump felt acceleration into:

More Than Honor, The Universe of Honor Harrington, (1) Background (General) wrote:Then, in 1384 pd, a physicist by the name of Shigematsu Radhakrishnan added another major breakthrough in the form of the inertial compensator. The compensator turned the grav wave (natural or artificial) associated with a vessel into a sort of "inertial sump," dumping the inertial forces of acceleration into the grav wave and thus exempting the vessel's crew from the g forces associated with acceleration. Within the limits of its efficiency, it completely eliminated g force, placing an accelerating vessel in a permanent state of internal zero-gee, but its capacity to damp inertia was directly proportional to the power of the grav wave around it and inversely proportional to both the volume of the field and the mass of the vessel about which it was generated. The first factor meant that it was far more effective for starships than for sublight ships, as the former drew upon the greater energy of the naturally occurring grav waves of hyper-space, and the second meant it was more effective for smaller ships than for larger ones. The natural grav waves of hyper-space, with their incomparably greater power, offered a much "deeper" sump than the artificial stress bands of the impeller drive, which meant that a Warshawski Sail ship could deflect vastly more g force from its passengers than one under impeller drive. In general terms, the compensator permitted humans to endure acceleration rates approaching 550 g under impeller drive and 4-5,000 g under sail, which allows hyperships to make up "bleed-off" velocity very quickly after translation. These numbers are for military compensators, which tend to be more massive, more energy and maintenance intensive, and much more expensive than those used in most merchant construction. Military compensators allow higher acceleration—and warships cannot afford to be less maneuverable than their foes—but only at the cost of penalties merchant ships as a whole cannot afford.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
When the birds reach the area the booms start going off. The guys hiding are going to have a very hard time maintaining stealth against the sensor birds--and when their location is revealed the attack birds are not far behind, they don't have time to slip away.

Of course the probe missiles are sitting ducks--but if the defenders fire on them it's the same thing--they just revealed their location.

munroburton wrote:Thanks for that. I was wondering if I'd missed something about ships under warshawski sails not being compensated.

So do spider ships under sail have use of compensators? I realise it doesn't provide much combat or strategical benefits, but would be interesting to know.