Honorverse ramblings and musings

SWM wrote:

cthia wrote:S.O.S.

The scene in The Honor of the Queen when Theisman suckered Honor's ship as they were circling the base was tactical genius. Of course, Theisman. Now Theisman had benefit of Blackbird's sensors. Would someone tell me why, in situations like that, probes are not steered around a planet to cover blind spots? If they're destroyed, you know something's lurking.

This was pre-war. I would guess that up to then, drones were not seen as effective battlefield devices. In fact, we don't see very much from drones on the battlefield until Ghost Rider came out. It is an interesting question, though.

I agree that it's an interesting question as well. Just sorry that I didn't think of it. Tierney asked me, and left me scratching my head.

At 13-yrs-old now, she manages to have me scratching my head as much as my ass. She admitted that the light bulb came on when she was rewatching "Independence Day" when Jeff Goldblum was explaining to the President about line of sight satellite communication. You'd only need three probes.

My initial thoughts were that Honor was in a hurry to get back to Grayson but my niece countered "That doesn't make sense Uncle. The probes could have been steered into place well before zero/zero intercept."

I got nothing.

cthia wrote:S.O.S.

The scene in The Honor of the Queen when Theisman suckered Honor's ship as they were circling the base was tactical genius. Of course, Theisman. Now Theisman had benefit of Blackbird's sensors. Would someone tell me why, in situations like that, probes are not steered around a planet to cover blind spots? If they're destroyed, you know something's lurking.

SWM wrote:This was pre-war. I would guess that up to then, drones were not seen as effective battlefield devices. In fact, we don't see very much from drones on the battlefield until Ghost Rider came out. It is an interesting question, though.

cthia wrote:I agree that it's an interesting question as well. Just sorry that I didn't think of it. Tierney asked me, and left me scratching my head.

At 13-yrs-old now, she manages to have me scratching my head as much as my ass. She admitted that the light bulb came on when she was rewatching "Independence Day" when Jeff Goldblum was explaining to the President about line of sight satellite communication. You'd only need three probes.

My initial thoughts were that Honor was in a hurry to get back to Grayson but my niece countered "That doesn't make sense Uncle. The probes could have been steered into place well before zero/zero intercept."

I got nothing.

I'm now annoyed with myself that I can't recall ever having the same question.

One guess might be that in the (relatively) congested space between Blackbird and the gas giant it's orbiting that any drones in a position to maintain a good look at the backside of the moon would be very likely to get picked off by the base's defenses or by the ships surrounding it.


A second thought is that Honor came out hiding behind the impeller signatures of the mess of remaining Grayson navy ships. It's possible that Grayson didn't have any effective recon drones, and Honor using Fearlesses would have prematurely given away the surprise that she was coming along.

Or another possibility, I saw when double-chekcing the text, that Fearless had already deployed her FTL recon drones; to watch for incursions into the inner system while the force headed out-system to attack Blackbird. It's possible that, to get the necessary coverage, she deployed every RD that she had for that strategic purpose; leaving none for tactical deployment around the moon.


But as you said; interesting question.

My guess is that recon drones simply weren't used in battlefield conditions, until Ghost Rider vastly improved their capabilities. But I don't have anything to base that on except that we don't see battlefield drones used until after Ghost Rider.

SWM wrote:My guess is that recon drones simply weren't used in battlefield conditions, until Ghost Rider vastly improved their capabilities. But I don't have anything to base that on except that we don't see battlefield drones used until after Ghost Rider.

They were used later in the book to first detect and then intercept and follow the PNS Saladin from far beyond Saladin's detection range, so they were already in Fearless' bag of tricks, but at that point they were still new and on the Official Secrets list, meaning that Honor couldn't willy-nilly deploy them. Keeping in mind that as the "Thunder of God" that ship was destroyed, so post HotQ, there's still not even a suspicion that the RMN has FTL recon drones.

Part of the problem is that the original drones had limited endurance and VERY limited bandwidth. Fearless sensor "line of sight" was still obscured by the GSN formation. Once they cleared those sensor arcs, things got busy really fast, so tactical coverage partially shifted to missile defense and locating the "modern ship or ships" as quickly as possible.

Light speed being what it is, at "moon approach and orbital range", that's at max perhaps a two second detection delay, and Theisman had guidance on where the attack formations were coming in from. Blackbird would also be able to forecast outgoing RD tracks very briefly. That gave PNS Breslau practically a "follow the canyon" method of determining the best, most-difficult-to-detect approach vector and ANY shot he takes the second he pops out from around the moon would have been from well within missile range of all the RMN ships. They may have even detected the missiles before his ship cleared the moon's horizon relative to Fearless, etc.

I'd wager that between his launch and the destroyer's attack vector being localized the time required was less than 3-4 seconds. It was simply HMS Apollo's bad luck that she was too close to maneuver against the missile snapshot like HMS Troubadour did. I'd also calculate that Theisman's ship was surrendered less than five minutes later. Maybe even less than two to three minutes, but there's a whole lot of hurt available to early Honor series missiles even in that short interval.

SWM wrote:My guess is that recon drones simply weren't used in battlefield conditions, until Ghost Rider vastly improved their capabilities. But I don't have anything to base that on except that we don't see battlefield drones used until after Ghost Rider.

I thought we'd seen them a few times prior; mostly to check a formation's projected path for any stealthed ships or to check whether a target is real or a decoy.

Though we see Peep recon drones used when they ambush HMS Prince Adrian (IEH); those are basically stationary and being used to extend the sensor reach of a ship lying in wait.


Then there's the example of the trick that Admiral Henries pulled off during exercises against Honor's GSN wall (FiE) - slipped a powered down recon drone right through her formation which let him see through the EW deception she was pulling with her SDs.

But that only worked because her course was predicable enough (part of the deception) that he could launch an RD, build up velocity, and kill its drive beyond the range her sensors could see it.

(And Honor exploits that lesson learned when she effectively repeats the same EW trick against the Peeps. She puts such a tangled maneuvering mess of GSN light units in front of her disguised SDs that the Peeps specifically say any RDs would have to maneuver to get through - which would cause them to be "picked off and eliminated")



So it seems that the RDs were much less stealthy under power than the later ghost rider drones, plus they lacked the endurance of those GR drones. That makes them less capable of taking indirect courses towards their targets, or of taking up station off an enemy formation to provide continuous monitoring.

wiki:
Warshawski Sails:
The sail was an adaptation of the usual gravitic node used in the impeller drive. It was an extended force field at the bow and stern of a starship perpendicular to the axis of the ship. It served as a way to control the forces which gravity waves produced in hyperspace and thus greatly increase safety. It extended several hundred of kilometers and coruscated colorfully with the energies it handled. The sail was ineffective in normal space, but invaluable in hyperspace. Additionally, the sail could tap into the large energy fluxes in hyperspace and so provide enough power to essentially run the entire ship during its time in hyperspace. This reduced fuel expense considerably, making star transport, even of large masses, economically feasible.

The gravitic nodes used to produce the sail had to be tuned to work with each other properly, and if sufficiently out of tune, a sail could fail catastrophically. Maintenance was important as the nodes and tuners used for sails endured considerable stress and had to be replaced, at high expense, relatively often compared to the life of a starship.

The sails themselves were invisible to the naked eye, but the energies they handled not only could be seen, but most people thought them beautiful, in the way that planetary auroras are. (HH2)

I can't seem to fix an image in my mind's eye as to what exactly the sails are. Not what they do. But what they are.

From textev, I always drew an image of huge mechanical contrivances doing a mechanical dance of deployment. Extending themselves in a perpendicular fashion about the ship. But intuitively, I never liked that mind's image because it seems that a mechanical arrangement of this type would be very susceptible to damage during battles. Also, it seems that I remember some sort of animation that depicted the sails as 'deploying mechanical appendages.'

However, reading this wiki, it seems obvious that some naughty spy may have fed my mind the wrong imagery. Since the sails themselves are invisible.

Also, my niece wants to know why pods, that are limpeted to the hull, cannot be protected by some sort of shielding until use. Now that she mentions it, so too do I. (I mentioned to her that this has probably already been discussed.) But for us Johnnie come latelies...

P.S.
She wants to thank everyone for answers regarding the probes in the previous post.

cthia wrote:

wiki wrote:Warshawski Sails:
The sail was an adaptation of the usual gravitic node used in the impeller drive. It was an extended force field at the bow and stern of a starship perpendicular to the axis of the ship. It served as a way to control the forces which gravity waves produced in hyperspace and thus greatly increase safety. It extended several hundred of kilometers and coruscated colorfully with the energies it handled. The sail was ineffective in normal space, but invaluable in hyperspace. Additionally, the sail could tap into the large energy fluxes in hyperspace and so provide enough power to essentially run the entire ship during its time in hyperspace. This reduced fuel expense considerably, making star transport, even of large masses, economically feasible.

The gravitic nodes used to produce the sail had to be tuned to work with each other properly, and if sufficiently out of tune, a sail could fail catastrophically. Maintenance was important as the nodes and tuners used for sails endured considerable stress and had to be replaced, at high expense, relatively often compared to the life of a starship.

The sails themselves were invisible to the naked eye, but the energies they handled not only could be seen, but most people thought them beautiful, in the way that planetary auroras are. (HH2)

I can't seem to fix an image in my mind's eye as to what exactly the sails are. Not what they do. But what they are.

From textev, I always drew an image of huge mechanical contrivances doing a mechanical dance of deployment. Extending themselves in a perpendicular fashion about the ship. But intuitively, I never liked that mind's image because it seems that a mechanical arrangement of this type would be very susceptible to damage during battles. Also, it seems that I remember some sort of animation that depicted the sails as 'deploying mechanical appendages.'

However, reading this wiki, it seems obvious that some naughty spy may have fed my mind the wrong imagery. Since the sails themselves are invisible.

Also, my niece wants to know why pods, that are limpeted to the hull, cannot be protected by some sort of shielding until use. Now that she mentions it, so too do I. (I mentioned to her that this has probably already been discussed.) But for us Johnnie come latelies...

P.S.
She wants to thank everyone for answers regarding the probes in the previous post.

Limpeted pods first: they're not in any more danger than the ship itself until they're deployed, it is towed pods that are vulnerable to proximity kills. Usually the way Manticore uses them now is almost in a "boot them out the back" mode where the ship's accel pulls them away from dropped pods which then fire in whatever sequence they've been programmed in. I'd think that's maybe a 30 second window after drop usually, hard to target them in that time period.

My thought about the "sails" from textev in some of the books descriptions is that the "alpha nodes" aren't all that different but are much more powerful from the impeller drives, but are set essentially at a 90 degree angle and uber-tuned/tubable. Image wise, instead of forming a "V" that the ship "sails" between, I've pictured the deployed sails looking much more like the old "spanish armada style" main sails, except to both sides of the ship, pulling them forward through hyperspace. That would also be why in a wave, the "sails" would receive so much energy that the fusion power of the ship isn't even required. The sail's field capture is likely what changes the particle energies into the visible range. My only problem with that is "how does a wave function in both directions" do they sort of have lanes that go one way or the other, as seems to be implied in the wormhole junctions?

SharkHunter wrote:My thought about the "sails" from textev in some of the books descriptions is that the "alpha nodes" aren't all that different but are much more powerful from the impeller drives, but are set essentially at a 90 degree angle and uber-tuned/tubable. Image wise, instead of forming a "V" that the ship "sails" between, I've pictured the deployed sails looking much more like the old "spanish armada style" main sails, except to both sides of the ship, pulling them forward through hyperspace. That would also be why in a wave, the "sails" would receive so much energy that the fusion power of the ship isn't even required. The sail's field capture is likely what changes the particle energies into the visible range. My only problem with that is "how does a wave function in both directions" do they sort of have lanes that go one way or the other, as seems to be implied in the wormhole junctions?

I think your image of sails is pretty close, except that they are not deployed above and below the ship, but in a disc around the ship. Basically, imagine cutting a large circle of paper, then sticking the point of a pencil through the center. The tiny nub of pencil sticking through the other side of the paper is the part of the ship which lies beyond the impeller ring--i.e. the hammerhead, on a warship. Stick another circle on the other end of the pencil, and you have your model of a ship with Warshawski sails deployed.

Of course, to make it to scale, the pencil would have to be 1 inch long and the circles would have to be 150 inches in radius! The hammerheads stick out on either side, and are vulnerable to attack, while the body of the ship is hidden between the sails except for a very narrow angle directly to the sides.

As for how a wave moves in both directions--it doesn't. The text tells us that early ships had to tack back and forth like a sailing ship when traveling against the current in a grav wave. But modern ships can travel directly against the current with little loss in velocity, without the need to tack.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:My thought about the "sails" from textev in some of the books descriptions is that the "alpha nodes" aren't all that different but are much more powerful from the impeller drives, but are set essentially at a 90 degree angle and uber-tuned/tubable. Image wise, instead of forming a "V" that the ship "sails" between, I've pictured the deployed sails looking much more like the old "spanish armada style" main sails, except to both sides of the ship, pulling them forward through hyperspace. That would also be why in a wave, the "sails" would receive so much energy that the fusion power of the ship isn't even required. The sail's field capture is likely what changes the particle energies into the visible range. My only problem with that is "how does a wave function in both directions" do they sort of have lanes that go one way or the other, as seems to be implied in the wormhole junctions?

I think your image of sails is pretty close, except that they are not deployed above and below the ship, but in a disc around the ship. Basically, imagine cutting a large circle of paper, then sticking the point of a pencil through the center. The tiny nub of pencil sticking through the other side of the paper is the part of the ship which lies beyond the impeller ring--i.e. the hammerhead, on a warship. Stick another circle on the other end of the pencil, and you have your model of a ship with Warshawski sails deployed.

Of course, to make it to scale, the pencil would have to be 1 inch long and the circles would have to be 150 inches in radius! The hammerheads stick out on either side, and are vulnerable to attack, while the body of the ship is hidden between the sails except for a very narrow angle directly to the sides.

As for how a wave moves in both directions--it doesn't. The text tells us that early ships had to tack back and forth like a sailing ship when traveling against the current in a grav wave. But modern ships can travel directly against the current with little loss in velocity, without the need to tack.

That allows a much better visualization. Thank You.

But, are these sails mechanical in nature? Or just fields created?

cthia wrote:That allows a much better visualization. Thank You.

But, are these sails mechanical in nature? Or just fields created?

They're just grav fields, like the impeller wedge.