Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:Just completed my workout for the night. Exercise equipment, treadmill. I have to maintain my beautiful pose. Since I'm not married yet.

It got me to thinking. Heavy worlders probably have a harder time maintaining their physique, since their muscles are not just lacking a good workout, but are lacking their "normal" workload. It seems a heavy worlder would get absolutely no benefit from pushups, pullups done on a lower gravity world. Intuitively, it seems Honor's, and especially Anton Zilwicki's muscles would turn to flab without regular benefit of artificial grav and or exercise equipment. It would seem.

Just don't go picking fights with either of them on the assumption they are "soft". I believe when Honor is on board ship she crankks up the gravity during her workouts. I wonder how she deals with that on a planet...

Don

n7axw wrote:

cthia wrote:Just completed my workout for the night. Exercise equipment, treadmill. I have to maintain my beautiful pose. Since I'm not married yet.

It got me to thinking. Heavy worlders probably have a harder time maintaining their physique, since their muscles are not just lacking a good workout, but are lacking their "normal" workload. It seems a heavy worlder would get absolutely no benefit from pushups, pullups done on a lower gravity world. Intuitively, it seems Honor's, and especially Anton Zilwicki's muscles would turn to flab without regular benefit of artificial grav and or exercise equipment. It would seem.

Just don't go picking fights with either of them on the assumption they are "soft". I believe when Honor is on board ship she crankks up the gravity during her workouts. I wonder how she deals with that on a planet...

Don

Any well-equipped gym should have it's own grav plates just for that purpose, whether it's on a ship or on a planet.

n7axw wrote:

cthia wrote:Just completed my workout for the night. Exercise equipment, treadmill. I have to maintain my beautiful pose. Since I'm not married yet.

It got me to thinking. Heavy worlders probably have a harder time maintaining their physique, since their muscles are not just lacking a good workout, but are lacking their "normal" workload. It seems a heavy worlder would get absolutely no benefit from pushups, pullups done on a lower gravity world. Intuitively, it seems Honor's, and especially Anton Zilwicki's muscles would turn to flab without regular benefit of artificial grav and or exercise equipment. It would seem.

Just don't go picking fights with either of them on the assumption they are "soft". I believe when Honor is on board ship she crankks up the gravity during her workouts. I wonder how she deals with that on a planet...

Don

At least Honor has the extra weight of Nimitz most of the time. Amaroq, sweet summer child she is, brought to my attention why Young would be attracted to someone so homely, enough to attempt rape. It was the 'grace of her carriage.' She walked like she was floating. Because on a low grav world, she was! Nimitz helped hold her down.

cthia wrote:A thought occurred to me from the renderings thread regarding missile pods. System defense pods, like the ones that tore Honor's command a new arse, could be mimicked by the pods deployed via ship. Is there a reason a ship couldn't overtly drop shoals of missile pods then move away from said position to activate at a much later strategic time? In effect, a ship, certainly an SD(P) could utilize pods as mines-on-steroids. Possible? Practical? Sensible?

Yep, as others have said this can be practical.

Just remember that something has to be relatively near the missile to provide fire control. In the case of Hancock that was Sarnow's BCs (and escorts) which ran a course past the pods and launched and controlled them then.

And for system defense pods there's fire control relays, nodes, or stations/forts scattered about to control them.



But if you just rolled some off the back of an SD(P) or ammo ship and left them there alone they wouldn't be much use once you're more than a light minutes or so away. That's not necessarily a show stopper, just another factor to consider when looking to pull this trick off.

Jonathan_S wrote:...In the case of Hancock that was Sarnow's BCs (and escorts) which ran a course past the pods and launched and controlled them then....

Sigh, people need to reread tSVW:

"Yes, Ma'am. The Erebus-class ships are fast—almost as fast as a battlecruiser—and they're configured for rapid, mass mine emplacement. If we could make the Peeps think they are battlecruisers and operate them with the rest of our force, then kick the mines out in the Peeps' path . . ."

She let her voice trail off suggestively, and Banton gave a sudden, fierce snort of laughter.

"I like it, Admiral!" she told Sarnow. "It's sneaky as hell, and it might just work."

Adm Sarnow started the battle with towed pods, then ran back through the minefield. Since they were mines and not pods, the only "control" exerted by Adm Sarnow's BCs were functional IFF identification that stopped the mines from attacking RMN ships.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:...In the case of Hancock that was Sarnow's BCs (and escorts) which ran a course past the pods and launched and controlled them then....

Sigh, people need to reread tSVW:

"Yes, Ma'am. The Erebus-class ships are fast—almost as fast as a battlecruiser—and they're configured for rapid, mass mine emplacement. If we could make the Peeps think they are battlecruisers and operate them with the rest of our force, then kick the mines out in the Peeps' path . . ."

She let her voice trail off suggestively, and Banton gave a sudden, fierce snort of laughter.

"I like it, Admiral!" she told Sarnow. "It's sneaky as hell, and it might just work."

Adm Sarnow started the battle with towed pods, then ran back through the minefield. Since they were mines and not pods, the only "control" exerted by Adm Sarnow's BCs were functional IFF identification that stopped the mines from attacking RMN ships.

Darn it, knew I should have rechecked instead of getting myself mixed up by what others said. I knew they'd dropped the mines early but for some reason I erroneously thought they'd also dropped additional pods along their route.

Oops.

However, Henke did lay out a large quantity of pods while waiting for Crandall to pluck up his nerve. So it has been done. More than once, I think.

The problem with the trick is that ship-borne pods have a limited endurance. System defense pods can sit out waiting for months at a time between servicing. Ship pods can probably only last hours.

SWM wrote:However, Henke did lay out a large quantity of pods while waiting for Crandall to pluck up his nerve. So it has been done. More than once, I think.

The Apollo pods shoaled at Spindle were dropped by the ammunition ships that brought them ahead off the SD(P)s for tenth fleet. They had to be deployed in a system defense role because Adm Gold Peak (Henke) didn't have any ships capable of launching Apollo pods or even taking advantage of
Apollo's FTL control links.

Also, the pods weren't laid as a mine field and Adm Sandra Crandal didn't run over them.

The only approximation of pods used as a minefield I can think of is the aforementioned last gasp of Agamemnon just before Adm Gold Peak's capture by the RHN.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:A thought occurred to me from the renderings thread regarding missile pods. System defense pods, like the ones that tore Honor's command a new arse, could be mimicked by the pods deployed via ship. Is there a reason a ship couldn't overtly drop shoals of missile pods then move away from said position to activate at a much later strategic time? In effect, a ship, certainly an SD(P) could utilize pods as mines-on-steroids. Possible? Practical? Sensible?

Yep, as others have said this can be practical.

Just remember that something has to be relatively near the missile to provide fire control. In the case of Hancock that was Sarnow's BCs (and escorts) which ran a course past the pods and launched and controlled them then.

And for system defense pods there's fire control relays, nodes, or stations/forts scattered about to control them.



But if you just rolled some off the back of an SD(P) or ammo ship and left them there alone they wouldn't be much use once you're more than a light minutes or so away. That's not necessarily a show stopper, just another factor to consider when looking to pull this trick off.

Forgive me, do, for being so far behind the learning curve for hardware, but I tawt I taw textev stating that one of the advantages of Apollo is that it had been upgraded with the ability to set and forget, to launch and act completely autonomously with several preprogrammed immensely intelligent attack profiles. Now, without benefit of FTL they'll lose that slate wiping ability yes, but ... used in conjunction with other ship maneuvers, and the benefit of the 'covertly' laid pods' element of surprise would wreak havoc on someone's command. Wouldn't it?

cthia wrote:

cthia wrote:
My crystal ball is showing the same, as is my mirror on the wall; but a "few several" chapters of fun is all I ask, for a starving Honorverse-crack-addict.

****** *

Seriously RFC, I'm contemplating burning pages of your books and inhaling the smoke. I need a fix!

hanuman wrote:
More like a sex addict :whistle:

I am not; I repeat, I am not addicted to sex. Sex is addicted to me. I tried to divorce Sex, but her lawyer hit on me. I hit her back.

hanuman wrote:Ooh, you like the rough play, huh? :whistle:

Of course you do realize that "hit her" in this context is a euphemism for "make her day, roll and play."