Even though the alpha nodes couldn't give a large better acceleration than the spider drive (for the hull geometry reasons you pointed out) they could still be worth mounting just to give the ship wormhole transit capability.Relax wrote:Since impeller nodes have to be in certain positions for a given volume, your thesis seems non nonsensical. Non nonsensical in the sense, pun intended, where the acceleration given is for the volume. Either the spider ship fits or it does not. An either or proposition.
A triple skeg. Sure sounds like a triangle to me where the triangle tips are more pointy. Not a true equilateral triangle as it has 3 broadsides. No reason a triangle couldn't fit inside a cylindrical volume. Would work fine for light units. Run into problems for the Bigger classes as one hits that ol' 8M impeller ton limit. If a large portion of that 8M ton volume is empty air instead of warship it would make a piss poor accelerating capitol ship who may as well go with its spider drive for acceleration. Of course for light units a far better unit/cost/capabilities may be a straight up standard impeller design.
After all it doesn't really matter if you crawled through the wormhole at < 1g, it still cuts huge amounts of time off your strategic transit.
And the alpha nodes should never be slower than the spider, because if the volume is big enough that the max compensator accel is lower than the spider drive can pull w/ grav plates you can just use the same grav plates while under impeller drive and get the same accel. Then while under sail I suspect the compensator will always win because grav waves give all ships a roughly 100x boost in max accelerated compensation (due to their vastly deeper grav 'sumps', and that should more than offset how poor a 9+ Mton ship's normal compensated acceleration normally is.