lyonheart wrote:Hi Dreamrider,
I suppose it depends on your point of view.
The fact the MAlign are still years and years away from matching or duplicating the RMN's micro-miniaturization tech; FTL.comms, mini-fusion reactors, computers, Apollo's etc, to say nothing of MDM's despite at least ten years of concentrated effort despite knowing it could be done indicates they're far behind, and the Detweilers have admitted it.
The Streak Drive and Spider drives are new, but they seem more like new discoveries that the MAlign's DARPA analogue is desperately trying to weaponize all too quickly, only to find all the unk-unks [unknown-unknowns] biting them on the rear end.
The Sharks were supposed to be training not warships, because they were so crude.
Given how things aren't going to plan, I expect to see the Sharks used again in combat, only things don't go so well for them, ie much higher casualties, as the Detweilers readily admit.
The Spider drive is so new the Sharks don't have a compensator but grav plates with decks angled 3 ways from each other which seems rather crude to me, besides other textev.
Yes, its a strategic breakthrough, like Fulton's working submarine with a sail for strategic transport; but it's a very primitive capability and demonstrating it so early could be considered another eventual nail in the MAlign's coffin.
L
The Sharks were supposed to be used for training because they were smaller and finished before the giant Detweilers, not because they were crude. And the reason they don't have compensators is not because they are crude, but because they don't have impeller drives. Without an impeller wedge to use as a sump for inertia, a compensator does not work. And you can't put both a spider drive and an impeller ring on the same ship--the required shapes are incompatible. Therefore, a spider drive ship must use grav plates to counter acceleration instead of using an inertial compensator. It isn't because the spider drive ships are crude--it is a necessity of physics.
