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New Honorverse renders uploaded

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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by namelessfly   » Mon Jul 28, 2014 5:50 pm

namelessfly

Plausible explanation but not entirely convincing.

Might I suggest that the gravity drivers would either be a flat plate at the breach or a series of toroidial coils along the bore? The later is most plausible because we actually have theoretical designs for gravity generators that actually are shaped like a donut. The principle is to have ultra dense matter flowing through a series of rings concentric with the minor access of the torrid.

More importantly, there seems to be no reason why the cylindrical missile tube can not recipricate along it's axis to move the breach to a point even with the forward end of the magazine. My Barrett .50 BMG caliber rifle operates on this principle to facilitate loading as well as dampen recoil.


MaxxQ wrote:
namelessfly wrote:Great rendering.

I confess that I don't like the way the missile tubes split to accept loading rather than being loaded from the end. I envision the gravity drivers being analogous to magnetic coil guns so compromising the structural integrity in this manner would be a no no. I prefer the concept included in Weber's illustration of HMS MINATOUR in EoH where the missiles for the chase tubes load from the breach end. Check the numbers but I think there is enough hull beam to allow this for broadside tubes.


You're referring to the animation of the Mk-13 mag and tube, correct?

No, there's no room broadside to breechload. The Star Knight is the smallest ship with an armored core hull, and the tube and mags take up all the space between that and the main hull. As it is, the tubes are not even twice the length of the missile. That also happens to be for the SK itself, and on larger ships, there *would* be enough room for breechloading.

The Roland, because of the inordinate length of the hammerheads, has plenty of room for breechloading its Mk-16's, and that is how it's set up. The Falcon and Chanson, though, are too small and also use a similar loading mechanism to the SK, even though they use slightly smaller missiles than the Mk-13's the SK carries.

As for the grav drivers... while they may *act* similar to a magnetic rail gun, they don't work on a similar principle. Each "flat" section of the tube is a self-contained grav driver "plate" (for lack of a better term), and doesn't rely on a connection to the one next to it, except inasmuch as they need to communicate with each other for timing, the degree of power to use on the missile, and to transfer power to the "plate". As with everything else, that is not a finished mesh, but mainly just a conceptual, blocked-in model of one possible method that fits the criteria needed.

We're also trying to keep in mind the fact that some ships are older than others, and may have different ways of doing things. Then, when we get around to doing newer ships, we can make changes that would show generational differences, as you can see with the differences between the Roland and the other three ships.

Again, the issue crops up where people don't really see what goes into making these things work in a way that's plausible. Let's use the SK as an example:

The main hull of the ship is 66 meters wide.

The armor is 4 meters thick at the centerline, just a little below the lower weapons deck. At the centerline of the tubes on the upper deck, the armor is just under 3.5 meters thick, and the width of the outer hull at this point is 56 meters.

So, now we're down to a beam at the centerline of 58 meters.

The outer surface of the armored core hull is 24 meters across, so now we have 34 total meters at the centerline to play with, divided between the two broadsides, which means at most, there's 17 meters between the outer surface of the core hull and the inner surface of the main hull.

A Mk-13 is about 12 meters long. The magazine drum is 13 meters long, allowing for a little space between the missile and inner wall of the mag drum, and the thickness of the drum for armoring.

Do the math. Unless you're firing the missile through a 4 meter long launch tube - well, 6 meters, as it extends halfway through the armor - there's absolutely no way to breechload a warshot anywhere near the centerline. CM's, yes. Large missiles, no. Even a Roland couldn't breechload a broadside tube.

Another thing people forget (or at least, don't factor in when they're trying to figure things out) is that these ships are cylindrical, which causes its own problems with trying to fit a workable magazine and launcher into a broadside.

This reminds me of that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfus) is telling the other people about a trail up Devil's Tower leading around to where they're trying to go, and one of the guys says that he never knew that, that all his drawings were from the same side.

Roy responds, "Next time, try sculpture." :mrgreen:
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by MaxxQ   » Mon Jul 28, 2014 6:35 pm

MaxxQ
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namelessfly wrote:Plausible explanation but not entirely convincing.

Might I suggest that the gravity drivers would either be a flat plate at the breach or a series of toroidial coils along the bore? The later is most plausible because we actually have theoretical designs for gravity generators that actually are shaped like a donut. The principle is to have ultra dense matter flowing through a series of rings concentric with the minor access of the torrid.

More importantly, there seems to be no reason why the cylindrical missile tube can not recipricate along it's axis to move the breach to a point even with the forward end of the magazine. My Barrett .50 BMG caliber rifle operates on this principle to facilitate loading as well as dampen recoil.


Did you not read what I wrote? There's NO ROOM for the tube to move anywhere. It already takes up the entire open width between the core hull and two meters INTO the outer armor. At that, it's only 19 meters long, which is only 7 meters longer than the missile.

If you mean that part of the tube slides over another part, that doesn't work either, because what I have been told is that there should only be a couple centimeters between the missile and the inner surface of the tube. Can't have part of the tube sliding over another without splitting it to spread it out, which gets us back to your original objection.

As for the drivers, I already said that that's my own explanation of it, and until someone from BuNine comes up with a better, more "realistic" way to make it work, then it stays as is as a blocked-in design for fitting things into the overall design.

If you'd look a little closer at the animation, you'll notice that there are 16-sided toroids going the entire length of the tube - in fact, they FORM the tube. Each of the flat parts of each toroid contains a grav generator - however those may be made. While the mesh makes it look like each torus is a single unit, each flat section is removeable for R&R. Not easily, though. It's not something you can do aboard ship. That's why there can be a split in the tube to allow the missile to be loaded.

Let me stress one more time: This is my own interpretation of how it works, and until I get better info from the people I work with, it stays that way.

And you ain't getting broadside centerline breech-(with two "e's" - no "a") loading in anything smaller than a battlecruiser, ever.
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by namelessfly   » Mon Jul 28, 2014 9:24 pm

namelessfly

Why not have the launch tube run out to pprotrude through the armor and out the hull?

MaxxQ wrote:
namelessfly wrote:Plausible explanation but not entirely convincing.

Might I suggest that the gravity drivers would either be a flat plate at the breach or a series of toroidial coils along the bore? The later is most plausible because we actually have theoretical designs for gravity generators that actually are shaped like a donut. The principle is to have ultra dense matter flowing through a series of rings concentric with the minor access of the torrid.

More importantly, there seems to be no reason why the cylindrical missile tube can not recipricate along it's axis to move the breach to a point even with the forward end of the magazine. My Barrett .50 BMG caliber rifle operates on this principle to facilitate loading as well as dampen recoil.


Did you not read what I wrote? There's NO ROOM for the tube to move anywhere. It already takes up the entire open width between the core hull and two meters INTO the outer armor. At that, it's only 19 meters long, which is only 7 meters longer than the missile.

If you mean that part of the tube slides over another part, that doesn't work either, because what I have been told is that there should only be a couple centimeters between the missile and the inner surface of the tube. Can't have part of the tube sliding over another without splitting it to spread it out, which gets us back to your original objection.

As for the drivers, I already said that that's my own explanation of it, and until someone from BuNine comes up with a better, more "realistic" way to make it work, then it stays as is as a blocked-in design for fitting things into the overall design.

If you'd look a little closer at the animation, you'll notice that there are 16-sided toroids going the entire length of the tube - in fact, they FORM the tube. Each of the flat parts of each toroid contains a grav generator - however those may be made. While the mesh makes it look like each torus is a single unit, each flat section is removeable for R&R. Not easily, though. It's not something you can do aboard ship. That's why there can be a split in the tube to allow the missile to be loaded.

Let me stress one more time: This is my own interpretation of how it works, and until I get better info from the people I work with, it stays that way.

And you ain't getting broadside centerline breech-(with two "e's" - no "a") loading in anything smaller than a battlecruiser, ever.
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by MaxxQ   » Mon Jul 28, 2014 9:33 pm

MaxxQ
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Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 5:08 pm
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namelessfly wrote:Why not have the launch tube run out to pprotrude through the armor and out the hull?


Because only the energy weapons do that, as far as I've been told to make them. I always thought *all* weapons ran out, but apparently not. Even so, they'd have to run out pretty damn far to breech-load a missile, and again, you're limited on the maximum length of the tube anyway, which is about 19 meters. Sure, you could run it out 12-13 meters to load a missile, but that kinda increases vulnerability, no?

OTOH, it's been several years since I was told that the tubes don't run out, so I may actually be misremembering that, but again, it doesn't help with breech-loading.
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by cthia   » Mon Jul 28, 2014 10:30 pm

cthia
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I tell you, that BuNine entity has no idea how cool his R&D is. I'm spending too much time with my minicomp reviewing these dispatches. :D

Question has arisen. Regarding the missile pods, are they reusable? Please forgive me if I missed it in textev. Seems it'd be lots of work to reclaim missile pods, but a waste if not. Also, it seems during huge battles with lots of pods deployed, they'd possibly interfere with firing vectors of trailing ships. Seems lots of debris in space. Litterbugs?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by Vince   » Tue Jul 29, 2014 12:46 am

Vince
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cthia wrote:I tell you, that BuNine entity has no idea how cool his R&D is. I'm spending too much time with my minicomp reviewing these dispatches. :D

Question has arisen. Regarding the missile pods, are they reusable? Please forgive me if I missed it in textev. Seems it'd be lots of work to reclaim missile pods, but a waste if not. Also, it seems during huge battles with lots of pods deployed, they'd possibly interfere with firing vectors of trailing ships. Seems lots of debris in space. Litterbugs?

It depends on the design of the missile pod.

In Honor Among Enemies Wayfarer was conducting missile pod recovery operations at Sidemore after dealing with Warneke (sp?).

In Torch of Freedom, Admiral Rozak only had missile pods that were effectively good for one shot aboard his Masquerade missile freighters at the Battle of Torch. A more robust and IIRC, reloadable, missile pod design hadn't made it through production to the deployment stage.
-------------------------------------------------------------
History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by MaxxQ   » Tue Jul 29, 2014 2:00 am

MaxxQ
BuNine

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cthia wrote:I tell you, that BuNine entity has no idea how cool his R&D is. I'm spending too much time with my minicomp reviewing these dispatches. :D

Question has arisen. Regarding the missile pods, are they reusable? Please forgive me if I missed it in textev. Seems it'd be lots of work to reclaim missile pods, but a waste if not. Also, it seems during huge battles with lots of pods deployed, they'd possibly interfere with firing vectors of trailing ships. Seems lots of debris in space. Litterbugs?


Yep. Pretty much what Vince said. I recall that during the pod recovery ops, Honor was thinking to herself about mentioning adding remote-activated transponders to allow easier recovery of pods. I would assume that for the most part, pods *can* be recovered, but as you mentioned, cthia, there may be circumstances that might require a bit of judicious self-destruction on them.

Newer pods have fusion reactors in them (to power up the fusion drives of the missiles) - so it would be a simple matter to send a command to blow the reactor, which should pretty much solve any litter problems.
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by Daryl   » Tue Jul 29, 2014 3:30 am

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You'd want to hope that the enemy hadn't cracked your codes, and knew the self destruct command sequence.

MaxxQ wrote:
cthia wrote:I tell you, that BuNine entity has no idea how cool his R&D is. I'm spending too much time with my minicomp reviewing these dispatches. :D

Question has arisen. Regarding the missile pods, are they reusable? Please forgive me if I missed it in textev. Seems it'd be lots of work to reclaim missile pods, but a waste if not. Also, it seems during huge battles with lots of pods deployed, they'd possibly interfere with firing vectors of trailing ships. Seems lots of debris in space. Litterbugs?


Yep. Pretty much what Vince said. I recall that during the pod recovery ops, Honor was thinking to herself about mentioning adding remote-activated transponders to allow easier recovery of pods. I would assume that for the most part, pods *can* be recovered, but as you mentioned, cthia, there may be circumstances that might require a bit of judicious self-destruction on them.

Newer pods have fusion reactors in them (to power up the fusion drives of the missiles) - so it would be a simple matter to send a command to blow the reactor, which should pretty much solve any litter problems.
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by MaxxQ   » Tue Jul 29, 2014 4:00 am

MaxxQ
BuNine

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Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2009 5:08 pm
Location: Greer, South Carolina USA

Daryl wrote:You'd want to hope that the enemy hadn't cracked your codes, and knew the self destruct command sequence.


True, but I didn't say that they actually had them... just that it would be possible to do something like that.
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Re: New Honorverse renders uploaded
Post by cthia   » Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:32 am

cthia
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MaxxQ wrote:
cthia wrote:I tell you, that BuNine entity has no idea how cool his R&D is. I'm spending too much time with my minicomp reviewing these dispatches. :D

Question has arisen. Regarding the missile pods, are they reusable? Please forgive me if I missed it in textev. Seems it'd be lots of work to reclaim missile pods, but a waste if not. Also, it seems during huge battles with lots of pods deployed, they'd possibly interfere with firing vectors of trailing ships. Seems lots of debris in space. Litterbugs?


Yep. Pretty much what Vince said. I recall that during the pod recovery ops, Honor was thinking to herself about mentioning adding remote-activated transponders to allow easier recovery of pods. I would assume that for the most part, pods *can* be recovered, but as you mentioned, cthia, there may be circumstances that might require a bit of judicious self-destruction on them.

Newer pods have fusion reactors in them (to power up the fusion drives of the missiles) - so it would be a simple matter to send a command to blow the reactor, which should pretty much solve any litter problems.

Thanks for responses guys. It always puzzled me since the introduction of pods. You anticipated another of my concerns Maxx, of how they'd manage to find them all.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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