Slow CLAC's - fast SD(P)'s

SharkHunter wrote:

kzt wrote:With the compensator you are either at zero g or exposed to the full acceleration of the ship. There is no middle state.

?? Ya lost me, though that's also on me, not your thought. Asking my follow-on question because other Forum Dwellers likely won't understand either.

I'm thinking the reduction would be due to A) "percentage of the fusion energy / impeller wedge energy going into the "inertial compensator sump" in order to maintain the zero-added G environment of the ship, and maybe a B) any factors that might be related to the "free craft" launch-able under fleet battle acceleration conditions, perhaps a "transitional zone" from the CLAC's IC to n-space that the LACs launch through vs. an SD not needing a zone, etc.

Thoughts?

What KZT is saying that you are either in the Compensator field or you are out of it. It does not vary or taper it's compensation. it's a 100% yes or a 0 % no. Any parts of a ship outside the compensation field are subject to the full force of the ship's movements and acceleration, causing massive stress points and untimely structureal failure - in addition to the inability of us squisky lifeforms to reside in that area and the tendancy of every thing not bolted down to fall towards the back of the ship with 500x the acceleration it would havce on the earth's surface.

As we've seen in the Manticore asendant novels, you can choose a fatter field shape, and get a lower compensation value, but having something part in and part out of the compensated filed is a receipe for leaving the "out" part somewhere behind you.

crewdude48 wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:If the CLAC hull form penalizes acceleration that badly, then SD range ones would be a terrible idea - they'd slow down any fleet. If it's a problem for DN range ones but not SD range ones (more volume to play with for the hypothetical hull form constraint there), then everyone would have moved to SD range CLAC's in a hurry.

If the CLAC's hull form is the reason, I suspect that it would be less of a problem in a larger ship. At least part of the reason that a CLAC is "fatter" than other ships it's displacement is because of how long it's primary weapons system is.

The impression I got from Tom us that the hull form might cost them a couple of Gs; at most. It's not the answer to their mysteriously low accel in HoS.

Most likely it is a mistake. (Especially for Hydra-class)

But Tom did say there might have been a reason (and he couldn't remember if there was) that HMS Minotaur might have build using an "old stock" compensator. One from 8 or so years before, without the efficiency of a new 1912 era compensator. Now I've no idea why they'd do that unless there was a real shortage and they didn't want to waste one on an experimental unit; but he raised it as a possibility.

But like I said, I'm leaning towards simple error.