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Spider drive ships and technical limitations

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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by kzt   » Tue Oct 30, 2018 11:18 am

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ldwechsler wrote:Keep in mind that learning SOME things about a technological advance can provide a huge number of hints about others. For example, if he knows what the propulsion system is, it would not be nearly as difficult to find a way to track it.

You'd think so. Too bad the MAN, with the spider design team involved, found they couldn't detect it at more than roughly a LS.
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by Peregrinator   » Tue Oct 30, 2018 12:35 pm

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Do the graser torpedoes also use the spider drive? I can't quite recall.
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by kzt   » Tue Oct 30, 2018 12:52 pm

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Peregrinator wrote:Do the graser torpedoes also use the spider drive? I can't quite recall.

Yes. They are spiders.
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by Annachie   » Tue Oct 30, 2018 4:57 pm

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The only descriptions we have had was of the little ships, basically the large proof of concept stuff, that got used because the real spider drive ships weren't ready.

We know stuff all about the real spider drive ships like the Lenny Dert's.
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by kzt   » Tue Oct 30, 2018 5:01 pm

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Annachie wrote:The only descriptions we have had was of the little ships, basically the large proof of concept stuff, that got used because the real spider drive ships weren't ready.

We know stuff all about the real spider drive ships like the Lenny Dert's.

Yeah, the little 4MT toy scale spiders...
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by Dauntless   » Wed Oct 31, 2018 11:50 am

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Annachie may have half a point Kzt

while it is unlikely, it is possible then when scaled up for the Lenny Det's that having to move the greater mass makes them much more detectable/trackable then the sharks were.

no idea if that is true or not, as we have so little info, but it could be possible.

heck something has give the manties a chance, as otherwise we will end up in early WW2 with undetectable wolfpacks of honorverse subs sinking freighters, escorts and SDs with only the torpedoes wakes to use to find them. assuming that the LD use conventional missiles to do the job and not more graser torps or some other new weapon.
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by Exidor   » Sat Nov 03, 2018 5:51 pm

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Peregrinator wrote:Do the graser torpedoes also use the spider drive? I can't quite recall.


The ones used in the attack on Manticore, yes.

From Mission of Honor:

The first wave of each attack consisted of a weapon which was as much a fundamental breakthrough, in its own way, as the Manticoran introduction of the multidrive missile: a graser torpedo which used its own variant of the spider drive. It was a large and cumbersome weapon, with the same trilateral symmetry as the Shark-class ships which had launched it, and for the same reasons.
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by stewart   » Sat Nov 03, 2018 7:00 pm

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[quote Why do you think they do not have alpha nodes?[/quote]
While it's not specifically stated they do not have alpha nodes, it is specifically stated that they lack inertial compensators. They rely on the internal gravity plates to counteract acceleration and could not survive using gravity waves even if they could generate sails.[/quote]

It takes a little extrapolation, but RFC established that the shape of the Warshawki-equipped ships is determined by the nodes, and the need for them to have a certain geometrical relationship to each other.

Spider Drive ships are noted as looking "wrong", the hull-form is incompatible with the nodes and wedges/sails.

Have a feeling it might have been AAC, when the Spider Drive ships were first described in detail.[/quote]


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It is certainly "possible" for a Honorverse ship to have both Spider Drive "nodes" and Impeller drive Nodes (and even Streak Drive nodes) but eventually there is a limitation on hull space and volume for the systems.
There is always a cost trade for any function.

-- Stewart
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:18 pm

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stewart wrote:
It is certainly "possible" for a Honorverse ship to have both Spider Drive "nodes" and Impeller drive Nodes (and even Streak Drive nodes) but eventually there is a limitation on hull space and volume for the systems.
There is always a cost trade for any function.

-- Stewart

Streak drive appears to just be a more capable (and larger) hyper generator so it wouldn't have nodes of its own.

You need a little more internal volume, but that's easier to come by that free surface area of the hull; and it shouldn't impose any hull geometry restrictions.
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Re: Spider drive ships and technical limitations
Post by kzt   » Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:27 pm

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stewart wrote:While it's not specifically stated they do not have alpha nodes, it is specifically stated that they lack inertial compensators. They rely on the internal gravity plates to counteract acceleration and could not survive using gravity waves even if they could generate sails.

[/quote]

No, it has been stated they don’t use a compensator while under spider drive. This is quite different from not having one.
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