Spider drive ships and technical limitations

If these are "dead horse" topics, please be kind.

I have NOT read any of the released portions of UH, so if any of this is addressed there be circumspect in answering. That said:

How handicapped are spider drive ships compared to impeller drive?

The lack of Alpha nodes has to hurt in terms of flexibility; they can't use wormhole junctions at all and cannot stabilize themselves in hyperspace gravity waves. This would exclude them from systems lying entirely within gravity waves, granting MA opponents safe systems where even the lack of a functioning spider detector - assuming those same opponents know about this technical shortcoming, of course.

Second, is there a fundamental tonnage cap on spider drive ships the way the inertial compensator is for impeller drive ships? Without that cap, there's no reason a 20Mt+ spider behemoth couldn't carry an OMG number of pods or other weapons into a surprise attack. That said, even a ship that size wouldn't be able to protect itself against the type of missile salvos being tossed around in modern pod combat. That would certainly be a reason not to build such ships, but are such ships technically unfeasible or just tactically unfeasible?

Third, slightly off topic: Have the SKM advances in compensator technology led to a significant increase in the tonnage cap for warships? The SL Scientist class are only about the tonnage of DNs in the RMN; is this due to compensator improvements by Manticore or was the Scientist class just designed so long ago its compensator is several generations of tech behind?

The lack of Alpha nodes has to hurt in terms of flexibility; they can't use wormhole junctions at all and cannot stabilize themselves in hyperspace gravity waves.

Why do you think they do not have alpha nodes?

Second, is there a fundamental tonnage cap on spider drive ships the way the inertial compensator is for impeller drive ships?

None that we know of.

That said, even a ship that size wouldn't be able to protect itself against the type of missile salvos being tossed around in modern pod combat. That would certainly be a reason not to build such ships, but are such ships technically unfeasible or just tactically unfeasible?

They would be no worse off than a fortress of similar size, and no one thinks those are weak.

Third, slightly off topic: Have the SKM advances in compensator technology led to a significant increase in the tonnage cap for warships? The SL Scientist class are only about the tonnage of DNs in the RMN; is this due to compensator improvements by Manticore or was the Scientist class just designed so long ago its compensator is several generations of tech behind?

Both. Scientists are really old, whereas more modern pre-pod wallers from Manticore and Haven had half a million to a million more tons on them. Podnoughts are even larger than them, pushing nine million tons.

Galactic Sapper wrote:The lack of Alpha nodes has to hurt in terms of flexibility; they can't use wormhole junctions at all and cannot stabilize themselves in hyperspace gravity waves. This would exclude them from systems lying entirely within gravity waves, granting MA opponents safe systems where even the lack of a functioning spider detector - assuming those same opponents know about this technical shortcoming, of course.

I also haven't read any of UH - but I have seen posts here by David Weber (aka runsforcelery, aka rfc) at least hinting heavily that spider ships can use wormholes. He didn't, that I can recall, explain how you'd be able to engineer in that capability (or what tradeoffs might be required)

And whether any particular spider ship design incorporates that capability...

Potato wrote:They would be no worse off than a fortress of similar size, and no one thinks those are weak.

Though forts can bring up an impeller drive, albeit at quite low accelerations, and deploy normal sidewalls with it should they need to reposition during combat. Though normally they'd keep the drive down and a bubble sidewall up.
RFC did say that a spider drive couldn't be used through a bubble sidewall. And if they can't raise a wedge they can't use normal sidewalls either. So it would appear that a spider ship has to choose between any sidewall at all or using their main drive. (They might be able to use thrusters with a bubble wall up though).

That might make them a bit more tactically vulnerable than a fort. Not to mention forts never need to run after launching a less than perfectly successful sneak attack

Still if they choose to stick around and fight it out a Spider ship could presumably put up a bubble sidewall and be quite a tough customer.

Galactic Sapper wrote:If these are "dead horse" topics, please be kind.

I have NOT read any of the released portions of UH, so if any of this is addressed there be circumspect in answering. That said:

How handicapped are spider drive ships compared to impeller drive?

The lack of Alpha nodes has to hurt in terms of flexibility; they can't use wormhole junctions at all and cannot stabilize themselves in hyperspace gravity waves. This would exclude them from systems lying entirely within gravity waves, granting MA opponents safe systems where even the lack of a functioning spider detector - assuming those same opponents know about this technical shortcoming, of course.

Second, is there a fundamental tonnage cap on spider drive ships the way the inertial compensator is for impeller drive ships? Without that cap, there's no reason a 20Mt+ spider behemoth couldn't carry an OMG number of pods or other weapons into a surprise attack. That said, even a ship that size wouldn't be able to protect itself against the type of missile salvos being tossed around in modern pod combat. That would certainly be a reason not to build such ships, but are such ships technically unfeasible or just tactically unfeasible?

Third, slightly off topic: Have the SKM advances in compensator technology led to a significant increase in the tonnage cap for warships? The SL Scientist class are only about the tonnage of DNs in the RMN; is this due to compensator improvements by Manticore or was the Scientist class just designed so long ago its compensator is several generations of tech behind?

I admit I may have missed/forgot something from the books when reading about the Spider Drive but I can't think of any particular reason you couldn't put impellers onto a ship with Spider Drive.

Yes there would be likely sacrifices in space available having two separate drive systems but if your goal was to sneak in under stealth launch your attack and then run like hell, I see no reason you couldn't go in with Spider Drive and the Impellers on Standby then once the attack is actually launched light off the impellers with all the benefits of much higher acceleration and inertial sump available with this.

Potato wrote:Why do you think they do not have alpha nodes?

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.

Potato wrote:They would be no worse off than a fortress of similar size, and no one thinks those are weak.

They lack wedges and sidewalls, making them vulnerable to attack from any aspect and depriving them from any sort of passive defense at all. Assuming they continue accelerating they could be hit with energy fire from far outside the range that is usually possible.

The newer pod/LAC based fortresses are smaller because a greater tonnage no longer translates into the advantage it used to when capital ship warfare depended mostly on energy fire. They're not weak but are far less survivable than they used to be.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Potato wrote:Why do you think they do not have alpha nodes?

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.

I think that without a wedge you don't have the gravity sump that the compensators use (if I remember it correctly) so they are relegated to grav plates when using the spider drive.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Potato wrote:They would be no worse off than a fortress of similar size, and no one thinks those are weak.

They lack wedges and sidewalls, making them vulnerable to attack from any aspect and depriving them from any sort of passive defense at all. Assuming they continue accelerating they could be hit with energy fire from far outside the range that is usually possible.

The newer pod/LAC based fortresses are smaller because a greater tonnage no longer translates into the advantage it used to when capital ship warfare depended mostly on energy fire. They're not weak but are far less survivable than they used to be.

From what I understand about the spider drive it's a huge disadvantage when you have the typical standard battle - but it's just fine if you want the ability to sneak into a system, dump a bunch of missiles and then sneak out. I can't see it working in any other way. There are some permutations on that scenario though, but they all come down to pure hit'n'run scenarios.

But that's just my opinion...

That's rather an odd statement, on two fronts.

First, given that the first Warshawski-sail starships predate the compensator by a full century, you survive in a grav wave exactly the way Adrienne Warshawski did - by not pulling excessive accels. Come to think of it, she didn't have grav plates either, so a spider ship could actually use the sails a lot more efficiently than she could.

Second, if you're going to go to the trouble of installing a massive set of alpha nodes in the first place, I wouldn't think that it would be a huge extra effort to install a compensator to go with them. And if you've done that, the whole problem goes away.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Potato wrote:Why do you think they do not have alpha nodes?

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.

Louis R wrote:Second, if you're going to go to the trouble of installing a massive set of alpha nodes in the first place, I wouldn't think that it would be a huge extra effort to install a compensator to go with them. And if you've done that, the whole problem goes away.

As I understand it, the compensator is integrated with the impeller drive, not just in terms of components but in terms of the actual para-physics of that entire field. It's not simply a matter of taking an independent subsystem out and changing the color of the wires in the connecting cable. If it was that simple, they'd have done it. The MAlign may be malign, but it is not stupid.

The spider is a completely independent system that probably uses a different and presently incompatible branch of hyper-mathematics.

JohnRoth wrote:As I understand it, the compensator is integrated with the impeller drive, not just in terms of components but in terms of the actual para-physics of that entire field. It's not simply a matter of taking an independent subsystem out and changing the color of the wires in the connecting cable. If it was that simple, they'd have done it. The MAlign may be malign, but it is not stupid.

The spider is a completely independent system that probably uses a different and presently incompatible branch of hyper-mathematics.

The compensator depends on the existence of a wedge to cancel acceleration. No wedge, no cancellation.

However it's a totally separate system, which is why you can get compensator failure while the wedge is running.

Joat42 wrote:From what I understand about the spider drive it's a huge disadvantage when you have the typical standard battle - but it's just fine if you want the ability to sneak into a system, dump a bunch of missiles and then sneak out. I can't see it working in any other way. There are some permutations on that scenario though, but they all come down to pure hit'n'run scenarios.

But that's just my opinion...

They're also ridiculously hard to see. Without a wedge to light up passive sensors the MA believes spider drive ships will be nearly impossible to localize at significant ranges. We'll have to wait until they actually see a battle to find out how that works in practice.

Maybe they can even get close enough to use a grav lance and energy torpedoes. *hides*