Hypothetical match up KH vs Dreadnought

Dilandu wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Hi Dilandu,

Yup, that's what RFC posted long ago; the KH VII's are armored cruisers circa 1890-95, not 1907 dreadnoughts.

Well, actually there aren't direct analogue in real navy. And in 1890th their construction would be somewhat obsolete. Many armored cruisers of 1890 have a full waterline armoured belt, not citadel - simply to be able to mantain speed if they were hit. But for Earth armoured cruiser, their speed was a matter of survival, not some luxurity.

So, actually the "King Haarald"'s may be some sort of fast battleships (or "vanguard" battleships): their speed is less actual for them than the ability to windstand fire and stay oceanworthy.

That was, actually, the main difference between British and french conceptions of 1880-1890. The Royal Navy wanted for their battleship to stay afloat even with unarmoured ends are shattered, but any damage in the ends near waterline would greatly reduce speed. So, they make a citadel armour scheme. The french navy wanted for their battleship to be able to mantain full speed even it their unarmoured sides are shattered; so, they stay with full waterline belt. IMHO, for the Mediterranian Sea and Channel - were the french navy would be supposed to engage the enemy - the full armoured belt on the waterline would work better than the british citadel.

P.S. An important question: of what material KH's armored belt is made? Only iron, iron-steel compound, of some sort of Creusot steel?

That's been answered a time or dozen. In fact, it was part of my response to one of your criticisms of the design. They use "Howsmynized steel," which is basically Harvey nickel steel, with Krupp Cemented being held in reserve for after someone else "steals" the Howsymn process.

Silverwall wrote:On the topic of the main debate I sometimes question how fast Charis is able to physically build these ships given that most industrial powers of the approx same level of development (Italy and France in particular) took upwards of 5+ years to build each ship. However I am willing to overlook that in the interest of a good story. Even being able to give Radio to the romans (tv tropes) it would not be a very interesting story if you have to wait 10-15 years for the supporting infrastructure to be built. Also it must be admitted that the Schizo tech base Safehold has makes it harder to draw historical parallels.

That is peacetime build lead-time. In that context, lead time is less important than price.
Push all the buttons for war or pre-war economy like Charis did and you can cut that more than in half at least. Wont come cheap though.

A saying resumes it :

- Good, Cheap, Fast, choose any twos.

In one of the older threads on this board, there was some discussion of other Schizoid tech that was possible (if very unlikely).

Some of it ranged from vaguely plausible, like real life Babbage machines (the computer "server room" would be powered by a locomotive engine and each machine would be "networked" by a long drive axel on the roof and a leather drive belt...) to real screamers like late WWII era coal fired ramjets that the Luftwaffe had experimented with in the dying days of the conflict, or even lasers which were possible in a technological sense using victorian era technology (although the underlying theory would be lacking).

Mythbusters have also explored several hypothetical devices that were described by the ancients, such as rocket powered torpedoes, rocket artillery (ranging from ancient Korean fire arrows to a two stage rocket the Confederates allegedly built to attack Washington DC) and repeating catapults that fired arrows at a high rate of fire so long as the mechanism did not come loose and a soldier was capable of turning the crank.

This sort of tech is generally seized upon by the side with it's back against the wall (what do they have to lose anyway?), although in this scenario the CoGA isn't likely to encourage this sort of "out of the box" thinking.

OTOH, the British could be counted upon to create strange devices using baroque engineering, such as "iceberg" aircraft carriers, or jeeps fitted with autogyro rotors to be towed behind aircraft. Maybe the Empire could have a small institute devoted to these types of inventors since you never know when they might come up with something actually usable.

runsforcelery wrote:
That's been answered a time or dozen. In fact, it was part of my response to one of your criticisms of the design. They use "Howsmynized steel," which is basically Harvey nickel steel, with Krupp Cemented being held in reserve for after someone else "steals" the Howsymn process.

Please, it's too clearly much! The cost in terms of money, industrial power and manpower would be enormous for nothing. The Compound plates would do the job perfectly and would be avaliable immediately, not after ten or more years needed just to build the industry for mass-production of the Harvey armour!

Truly, maybe Charis should already start working on the nuclear bomb? Just in case "something gone wrong".

It's at least theoretically possible to enrich uranium with purely chemical process (actually it would possibly not work well, but THEORETICALLY it would work, and we have Merlin's remotes to make the job by replacing the Charis-produced uranium with OWL-produced). And it's definitely possible to build a gun-type nuclear bomb without electric power at all: the current Charisian technology level allow them to do that.

So, why should we bother with building ultratech battleships, if we could have a awesome power of NUCLEAR WEAPON? It's at least 20% cooler!

I wonder if they really could enrich uranium? IIRC there wasn't much gap between getting the theory straight and actually doing it in RL, so if somebody handed the Charisians the theory...

OTOH, a nuclear explosion would be insanely hard to justify as within the Proscriptions, and also might trigger the OBS.

Dilandu wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
That's been answered a time or dozen. In fact, it was part of my response to one of your criticisms of the design. They use "Howsmynized steel," which is basically Harvey nickel steel, with Krupp Cemented being held in reserve for after someone else "steals" the Howsymn process.

Please, it's too clearly much! The cost in terms of money, industrial power and manpower would be enormous for nothing. The Compound plates would do the job perfectly and would be avaliable immediately, not after ten or more years needed just to build the industry for mass-production of the Harvey armour!

Are we going to do this all over again? only ask cause it's getting kind of tiring.

No, i'm also tired of that. Please, if it suddenly appeared that KH's have a nuclear projectiles for their guns or equipped with "Standart" missiles - just tell me that it is your point.

cralkhi wrote:I wonder if they really could enrich uranium? IIRC there wasn't much gap between getting the theory straight and actually doing it in RL, so if somebody handed the Charisians the theory...

In theory, it is possible by purely chemical methods. Actually... i didn't thik it would really work, but after all - we have Merlin to do it!

And there is the so-called "natural nuclear reactors".

OTOH, a nuclear explosion would be insanely hard to justify as within the Proscriptions, and also might trigger the OBS.

I really doubt that the Proscriptions have anything against nuclear reaction... for Langnhore point, it would probably means that if the Safeholdian progressed to the nuclear power, it's already too late to control them.

Dilandu wrote:

cralkhi wrote:I wonder if they really could enrich uranium? IIRC there wasn't much gap between getting the theory straight and actually doing it in RL, so if somebody handed the Charisians the theory...

In theory, it is possible by purely chemical methods. Actually... i didn't thik it would really work, but after all - we have Merlin to do it!

And there is the so-called "natural nuclear reactors".

The natural reactors did not enrich uranium. In fact, they ran on the then available higher fraction of U235. In the times since, U235 has decayed to a greater degree than U238 and today you need to somehow bring that ratio up to the level of self-sustaining chain reactions.
Or you could just go with a much younger planet... If Safehold was, say, only 3 billion years old, the natural ratio would be such that under the right conditions you could sustain a nuclear reaction...