Honorverse ramblings and musings

and God only knew where things might have ended if she'd been allowed to implement her "spinal mount" main armament concept for ships of the wall! The idea of a capital ship which had no choice but to cross its own "T" for an enemy in order to engage it still made him cringe, and, he was certain, it would have the same effect on his hostess.

Yow wrote:Perhaps an early mention of the Rolands??? A quote from IEH when the Admiral White Haven got raked over the coals by Commodore Harrington for dismissing Admiral Hemphills new toys as boondoggles.

and God only knew where things might have ended if she'd been allowed to implement her "spinal mount" main armament concept for ships of the wall! The idea of a capital ship which had no choice but to cross its own "T" for an enemy in order to engage it still made him cringe, and, he was certain, it would have the same effect on his hostess.

Yow wrote:Perhaps an early mention of the Rolands??? A quote from IEH when the Admiral White Haven got raked over the coals by Commodore Harrington for dismissing Admiral Hemphills new toys as boondoggles.

and God only knew where things might have ended if she'd been allowed to implement her "spinal mount" main armament concept for ships of the wall! The idea of a capital ship which had no choice but to cross its own "T" for an enemy in order to engage it still made him cringe, and, he was certain, it would have the same effect on his hostess.

Yow wrote:Perhaps an early mention of the Rolands??? A quote from IEH when the Admiral White Haven got raked over the coals by Commodore Harrington for dismissing Admiral Hemphills new toys as boondoggles.

and God only knew where things might have ended if she'd been allowed to implement her "spinal mount" main armament concept for ships of the wall! The idea of a capital ship which had no choice but to cross its own "T" for an enemy in order to engage it still made him cringe, and, he was certain, it would have the same effect on his hostess.

JeffEngel wrote:Rolands aren't ships of the wall. What you have here is that spinal mount energy weapon concept - once for ships of the wall, the primary users of energy weapons - remembered from that original context, when in actual use, it filtered into Shrike LAC's instead.

In Ashes of Victory, at the beginning of Operation Buttercup, Scotty Tremaine mused on the reversal of use of energy weapons and missiles. LAC's were now predominantly energy weapons users, thanks to the power budgets of the new fission plants; the speed from new compensators, those plants, and beta-squared nodes; and the bow-wall so that crossing your own T no longer was a suicidal act. And capital ships, with missile pods and MDMs, were using missiles instead of energy weapons as their weapons of decision.

Given their size, any warships has traditionally had a lot of weapons in the hammerheads, even though they don't ever want to have an enemy with weapons pointing in that direction. The Roland takes that a whole lot further, mounting all its anti-shipping weaponry there, but only because (1) it can't fit its missiles in broadsides, and (2) off-bore firing capability means it can perfectly well fire out the front and back at enemies off to the side. I imagine that aspect should make the hammerheads much more attractive still as missile launcher sites even on larger ships that can mount their missiles broadside too.

Yow wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Rolands aren't ships of the wall. What you have here is that spinal mount energy weapon concept - once for ships of the wall, the primary users of energy weapons - remembered from that original context, when in actual use, it filtered into Shrike LAC's instead.

In Ashes of Victory, at the beginning of Operation Buttercup, Scotty Tremaine mused on the reversal of use of energy weapons and missiles. LAC's were now predominantly energy weapons users, thanks to the power budgets of the new fission plants; the speed from new compensators, those plants, and beta-squared nodes; and the bow-wall so that crossing your own T no longer was a suicidal act. And capital ships, with missile pods and MDMs, were using missiles instead of energy weapons as their weapons of decision.

Given their size, any warships has traditionally had a lot of weapons in the hammerheads, even though they don't ever want to have an enemy with weapons pointing in that direction. The Roland takes that a whole lot further, mounting all its anti-shipping weaponry there, but only because (1) it can't fit its missiles in broadsides, and (2) off-bore firing capability means it can perfectly well fire out the front and back at enemies off to the side. I imagine that aspect should make the hammerheads much more attractive still as missile launcher sites even on larger ships that can mount their missiles broadside too.

The emphasis I caught out of this was "main mount" which to me spelled not just energy but missles as well. I understood it to be that all ships had chase armament but I thought what Admiral White Haven had looked at was a complete move of the main broadside weapons to the hammerheads.

Also at this point it seemed he had only looked at the summaries and overlooked the off bore capability and thought only of crossing the T and its impending consequences. Prompting an arse chewing from a lowly Commodore. I thought of Rolands only because I couldn't recall capital ships in later novels firing completely offbore. Does anyone recall where capital ships added the weight of their hammerheads to their broadsides? Would you think that would detract from missle telemetry controls in a traditional broadside or would it have dedicated controls that are directed off bore in addition to?

Yow wrote:The emphasis I caught out of this was "main mount" which to me spelled not just energy but missles as well. I understood it to be that all ships had chase armament but I thought what Admiral White Haven had looked at was a complete move of the main broadside weapons to the hammerheads. Also at this point it seemed he had only looked at the summaries and overlooked the off bore capability and thought only of crossing the T and its impending consequences. Prompting an arse chewing from a lowly Commodore. I thought of Rolands only because I couldn't recall capital ships in later novels firing completely offbore. Does anyone recall where capital ships added the weight of their hammerheads to their broadsides? Would you think that would detract from missle telemetry controls in a traditional broadside or would it have dedicated controls that are directed off bore in addition to?

cthia wrote:After searching the Pearls to no avail, lest I overlooked, I cannot find that which I seek. Namely, I recall certain textev mentioning the solution employed of missiles travelling at such high rates of speed not being destroyed by the smallest of space debris. I think I recall that the missiles are spirited away behind some metal until final attack stage? If so, is that metal battle steel?

But what of the Apollo control missile that must always see? What's protecting it?

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 13 wrote:"Jettisoning the shrouds now," Diego reported as the first pod's missiles reached Point Alpha.
"Acknowledged," Adenauer replied.
The shroud-jettisoning maneuver had been programmed into the missiles before launch. Unlike any previous attack missile, the Mark 23s in an Apollo pod were fitted with protective shrouds intended to shield their sensors from the particle erosion of extended ballistic flight profiles at relativistic speeds. Most missiles didn't really need anything of the sort, since their impeller wedges incorporated particle screening. They were capable of maintaining a separate particle screen—briefly, at least—as long as they retained on-board power, even after the wedge went down, but that screening was far less efficient than a starship's particle screens. For the most part, that hadn't mattered, since any ballistic component of a "standard" attack profile was going to be brief, at best. But with Apollo, very long-range attacks, with lengthy ballistic components built into them, had suddenly become feasible. That capability, however, would be of limited usefulness if particle erosion had blinded the missiles before they ever got a chance to see their targets.
Now the jettisoning command blew the shrouds, and the sensors they had protected came on-line. Of course, the missiles were 72,998,260 kilometers from Artemis. That was over four light-minutes, which in the old days (like five or six T-years ago) would have meant any transmission from them would take four minutes to reach Artemis.

cthia wrote:But what of the Apollo control missile that must always see? What's protecting it?

Vince wrote:

cthia wrote:After searching the Pearls to no avail, lest I overlooked, I cannot find that which I seek. Namely, I recall certain textev mentioning the solution employed of missiles travelling at such high rates of speed not being destroyed by the smallest of space debris. I think I recall that the missiles are spirited away behind some metal until final attack stage? If so, is that metal battle steel?

But what of the Apollo control missile that must always see? What's protecting it?

Here's the text:

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 13 wrote:"Jettisoning the shrouds now," Diego reported as the first pod's missiles reached Point Alpha.
"Acknowledged," Adenauer replied.
The shroud-jettisoning maneuver had been programmed into the missiles before launch. Unlike any previous attack missile, the Mark 23s in an Apollo pod were fitted with protective shrouds intended to shield their sensors from the particle erosion of extended ballistic flight profiles at relativistic speeds. Most missiles didn't really need anything of the sort, since their impeller wedges incorporated particle screening. They were capable of maintaining a separate particle screen—briefly, at least—as long as they retained on-board power, even after the wedge went down, but that screening was far less efficient than a starship's particle screens. For the most part, that hadn't mattered, since any ballistic component of a "standard" attack profile was going to be brief, at best. But with Apollo, very long-range attacks, with lengthy ballistic components built into them, had suddenly become feasible. That capability, however, would be of limited usefulness if particle erosion had blinded the missiles before they ever got a chance to see their targets.
Now the jettisoning command blew the shrouds, and the sensors they had protected came on-line. Of course, the missiles were 72,998,260 kilometers from Artemis. That was over four light-minutes, which in the old days (like five or six T-years ago) would have meant any transmission from them would take four minutes to reach Artemis.

Italics are the author's.

Note that this was a simulation exercise. David has not given details that answer your questions.