Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:I wonder because initially it seemed 'twould be effective if a ship would seed its immediate vicinity in a cloud of bbs. Seems it'd be cheap and relatively simple to implement too.

cthia wrote:Wow Vince, you're faster than Clint on the draw. That's the passage I recall. And it is as vague now as it was then. I'd sure like to know a little more about these 'shrouds.' I promise that I'm not a spy for the League because I'm certain they'd pay many a credit to find out as well.

I wonder because initially it seemed 'twould be effective if a ship would seed its immediate vicinity in a cloud of bbs. Seems it'd be cheap and relatively simple to implement too.

Yow wrote:"Yow"]"JeffEngel"]

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?

SWM wrote:

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?

No, I think the point is pretty clear. He is looking at Hemphill's proposal for LACs whose main armament is a massive spinal mount graser. Apparently she also proposed a massive spinal mount beam weapon on capital ships.

Capital ships have been able to add their hammerhead missiles to their broadsides ever since full off-bore fire was invented. If you can fire off-bore missiles from a broadside facing 180 degrees away from the enemy, you can also fire off-bore missiles from hammerheads which are only 90 degrees away from the enemy. Modern Manticoran capital ships fire all missile tubes off-bore.

Jonathan_S wrote:I think a lot of the reason we don't read about it much for capital ships is that all the Manticoran or Grsyson wallers designed since off bore firing was rolled out were pod layers. And while some of those classes do mount both fore and broadside launcher the battle descriptions focus overwhelmingly on their pod salvos.

If you want to count BCs as capital ships then the designs were the Nikes which don't have chase tubes, Aggies which don't have any tubes, or Courvosier IIs, which have fore and broadsides but again get mostly described by pod salvos.

George J. Smith wrote:Storm From the Shadows

snip...

The fact that the planet Mesa, despite having quite a nice climate, also possessed a biosystem poorly suited to terrestrial physiology helped lower the price, given the expenses involved in terraforming. But Detweiler hadn't intended to terraform Mesa. Instead, he'd opted to "mesaform" the colonists through genetic engineering.

Anyone any idea of the extent of the differences between the "norm of Earth" and the "norm of Mesa"?

George J. Smith wrote:Storm From the Shadows

snip...

The fact that the planet Mesa, despite having quite a nice climate, also possessed a biosystem poorly suited to terrestrial physiology helped lower the price, given the expenses involved in terraforming. But Detweiler hadn't intended to terraform Mesa. Instead, he'd opted to "mesaform" the colonists through genetic engineering.

Anyone any idea of the extent of the differences between the "norm of Earth" and the "norm of Mesa"?

cthia wrote:What is the size difference in a LACs wedge and a Tug's wedge? What is the difference in maneuverability? Can a LAC use its wedge in Oyster Bay-like scenarios to destroy some planet bound debris?

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 12 wrote:The thought had no sooner crossed her mind than her eye caught the subtle distortion of an impeller wedge a hell of a lot bigger than any pinnace's. In fact, it was at least the size of a superdreadnought's wedge . . . and it couldn't be more than a couple of hundred kilometers outside its threat perimeter from the station. She tensed internally, then relaxed almost as quickly as she saw the second ship moving steadily—and rapidly—away from Hephaestus behind whoever was generating that wedge and realized what it must be.
Well, I suppose there have to be some exceptions to any rule, she reflected. But even the tugs have been required to make a few operational changes since Haven tried to kill Honor.