Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:Also, it isn't the officers and Naval Intelligence I'm having quite so much trouble with. It's the man in the streets.

A Rising Thunder wrote:Malachai Abruzzi’s holo image said sarcastically. The dark-haired, dark-eyed permanent senior undersecretary of information

The Solly man-on-the-street believes what Malachai Abruzzi and the Ministry of Information tells them to believe.

Think "Joseph Goebbels" and "Reich Minister of
Propaganda" when reading about the permanent senior undersecretary of information. Soviet Era Russian news management is another example of a "permanent senior undersecretary of information" at work.

In textev, Cordelia Ransom held much the same position as Abruzzi.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:Also, it isn't the officers and Naval Intelligence I'm having quite so much trouble with. It's the man in the streets.

A Rising Thunder wrote:Malachai Abruzzi’s holo image said sarcastically. The dark-haired, dark-eyed permanent senior undersecretary of information

The Solly man-on-the-street believes what Malachai Abruzzi and the Ministry of Information tells them to believe.

Think "Joseph Goebbels" and "Reich Minister of
Propaganda" when reading about the permanent senior undersecretary of information. Soviet Era Russian news management is another example of a "permanent senior undersecretary of information" at work.

In textev, Cordelia Ransom held much the same position as Abruzzi.

Wouldn't want anybody giving credence to these wild rumors coming out of the Haven sector after all...

Don

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:What is the basic shape of a CLAC, and the tonnage compared to an SD? Can a CLAC roll to interpose the wedge?

I wonder if MaxxQ has some renders of a CLAC.

Depends on the CLAC. The Grayson / Manitcoran ones are around 6.1 - 6.2 mtons.

That's even smaller than a SLN SD (Scientist-class; 6.8 mtons), and much closer to a RMN or PNS DN than an SD. However Haven has some SD-sized CLACs; their Aviary-class (I don't know that we ever got an exact tonnage for them)

The line drawing in House of Steel shows that the CLACs have basically the same double-tapered spindle design of all starships. But a comparison of the hull dimensions shows that they're a bit (about 14%) "stubbier" than a normal waller. I assume the PSN CLACs are the same; but we probably won't know until House of Lies is released with their specs.


The Invictus SD(P), Medusa SD(P), Gryphon SD, Sphinx SD, Bellerophon DN, and Majestic DN classes all have a length-to-beam ratio around 6.9.
The 3 RMN or GSN CLAC classes have a l/b ratio around 6.0.
(But the beam-to-draught ratios of all of them are pretty similar - so the CLACs are really "shorter" than they'd normally be; not fatter)

If a Hydra-class had an l/b ratio of 6.9 its hull would be 1287.2m, instead of the 1129m its actually listed at.

The reason I asked is because I've been scouring sources to find out why ships absolutely have to be spindle shaped in the Honorverse.

Regarding CLACs, I've always hated that they have to be so vulnerable, armor wise. I'm assuming, though not sure, that the reason CLACs aren't more heavily armored is because it would lower, even further, already lackluster accel?

Which beings me to a few points of order.

Why can't the aft end of ships fork into two wedges? Akin to my turbo twin-pipe Porsche Cayenne. I don't know much about RFC's ship propulsion, but if possible, could double impeller wedges increase accel?

I know that at one time, wedge interference of weapons was a problem, but with the added off-bore capability and Apollo, would that still be a problem?

So far, the Spider is the only ship that deviates from the spindle design.

Apropos thread:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4011

cthia wrote: The reason I asked is because I've been scouring sources to find out why ships absolutely have to be spindle shaped in the Honorverse.

Because they have to fit inside the ovoid volume covered by the compensator?

cthia wrote: Regarding CLACs, I've always hated that they have to be so vulnerable, armor wise. I'm assuming, though not sure, that the reason CLACs aren't more heavily armored is because it would lower, even further, already lackluster accel?

The sides are covered by ~100 LAC bays. Would there be any point in putting armor inside that? A carrier's main protection is to be elsewhere during the fighting.

cthia wrote:Also, it isn't the officers and Naval Intelligence I'm having quite so much trouble with. It's the man in the streets.

Let me explain my dilemma. It's keyed to my idea of what HD is in the Honorverse. Every reference of an HD broadcast in the Honorverse, especially the hanging of the Salamander, I picture my visits to Tokyo. To me, Tokyo represents a slight glimpse into the future - the Honorverse. There are these huge digital billboards, featuring all manner of ads, news information, etc. They use facial recognition to identify your sex and talk to you. I imagine there are huge 3D digital HD everywhere in the Honorverse that feature sensor recordings of Manty tech. Perhaps it is summarily dismissed by the League bureaucrats, but it is difficult to believe that there isn't a small segment of the population that know better and are making waves.

I understand the psychology of the why. Just hard to swallow.

The newsies didn't have sensor recordings of Manticoran tech. And why would the news agencies bother broadcasting news about some two barbarian nations fighting six hundred light-years away? Wars happen all the time out in those hinterlands. Like I said before--news reports of the Manticore-Haven war was not headline news. If you were lucky, you might be found buried deep in the galactic news section. Who reads that when there is news from two thousand League planets to keep up with?

It wasn't being splashed all over the digital billboards because no one cared. Those billboards were showing the latest toaster from Technodyne, and the union strike five systems over which was affecting local imports, and the plague seven systems the other direction, and the latest shenanigans of the drunken interstellar HD star, and the election results from three systems away.

Sure, there were some people who recognized what was going on, and made a bit of a stir. We even hear about that in the text. But it was not enough to matter.

cthia wrote:The reason I asked is because I've been scouring sources to find out why ships absolutely have to be spindle shaped in the Honorverse.

Regarding CLACs, I've always hated that they have to be so vulnerable, armor wise. I'm assuming, though not sure, that the reason CLACs aren't more heavily armored is because it would lower, even further, already lackluster accel?

Which beings me to a few points of order.

Why can't the aft end of ships fork into two wedges? Akin to my turbo twin-pipe Porsche Cayenne. I don't know much about RFC's ship propulsion, but if possible, could double impeller wedges increase accel?

I know that at one time, wedge interference of weapons was a problem, but with the added off-bore capability and Apollo, would that still be a problem?

So far, the Spider is the only ship that deviates from the spindle design.

Apropos thread:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4011

From Honor Harrington's Navy (appendix to The Short Victorious War):

The constraints of the impeller drive and the fact that ships were designed for broadside fire also dictated their hull forms.

The nodes which generated the impeller wedge had to be very specifically located relative to the dimensions of a ship. In general, they had to lie within twelve to fifteen percent of the extreme ends of the vessel and well inside the maximum beam which the wedge allowed. Although there were a few idiosyncratic exceptions, this meant that virtually all warships were flattened, "hammer-headed" spindles, tapering to their smallest dimensions at their fore and aft impeller rings and then flaring back out to perhaps a quarter of their maximum beam.

David has made some clarifications over the years, which I will try to recall correctly. Basically, the impeller rings have to be circular, and a certain diameter compared to certain other dimensions. The impeller rings also have to be open, exposed to space. The bulk of the ship can be wider, but there are limits. The shape of the taper is limited by the impeller field projected from the impeller rings. Altogether, that essentially means a spindle shape. Most freighters just go with the spindle shape alone. Warships take advantage of the fact that they can have some (limited) additional mass further fore and aft of the impeller rings--they use that to create hammerheads to provide additional weapon and defensive mounts.

So no double-spindles, not forked tails, no double wedges.

Acceleration is determined by the inertial compensator. The simplified version is that the efficiency of the compensator is determined by the volume enclosed by the compensator, and the volume is determined by the separation between the impeller rings and the maximum dimension perpendicular to the length (beam or depth). In other words, a ship of a particular length and a particular beam will have the same acceleration whether it is a cylindrical spindle or a flattened spindle. For that reason, most warships are cylindrical, to take maximum advantage (in terms of internal storage space) of the compensator volume without affecting acceleration.

So there are exceptions--warships that are unusually flattened (and thus lower acceleration than would be most efficient for the mass), or no hammerheads, or unusually shaped hammer-heads, or protuberances on the ventral or dorsal sides, and similar stuff. But they are all less efficient in one way or another (mass/acceleration ratio, useful volume, weapon mount points, surface area exposed to the sidewalls, etc.)

The most efficient shape is the classic hammer-headed cylindrical spindle; all others are relatively minor variations on that shape. The combination of the limitations the impeller rings and the inertial compensator defines that shape.

SWM wrote:From Honor Harrington's Navy (appendix to The Short Victorious War):

The constraints of the impeller drive and the fact that ships were designed for broadside fire also dictated their hull forms.

The nodes which generated the impeller wedge had to be very specifically located relative to the dimensions of a ship. In general, they had to lie within twelve to fifteen percent of the extreme ends of the vessel and well inside the maximum beam which the wedge allowed. Although there were a few idiosyncratic exceptions, this meant that virtually all warships were flattened, "hammer-headed" spindles, tapering to their smallest dimensions at their fore and aft impeller rings and then flaring back out to perhaps a quarter of their maximum beam.

David has made some clarifications over the years, which I will try to recall correctly. Basically, the impeller rings have to be circular, and a certain diameter compared to certain other dimensions. The impeller rings also have to be open, exposed to space. The bulk of the ship can be wider, but there are limits. The shape of the taper is limited by the impeller field projected from the impeller rings. Altogether, that essentially means a spindle shape. Most freighters just go with the spindle shape alone. Warships take advantage of the fact that they can have some (limited) additional mass further fore and aft of the impeller rings--they use that to create hammerheads to provide additional weapon and defensive mounts.

So no double-spindles, not forked tails, no double wedges.

Acceleration is determined by the inertial compensator. The simplified version is that the efficiency of the compensator is determined by the volume enclosed by the compensator, and the volume is determined by the separation between the impeller rings and the maximum dimension perpendicular to the length (beam or depth). In other words, a ship of a particular length and a particular beam will have the same acceleration whether it is a cylindrical spindle or a flattened spindle. For that reason, most warships are cylindrical, to take maximum advantage (in terms of internal storage space) of the compensator volume without affecting acceleration.

So there are exceptions--warships that are unusually flattened (and thus lower acceleration than would be most efficient for the mass), or no hammerheads, or unusually shaped hammer-heads, or protuberances on the ventral or dorsal sides, and similar stuff. But they are all less efficient in one way or another (mass/acceleration ratio, useful volume, weapon mount points, surface area exposed to the sidewalls, etc.)

The most efficient shape is the classic hammer-headed cylindrical spindle; all others are relatively minor variations on that shape. The combination of the limitations the impeller rings and the inertial compensator defines that shape.

IIRC the impeller field that forces the hull to taper from its maximum possible beam mostly applies during wedge start-up (and possibly wedge power-down). I think objects can safely transit that zone once the wedge is up and stable.


But in any case, as you said RFC designed limitations into the tech that force the basic shape of a starship's hull.


Ships with only 1 beta ring (like pinnaces, shuttles, and some forts), or for that matter missiles, don't have to same wedge/hull geometry limitation. But they can't use wormholes or grav-waves.

cthia wrote:Regarding CLACs, I've always hated that they have to be so vulnerable, armor wise. I'm assuming, though not sure, that the reason CLACs aren't more heavily armored is because it would lower, even further, already lackluster accel?

Volume is a harsh mistress. CLAC's have two major issue that way: they need the beam to fit the LAC's well inside, with space to move around them, and they need to keep hatches for them that are both protective and capable of being opened wide to let the LAC's in and out.

Building them DN scale represents about a minimum for satisfying those needs effectively. I'm not at all confident that it does satisfy those needs well enough, if the accel is limited by the beaminess. More armor will mean more beam, or trying a radically different and likely less efficient launch/recovery/storage arrangement like a podlayer's rear hatch, for instance. (And that opens up its own vulnerabilities too.)

If you do go to a larger CLAC, volume will remain a harsh mistress. You may be able to maintain a closer to standard SD hull form, but you're still going to be faced with armoring hatches and trading off LAC capacity and/or maintenance efficiency to get more armor.

You could do that, but accepting CLAC vulnerability is a perfectly valid option. The things can operate without coming under fire. Here's where that aircraft carrier/fighter comparison WILL trip you up. LAC's are parasite warships. They needn't come back for weeks or months to the carrier. (Havenite ones have shorter legs, so far, granted.) The CLAC can drop them off beyond the hyperlimit and remain out of combat, out of the system, even out of normal space after the drop off. And even if you can bring it under fire and hurt or kill it, the LAC's will not care until weeks or months later or having to leave the star system, so using fire on the CLAC does nothing to retain control of your star system. It's wasted fire for keeping this one. And in a pinch, the LAC's can still leave the system with some awkward help from non-CLAC hyper-capable warships.

If you are designing a CLAC to remain with the wall and provide rapid reloading of LAC's that are a part of its missile defense - if that's even practical, it's apparently still an open question in RFC's mind - then being able to contribute to the wall's close-in point defense and handle missiles that pick out the CLAC as a target as a plausible mistake is useful. There's where trading LAC capacity for defenses (active particularly, but armor somewhat as well) serves more point. But you still need not count on being able to stand up to the fire a priority target would get, because you still won't be a priority target, outside weird circumstances where an enemy fleet would gain greatly from stranding LAC's and can carry out the rest of the battle to achieve that goal.

JeffEngel wrote:If you are designing a CLAC to remain with the wall and provide rapid reloading of LAC's that are a part of its missile defense - if that's even practical, it's apparently still an open question in RFC's mind - then being able to contribute to the wall's close-in point defense and handle missiles that pick out the CLAC as a target as a plausible mistake is useful. There's where trading LAC capacity for defenses (active particularly, but armor somewhat as well) serves more point. But you still need not count on being able to stand up to the fire a priority target would get, because you still won't be a priority target, outside weird circumstances where an enemy fleet would gain greatly from stranding LAC's and can carry out the rest of the battle to achieve that goal.

Well, if you're involved in a lengthy missile exchange (defenses on both sides able to more or less stand up to deeply stacked salvos), and to assault CLAC was effective enough at topping up the screening LAC's CMs, I could see where it might make sense to target it first.

If you can cripple or destroy the assault CLAC(s) then the screening LACs rapidly run out of CMs; sharply reducing their sustained anti-missile capabilities. That in turn lets more of your missiles through against the offensively dangerous targets.


Basically taking the approach of stripping the defenses before going for the juicy targets. Normally that's not a great strategy; since it just gives your opponent's offensive units free of fire to concentrate on attriting your offensive forces. But in rare situations it can make sense.

Jonathan_S wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:If you are designing a CLAC to remain with the wall and provide rapid reloading of LAC's that are a part of its missile defense - if that's even practical, it's apparently still an open question in RFC's mind - then being able to contribute to the wall's close-in point defense and handle missiles that pick out the CLAC as a target as a plausible mistake is useful. There's where trading LAC capacity for defenses (active particularly, but armor somewhat as well) serves more point. But you still need not count on being able to stand up to the fire a priority target would get, because you still won't be a priority target, outside weird circumstances where an enemy fleet would gain greatly from stranding LAC's and can carry out the rest of the battle to achieve that goal.

Well, if you're involved in a lengthy missile exchange (defenses on both sides able to more or less stand up to deeply stacked salvos), and to assault CLAC was effective enough at topping up the screening LAC's CMs, I could see where it might make sense to target it first.

If you can cripple or destroy the assault CLAC(s) then the screening LACs rapidly run out of CMs; sharply reducing their sustained anti-missile capabilities. That in turn lets more of your missiles through against the offensively dangerous targets.

Basically taking the approach of stripping the defenses before going for the juicy targets. Normally that's not a great strategy; since it just gives your opponent's offensive units free of fire to concentrate on attriting your offensive forces. But in rare situations it can make sense.

Yeah, in that case, a sturdy CLAC would be really useful - if you could get it at a reasonable price. But if the price is having far fewer LAC's out there as that defense, chances are the price won't be worth it. And that's a marginal situation, and also depends on the LAC's themselves - all alone out there, away from the wall's close defenses - not constituting a better attritional target. (Even if you're attacking them with your own space-superiority LAC's, unsuited to a direct attack on the wall, you're in a position to get the LAC's off the board directly rather than by taking out their base for reloading.)

You'd have to edge down a path of a lot of contingencies likely to go the other way before you'd find that to be a good design/deployment decision. I'm not going to say it's impossible, but I'm going to say it's too unlikely to be a good basis of doctrine or design.