Jonathan_S wrote:Redlining a LAC to 100% military power, or even trying to ride the compensator's safety margin to momentarily exceed 100% power (an Honor did on the CA HMS War Maiden during an emergency in Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington would be very dangerous) But also not something you'd ever be allowed to do in training.
Here's the bit I was referring to.Changer of Worlds: Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington wrote:HMS War Maiden's inertial compensator protested its savage abuse. More alarms howled as the load on the heavy cruiser's impeller nodes peaked forty percent beyond their "Never Exceed" levels. Despite her mangled after impeller ring, War Maiden slammed suddenly forward at almost five hundred and fifty gravities.
WLBjork wrote:Depends. If the "never exceed" limit was about 70% of max, then 140% of that takes you to about 98% of max.
Although I thought they limited themselves to 80% of max under normal circumstances.
On the other hand, "never exceed" may have been intended as max, although that would require something distinctly...unusual for WM to achieve without the compensator blowing.
cthia wrote:Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!
I simply meant that LACS is one area where I imagine the RMN went out to push the limit. I still think I'm right. You all are so invested in the tech that you have one track minds. Pull back.
It is the human element and human nature. In the beginning, I imagine that the first LACS had many intrinsic problems that had to be ironed out. The RMN was in the middle of a war. LACS were evolving. I imagine that there were many accidents simply training to launch the damn things quickly. David Weber cannot and should not have to include everything that I know goes on behind the scenes in everyday life. Do you not think that the Honorverse is subject to the human element, human error, human nature?
No? Why is that?
Older RMN LACs prior to the Series 282s (1904PD) did not have the capability of maxing out their inertial compensators:
Italics are the authors', boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.House of Steel, The Royal Manticoran Navy, Order of Battle wrote:Series 282 light attack craft
Mass: 17,750 tons
Dimensions: 121 × 20 × 19 m
Acceleration: 573.2 G (5.621 kps²)
80% Accel: 458.6 G (4.497 kps²)
Broadside: 12MB, 1L, 1CM, 3PD
Chase: 1L, 2PD
Service Life: 1904–1918
The Series 282 light attack craft was never given a formal class name because it was a prototype LAC, designed by the Weapon Development Board for the Trojan Horse program which saw extremely limited operational service.
While the Highlander class was a typical LAC design, built to very similar standards as a conventional warship, the Series 282 took advantage of advances in both equipment miniaturization and automation to greatly decrease the volume necessary for critical systems. The result was a flattened hull that was slightly smaller than the Highlander, despite being half again the tonnage. The small size of the Series 282, along with the fact that its “on-paper” offensive capabilities were nearly identical to those of the old design, was cited numerous times by the program’s many critics.
These critics uniformly failed to recognize the qualitative improvements behind the figures. The 282s carried only twelve cell-launched missiles, but both the missiles and launch cells were far in advance of anything the Highlander mounted. Beam mounts were also more powerful, and the addition of a counter-missile launcher in each broadside more than doubled their survivability, as well as allowing them to perform an area defense mission in protection of their launch platform. Perhaps most notably, the Series 282 was the first LAC to mount an impeller ring powerful enough to accelerate it to the limits of its inertial compensator. This class was the first to serve as testbeds for the early second generation compensator, raising its maximum acceleration to just over 600 G.
Despite the type’s clear advantages, it was never able to overcome the opposition of its critics. Regarded as suitable solely for local defense and burdened with the anti-LAC attitudes of a navy philosophically committed to projecting combat power (and vehemently opposed to attrition-based tactics), it was produced in very small numbers. The number built provided valuable experience in the new technologies and were used as test beds for many of the systems incorporated into the early Shrike-class prototypes, however, and the 282s provided a critical component in the combat power of the Trojan-class Q-ships until their final retirement in 1918.