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NEXT GENERATION SDs

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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by kzt   » Sat Jul 09, 2022 3:16 pm

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Relax wrote:
Nit: Must assume micro fusion MK16 charge/dwell time is same as MK23 or MK23E. This seems a bit problematic of an assumption with a MUCH larger missile in the case of MK23E. Though we are ALSO told RD's also use Micro Fusion plants... Does not mean they are all the same size or startup time.

I'm pretty sure that David once said they all use the exact same reactor module.
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by kzt   » Sat Jul 09, 2022 3:46 pm

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Relax wrote:In DW's replies further justifying why the SAG-C has broadside launchers but the Roland does not. Was not in books. Start up time for the micro fusion was longer than the launch cycle period not only requires a LOT more beam depth, but a lot more tonnage as well as must be armored to somehow contain a failed micro fusion reactor... Uh, we aren't supposed to ask how that miracle happens though.... :lol:

Yeah, the need to have a center line to edge of hull over twice the length of the rather large Mk23 is a problem. Given all the various things in the ship (like the armor system), you probably needs about 2.5x.

It's apparently a 10-20 megaton yield if the reactor fails, which you contain by using really durable sacrificial material so it vents outside the hull. The ship is supposed to survive a failed reactor in the tube, it's isn't required to be operational after that. And it probably won't be.
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sat Jul 09, 2022 3:53 pm

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kzt wrote:
Relax wrote:
Nit: Must assume micro fusion MK16 charge/dwell time is same as MK23 or MK23E. This seems a bit problematic of an assumption with a MUCH larger missile in the case of MK23E. Though we are ALSO told RD's also use Micro Fusion plants... Does not mean they are all the same size or startup time.

I'm pretty sure that David once said they all use the exact same reactor module.

I know he said that the Mk23 doesn't have an ECM advantage over the Mk16 -- that the dazzler and dragons teeth versions of each have the same power for their transmitters. And I think the reactor is still capable of providing more power than the missile needs. The Mk16 might have a smaller fuel tank for its reactor, but it would make sense to make the reactor itself a common part.

Though that would probably have required that they were doing the Mk16 and Mk23 development sufficiently in parallel to have locked down the size of the 16's missile body; so they could ensure the reactor package fit inside the smaller diameter as well.
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by kzt   » Sat Jul 09, 2022 5:34 pm

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I suspect that the development team for the micro-reactor went to the other R&D teams and said 'we can do x, and it needs to be about this big, are you interested and if so, what are your critical constraints so you can make use of this?'

Then they figured out what would work for the best use cases and built it to fit those use cases with a common design.

So I expect the weapons were designed around the reactor.
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by Somtaaw   » Sat Jul 09, 2022 6:46 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:A minimum of one third size gain to get the designation of "large superdreadnought" or "heavy superdreadnought" would put a Gryphon or Benjy at over 11 million tonnes and that's not physically possible today with the limitations of compensators. A new technological breakthrough in that area would be required... which would lead to larger SD(P)s, of course.

9 million tonnes, which is the practical limit today, is only 5.8% bigger than the Benjy. The designation for a 9 million tonne non-pod-laying superdreadnought is "superdreadnought."


Original compensators didn't allow superdreadnoughts to accelerate faster than most people's destroyers, so it's pretty safe estimate Manticoran/GA compensators are likely not capped to the same tonnage as Solarian compensators. So the GA actually could probably build a "superdreadnought" that is in excess of 11 Mtons, and it would accelerate at the same ratio as everybody else's 8-9 MTon superdreadnoughts.

Manticore is obviously going to try holding onto those improved compensators as much as possible. By direct textev obviously the Graysons have always had it, the Andermani got it when they were allies against Haven (pre-Battle of Manticore), and Haven almost certainly got them by the time Hemphill arrived at Bolthole to start working out how to turn Bolthole into the primary ship manufacturer for the entire Grand Alliance.

The Erewhonese have 'some' improved compensators over generic Solarian (possibly Mesan too?), but they don't have all the bells and whistles nor does any textev suggest Manticore "forgave and forgot". They're on mostly friendly terms at the moment, and MAnticore even offered up Mycroft for Erewhone/Maya but that doesn't mean they gave up full design specs to the latest compensators, or to any other of the very latest tech, there is textev Manticore was still effectively giving Erewhon their castoffs like the Extended-Range Single Drive missiles.


Which would make the notional SD(L) more of a bastardization of the 16 Mton forts, and 8.4 Mton Gryphon-class. Tonnage-wise it's going to be almost halfway between the two, acceleration and top speed it'll be closer to the 6.4 Mton Scientist-class SD, but for weaponry it'd be closer to the fort.

That much firepower without being as slow as most forts really deserves to be called SD(L), unless we want to just make it look like a spherical fort and then start calling them "planetoids"? :lol:
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by tlb   » Sat Jul 09, 2022 8:10 pm

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Somtaaw wrote:Which would make the notional SD(L) more of a bastardization of the 16 Mton forts, and 8.4 Mton Gryphon-class. Tonnage-wise it's going to be almost halfway between the two, acceleration and top speed it'll be closer to the 6.4 Mton Scientist-class SD, but for weaponry it'd be closer to the fort.

That much firepower without being as slow as most forts really deserves to be called SD(L), unless we want to just make it look like a spherical fort and then start calling them "planetoids"?

We have been told that the drop-off in compensator efficiency is rapid as the weight approaches the maximum limit. So how do you figure you can get to a weight halfway between an SD and a fort? Is that a guess or do you have hard numbers?
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by Somtaaw   » Sat Jul 09, 2022 9:42 pm

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tlb wrote:
Somtaaw wrote:Which would make the notional SD(L) more of a bastardization of the 16 Mton forts, and 8.4 Mton Gryphon-class. Tonnage-wise it's going to be almost halfway between the two, acceleration and top speed it'll be closer to the 6.4 Mton Scientist-class SD, but for weaponry it'd be closer to the fort.

That much firepower without being as slow as most forts really deserves to be called SD(L), unless we want to just make it look like a spherical fort and then start calling them "planetoids"?

We have been told that the drop-off in compensator efficiency is rapid as the weight approaches the maximum limit. So how do you figure you can get to a weight halfway between an SD and a fort? Is that a guess or do you have hard numbers?


'Everybody knows' compensators fail more often if you go above 80%, but both Manticore & Haven have been using 90% or maximum military regularly for years with zero ships lost from failed compensators. 'Everybody knew' FTL comms were impossible, Manticore developed the Grav-pulse. 'Everybody knows' that multi-drive missiles were impossible, Project Gram invented it anyways. 'Everybody knew' Iota band was unbreakable, but Mesa developed the streak drive and cracked the Kappa wall too. 'Everybody knew' ...


So things change as the series has gone on, and the declaration that there is a max size for acceleration is from early early on correct? Well technologies have advanced, but nobody in-universe has been crazy or desperate enough, with the right technology to even attempt it.

Nobody else ever had compensators this efficient until now. And only the Grand Alliance could even think about making an 11 mton warship that can accelerate around the same ratio as a craft half the size using the old Solly compensator tech. Manticore has 8.7 Mton superdreadnoughts that accelerate faster than Solarian Nevada battlecruisers less than 1/3rd their size.

Could Manticore do it, absolutely they could try... will they is another thing entirely. Even if it did work, a possible SD(L) that is half-fortress & half-superdreadnought and masses 11 mtons or more is more of a solution looking for a problem than anything else. "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" applies heavily.
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sun Jul 10, 2022 12:00 am

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tlb wrote:We have been told that the drop-off in compensator efficiency is rapid as the weight approaches the maximum limit. So how do you figure you can get to a weight halfway between an SD and a fort? Is that a guess or do you have hard numbers?

Actually - it's after it crosses the critical point.
More Than Honor - The Universe of Honor Harrington wrote:Note also that in 1900 pd, 8,500,000 tons represented the edge of a plateau in inertial compensator capability. Above 8,500,000 tons, warship accelerations fell off by approximately 1 g per 2,500 tons, so that a warship of 8,502,500 tons would have a maximum acceleration of 419 g and a warship of 9,547,500 tons would have a maximum acceleration of 1 g. The same basic curves were followed for merchant vessels.
The issue is that while it seems clear than this edge of the plateau has crept up at least some - witness 1919 ships of up to 8,779,250 tons -- we have absolutely no data on how far it has moved.

By comparing their acceleration improvement to smaller classes designed in the same year we can see that the RMN/GSN ships are still not over the edge of the plateau. But, because that edge is an inflection point in the compensator curve slope we've no way to extrapolate how far it's moved.

I suspect that if the cutoff tonnage had moved very much we'd have been looking at ships that had more than 5% tonnage increase over the 1900 Gryphon-class SD.

An RMN SD with the latest 1922 PD compensator can accelerate at least 1.55x faster, for the same tonnage, as one of their SDs in 1900. If the plateau edge had moved by that same ratio then we could be looking at ships massing up to up to about 13.5 million tons before suffering that excessive loss of acceleration (and such a 13.5 mton ship should expect to have an acceleration around 515 gees)

It's hard to imaging that the RMN and GSN designers would have forgone nearly all of that 4.7 mtons of additional displacement if it actually was possible to design a ship that large with that acceleration.



Personally I find it more likely that the plateau edge crept upwards only around have a megaton or so; and that the RMN continues their practice of leaving a little bit of margin instead of designing right to the tonnage limit. (IOW I feel that the Invictus and Harrington II designs are quite close to the largest ships buildable today without suffering massive acceleration penalties)
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sun Jul 10, 2022 12:04 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:The issue is that while it seems clear than this edge of the plateau has crept up at least some - witness 1919 ships of up to 8,779,250 tons -- we have absolutely no data on how far it has moved.


I think we do: it's about the the size of the biggest ship they actually made. Because why would they not go all the way to the practical limit? SDs scale up easily: with more volume or mass available, you're going to add more armour, more pod capacity and/or more hull features. In particular, both have a constant marginal cost and adding more volume has a constant cost of zero.

And those ships were not cost-capped. The SLN may have needed to cap theirs because they were building some towards the Reserve and because they may have thought "no one needs more than 34 missile tubes per broadside."

Any reason you could give for a non-cost-capped ship to go below a certain limit simply moves that practical limit. Does it make compensator failure chance significant? Does it make them far more expensive? Have they not tested this properly? Does the energy consumption grow exponentially?

By comparing their acceleration improvement to smaller classes designed in the same year we can see that the RMN/GSN ships are still not over the edge of the plateau. But, because that edge is an inflection point in the compensator curve slope we've no way to extrapolate how far it's moved.


Sorry, how do smaller ships tell us anything about the edge of the plateau? By definition, smaller ships are not anywhere near the edge of the plateau.

I suspect that if the cutoff tonnage had moved very much we'd have been looking at ships that had more than 5% tonnage increase over the 1900 Gryphon-class SD.


Agreed in general, though they may have had marginal gains since then, allowing for the 8.75 Mtonne SD.

It's possible they're accepting a major loss of efficiency in the capability of those compensators, but if so I'd have expected some other ships at 8.5 and a 120 gravities advantage. But those aren't there.

(IOW I feel that the Invictus and Harrington II designs are quite close to the largest ships buildable today without suffering massive acceleration penalties)
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Re: NEXT GENERATION SDs
Post by Somtaaw   » Sun Jul 10, 2022 12:07 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Actually - it's after it crosses the critical point.
More Than Honor - The Universe of Honor Harrington wrote:Note also that in 1900 pd, 8,500,000 tons represented the edge of a plateau in inertial compensator capability. Above 8,500,000 tons, warship accelerations fell off by approximately 1 g per 2,500 tons, so that a warship of 8,502,500 tons would have a maximum acceleration of 419 g and a warship of 9,547,500 tons would have a maximum acceleration of 1 g. The same basic curves were followed for merchant vessels.



And bolded the critical portion, the drop in compensator efficiency was last calculated in 1900, which predates Manticore-Grayson technology sharing. The tonnage cap is based entirely around compensator capability, and from ~1903 (HotQ) onwards, Manticoran & Grayson compensator capability took off like a rocket, and Haven was not far behind through both wars.


Jonathan_S wrote:It's hard to imaging that the RMN and GSN designers would have forgone nearly all of that 4.7 mtons of additional displacement if it actually was possible to design a ship that large with that acceleration.


Are their compensators good enough for a max tonnage jump from 8.5 mtons to 12+, maybe or maybe not, but it also depends on the acceleration curve one is willing to accept. Manticoran have that battlecruiser fetish, and they continued making DN-sized CLACs knowing that Haven used SD-size CLACs, which shows Manticorans would never be willing to accept "equal" acceleration even if they could have a massive tonnage advantage. Manticoran doctrine heavily influenced Grayson, so nothing more to be said there. Same logic applies to the Andermani, circa WoH they knew they couldn't keep up with the Sphinx or Gryphon SD's, so they built their Seydlitz-class a little smaller to match effective acceleration curves; which makes the Andermani something of a speed junkie as well.


Haven on the other hand, was totally willing to build bigger than anybody else, if that's what it took to equalize. They built CLACs on an SD hull, so they could carry LACs in sufficient numbers to win fights. They also consistently built bigger missiles than Manticore all the way back to First Hancock to force a match of capabilities.

If Haven was willing to build big to match Manticore, then they'd do it again if that's what it takes to go toe-to-toe with a Lenny Det. But the biggest problem isn't shooting an LD, it's detecting and locating it in the first place. So even Haven wouldn't be crazy enough to actually go for a 12 MT half-fort... yet anyways. If a MAlign superweapon were revealed that could one-shot anything smaller than 9MT's, Haven would have 12MT half-fort SD(L)'s clearing the slips of Bolthole in less than 3 months, absolutely laden with the very latest tech the Horrible Twosome thought up.


With Manticore, Grayson, Andermani, and Haven knocked out of the running, there's few entities left that have known shipyards at all.
  • Beowulf if it forms it's own independent star nation with Hypatia (and other nearby systems) won't, they're going to be building universal GA ships.
  • Neither Maya nor Erewhon could at all due to technology, and Torch doesn't even have shipyards of it's own nor could it crew one when it's having crew issues just with BC's.
  • The main Solarian League don't have the compensators but more importantly just had their ass whooped by Manticoran speedsters. So they're unlikely to build a 12MT behemoth that's going to be borderline slow and ponderous anytime in the next century.
  • MAlign would totally build to 12MT or larger if they could actually lay hands on Manticoran compensators, but I recall reading somewhere they haven't yet gotten samples. So while they would, they're technologically unable to do so.
  • If MAlign can't, that also means the Renaissance Factor is out too.
  • AFAIK nobody else has shipyards of their own, and if they do they're so utterly irrelevant they can also be ignored
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