Attacking Darius:

cthia wrote:Drats. This approach was going to be my answer to destroying the RMN's fleet train. Graser platforms should also be considered. The effective range of energy weapons is greater in hyper, isn't it? Targeting may be a problem, but still, there shouldn't be a need for nearly as many platforms.

Can't recall the books ever saying anything about energy weapons having greater effective range in hyper. And at Selker Rift the Peeps still seemed to need to close to 500,000 km for their broadside energy mounts to get into range against a sidewall protected opponent. So that's the same as in normal space.

Though, as with normal space, attacking someone who didn't have sidewalls doubles the effective range to 1,000,000 km. (Guess it's possible that a warship might be less likely to expect surprise hostilities in hyper; and so might be more likely to have their sidewalls off - but only until the first time anyone sees or survives such an attack)

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Drats. This approach was going to be my answer to destroying the RMN's fleet train. Graser platforms should also be considered. The effective range of energy weapons is greater in hyper, isn't it? Targeting may be a problem, but still, there shouldn't be a need for nearly as many platforms.

Can't recall the books ever saying anything about energy weapons having greater effective range in hyper. And at Selker Rift the Peeps still seemed to need to close to 500,000 km for their broadside energy mounts to get into range against a sidewall protected opponent. So that's the same as in normal space.

Though, as with normal space, attacking someone who didn't have sidewalls doubles the effective range to 1,000,000 km. (Guess it's possible that a warship might be less likely to expect surprise hostilities in hyper; and so might be more likely to have their sidewalls off - but only until the first time anyone sees or survives such an attack)

I think I have serious holes in my understanding. Ok, I am sure I do. I thought you needed a wedge for sidewalls. And that wedges don't work in hyper? Does that only apply to grav waves?

Which, without sidewalls, the effective range of energy weapons would be greater. This is also why I think 3-second firing grasers would have an application as a very effective CM, destroying RMN missiles like flies. Because missiles have no sidewalls.

Jonathan_S wrote:Can't recall the books ever saying anything about energy weapons having greater effective range in hyper. And at Selker Rift the Peeps still seemed to need to close to 500,000 km for their broadside energy mounts to get into range against a sidewall protected opponent. So that's the same as in normal space.

Though, as with normal space, attacking someone who didn't have sidewalls doubles the effective range to 1,000,000 km. (Guess it's possible that a warship might be less likely to expect surprise hostilities in hyper; and so might be more likely to have their sidewalls off - but only until the first time anyone sees or survives such an attack)

Given the higher particle density in hyperspace, they have to be shorter-ranged. The beam has to dissipate much more quickly.

This is conjecture based on other info on the books.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Can't recall the books ever saying anything about energy weapons having greater effective range in hyper. And at Selker Rift the Peeps still seemed to need to close to 500,000 km for their broadside energy mounts to get into range against a sidewall protected opponent. So that's the same as in normal space.

Though, as with normal space, attacking someone who didn't have sidewalls doubles the effective range to 1,000,000 km. (Guess it's possible that a warship might be less likely to expect surprise hostilities in hyper; and so might be more likely to have their sidewalls off - but only until the first time anyone sees or survives such an attack)

I think I have serious holes in my understanding. Ok, I am sure I do. I thought you needed a wedge for sidewalls.

You do, unless it's a bubble sidewall. (Well, and bucklers walls status isn't quite clear).

cthia wrote:And that wedges don't work in hyper? Does that only apply to grav waves?

Only applies in grav waves.

In the rifts between them everything mostly works like normal space, wedges, sidewalls, missles, etc. (hence the missile combat we saw in the Selker Rift in hyperspace in 'Honor Among Enemies').
The two partial exceptions to that are:
1) there's a lot more EM and particle noise and so effective sensor range is shorter than in normal space.
2) grav sensors / comms / fire control is less FTL than it is in normal space; so provides less advantage over lightspeed sensors and links.

cthia wrote:Which, without sidewalls, the effective range of energy weapons would be greater. This is also why I think 3-second firing grasers would have an application as a very effective CM, destroying RMN missiles like flies. Because missiles have no sidewalls.

Without sidewalls energy weapon range is doubled (as I mentioned in my post) to 1,000,000 km. (Though a sail is just as impenetrable as a wedge so within a grav wave, depending on angle, you might not have much to hit)

As for long endurance grasers are a point defense weapon, they'd have some use. After all ships even use their main broadside energy mounts to try to hit missiles; we're even told that the Peeps were a bit better at doing so than the Manties. However PDLCs are designed to rapidly switch targets in a way that larger mounts aren't; firing for 3 solid seconds isn't much use if most of that time is wasted shooting empty space as you try to slew the beam onto the next missile.

Sensor and lightspeed issues make it hard to score hits on something as small and fast as a missile much beyond 200,000 km (basically PDLC range), so the grasers longer range isn't likely to be all that useful.

[edit: ignore the following, it's got a 3 second endurance. No idea why I inflated it 60 fold] And a 3 minute endurance doesn't matter much when even a DDM or Cataphract can cross the last million kilometers in under 10 seconds - and an MDM in less than half that. At then you've no targets until the next salvo shows up.[/edit]

Basically it'd be as useful as any other non-PDLC energy mount, but I don't see how it'd be more useful. Thus making it a marginal extra advantage, but less so than an additional PDLC.

Mines need to be laid where they are going to be in the path of a potential target. I know my thinking is going to be more or less Terran wet navy thinking but when you place mines you have to take into consideration what is going to act on them once they are laid,
Most of the time, mines are laid with anchors holding them in one spot such that tides and currents don't pull them away (withing some number of feet) of where they were placed and the depth they are placed at. Mostly that is so at high tide a target will not cross over them without setting them off. Ok there are magnetic activated mines etc but those are "sensor" fired which is what most Honorverse mines are going to be in addition to command detonation.

Once you move off earth, it is more a question of setting the mines into an orbit relative to something such that they will stay -again, more or less between what you want to protect and what might be comming in to attack. That's mines vs ships, not mines vs missile though missiles probably are going t set off mines that get too close to. We know various Honorers navies have minelayers (so they also have to have minesweepers because a mine in the wrong place can just ruin your day. The mine sweepers are also good at unexploded munitions clearing - just like wet navy minesweepers are also used for,

The trick is how far apart and how you shape (in 3 dimensions) you lay the field and -since there as a lot more mechanics involved, what the relative orbits look like for each mine so they stay in an effective pattern relative to what they are supposed to be defending.
Ah well, too much detail

Brigade XO wrote:Mines need to be laid where they are going to be in the path of a potential target. I know my thinking is going to be more or less Terran wet navy thinking but when you place mines you have to take into consideration what is going to act on them once they are laid,
Most of the time, mines are laid with anchors holding them in one spot such that tides and currents don't pull them away (withing some number of feet) of where they were placed and the depth they are placed at. Mostly that is so at high tide a target will not cross over them without setting them off. Ok there are magnetic activated mines etc but those are "sensor" fired which is what most Honorverse mines are going to be in addition to command detonation.

Once you move off earth, it is more a question of setting the mines into an orbit relative to something such that they will stay -again, more or less between what you want to protect and what might be comming in to attack. That's mines vs ships, not mines vs missile though missiles probably are going t set off mines that get too close to. We know various Honorers navies have minelayers (so they also have to have minesweepers because a mine in the wrong place can just ruin your day. The mine sweepers are also good at unexploded munitions clearing - just like wet navy minesweepers are also used for,

The trick is how far apart and how you shape (in 3 dimensions) you lay the field and -since there as a lot more mechanics involved, what the relative orbits look like for each mine so they stay in an effective pattern relative to what they are supposed to be defending.
Ah well, too much detail

Actually I like the detail. Good.

It reminds me of questions I have had for a while about minelayers. The only time I have seen them is in movies where the crew were dumping them off of the back of a boat. At any rate, I recall researching it quite a while back and learned that destroyers were a common platform used to lay mines. What size ship are minelayers in the HV, and how are they deployed? A minelayer should be able to spit out mines at an alarming rate, if they are to be tactically effective. Otherwise, It appears to be a strategic defense only.

If mines can attack missiles like XO is suggesting, then an LD might be able to lay down covering fire as a layer of defense.

Jonathan_S wrote:As for long endurance grasers are a point defense weapon, they'd have some use. After all ships even use their main broadside energy mounts to try to hit missiles; we're even told that the Peeps were a bit better at doing so than the Manties. However PDLCs are designed to rapidly switch targets in a way that larger mounts aren't; firing for 3 solid seconds isn't much use if most of that time is wasted shooting empty space as you try to slew the beam onto the next missile.

Nice post Jonathan. Pardon the snip.

The books depict missiles oftentimes as interpenetrating the enemy's launches. If a 3-second-firing graser can spin fast enough while in the midst of that launch, it should be able to get most of them. Apollo launches stay tightly packed.

There is another question I wonder about the extended firing grasers. And that is whether the MA can develop a version that is intermittent, and if so, would it have an application.


Beware the double post.

cthia wrote:It reminds me of questions I have had for a while about minelayers. The only time I have seen them is in movies where the crew were dumping them off of the back of a boat. At any rate, I recall researching it quite a while back and learned that destroyers were a common platform used to lay mines. What size ship are minelayers in the HV, and how are they deployed? A minelayer should be able to spit out mines at an alarming rate, if they are to be tactically effective. Otherwise, It appears to be a strategic defense only.

From chapter 1 of Storm from the Shadows:

Michelle stared at him while her mind tried to grapple with the impossible numbers. The remote arrays deployed by the task force's pre-attack scout ships had detected barely four hundred pods in orbit around Arthur. That should have meant a maximum of only four thousand missiles, so where the hell—?
"We've got at least thirteen thousand coming in from Bogey One," Stackpole said, as if he'd just read her mind. His tone was more than a little incredulous, and her own eyes widened in shock. That was even more preposterous. Two superdreadnoughts and seven battlecruisers couldn't possibly have the fire control for that many missiles, even if they'd all been pod designs!
"How could—?" someone began.
"Those aren't battlecruisers," Oliver Manfredi said suddenly. "They're frigging minelayers!"
Michelle understood him instantly, and her mouth tightened in agreement. Just like the Royal Manticoran Navy, the Republic of Haven built its fast minelayers on battlecruiser hulls. And Manfredi was undoubtedly correct. Instead of normal loads of mines, those ships had been stuffed to the deckhead with missile pods. The whole time they'd been sitting there, watching the task force flee away from Bogey Four and directly towards them, they'd been rolling those pods, stacking them into the horrendous salvo which had just come screaming straight at TF 82.

Ah, thanks for that tlb! It still leaves open what the RMN uses as a minelayer.

Edit: tlb beat me to one reference, but hopefully the wider results from my text searches will be a useful addition

cthia wrote:Actually I like the detail. Good.

It reminds me of questions I have had for a while about minelayers. The only time I have seen them is in movies where the crew were dumping them off of the back of a boat. At any rate, I recall researching it quite a while back and learned that destroyers were a common platform used to lay mines. What size ship are minelayers in the HV, and how are they deployed? A minelayer should be able to spit out mines at an alarming rate, if they are to be tactically effective. Otherwise, It appears to be a strategic defense only.

If mines can attack missiles like XO is suggesting, then an LD might be able to lay down covering fire as a layer of defense.

In wet navy terms there have also been mine laying submarines, like the RN's Grampus-class, and mine laying aircraft.

Historical digression - after WWII the US had a hell of a time clearing the air dropped pressure influence mines the USAAF had dropped around Japan during the late war Operation Starvation. (Weren't pulling any punches with that name ) The US didn't actually have good minesweeping methods against that type of mine, and as I recall eventually ended up having to basically take old cargo ships, stuff them full of buoyant materials, rig up shock protection for the small US crew, and sail the things back and forth through the minefields simply sweeping by exhaustion - triggering all the mines and absorbing their blasts.



Anyway, Honorverse minelayers. We see them at Hancock at the start of the war (used as part of Sarnow's BC delaying tactics against the Peep). SVW tells us those were "Erebus-class minelayers" which "are fast-almost as fast as a battlecruiser-and they're configured for rapid, mass mine emplacement." but also notes "Minelayers don't have much in the way of point defense, and their sidewalls aren't much, either"

We also have a passing mention of them in IEH with "two fast minelayers-Yarnowski and Simmons-which have been reconfigured as freighters to provide logistical support" for Tourville's BC sweep.

And Honor ran into some old ones, apparently modified to deploy (though not control) pods, at Arthur in AAC. "The Havenites build their fast fleet minelayers on battlecruiser hulls". (And we see that same engagement from Michelle's point of view in SftS - which is what tlb quoted)





So at least the two navies we've seen the most built their minelayers on BC, or roughly BC-sized, hulls, and are giving them military grade drives, so they also have roughly BC acceleration. (Though, at least for the RMN and presumably for the Peeps, not any serious defenses and quite likely no missiles at all - devoting all that volume for carrying more mines).

Given how easily they can be repurposed for supply ships or evacuation transports (maybe a couple hours at most from dropping mines at Hancock to evacuating half the base's personnel) I'd guess that they don't need special racks or mine handling equipment filling their mine stowage, and likely have the mines stored on fairly normal decks that can also handle cargo containers or personnel. (Though I suppose it's not impossible that they do have holds full of mine handling gear but it's simply quick to remove for storage ashore, or in an emergency jettisoned) Their mine laying might literally be as simple as throwing cargo container sized pallets of mines out cargo hatches with tractor/pressor beams.

Their ability to evacuate folks at Hancock further suggests that the mine stowage decks aren't vast chasms, and can be pressurized and tied into life support (and that they apparently have enough spare life support to handle mass evacuations for at least a short trip between the stars)

But I think that's about all we know about Honorverse naval minelayers. They weren't significant enough to show up in Jaynes, SITS, or House of Steel.