Topic Actions

Topic Search

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 36 guests

Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
Re: Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next
Post by Brigade XO   » Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:07 pm

Brigade XO
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 3114
Joined: Sat Nov 14, 2009 12:31 pm
Location: KY

Back to RDs and lashing on a warhead. It was less than 250 years ago when a really stealthy trick was to take two watertight wooden barrels stuffed with gunpowder, a long rope and -after igniting the slow-match for each barrel- release them up current from an anchored enemy warship. If things went as planned (and the lookouts were getting drowsy in the wee hours of the morning) the rope would get stopped by the ship's bow and each barrel would be slowly brought somewhere on either side of the ship. If both fuse set of the respective powder charges at the same time someone was going to loose a ship.
So. If you are going to have RDs really slinking around somewhere out in a system on a POSSIBLE incursion vector to the system and some ship comes slithering in to take a look or deliver a packages--and if your RD is in the right place- you could reorient it and add some speed (still being stealth) and send the warhead on an intercept vector. You will probably need some sort of engine to make the last (and really short) sprint between the distance where a ballistic object like a laser head would get notices by a ship's sensors and optimal distance to skewer said ship with the energy through the casing rods. I suspect the intruder would be trying to be stealth so in the minimal time between the warhead's motor lighting off and the warhead detonating would not be a long time...not long enough to interpose that "low powered" wedge or flip on the active sensors so the CL and light speed weapons could get a target read/calculate and shoot.
Ah well........heck, there was at least one time a pilot rigged up a pair of torpedoes on a PBY and played merry hell out there in the Solomons. Heavy, slow and a big surprise. It's the surprise part that makes the difference.
Top
Re: Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Jun 27, 2022 6:18 pm

Jonathan_S
Fleet Admiral

Posts: 8269
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 2:01 pm
Location: Virginia, USA

Somtaaw wrote:Tbh, I believe while they may be called 'Buoys' which would imply a general level of not-moving (ever), the Hermes are actually built on the Ghost Rider drone platform itself. By sharing the same casing, impellers and FTL units, that simplified manufacturing and meant all Hemphill had to do was design a different set of insides for mildly different purposes.

The full-up RDs dedicate most of their mass towards their highly sensitive sensors and only a portion towards the reactor because they were never intended for long-term missions. While the Hermes communications would flip that to be mostly reactor tonnage to enable much lengthier operational time because they don't need much sensors to track a ship or enter orbit of a planet/station.

If it's already built on the Ghost Rider drone platform then why are Hemphill and Foraker looking at strapping Hermes Buoys to Ghost Riders in their FTL lashup? I'd assume that that was in order to get them downrange in a tactically useful time; so they'd be there in time to control your missile launch.

Uncompromising Honor wrote:“I suspect the initial concept came from Foraker,” she said, “but the final proposal has Sonja’s fingerprints all over it, too. [...]
For all intents and purposes, their suggestion is that we use Hermes buoys in conjunction with Ghost Rider. The Agamemnons have plenty of telemetry links; their links just don’t have an FTL capability. So the idea is that we strap Hermes buoys onto Ghost Rider recon drones and then tractor four or five more buoys just outside an Agamemnon’s wedge perimeter and let them talk to each other. Hermes has a lot more bandwidth—and more channels—than the standard shipboard grav com, Elizabeth. So if we pair buoys between those tractored to the ship and the ones mounted on the recon platforms then feed the telemetry links through the buoy channels and use the ones on the recon platforms to talk to the missiles…”

If the buoys are built on a Ghost Rider platform then you'd expect them to have similar drive performance; but if they can already self-deploy about as quickly as the drone then why carry extra RDs to strap to buoys?

They already complain that carrying all those buoys and RDs is going to cut into the missile carrying capacity of the BC(P) -- so if they could get nearly the same effect without having to carry extra RDs, and thus mitigate much of that loss of missile capacity, then why on earth would they do anything else?
Top
Re: Fall 1924: What will the Admiralty build next
Post by Somtaaw   » Mon Jun 27, 2022 7:02 pm

Somtaaw
Rear Admiral

Posts: 1184
Joined: Mon Sep 01, 2014 11:36 am
Location: Canada

Strapping a Hermes to a Ghost Rider would generally suggest that 20,000 gravities isn't even GR's top speed; just an upper limit if it's also trying to stay stealthy. If Ghost Rider cut their stealth they surely must be capable of much more, potentially enough to pace missiles at least long enough for the strapped-on Hermes to update the Apollo's.

Hermes apparently don't have that... for lack of a better label, sprint capability, to pace the missiles alone. But that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't fast themselves, simply not fast enough to stay close enough to Apollo's long enough for updating. Which doesn't make any sense, the FTL grav-pulse comm is pretty quick these days, so even if Apollo's blow past a Hermes at max thrust, it should be in range long enough to relay any tactical updates before they're no longer in FTL range of the Hermes.


By my calculations, assuming Zavala dropped his Hermes within ±1 minute of Alpha translation into Saltash, his Hermes was pushing 1097.3g's of acceleration to cross the 9 lightminutes (just under 162million km) and he uses it immediately upon arrival. And if Terekhov did the same, launching HIS Hermes within ±1 minute of translation and if it had the same speed, his would have crossed the 215.9 million km and been on station of Mobius within 105 minutes but he only uses it ~50 minutes later due to mind-game reasons.

But 1100g's is now the absolute minimum speed for a Hermes, by textev. That's far short of a Ghost Rider's 20,000 gravities or more, but solar systems and their hyper limits are big, and 1100 is pretty piss poor for any drone with zero reason to be held back by compensators.


So I stand by Hermes being subject to plot and therefore any known capabilities change drastically on an usage by usage basis. Zavala and Terekhov were getting 1100+ out of theirs, but apparently when Hemphill and Foraker use a Hermes, it's so ridiculously slow they decided to bolt Hermes onto Ghost Rider to give it more acceleration.

We need more data samples of tactical usage of Hermes, where Manticoran/Havenite units were NOT in-system at the start. Try and see whether they also have an 1100-ish acceleration curve, or the Bolthole tests curve requiring Ghost Rider to tag-in; or worse we have a third/fourth/fifth curve.
Top

Return to Honorverse