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TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...

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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:06 pm

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munroburton wrote:Ah, never got myself a copy of SITS. It's not just OBS which doesn't leave that impression, none of the subsequent novels feature an example of those ships doing anything with that particular weapon.

From the reader's perspective, it shows up once, shoots and vanishes. Perhaps the reason it's been on my mind lately(aside from a recent reread of OBS) is that by now spider ships are rather similar. They have not been an element in any of the novels since SftS/MoH, published in 2009 and 2010 respectively, aside from maybe the Detweiler yacht. And TEIF pretty clearly indicated that the Alignment probably isn't planning to use them for another 30-50 years.

Of course the reason it never shows up again is that (with the exception of 4th Yeltsin) wallers basically never manage to get into energy range (much less 4/5th of the way across energy range) of an enemy vessel -- the other side always breaks and rolls behind their wedge to escape long before then.

So the SDs, DNs, and the Homer-class BCs, that carried it spend the entire 1st war unable to close to its effective range.

In fact, never even getting close enough to have someone speculate hopefully about making it to its effective range.


Plus, of course, Honor was our main POV character for most of that war and she never captained an SD or DN most of the combat featuring them, especially the fleet battles, happened 'off screen' with only the most minor of details. (Even the SDs of her squadron at 4th Yeltsin were the ex-Peep ones -- and they didn't believe in wasting space on their wallers for GLs)

So it makes sense that it never came up -- but it did very much leave the impression (aside from discussions on the forums; fueled by said Jayne's books) that Fearless was the first and only time it was tried by Manticore. Rather than the actuality which was that the Anduril-class SDs (1889), Gladiator-class DN (1868), and Homer-class BC (1863) all carried it[1], at at least come point in their careers[2].

---
[1] At least according to House of Steel[3].

[2] HoS implies that it was not yet in any ships in Sept 1883 (when the novella happens) and clarifies that it was the "later flights" of the Homers that had it added; and it was retrofitted into the the Gladiators at some point.

[3] Jayne's lists those 3 classes, but also the King William-class SDs (1872) and Majestic-class DN (1888); giving each 12 ETs to pair with their GL. Majestics would have been the right time period to have had it built in from the start, but the King Williams would have seemingly had to be refitted to add it.

There are a couple possible explanations for this inconsistency.
* HoS doesn't list weapons 'as built' but rather 'as refit' as of some date, presumably around 1921 PD; and so it's possible that pre-war those two classes had be built/refit with GL+ET and then during the war or during the ceasefire they were removed.
* HoS establishes (or retcons :D) that Jayne's is an 'in universe' publication (rather than being canonical word of author) and its editors can be mistaken about the tech specs they include -- see the apology letter about the Star Knight-class specs. These two ships could have been additional cases where Jayne's editors got incorrect information and published it in good faith.
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by munroburton   » Mon Jul 04, 2022 5:36 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Of course the reason it never shows up again is that (with the exception of 4th Yeltsin) wallers basically never manage to get into energy range (much less 4/5th of the way across energy range) of an enemy vessel -- the other side always breaks and rolls behind their wedge to escape long before then.

So the SDs, DNs, and the Homer-class BCs, that carried it spend the entire 1st war unable to close to its effective range.

In fact, never even getting close enough to have someone speculate hopefully about making it to its effective range.


Fourth Yeltsin is the only real example of an energy-range battle wall clash we actually see take place under a microscope(and if some of the Allied BCs were Homers, it wasn't mentioned), but virtually all of the offscreen battles after First Hancock up to Trevor's Star could have included an energy range duel, especially while the PRH was shooting admirals for retreating, so they had to stand and fight(https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/e ... gton/90/1/).

FiE wrote:Another Havenite fell out of the wall, covering herself with her impeller wedge as best she could, and something stirred in the back of White Haven's mind. That was five Peep SDs destroyed or out of action to only one of his. At this rate, he'd have a decisive edge, even at energy range, when the two fleets finally came together. Whoever was in command over there had to know that, so why in hell was he still coming in this way? Nightingale was an important outwork for Trevor's Star, but hardly worth the destruction of a force this size! There had to be a reason—

That shows an energy range engagement was possibly on the table from the RMN's perspective. It certainly was what the Peeps intended:
No wonder that wall had closed so steadily! White Haven extended his enemies a single moment of ungrudging respect as he recognized the trap into which that unflinching Peep formation was herding his own. Another fifteen minutes, and he would have been hopelessly boxed, committed to close action against Bogey One even as Bogey Two came boring into his flank from above, and he'd walked straight into it.


And then there was Second Basilisk, where this was overshadowed by the SD(P)s' first shots in anger:
EoH wrote:Two Peep superdreadnoughts had died with King William's consorts, and others had been damaged, if none had been hurt so dreadfully as the Manticoran ships of the wall. Now the two forces slammed together and interpenetrated, short-range weapons ripping and tearing with brief, titanic fury.
It took only seconds, and when it was over, two more Peep SDs had been destroyed. At least three more were severely damaged . . . and every single ship of Vice Admiral Silas Markham's task group had been obliterated.
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Jul 04, 2022 6:24 pm

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munroburton wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Of course the reason it never shows up again is that (with the exception of 4th Yeltsin) wallers basically never manage to get into energy range (much less 4/5th of the way across energy range) of an enemy vessel -- the other side always breaks and rolls behind their wedge to escape long before then.

So the SDs, DNs, and the Homer-class BCs, that carried it spend the entire 1st war unable to close to its effective range.

In fact, never even getting close enough to have someone speculate hopefully about making it to its effective range.


Fourth Yeltsin is the only real example of an energy-range battle wall clash we actually see take place under a microscope(and if some of the Allied BCs were Homers, it wasn't mentioned), but virtually all of the offscreen battles after First Hancock up to Trevor's Star could have included an energy range duel, especially while the PRH was shooting admirals for retreating, so they had to stand and fight(https://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/e ... gton/90/1/).

FiE wrote:Another Havenite fell out of the wall, covering herself with her impeller wedge as best she could, and something stirred in the back of White Haven's mind. That was five Peep SDs destroyed or out of action to only one of his. At this rate, he'd have a decisive edge, even at energy range, when the two fleets finally came together. Whoever was in command over there had to know that, so why in hell was he still coming in this way? Nightingale was an important outwork for Trevor's Star, but hardly worth the destruction of a force this size! There had to be a reason—

That shows an energy range engagement was possibly on the table from the RMN's perspective. It certainly was what the Peeps intended:
No wonder that wall had closed so steadily! White Haven extended his enemies a single moment of ungrudging respect as he recognized the trap into which that unflinching Peep formation was herding his own. Another fifteen minutes, and he would have been hopelessly boxed, committed to close action against Bogey One even as Bogey Two came boring into his flank from above, and he'd walked straight into it.


And then there was Second Basilisk, where this was overshadowed by the SD(P)s' first shots in anger:
EoH wrote:Two Peep superdreadnoughts had died with King William's consorts, and others had been damaged, if none had been hurt so dreadfully as the Manticoran ships of the wall. Now the two forces slammed together and interpenetrated, short-range weapons ripping and tearing with brief, titanic fury.
It took only seconds, and when it was over, two more Peep SDs had been destroyed. At least three more were severely damaged . . . and every single ship of Vice Admiral Silas Markham's task group had been obliterated.
Nice - thanks for sharing those.

Of course in event once White Haven detected the trap he broke off to avoid getting crushed between two forces at energy range. And if the Peeps hadn't been trying to shepherd him into a trap (and maybe even though they were) they'd have rolled behind their wedges before engaging him at energy range -- since they'd be able to see just as well as he did that he'd have a decisive advantage. And unless you need to try cripple the enemy at all costs you simply do your best to avoid participating in an energy range fight when the odds are against you.

The fight with Markham it's possible that some of King William's consorts actually carried grav lances -- but whether or not they were able to come into play when the 3 surviving RMN SDs made it to energy range isn't said.

I suspect not, it seems probable that King William and her two surviving squadron-mates died to the massed graser fire of the Peeps well short of the 100,000 km zone where a GL becomes effective.
OTOH it's not impossible that at least one of the dead Peep SDs from that exchange was taken down by energy torpedoes after someone survived just long enough to drop her sidewall. (Or that normal energy weapons or even earlier laserhead fire opened gaps in the sidewall that ETs could exploit. HoS does list several classes, King Williams among them, that mount some broadside ETs despite lacking the grav lance. Presumably those are to take advantage of any case where they manage to cross and enemy's 'T' or knock gaps in its sidewall with their other weapons.)
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon Jul 04, 2022 6:38 pm

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munroburton wrote:No, they wouldn't be part of Sarnow's group. They would be lying doggo as part of the minefield, mostly relying on the Peep dreadnoughts' velocity to bring them into and then out of weapons range - more or less exactly how D'Orville's flagship was nailed that one time. Then they roll and away they go in the opposite direction. Hideously vulnerable to the Peep survivors concentrating upon them with missiles if they choose to, but that does take those missiles off Sarnow's group in the meantime.


A dozen or two light cruisers with hot impellers, even if no wedge, would not be stealthy at that range. Mines were, but old light cruisers with reactors at standby power, radiating heat, and wedges ready to go up, right across the flight path would be a dead giveaway. The Peeps wouldn't miss them.

The Peep escorts would trigger the trap by walking into it before the DNs did. They'd also give the minefield away much sooner. This looks like a lose-lose proposition.

One ship might be mistaken for dead or non-combatant. Two dozen would not. Chin would have communicated with them and asked their formal surrender, which would include shutting the impellers down completely to cold, or she'd rightfully send a brace of missiles on them.

Ah, never got myself a copy of SITS. It's not just OBS which doesn't leave that impression, none of the subsequent novels feature an example of those ships doing anything with that particular weapon.


HoS mentions them three times. Once in the story, when it's made clear Sonja christened the weapon "grav lance" in the 1883 PD section. Then in the section about the Homer-class BC and Gladiator-class DN, in both cases saying those were late refits of the new weapon.

So the theory behind it had existed for nearly 20 years at the time of OBS.
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by munroburton   » Mon Jul 04, 2022 8:32 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:A dozen or two light cruisers with hot impellers, even if no wedge, would not be stealthy at that range. Mines were, but old light cruisers with reactors at standby power, radiating heat, and wedges ready to go up, right across the flight path would be a dead giveaway. The Peeps wouldn't miss them.


The Peeps are the same folks who missed the Elysian Space Navy pulling a Nelson Maneuver. And they had hot nodes ready to go:
EoH wrote:But the battle board glowed a reassuring crimson at Tactical—for Farnese's port broadside, at least—and her helmsman sat tautly poised and ready at his station. The impeller board beside him burned the steady amber that indicated nodes at standby, ready to bring up instantly, and Honor inhaled deeply.


Five 900,000 ton PN battlecruisers with everything ready to go were only detected at 730,000km(and one of them was sunburnt along an entire broadside). With only 90,000 tons and RMN stealth, the Courageouses do have a chance, however small it might be.

I think it comes down to how fast Chin's dreadnoughts are moving when they're lured into the minefield. During First Hancock, they briefly abandoned their pursuit of Sarnow's group because of fake SDs, so there is the possibility of not doing that to bring the Peeps through the Fearless squadron's envelope faster.
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Jul 04, 2022 9:27 pm

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munroburton wrote:
ThinksMarkedly wrote:A dozen or two light cruisers with hot impellers, even if no wedge, would not be stealthy at that range. Mines were, but old light cruisers with reactors at standby power, radiating heat, and wedges ready to go up, right across the flight path would be a dead giveaway. The Peeps wouldn't miss them.


The Peeps are the same folks who missed the Elysian Space Navy pulling a Nelson Maneuver. And they had hot nodes ready to go:
EoH wrote:But the battle board glowed a reassuring crimson at Tactical—for Farnese's port broadside, at least—and her helmsman sat tautly poised and ready at his station. The impeller board beside him burned the steady amber that indicated nodes at standby, ready to bring up instantly, and Honor inhaled deeply.


Five 900,000 ton PN battlecruisers with everything ready to go were only detected at 730,000km(and one of them was sunburnt along an entire broadside). With only 90,000 tons and RMN stealth, the Courageouses do have a chance, however small it might be.

I think it comes down to how fast Chin's dreadnoughts are moving when they're lured into the minefield. During First Hancock, they briefly abandoned their pursuit of Sarnow's group because of fake SDs, so there is the possibility of not doing that to bring the Peeps through the Fearless squadron's envelope faster.

The difference is that the Peeps at Hades had zero suspicion there might be enemy warships in the system, while Chin's force was probing to find and engage the RMN defenders at Hancock. Remember, the Peeps suspected a trap, that Parks had let himself be observed leaving and snuck back in to sucker them -- that's why they had Chin's more agile DN's probing for the trap, leaving the bulk of their firepower -- their SD squadrons, hanging back where they could hyper out should the defenses be too tough to crack. So her people would have been extremely on their toes looking for enemies trying to sneak up on them.

Whereas, as far as I can see, at Hades they weren't even at battle stations! They figured if they stopped out of range of the fixed defenses they'd be perfectly safe. That's about as lackadaisical as you can possibly get!

And even so, without any reason in the world to expect warships and their attention focused ahead of them on the planet and its fixed orbital defenses, the Peeps at Hades still had their automated search radar pick up the ESN at 730,000 km -- 630,000 km short of GL range!

Heck, even though there were no sidewalls because the ESN had an open shot down the throat of the decelerating Peep ships they were still detected well outside energy torpedo range (which SVW's annex gives as 300,000 km).


Just saying a Courageous is smaller than a Peep battlecruiser doesn't mean it's going to be able to sneak in 630,000 km closer (with its radar return growing exponentially as it closes -- damned inverse square law)
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Tue Jul 05, 2022 12:15 am

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munroburton wrote:Five 900,000 ton PN battlecruisers with everything ready to go were only detected at 730,000km(and one of them was sunburnt along an entire broadside). With only 90,000 tons and RMN stealth, the Courageouses do have a chance, however small it might be.


90k tonne of obsolete warship. There's only so much you can retrofit onto them to make them stealthy and still cost-effective.

Your premise was "we have these ships we're about to decommission, let's do some quick job of mounting grav lances on them." But now we need to basically replace both of their impeller rings to rig them for stealth, probably replace the reactor assemblies too for modern units that are more efficient, replace the radiators, etc.

This would not be cost-effective for a ship they were about to dispose of. It probably cost nearly as much as just building the new Illustrious that was meant to replace the ship in the first place.
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by munroburton   » Tue Jul 05, 2022 7:51 am

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
munroburton wrote:Five 900,000 ton PN battlecruisers with everything ready to go were only detected at 730,000km(and one of them was sunburnt along an entire broadside). With only 90,000 tons and RMN stealth, the Courageouses do have a chance, however small it might be.


90k tonne of obsolete warship. There's only so much you can retrofit onto them to make them stealthy and still cost-effective.

Your premise was "we have these ships we're about to decommission, let's do some quick job of mounting grav lances on them." But now we need to basically replace both of their impeller rings to rig them for stealth, probably replace the reactor assemblies too for modern units that are more efficient, replace the radiators, etc.

This would not be cost-effective for a ship they were about to dispose of. It probably cost nearly as much as just building the new Illustrious that was meant to replace the ship in the first place.


Not Illustrious, you're thinking of the Valiant - which nearly doubled a Courageous' tonnage. They built 83 of those to replace 62 Courageous; replacing 5.5 million ton of light cruiser with 12.8 million ton.

I know Honorverse economics are screwy, but I find it difficult to believe that refitting sixteen 90,000 ton units would be prohibitively expensive. With over 100 grav lances througout the fleet, they already had an infrastructure for it which would have been maintained right up until Oyster Bay blew it away, simply to keep the Homers' GLs in working order(they also retained the Gladiators until 1920).

Not cheap, but a price worth paying if it resulted in a certain number of enemy SDs blown away despite the total loss of the refitted class after their single use, whether they're destroyed by enemy action or finally withdrawn from service. ~2mt of light cruisers for, well, even a light battle squadron of dreadnoughts masses almost forty million tons.
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by Theemile   » Tue Jul 05, 2022 8:25 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:Didn't need HoS to tell us that -- that was well known from the SITS Jayne's Intelligence Review books for a decade or so before HoS was published. Though OBS (which came out 6 years or so before SITS) certainly doesn't leave you with that impression.


But also, it didn't preclude it. When McKeon gave Honor her initial briefing on what they were doing to the ship, Honor already knew what the grav lance was - the explanation was just there for the reader, and I do believe that the text had said the technology had been known for decades - it was just never mentioned that the tech had been routinely installed on RMN capital ships for a period of time.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: TWTSNBN: hmm, maybe this soup could be thinner...
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jul 05, 2022 9:20 am

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Theemile wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Didn't need HoS to tell us that -- that was well known from the SITS Jayne's Intelligence Review books for a decade or so before HoS was published. Though OBS (which came out 6 years or so before SITS) certainly doesn't leave you with that impression.


But also, it didn't preclude it. When McKeon gave Honor her initial briefing on what they were doing to the ship, Honor already knew what the grav lance was - the explanation was just there for the reader, and I do believe that the text had said the technology had been known for decades - it was just never mentioned that the tech had been routinely installed on RMN capital ships for a period of time.
Agreed it didn't preclude it. And Honor didn't have to ask what it was, just how much broadside it had cost to install it.

But as for decades, all I could find was
On Basilisk Station wrote:The grav lance was new and might, indeed, someday have the potential Hemphill claimed for it, but it certainly didn't have it yet. With only a very little luck, a direct hit could set up a harmonic fit to burn out any sidewall generator, but it was a cumbersome, slow-firing, mass-intensive weapon, and its maximum range under optimum circumstances was barely a hundred thousand kilometers.
[...]
It might even make sense aboard a capital ship with the mass to spare for it
"New" in the context of Honor's musing on a combat paradigm that had largely "remained unaltered for over six standard centuries" could well be decades (and in fact, per HoS, it was around 1-1.5 decades) - but could equally be much more recent. [SVW's annex also simply calls it a "new development"]

And again, the last sentence doesn't preclude some of the RMN's capital ships already mounting it; but certainly does little to clue the reader into that being the case.
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