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Re: ?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:13 pm

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cthia wrote:
ThinksMarkedly wrote:"At some point" is the key phrase here. I don't see the need to do it right now. It's true the GA has no reason to keep it a secret, since its opponent already knows the secret too. It's not an advantage to them to keep the tight lid on what the Alignment already knows. And what if the Sollies can also get streak drive on their new generation SD(P)s that will start rolling out in the 1930s? The danger is only if the Sollies can actually surpass both the Alignment's and the Alliance's development on the streak drive and turn it into an advantage.

But they also have no reason to expose the details.


Time-out. I was under the impression that the streak drive has no tactical benefit (in the heat of battle), but only strategic benefit. Of course, it could have assisted the Sollies to shave time off arriving in Manticoran Space to get trampled.

I'm certainly not seeing a tactical benefit in normal combat. When you're inside the hyper limit your hyper generator is irrelevant; and it seems the vast majority of combat occurs well within the hyper limit.

I guess if you're messing around with long range fire from outside the hyper limit having a faster recharging hyper generator would be a tactical benefit; but we've seen nothing to indicate that the Streak Drive would have a different charging/cycle time than a "normal" hyper generator. So again, no tactical impact.


Now in the exceedingly rare case of combat within hyper (whether you're intercepted there or pursued into hyper as you flee) I can see a tactical benefit to having a more capable hyper generator than your opponent.
* Defensively if you can get into a higher band than your opponent then you're utterly safe from them.
* Offensively if your acceleration rates are closely enough matched then if you've got equivalent hyper generators you'll never catch them - you'll both end up in the Theta bands at 0.6c and thus unable to close the range. But if you've got a more capable hyper generator then you can pop up another band and use that to attempt to drop out ahead of them. (It's really tricky, since they'll presumably try to alter course so you don't remerge within weapons range - plus you do lose velocity going up and back down, so you'll likely only get a snap shot off as they go by you.) The tactic would work better if you seriously outnumber and outgun the fleeing force so you can split your forces with only some going ahead. Then if your targets chance course that lets your trailing force cut the corner and make up some ground on them, but if they don't then you can try to drop the other half of your force in their path.

Still, it's an exceedingly unusual combat where hyper generators could have any tactical impact.
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Re: ?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:18 pm

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Though streak drive can have an operational, not just strategic, impact.

Faster hyper travel impacts what forces you can bring to bear on a fight (and therefore where you can fight). The shorter command and control loop that faster hyper travel permits allows them to better concentrate their forces, or react to your actions faster than you can - forcing you to try to be strong in more places lest overwhelming numbers show up unexpectedly.

Say you send your major striking force a deep raid on a target a month (~250 LY) away; if your opponent can use the kappa band then a force anywhere within 50 LY of that target could get notified the raid had occurred and then beat the raiding force back to their base!. Deep raids aren't getting inside your enemy's decision making cycle anymore; and so you have to leave sufficient forces behind to stand off attacks that try to take advantage of knowing the forces in that system are depleted due to many being away on a mission.

And that 50 LY is worst case for a 250 LY distant raid; where the reaction force is 50 LY deeper into your territory (100 total extra LY to cover). Transits take about 31% less time in the Kappa bands than in Theta; so in the time it takes to cover 250 LY in Theta a force using Kappa bands can cover about 360 LY.
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Re: ?
Post by cthia   » Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:20 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Though streak drive can have an operational, not just strategic, impact.

Faster hyper travel impacts what forces you can bring to bear on a fight (and therefore where you can fight). The shorter command and control loop that faster hyper travel permits allows them to better concentrate their forces, or react to your actions faster than you can - forcing you to try to be strong in more places lest overwhelming numbers show up unexpectedly.

Say you send your major striking force a deep raid on a target a month (~250 LY) away; if your opponent can use the kappa band then a force anywhere within 50 LY of that target could get notified the raid had occurred and then beat the raiding force back to their base!. Deep raids aren't getting inside your enemy's decision making cycle anymore; and so you have to leave sufficient forces behind to stand off attacks that try to take advantage of knowing the forces in that system are depleted due to many being away on a mission.

And that 50 LY is worst case for a 250 LY distant raid; where the reaction force is 50 LY deeper into your territory (100 total extra LY to cover). Transits take about 31% less time in the Kappa bands than in Theta; so in the time it takes to cover 250 LY in Theta a force using Kappa bands can cover about 360 LY.

Agreed. I considered it as well. I simply chose to lump it all under the heading of strategy (recalling a certain thread impacted by my young niece at the time in her arguments with college students, and visited by the author in our chats about the varying differences of strategy and tactics), because the Admiralty certainly would have been able to make immense changes in the overall galactic deployment scheme when they were at war with the "Peeps."

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: ?
Post by Brigade XO   » Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:07 pm

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You can only really use that example of beating non-streak drive equipped back to base. IF you dispatch a streak boat from your place that was hit to a location (within close enough reaction distance which either is streak equipped or can get off the retaliation raid really really quickly.

Of course that would also depend on if the boat sent out from the place 1st attacked is also carrying the information of where the attacking force came from. I suppose if the defender counts ships and goes "ah ha, that has to be Manticore's 8th fleet that was reported a month ago at X" will this work.

It is true that the initial attacking fleet is probably not going to go immediately (like at the end of a 24 hour period) unless they were 1) doing just a quick raid to smash everything and then
Get out of Doge or 2) they got hammered and the survivors also ran back to the nominal base. Of course, this being warfare at interstellar distances, at least part of the attacking for in retreat (as planned or escaping destruction) is PROBABLY going to head for rendezvous point as they would be looking to provide aid and repairs for ships that were damaged and, while they could get to hyper, would be much safer if they could get damage repaired before going all the way back to base.
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Re: ?
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon Apr 05, 2021 8:20 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Though streak drive can have an operational, not just strategic, impact.

Faster hyper travel impacts what forces you can bring to bear on a fight (and therefore where you can fight). [cut]


I'm not denying any of that. That is certainly to the RMN's and the GA's advantage to have a streak drive. Everyone will want one on their military ships.

My point is that it's not an advantage to keep it a secret, since the opponent already knows it. The opponent can already get into the Kappa band, so you may as well disclose it to the Galaxy. This could have the benefit that the Galaxy at large will move faster, thereby eliminating the relative advantage that the enemy had. The advantage would be in not letting the enemy know you know, but it looks like this cat is out of the bag.

Improvements the GA makes on the MAN tech shouldn't / won't be shared except to Alliance members, since those would confer the GA an advantage.

Which is a possible reason not to share it: as I said, the SL has a huge R&D base, so they could leapfrog both the MAN and the GA tech and thus become a threat.
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Re: ?
Post by cthia   » Mon Apr 05, 2021 8:42 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Though streak drive can have an operational, not just strategic, impact.

Faster hyper travel impacts what forces you can bring to bear on a fight (and therefore where you can fight). [cut]


I'm not denying any of that. That is certainly to the RMN's and the GA's advantage to have a streak drive. Everyone will want one on their military ships.

My point is that it's not an advantage to keep it a secret, since the opponent already knows it. The opponent can already get into the Kappa band, so you may as well disclose it to the Galaxy. This could have the benefit that the Galaxy at large will move faster, thereby eliminating the relative advantage that the enemy had. The advantage would be in not letting the enemy know you know, but it looks like this cat is out of the bag.

Improvements the GA makes on the MAN tech shouldn't / won't be shared except to Alliance members, since those would confer the GA an advantage.

Which is a possible reason not to share it: as I said, the SL has a huge R&D base, so they could leapfrog both the MAN and the GA tech and thus become a threat.

That is the curious part. The SL can't possibly leapfrog the advantage of the RMN's global market on the interior lines of movement / defense. I suppose local battles could take a new turn. Like the SL arriving at Ajay before the RMN? But that disadvantage would simply be factored into orders and strategy. But I can see your logic in not giving up a single percent of relief to the enemy.

Plus I thought you were referring to advantages that can be applied to the heat of battle.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: ?
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:13 pm

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cthia wrote:
Which is a possible reason not to share it: as I said, the SL has a huge R&D base, so they could leapfrog both the MAN and the GA tech and thus become a threat.

That is the curious part. The SL can't possibly leapfrog the advantage of the RMN's global market on the interior lines of movement / defense. I suppose local battles could take a new turn. Like the SL arriving at Ajay before the RMN? But that disadvantage would simply be factored into orders and strategy. But I can see your logic in not giving up a single percent of relief to the enemy.

Plus I thought you were referring to advantages that can be applied to the heat of battle.


I meant in the strategic and long-term sense. Right now, the SLN is a joke. Their SDs are deathtraps and their personnel is ill-trained. Unless you fix both, it's not going to matter, not even if they had streak drives.

But in the medium- to long-term, the SLN will fix itself. From 1930 onwards, they will have capable SD(P)s, probably their second generation of ships (the first will be experimental platforms worse than Medusa and Sovereign of Space class ships).

They are embarking on a two-decade-long R&D and rebuild process right now. They'll be pouring trillions of credits into a lot of lines of research. It's possible that, given the secret of the streak drive, they can get to the Lambda band sooner than anyone else, or miniaturise it sufficiently to make economical sense for non-military ships. Or simply make regular Eta- and Theta-band generators economically viable for freighters, which Kolokainos gets first dibs on.
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Re: ?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:31 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:I'm not denying any of that. That is certainly to the RMN's and the GA's advantage to have a streak drive. Everyone will want one on their military ships.

My point is that it's not an advantage to keep it a secret, since the opponent already knows it. The opponent can already get into the Kappa band, so you may as well disclose it to the Galaxy. This could have the benefit that the Galaxy at large will move faster, thereby eliminating the relative advantage that the enemy had. The advantage would be in not letting the enemy know you know, but it looks like this cat is out of the bag.

Improvements the GA makes on the MAN tech shouldn't / won't be shared except to Alliance members, since those would confer the GA an advantage.

Which is a possible reason not to share it: as I said, the SL has a huge R&D base, so they could leapfrog both the MAN and the GA tech and thus become a threat.

I can certainly see not bothering to keep the existence of a Kappa-band capable generators secret. But while the MAlign is their current enemy I'm not sure what benefit the GA would see from handing over the blueprints to navies outside their circle of friends.

They don't necessarily need to treat it as the most top secret data; but (unless it's sweetening the pot in some diplomatic agreement) what benefit is there to the GA in turning the design data over to, say, their recent enemies in the League? (Even if they're supposed to be turning over a new leaf after their disastrous Manticoran military adventure)


Also it seems unlikely that merchant ships would adopt it. But if merchies were going to then the GA reserving it for their own merchant fleets would give them a competitive edge over their competitors; letting them reap the initial benefits from the increased trade that quicker transits might generate. So again, that seems to argue for delaying any general release of the design details. Give yourself at least as real head start on deploying it. (And if you don't simply give it away then access to it, or licensing rights to produce it is something you can use later as part of a diplomatic or trade negotiations)
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Re: ?
Post by cthia   » Sat Apr 10, 2021 3:39 am

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tlb wrote:My understanding of the higher acceleration for the Cataphract is that they used a CM engine for the attack stage; so I do not believe there is any need for a technology transfer, because the RMN already has a CM with high acceleration. The piece that the RMN has not done is to stuff two missiles together to create a multi-stage attack vehicle with a significant size penalty. Not having done it, need not imply that they could not do it. So would the RMN ever want to do that?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And not be able to fire them from internal tubes? Not bloody likely ("as big as a frigate, as expensive as a destroyer", as Travis put it). The MDM concept with baffles is a superior technology.

From the beginning (Cataphract-A), I had the impression that the Manties knew the SLN missiles were faster because of the CM body. And yet they were impressed with the Cs that Filareta and Hajdu fired, which means that Technodyne and/or the MAlign made some improvements worthy of inspection.

Theemile wrote:Later variants of the Cataphract had significantly higher accelerations for both the attack missile stage and the cm stage, while not updating the normal cm abilities. It is the updated attack missile stage accelerations that were being referenced.

tlb wrote:Yes, but that is a tweak; the newer Cataphracts used a larger, higher powered CM drive.

Isn't the relationship simple? A CM makes a trade off between acceleration and endurance for a fixed amount of power; the larger CM regains some endurance at increased acceleration by having larger plasma capacitors? However there must also be a limit set by engine life at each power rating, otherwise a single drive missile could have the same flight profile as a MDM without a programmed ballistic stage.

If the RMN manage the breakthrough to allow each drive to run at a different power setting, then that would be more impressive. That might also allow the final stage run at a higher acceleration than currently available.

Hmm, what was the fate of Technodyne? I don't recall it being attacked, or terms covering it in Honor's demands. Yet, I can't see the GA were willing to allow the SL's main missile supplier and tech giant to survive. And I can't see Technodyne sharing secrets outside the company. The secrets were the source of their leverage which kept them out of jail. That leaves the Cataphracts to be reverse engineered "in time"?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: ?
Post by Theemile   » Sat Apr 10, 2021 7:23 am

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cthia wrote:Hmm, what was the fate of Technodyne? I don't recall it being attacked, or terms covering it in Honor's demands. Yet, I can't see the GA were willing to allow the SL's main missile supplier and tech giant to survive. And I can't see Technodyne sharing secrets outside the company. The secrets were the source of their leverage which kept them out of jail. That leaves the Cataphracts to be reverse engineered "in time"?


Technodyne's fate was never mentioned. However the attack on Hyperion One resulted in the GA getting a full copy of all the SLN research, past and present as well as all the prototypes at Hyperion one and working copies of all the SLN current hardware and their specs/production details/designs.

So the GA knows everything the SLN has and is expecting to field, how it works, and how to field it. Oh, and they blew up the SLN's main workshop of said works (though the scientists survived).

But Technodyne continues...
******
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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