|
It almost doesn't make sense that ships can do double broadsides, for reasons I would type out if I didn't have to go grab my laundry. e: lame snipe
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 17:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 08:13 |
|
|
Kchama posted:It might have helped if he had more explicitly described it. Describe what Raoul thinks they're doing, and then give it the name. "If two cruisers really are firing off that many, one of them must be rolling to get its other broadside in range, the classic double broadside." Yes, if he wasn't going to show it in use, that would be the ideal. It almost feels like an editing mistake with things getting shuffled around or a section deleted.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 17:29
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:It almost doesn't make sense that ships can do double broadsides, for reasons I would type out if I didn't have to go grab my laundry. Well, type it out when you get back, geez. I'm curious. Gnoman posted:Yes, if he wasn't going to show it in use, that would be the ideal. It almost feels like an editing mistake with things getting shuffled around or a section deleted. Yeah it's possible. Like the mention of 'city-class' ships, which feels like a placeholder name that got missed in editing.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 17:34
|
|
|
Kchama posted:It might have helped if he had more explicitly described it. Describe what Raoul thinks they're doing, and then give it the name. "If two cruisers really are firing off that many, one of them must be rolling to get its other broadside in range, the classic double broadside." It was described, actually; just not by the people on the receiving end: quote:But this was an almost classic ambush scenario, and Commander Theisman already had his ship spinning on her central axis. Thunder was too slow on the helm and too close, but Theisman could bring both broadsides to bear in his window of engagement. He'd fire the first one with its missiles' drives programmed for delayed activation, then fire the second as his other broadside rolled onto the target, which would bring them in together and let him get off almost as many birds as Thunder. This matches exactly with what Courvosier says: quote:The missile pattern was obviously a classic double broadside from something fairly powerful—probably a light cruiser—and he'd allocated six of the birds in his second launch to Madrigal.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 17:49
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:It almost doesn't make sense that ships can do double broadsides, for reasons I would type out if I didn't have to go grab my laundry. I'm guessing you're talking about the grav-driver issue (missiles are ejected at some crazy speed like .2c so after spinning and launching a second salvo the first salvo is already almost 500,000km downrange) but I think that's covered by the fact that they can change the acceleration on the missiles so that the ones fired first accelerate slightly slower so that they still arrive on target at the same time. I haven't done the math, but I think missile acceleration is high enough for this to work if you can launch the second salvo in under 10 seconds. It's probably less effective against point defense than a single salvo of that size (due to both Weber making a big deal out of control links being limited and the fact that two smaller sets of missiles moving at different rates are easier to track and prepare counterfire for) and doesn't get used a lot because I think most of the ships can't rotate fast enough (destroyers are probably the exception which is why it's a destroyer using it here). It seems like the kind of thing that comes up a lot in theory-crafting and simulations but doesn't get used much in the real world because the conditions for it being useful almost never come up. Heck, I doubt Weber thought of this but that also makes the Admiral recognizing it make sense - he was in charge of a training facility so he probably is familiar with a bunch of weird theoretical tactics like that. fake edit: decided to take the time to do the math. Using the book numbers of missile acceleration = 460,000 m/s^2 and assuming the first salvo is at half acceleration the launch window for the second salvo is 5 seconds at 1 minute of travel time or just under 20 seconds at 2 minutes of travel time. I'm convinced that the math works out such that this tactic is usually only relevant for ships that can spin pretty darn fast. Someday I'll calculate how much force you'd experience inside each size of ship spinning at various rates and figure out if it would be an interesting detail to say that because of *technobabble wedge shape blah blah blah* wedge force cancellation didn't apply to centripetal force. real edit: 1) I messed up my math a bit, corrected number are in the post above 2) screw that, I'm not doing the math on delayed activation because I've already put too much effort into this but I don't think it changes much vs. my solution of half acceleration. Most of the ground to be made up is from the initial launch velocity so the numbers should still be pretty close. blackmongoose fucked around with this message at 18:51 on May 7, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 18:29
|
|
|
Yeah, the reason I said almost doesn't make sense is that there are a number of tactics you could do with delayed activation which are never explored - for example, getting your ships up to high speed, launching a big salvo, and delaying drive activation until they're in powered attack range of the target. Basically a makeshift MDM where the launch ship itself is the first stage. But you can come up with various fixes involving targeting/power/etc to make this not an issue.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 18:47
|
|
|
Rosalie_A posted:It was described, actually; just not by the people on the receiving end: Thanks, I remember that description being later in the book/
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 18:49
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:Yeah, the reason I said almost doesn't make sense is that there are a number of tactics you could do with delayed activation which are never explored - for example, getting your ships up to high speed, launching a big salvo, and delaying drive activation until they're in powered attack range of the target. Basically a makeshift MDM where the launch ship itself is the first stage. But you can come up with various fixes involving targeting/power/etc to make this not an issue. This is why I used a changed acceleration solution because that causes a lot less problems for the universe than allowing delayed activation does. I thought of delayed activation first, realized it allowed for poor man's MDMs, then decided that assuming the technology required instant wedge activation caused fewer problems. Of course, I was foiled by Weber actually writing the dumber option as canon.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 18:54
|
|
|
The 'fix' I assumed for ~~my fanfic~~ was that standard missile capacitor rings can't hold the 'juice-up' they get from the shipboard fusion reactor for very long. So you can't delay the activation much. This is necessary because if you can delay activation for more than a few seconds, there's no reason you can't just dump a pile of missiles out your rear end end and ignite them all at once. Sure, you lose the initial mass driver boost. But that's like .02C and not a huge factor in terminal missile velocity.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 18:57
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:The 'fix' I assumed for ~~my fanfic~~ was that standard missile capacitor rings can't hold the 'juice-up' they get from the shipboard fusion reactor for very long. So you can't delay the activation much. It's .2c actually which is a pretty big deal (and why pods don't work until you can put launchers in them). There's still the problem of launching a bunch of missiles and letting them coast for a while before activating to extend your range. The normal solution of "use missile dead time to move out of the envelope" holds down the range extension somewhat, but I'm pretty sure I calculated it once assuming the target changes acceleration instantly when the light from the launch reaches them and even under those conditions it extends range a ton.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 19:04
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:Yeah, the reason I said almost doesn't make sense is that there are a number of tactics you could do with delayed activation which are never explored - for example, getting your ships up to high speed, launching a big salvo, and delaying drive activation until they're in powered attack range of the target. Basically a makeshift MDM where the launch ship itself is the first stage. But you can come up with various fixes involving targeting/power/etc to make this not an issue. IIRC, a major reason why those kinds of strikes weren't done is that everybody was still afraid of the Solarian League and nobody wanted to risk an Eridani Edict violation. A failed strike of this type could very easily result in you spiking a missile into a planet at 0.8c, especially with you unable to send a self-destruct command because they're out of range, and that would result in the Solarian League dismantling your star nation.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 20:01
|
|
|
That only applies for targets near planets. IIRC, the explanation for not sending missiles in ballistic with a delayed ignition was that they need the impeller wedge to have particle shielding to protect their sensors from dust and micro-meteors.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 20:21
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:That only applies for targets near planets. IIRC, the explanation for not sending missiles in ballistic with a delayed ignition was that they need the impeller wedge to have particle shielding to protect their sensors from dust and micro-meteors. He definitely talks a lot about having a ballistic phase after the wedge burns out though, usually having someone dismiss it because if they can't maneuver at the end of the run they're too easy for point defense to kill. Also, MDMs can have a mid-course ballistic phase between wedge activations.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 21:01
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:That only applies for targets near planets. IIRC, the explanation for not sending missiles in ballistic with a delayed ignition was that they need the impeller wedge to have particle shielding to protect their sensors from dust and micro-meteors. The sensors and warhead work fine after long high-speed coast phases after wedge burnout, such as at the end of book 2.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 21:42
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:The sensors and warhead work fine after long high-speed coast phases after wedge burnout, such as at the end of book 2. Maybe it isn't until the high speed of the MDM era that that becomes a problem. There's definite late-era "unlike older missiles, these had an ablative cap to compensate for the long ballistic phases" mentions.
|
|
#
?
May 7, 2020 21:45
|
|
|
Kchama posted:Well, type it out when you get back, geez. The Masadan DD Principality is the ex-Havenite, City-class destroyer Breslau. The Haven-built ships in the Masadan navy changed names (but not crews), but Principality is still a member of the Havenite City class of destroyers despite no longer being named after a city.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 02:51
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:The Masadan DD Principality is the ex-Havenite, City-class destroyer Breslau. The Haven-built ships in the Masadan navy changed names (but not crews), but Principality is still a member of the Havenite City class of destroyers despite no longer being named after a city. Every other reference to that class of destroyers in Havenite service has them as the Bastogne class. "City Class" is used only in this book, and Kchama's probably entirely correct that this was a placeholder name that didn't get corrected.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 03:08
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Every other reference to that class of destroyers in Havenite service has them as the Bastogne class. "City Class" is used only in this book, and Kchama's probably entirely correct that this was a placeholder name that didn't get corrected. I was coming here to basically post this, yeah. I'd more blame Baen's editing practices than Weber for this to be honest. Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:54 on May 8, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 03:49
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Every other reference to that class of destroyers in Havenite service has them as the Bastogne class. "City Class" is used only in this book, and Kchama's probably entirely correct that this was a placeholder name that didn't get corrected. It's just Weber copying a British thing. Here's one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County-class_cruiser Properly those ships would be the Kent-class, London-class, and Norfolk-class. At least, that's what the US Navy would have called them. Instead they're just collectively called the County class even though none of them was named HMS County because that's dumb There are a bunch of British (and Commonwealth country) group-classes of ships named like this. And Haven probably has hundreds of destroyers named after cities, which are broadly similar in design and capability, but differ enough to fit many sub-classes but nobody gives enough of a poo poo to memorize which ship is which sub-class so it's easier to just call all of them the city-class. Another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal-class_destroyer_(1936) FuturePastNow fucked around with this message at 04:50 on May 8, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 04:35
|
|
|
FuturePastNow posted:It's just Weber copying a British thing. Here's one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County-class_cruiser Not exactly. The county-class ships were properly called county-class. Kent, London, and Norfolk were subgroups within the class, as modifications were introduced through experience. The US equivalent would be "First/second/third flight", and we see later that this is the system the Havenites used (there's reference to a "first-flight Mars class). There's no reference at all to anything called the "City-class" anywhere else, and the Bastogne class is suggested to be a very unusual design due to being missile-focused. It is probably an editing thing, just like the fact that my copy of At All Costs has a pair of sentences repeated three times in one paragraph.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 04:54
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Not exactly. The county-class ships were properly called county-class. Kent, London, and Norfolk were subgroups within the class, as modifications were introduced through experience. The US equivalent would be "First/second/third flight", and we see later that this is the system the Havenites used (there's reference to a "first-flight Mars class). There's no reference at all to anything called the "City-class" anywhere else, and the Bastogne class is suggested to be a very unusual design due to being missile-focused. It is probably an editing thing, just like the fact that my copy of At All Costs has a pair of sentences repeated three times in one paragraph. Man, Gnoman using his immense knowledge on these topics in my defense is weird. I should do a chapter soon so he can get back to using it against me.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 05:45
|
|
|
If you want immense knowledge, you need to go to the Milhist thread. I'm just a dabbler.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 06:16
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Not exactly. The county-class ships were properly called county-class. Kent, London, and Norfolk were subgroups within the class, as modifications were introduced through experience. The US equivalent would be "First/second/third flight", and we see later that this is the system the Havenites used (there's reference to a "first-flight Mars class). There's no reference at all to anything called the "City-class" anywhere else, and the Bastogne class is suggested to be a very unusual design due to being missile-focused. It is probably an editing thing, just like the fact that my copy of At All Costs has a pair of sentences repeated three times in one paragraph. Doesn't change the fact that it's just Weber copying poo poo he's read in various war/history books and assuming his readers have the same knowledge. I'm not, like, defending him as a writer here. But you cannot be genuinely confused about this.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 06:26
|
|
|
FuturePastNow posted:Doesn't change the fact that it's just Weber copying poo poo he's read in various war/history books and assuming his readers have the same knowledge. I'm not, like, defending him as a writer here. But you cannot be genuinely confused about this. If there was anything whatsoever to support this, you'd be on firmer ground. The "city-class" wording is used exactly once and is never mentioned again. Anywhere in the entire canon. Later works that refer to the ship do not use it. Fundamentally, it is like the "builder's plaque" on the USS Enterprise set for the original Star Trek. This refers to the Enterprise as "Starship-class", when every later reference has it as "Constitution-class". The people in charge changed the designation later, and never bothered to modify the prop because they figured nobody would notice. That doesn't mean that "Starship-class" is some sort of umbrella designation.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 06:31
|
|
|
blackmongoose posted:It's .2c actually which is a pretty big deal (and why pods don't work until you can put launchers in them). There's still the problem of launching a bunch of missiles and letting them coast for a while before activating to extend your range. The normal solution of "use missile dead time to move out of the envelope" holds down the range extension somewhat, but I'm pretty sure I calculated it once assuming the target changes acceleration instantly when the light from the launch reaches them and even under those conditions it extends range a ton. I thought it was more about kicking them clear of the wedge and giving them a small initial boost like GB said. Where are you getting they launch them out at .2c from? Edit: Incidentally because I was curious. Obviously the accleration time of the mass driver depends on what length the launch tubes are but assuming a missile accelerates from rest to .2c over the course of a millisecond* it's experiencing roughly six billion G's (if I punched the numbers into the online calculator right, i am not a rocket scientist). * If it's coming out the other end at .2c it's going to cover the length of that mass driver super goddamn quick. 1millisecond is completely arbitrary. Again I stand to be corrected. Deptfordx fucked around with this message at 13:15 on May 8, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 09:31
|
|
|
Deptfordx posted:I thought it was more about kicking them clear of the wedge and giving them a small initial boost like GB said. I got it from unsourced forum posts ironically enough. But it pretty much has to be on that order of magnitude, because it's mentioned multiple times that pods didn't work before book 3 because the lack of mass drivers meant that the pod launched missiles had sufficiently inferior performance to be useless. In order for the presence or lack of them to be relevant to the performance of missiles that can accelerate at almost 100,000g, they pretty much have to be imparting initial velocities in the tenth c ranges
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 15:23
|
|
|
I guess it's jussstttt possible, Weber didn't fully calculate the physical implications of his handwavium tech.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 15:54
|
|
|
blackmongoose posted:I got it from unsourced forum posts ironically enough. But it pretty much has to be on that order of magnitude, because it's mentioned multiple times that pods didn't work before book 3 because the lack of mass drivers meant that the pod launched missiles had sufficiently inferior performance to be useless. In order for the presence or lack of them to be relevant to the performance of missiles that can accelerate at almost 100,000g, they pretty much have to be imparting initial velocities in the tenth c ranges They needed the kick to get clear of the launching ship's wedge so they could engage their own wedge without getting destroyed by wedge interference. The driver is just to get them clear so they can accelerate on their own. Drivers on pods are similar IIRC. They need to throw the missiles far enough away from each other so they can engage their wedges immediately without needing to spread out on maneuvering thrusters. Khizan fucked around with this message at 16:35 on May 8, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 16:32
|
|
|
Khizan posted:They needed the kick to get clear of the launching ship's wedge so they could engage their own wedge without getting destroyed by wedge interference. The driver is just to get them clear so they can accelerate on their own. If that were the case everyone would have been using missile pods forever (actually they'd just drop 1,000 missiles out their back and turn them all on at the same time). The problem is Weber wanted a brilliant idea for his protagonist faction, came up with pods, but then realized he had to come up with a reason everyone wasn't already using them. Hence the justification that without launchers performance was inadequate. quote:The old pods' launchers had lacked the powerful mass-drivers which gave warships' missiles their initial impetus. That, in turn, gave them a lower initial velocity, and since their missiles had exactly the same drives as any other missile, they couldn't make up the velocity differential unless the ship-launched birds were stepped down to less than optimal power settings. If you didn't step your shipboard missiles down, you lost much of the saturation effect because the velocity discrepancy effectively split your launch into two separate salvos. Yet if you did step them down, the slower speed of your entire launch not only gave the enemy more time to evade and adjust his ECM, but also gave his active defenses extra tracking and engagement time. However, he failed to do the math because all that fancy justification is totally irrelevant given the crazy acceleration of missiles - if the mass drivers are launching them at reasonable speeds, the "extra tracking and engagement time" is on the order of 5 seconds or fewer. In order for that extra time to be anything close to significant, initial velocity from mass drivers has to be absurd. He wrote himself into a corner by coming up with pods and .2c missile launchers is the only way to make sense of his justifications.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 16:47
|
|
|
The wiki gives the accel of a typical single-drive missile at 18000 gravities for 180 seconds. Some back-of-the envelope calculations suggest a final speed of .27c. That's not much more than the .2c you're positing that the grave drivers must throw at for initial velocity.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 17:10
|
|
|
Those mass drivers must be pretty neat to accelerate a multi ton object to 0.2 C within the ship and without recoil obliterating everyone inside.
Velius fucked around with this message at 18:03 on May 8, 2020 |
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 17:18
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:The wiki gives the accel of a typical single-drive missile at 18000 gravities for 180 seconds. Some back-of-the envelope calculations suggest a final speed of .27c. That's not much more than the .2c you're positing that the grave drivers must throw at for initial velocity. quote:The typical capital ship missile of the late 19th and early 20th centuries Post Diaspora massed 80 tons and could accelerate at 46,000 G for perhaps 180 seconds That's the wiki quote I was using, although other wiki entries say 88,000g. quote:Mark 13 Edit
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 17:43
|
|
|
Velius posted:Those mass drivers must be pretty neat to accelerate a multi ton object to 0.2 C within the ship and without recoil obliterating everyone inside. There's no recoil in the Newtonian sense. The launchers are based on the same technology as the drive systems of starships, so there's nothing happening until catastrophic failure of the gravitic fields shows its ugly face. In one of the later books, Honor demonstrates what happens if you switch on the drive system of a ship inside the hangar of a larger ship and it's not pretty. I imagine something similar happens if a missile launcher is hit and destroyed in the split second were it spools up to fire a missile.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 18:09
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:If you want immense knowledge, you need to go to the Milhist thread. I'm just a dabbler. Maybe. But you sure do know a lot more than I do. blackmongoose posted:If that were the case everyone would have been using missile pods forever (actually they'd just drop 1,000 missiles out their back and turn them all on at the same time). The problem is Weber wanted a brilliant idea for his protagonist faction, came up with pods, but then realized he had to come up with a reason everyone wasn't already using them. Hence the justification that without launchers performance was inadequate. This is basically classic Weber. One of this biggest issues is that he tries to force things even when things aren't set up for it. Like the entire deal with like, the last quarter of the series where he decides to let Flint go ahead and gently caress up his timeline and introduce awful characters who basically make it even more impossible for his villains to actually succeed.
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 18:22
|
|
|
I told you about missile pods bro
|
|
#
?
May 8, 2020 18:32
|
|
|
i wonder if writing stuff about erewhon (where the organized crime families just function the same way as the manticoran aristocracy) ever brought weber near a point of epiphany about the idealized political worldview he constructed in Manticore
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2020 02:11
|
|
|
speaking of honorverse spinoffs, John Ringo's anthology contribution (space comedy in a sort of Banned from Argo tone) is probably his least-awful work, and is the first thing of his that I read it was not until many years later that I found out ringo steals all of his ideas for that sort of thing from anime
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2020 02:18
|
|
|
PupsOfWar posted:speaking of honorverse spinoffs, John Ringo's anthology contribution (space comedy in a sort of Banned from Argo tone) is probably his least-awful work, and is the first thing of his that I read Let's Go To Prague is a solid short story and makes me feel bad about all the good stories that crazy rear end in a top hat could have been writing instead of the rapey, Nazi-adjacent bullshit he's been making GBS threads out.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2020 02:36
|
|
|
PupsOfWar posted:i wonder if writing stuff about erewhon (where the organized crime families just function the same way as the manticoran aristocracy) ever brought weber near a point of epiphany about the idealized political worldview he constructed in Manticore He didn't seem to have any revelation when he made Beowulf into a corporate hellworld with corporate royalty (that Honor is a member of).
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2020 05:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 16, 2024 08:13 |
|
|
descriptions from earlier in the series make Beowulf's government sound like the sort of literal technocracy that crops up in utopian sci-fi (like Krypton, or the Arisians in lensmen, or the Foundation) but has few real-world antecedents i only skimmed the last two books however - does it work differently from how it was originally described? (yes i do know that, despite the lack of any prior indication to this effect, it turns out Allison's family are among the local bigwig families, meaning that Honor is actually a high-ranking aristocrat in 3 different star nations rather than just 2)
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2020 05:55
|
|