Battle of the Weberverse

[Highlord Laan]

This is a question that's been bouncing around my skull for a bit. The scenario is:

In a titanic WTF of gravity twisting, Honor Harrington aboard the Invictus (SDP) and the rest of Eighth Fleet, end up in the Starfire universe, post Shiva Option. Murphy and Ares team up to make everything go to shit.

Her opponent is Admiral Murakuma, commanding from a TFN Monitor, and has Fifth Fleet at her command. Starting range is extreme, allowing for no surprise broadsides out of nowhere.

Let the missiles fly.

[1stPalladin]

At the end of the Shiva Option, Murakuma has Sixth Fleet under her command with an order of battle of 7 MTs, 50 SDs, 10 BBs, 54 BCs, 23 CLs, 4 DDs, 40 CVs, and 80 CVLs. Additionally her ships carry 3665 fighters and 275 gunboats. Her fleet has over 51,000 offensive missiles (5031 SBM, 11480 CM, 32464 SM, and 2388 CAM) not including small craft munitions, and 14,970 anti-fighter missiles. Her longest ranges missles, the SBMs, have a range of 19 light seconds - 5.7 million km, the CMs have a range of 4.2 million km.

If by "starting range is extreme" you mean greater than 20 light seconds (point blank range in Honorverse), then Murakuma is screwed, since Honor's missiles have an effective range of over 70 million km. However, since Sixth Fleet doesn't use impeller wedges, Eighth Fleet wouldn't be able to detect them until much closer.
If you mean point blank range for the Starfire universe, then Honor faces 268 ships with at most the 86 combatants Spoiler

that Honor took to Haven (48 SDs, 6 CLACs, 12 BCs, 20 DDs and 12 freighters carrying more missile pods).

Although if the CLACs manage to launch some of their LACs (approximately 600 carried, each one masses more than the CLs or CVLs) then the force advantage swings even more in Honor's direction. I think the biggest threat to Eighth Fleet at energy mount range would be the small craft if Murakuma were inclined to use them as kamikazes (up the kilt collisions). I still think Sixth Fleet is screwed but Eighth Fleet will probably take some casualties. I think a lot of Sixth Fleet's missiles would be wasted on Manticoran wedges.

In my opinion Sixth Fleet is decisively defeated either way.

[Dahak]

At least given the Drive, Murakuma can most likely cut the battle if she finds herself in too much trouble.

[1stPalladin]

According to the Shiva Option, page 529, the Li Chien-lu (Murakuma's flagship) has a maximum sustainable velocity of .03c. IMO Murakuma would be in the positions the Bugs were in during all too many battles - unable to run away (if needed) and unable to catch the enemy. Her only chance to get away almost cleanly would be if Sixth Fleet happened to be at a warp point at the beginning of the battle.

[Connor MacLeod]

Depends entirely on precise ranges used, initial velcoities, and heading.

In general the Starfire universe has certian advantages. Massively greater firepower (high GT/low TT range firepower for its warships, on the basis of the Shiva Option and 2000 fighters rendering a planet uninhabitable in a couple strikes), a drive with high acceleration (near instantnaeous) and greater mobility, and correspondingly greater durability relative to said firepower.

The Honorverse basically has the potential that they can throw more missiles (with the faint chance of a kinetic impact kill) and have a higher top speed (Starfire tops out at .1 or .2c even for the fastest ships, while HV can go up to .6 or . and a massively greater weapons range with the tech eighth fleet has. This is balanced by the fact that Starfire (while having gravity) does not have a massive-ass wedge to home in on, and can have some pretty effective stealth (at least within, IIRC 10 or so LS of a target). And, if they engage outside of the hyper limit, they can use their drives for some measure of tactical FTL advantage (although power draw and recharge limitations will mean that they can't do this often I believe.)_

If an Honorverse ship can get up past .1 or .2c (not unreasonable) it can literally keep pace with or outrun anything the Furyverse could throw at it.. and again in theory paste them with missiles. I say "in theory" because the difference in firepower between Starfire and HV missiles is literally orders of magnitude. It is quite possible a SFverse Monitor, SD, or perhaps even a smaller vessel could tank most if not all of a Podnaught's payload, and that assumes all missiles and lasers from the laser head hit (highly improbable.) Hell, there's no reason they would tank them though - with their greater speed and mobility they would simply manuever around a missile swarm, or at worse manuver in such a way that it only catches part of the salvo at most (it could do either.)

Missile engagements DO still favor the HV side some. with the sidewalls and point defense. SF missiles don't have the needed penaids so at best have to explode at a distance. This can be offset by the fact they use "shaped charge" munitions in later novels (IIRC) and the sheer difference in yield. Likewise SF point defense is nothing like HV point defense, but again this is tempered by the aclk of SF missiles having a huge ass impeller wedge (and possibly being smaller and less massive) which coupled with the shorter effective engagement ranges of SF missiles (far shorter than a light minute anyhow) will limit tracking time even further.

If they get into energy range of course its no contest. The Starfire ships will maul the honroverse ships in short order.

If (somehow) the HV could use their missiles as KKV against STarfire ships they might get an easy victory, but considering they can't even get skin on skin contact (and rarely wedge on wedge) against their OWN universes' ships, nevermind something as hard to detect and agile as a SF ship would be, this seems a remote chance.

Unless we started with something absurd like "on other side of the systems" from each other and HV already had all its advantages in place (up to speed, with platforms already deployed, etc.) the debate is likely to go in favor of the SF side. Hell even if you do stack things in HV advantage (short of crippling the Starfire ships), victory is still quite possible for them given enough time (HV ships can't run/manuver forever, they'll run out of missiles, power, etc.) but in most cases would probably result in at best a draw. The disparities in favor of the Starfire verse are just too significant ot overcome any weaknesses it has against the HV.