Battlestar Galactica vs Honor Harrington

[NecronLord]

So, presumably, do the Ferengi. Perhaps Picard could tell the Ferengi ship's sensors were down or something?

[Simon_Jester]

And the second issue, that's not how Star Trek ships fight. It always comes down to it, in all canon Star Trek fights we seen. They are close range affairs, even if they can fight at long range. Harrington short range fights are 400,000 kilometer affairs or ten earth lengths away. Have we seen anything similar from Star Trek? No? Yeah...

Well... it depends. In the original series that was long range; in the more recent series they started having everything be knife-range because it made for better visuals.

And don't even get me started on thinking you can use missile weapons against the Harrington verse ships. These ships on the low end are used to dealing with volumes of fire of dozens of missiles a time. Even a thirty two missile wave was stopped cold by a Star Knight's defenses. The heavier ships can deal with missile waves of several hundred. And if we are talking late stage Harrington ships with the Pod Designs, your talking tens of thousands of missiles it's expected to be able to deal with.

That depends heavily on the era: the missile defense capabilities change enormously over the course of the series.

Photon torpedoes could actually work against the throat or kilt of an Honorverse ship. I doubt they'd have much chance of getting through the wedge, but... the lack of a gravitic signature is going to make them very hard to track for countermissile fire. Of course, a countermissile hit would swat them out of the sky easily enough... but it would have to be much closer to a "direct" hit, because there's no wedge interference. Likewise, the torpedoes are small targets for the close-in point defense lasers. Depending on how fast they cross the point defense envelope, they might get through, though since they have to close to a few hundred meters to do any real damage they'll run into problems after the Honorverse ships figure out that the best point defense plan is to hold fire until the missiles get really close.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Photon torpedoes could actually work against the throat or kilt of an Honorverse ship. I doubt they'd have much chance of getting through the wedge, but... the lack of a gravitic signature is going to make them very hard to track for countermissile fire.

Honorverse uses lasers for targeting and optical sensors as well; I think they'll be able to target and hit a missile that glows brightly like photon torpedoes do.

[Mr Bean]

Well... it depends. In the original series that was long range; in the more recent series they started having everything be knife-range because it made for better visuals.

Yeah no, the original series had engagements well into knife fighting range as well.

That depends heavily on the era: the missile defense capabilities change enormously over the course of the series.

Yes indeed, I went back and grabbed my copy. But even the HMS Fearless way back in book one. A ship that was gutted and had most of it's armaments removed was able to keep it together through over two hundred missiles tossed her way first in groups of two then in waves of six. That's day 1 of Honorverse ships can stop that many. Later on when pod designs started hitting the scene we saw ships stopped ten times as many. Star Trek ships can't put out Sirus levels of missile fire for one and even a light cruiser can manage that and survive.

Photon torpedoes could actually work against the throat or kilt of an Honorverse ship. I doubt they'd have much chance of getting through the wedge, but... the lack of a gravitic signature is going to make them very hard to track for countermissile fire. Of course, a countermissile hit would swat them out of the sky easily enough... but it would have to be much closer to a "direct" hit, because there's no wedge interference. Likewise, the torpedoes are small targets for the close-in point defense lasers. Depending on how fast they cross the point defense envelope, they might get through, though since they have to close to a few hundred meters to do any real damage they'll run into problems after the Honorverse ships figure out that the best point defense plan is to hold fire until the missiles get really close.

Honorverse ships use radar for target mapping. The FTL sensors are not the ones they use for aiming except at long range. Closer up they use standard radar with again the 400,0000 km bubble. Oh and counter missiles use wedges as their primary weapon. The wedge hits the enemy wedge and both are destroyed. Running a wedge into a proton torpedo will stop it just as well and they are designed to be as over-sized as possible to insure the best chance of hitting the target. Since the wedge is effectively a semi-umbrella shield projected in front of the counter missile which it tries to ram into the enemy missile. They just have to move the wall into the way of the incoming missile.

And yes the front of the wedge is open. That's why they go broadside to the enemy once they've gotten up enough velocity to fight.

[Simon_Jester]

Honorverse uses lasers for targeting and optical sensors as well; I think they'll be able to target and hit a missile that glows brightly like photon torpedoes do.

True, but it won't be nearly as easy as targeting that massive glaring impeller wedge. There are good reasons they rely on gravitics as their main passive sensors.

Yes indeed, I went back and grabbed my copy. But even the HMS Fearless way back in book one. A ship that was gutted and had most of it's armaments removed was able to keep it together through over two hundred missiles tossed her way first in groups of two then in waves of six. That's day 1 of Honorverse ships can stop that many.

My impression is that photon torpedoes have a cyclic rate of about one per second, whereas Sirius was firing one salvo per fifteen. That could make a noticeable difference in the point defense capabilities, especially with their long range countermissile acquisition ability degraded by the fact that their targets don't have wedges.

I think the best analogy for photon torpedoes is the energy torpedo armament we saw in On Basilisk Station. Maximum range of a few hundred thousand kilometers, high rate of fire, mid to high-megaton range firepower... completely useless against sidewalls.

Star Trek ships are ridiculously lightly armed by Honorverse standards; the only approach vector where they have any chance is by warping into the Honorverse ships' energy range ahead or behind them and popping a barrage of photons into their fore or after arcs. Against the heavier main gun and point defense batteries on the flanks, they wouldn't stand a chance.

Honorverse ships use radar for target mapping. The FTL sensors are not the ones they use for aiming except at long range. Closer up they use standard radar with again the 400,0000 km bubble. Oh and counter missiles use wedges as their primary weapon. The wedge hits the enemy wedge and both are destroyed. Running a wedge into a proton torpedo will stop it just as well and they are designed to be as over-sized as possible to insure the best chance of hitting the target. Since the wedge is effectively a semi-umbrella shield projected in front of the counter missile which it tries to ram into the enemy missile. They just have to move the wall into the way of the incoming missile.

Running over a photon torpedo with the wedge is a kill, but countermissiles can also score kills against Honorverse missiles by wedge interference (the two wedges hit and both missile drives burn out explosively). Against photons that's not possible. The countermissiles will still work, assuming they've got the right type of sensors (very likely, virtually certain). But they won't work as well, because their ability to score kills en passant gets cut: they need to get within fifty kilometers instead of 100, say.

Offsetting this is that photon torpedoes don't have much onboard ECM, as far as I know, whereas Honorverse countermissiles and shipboard CM control links have quite a bit of ECCM. The electronic warfare environment does not favor the Trekkers here.

The countermissiles will still work, with one substantial reduction in effectiveness and one inestimable, probably large improvement.

The laser clusters are going to be a LOT less effective at any given range, because they're engaging smaller targets, but on the other hand they're shooting at contact nukes, which means they can get kills on the final approach. If they try to get point defense kills outside of laser head range they're making a mistake and it will hurt them; if they hold fire until the photorps get within a few hundred kilometers they're almost assured of one shot per kill.

Whether the point defense of an Honorverse ship is adequate to stop a photon torpedo barrage depends very heavily on just how much missile defense the ship mounts, what arc the photorps are coming in from, and how many torpedoes are being launched. On the other hand, if the Trek ship hangs around for more than ten seconds or so they're probably doomed, because there is no WAY that they can take more than one or two hits from an Honorverse ship's chase energy weapons.
_______

The only chance a Trekker has (not a great chance, just the best they can come up with given their technical limitations) is to warp in from ahead or behind and shoot their ready torpedo magazines dry from the longest possible range, then warp out, praying that their shields hold up against any return fire from the target's chase armament. To fight Honorverse capital ships this would require coordinated squadron strikes, and you'd almost certainly lose one or more ships on each firing pass. If any of the torpedoes connect, which is far from certain, they're going to do a lot of superficial damage to the bow/stern of the target... at which point future firing runs might be survivable. Repeat enough times and you'll start doing damage to the impeller nodes, at which point the wedge starts to go down and you win.

No way would I even consider trying this without a huge tonnage advantage and a ship optimized for torpedo attacks like an Akira-class. Even then it would be risky and casualty-heavy, but it wouldn't be absolute suicide in the "charge the tanks with flint-tipped spears" sense. It's not as completely hopeless as taking the same Trek ships up against Imperial star destroyers or 40k ships would be.

This would likely fail entirely if I were trying to defend an objective, because my odds of stopping the Honorverse ships before they come into missile range of whatever I'm trying to defend are effectively zero.

[Serafina]

Regarding the "open wedge" issue:
Both the front and the back of a ship CAN be protected with a sidewall.
It's just that they do not do it until the CLAC-era, since it prevents acceleration, deceleration and course changes with their impeller wedges (tough it is still possible with reaction drives) - which normally costs too much tactical advantage to be worthwile.

But if Trek-ships start exploiting this big time, then they could strap sidewall generators to the front and back - we have seen them jury-rigging those at least once.

[Starglider]

I think this has adequately illustrated my original point, which is that Trek vs HH is at least a debate (though heavily in favor of HH), wheras HH vs BSG is not.

[dragon]

And the second issue, that's not how Star Trek ships fight. It always comes down to it, in all canon Star Trek fights we seen. They are close range affairs, even if they can fight at long range. Harrington short range fights are 400,000 kilometer affairs or ten earth lengths away. Have we seen anything similar from Star Trek? No? Yeah...

Well... it depends. In the original series that was long range; in the more recent series they started having everything be knife-range because it made for better visuals.

There was one case in the the TNG where a fight was conducted at long range. The episode where the rogue federation captain was attacking the Cardiassians. When the Enterprise was watching they were using a tactile display with ranges on it while we don't know the exact distances involved but you could tell they were fighting at what ever they consider long range.

[Enigma]

Photon torpedoes are FTL? Since when?

They've got warp sustainers. While they cannot achieve warp speed on their own, they can maintain warp speed when launched while in warp.

[Simon_Jester]

I think this has adequately illustrated my original point, which is that Trek vs HH is at least a debate (though heavily in favor of HH), wheras HH vs BSG is not.

Very, very heavily. The only reason the Trekkers stand even the vaguest shade of a chance is because of their ability to (from an Honorverse point of view) teleport into energy range at will. Even then it's about like taking Zulus up against a Victorian expeditionary force... you might win a few battles but you're practically guaranteed to lose the war.

[Batman]

This is one situation where the Trekkie's vaunted Warp Strafing maneuver would come in handy
And while I agree Simon_Jester's approach is about the only chance they have to land a hit, I think it's an even lousier chance than he already allows for.
-Photon torpedoes are not only painfully visible, they're also BLASTED SLOW. Even in the long range TOS engagements they IIRC needed several seconds to cover a few 10,000 km, giving PD plenty of time to engage unless the Trek ship warps in REALLY close.
-How quickly can the Trek ship get a firing solution, release her torpedoes, and warp out again? All it takes is ONE chaser energy mount getting a lock and the party is over.
-Honorverse ships routinely survive hits from their own weapons (they're damaged, but they don't die instantly). Those are energy weapon hits even for missiles (the standard missile warhead is a laser head). A photon torpedo spreads its already comparatively meager yield over the entire frontal area of the target ship. I wouldn't be surprised if Honorverse ships could simply take that on their armour.

[Coalition]

Running over a photon torpedo with the wedge is a kill, but countermissiles can also score kills against Honorverse missiles by wedge interference (the two wedges hit and both missile drives burn out explosively). Against photons that's not possible. The countermissiles will still work, assuming they've got the right type of sensors (very likely, virtually certain). But they won't work as well, because their ability to score kills en passant gets cut: they need to get within fifty kilometers instead of 100, say.

Offsetting this is that photon torpedoes don't have much onboard ECM, as far as I know, whereas Honorverse countermissiles and shipboard CM control links have quite a bit of ECCM. The electronic warfare environment does not favor the Trekkers here.

The countermissiles will still work, with one substantial reduction in effectiveness and one inestimable, probably large improvement.

I'd see countermissiles being used vs photons initially, then someone relaizes that firing a ~12 ton countermissile (Manty countermissiles are about 12 tons, IIRC) to kill a ~quarter ton photon torpedo (from the TechManuals) doesn't make much sense. You'd have to kill 48 photons with every countermissile to break even.

The annoying part is that they will realize that the half-ton photon is still a megaton yield weapon, in spite of its size. HHverse missiles are ~.5 MT per ton of missile mass, IIRC. Photorps from here are 7-24 MT yield, and only mass ~.25 tons, for a yield of 28-96 MT per ton of ammo.

The laser clusters are going to be a LOT less effective at any given range, because they're engaging smaller targets, but on the other hand they're shooting at contact nukes, which means they can get kills on the final approach. If they try to get point defense kills outside of laser head range they're making a mistake and it will hurt them; if they hold fire until the photorps get within a few hundred kilometers they're almost assured of one shot per kill.

The other nice part about PD lasers, is that photorps don't have a wedge to protect themselves with. So what would be misses normally (due to missile wedge interference) turn into hits. The other fun would be that if they did machine gun style rather than claymore style laser PD firing, so as the photons got closer they'd keep getting killed. Using laser clusters claymore style would mean more shots at longer range, but the capacitors recharging (and lasers cooling) as the photons continue to close.

But against BSG, I'd see the first wave of defending Vipers (or Raiders) getting killed in a few seconds at half light-second ranges. From there, the main missile batteries (or given the range, the main beam weapons) would carve up Galactica or a Basestar for target practice.

[Serafina]

Running over a photon torpedo with the wedge is a kill, but countermissiles can also score kills against Honorverse missiles by wedge interference (the two wedges hit and both missile drives burn out explosively). Against photons that's not possible. The countermissiles will still work, assuming they've got the right type of sensors (very likely, virtually certain). But they won't work as well, because their ability to score kills en passant gets cut: they need to get within fifty kilometers instead of 100, say.

Offsetting this is that photon torpedoes don't have much onboard ECM, as far as I know, whereas Honorverse countermissiles and shipboard CM control links have quite a bit of ECCM. The electronic warfare environment does not favor the Trekkers here.

The countermissiles will still work, with one substantial reduction in effectiveness and one inestimable, probably large improvement.

I'd see countermissiles being used vs photons initially, then someone relaizes that firing a ~12 ton countermissile (Manty countermissiles are about 12 tons, IIRC) to kill a ~quarter ton photon torpedo (from the TechManuals) doesn't make much sense. You'd have to kill 48 photons with every countermissile to break even.

The annoying part is that they will realize that the half-ton photon is still a megaton yield weapon, in spite of its size. HHverse missiles are ~.5 MT per ton of missile mass, IIRC. Photorps from here are 7-24 MT yield, and only mass ~.25 tons, for a yield of 28-96 MT per ton of ammo.

Well, if you want maximum firepower, you can just use standard nukes.
Which HH would propably do rather soon - they have no reason to use stand-off bomb-pumped laserwarheads against a target without any point defense.
Given that these are in the high megaton (and IIRC up to gigaton) range, Trek would have a lot of trouble with them.

[Batman]

I'd see countermissiles being used vs photons initially, then someone relaizes that firing a ~12 ton countermissile (Manty countermissiles are about 12 tons, IIRC) to kill a ~quarter ton photon torpedo (from the TechManuals) doesn't make much sense. You'd have to kill 48 photons with every countermissile to break even.

That's hogwash. Who cares how much the projectiles masses? The question is does the countermissile cost more than the damage the photorp would cause if it hit.

The annoying part is that they will realize that the half-ton photon is still a megaton yield weapon, in spite of its size. HHverse missiles are ~.5 MT per ton of missile mass, IIRC. Photorps from here are 7-24 MT yield, and only mass ~.25 tons, for a yield of 28-96 MT per ton of ammo.

Happily ignoring the fact that photon torpedoes carry NO penaids, no ECM, no ECCM, are slow as molasses and NOT megaton to boot. As has been mentioned umpteen million times before the main site hasn't been updated in eons and still uses non-canon TM material. Photorps are midrange KT to low MT. Oh, and I'd like some sources for your Honoverse missile yields per ton because the ONLY quantified yields I remember were the 250MT stealth torpedoes used in Ashes of Victory.

The other nice part about PD lasers, is that photorps don't have a wedge to protect themselves with. So what would be misses normally (due to missile wedge interference) turn into hits.

Um-PDLs will almost inevitably fire down the missile wedge's throat due to the missile heading for the ship they're mounted on. Wedge interference is likely to be a nonfactor at PDL ranges.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, if you want maximum firepower, you can just use standard nukes.
Which HH would propably do rather soon - they have no reason to use stand-off bomb-pumped laserwarheads against a target without any point defense.
Given that these are in the high megaton (and IIRC up to gigaton) range, Trek would have a lot of trouble with them.

Trek ships would be well advised to go into warp if someone starts lobbing missiles at them; it's the only way for them to break a lock, and they can't outrun the missiles in normal space. The flip side of that is that they can go into warp at normal missile ranges, because they have a few minutes before the missiles get there.

Basically, the Trekkers don't stand a chance of doing any damage anywhere but in the Honorverse ship's after and chase energy envelopes, and even there things are dangerous. Their one advantage is tactical FTL; if they use it competently they've at least got a good chance of getting into a position where they could potentially harm the enemy.

I'd see countermissiles being used vs photons initially, then someone relaizes that firing a ~12 ton countermissile (Manty countermissiles are about 12 tons, IIRC) to kill a ~quarter ton photon torpedo (from the TechManuals) doesn't make much sense. You'd have to kill 48 photons with every countermissile to break even.

What Batman said. It's not whether a countermissile is heavier (or more expensive) than the photon it kills, it's whether it's heavier (or more expensive) than the crater the photon will make in your hull when it hits.

The annoying part is that they will realize that the half-ton photon is still a megaton yield weapon, in spite of its size. HHverse missiles are ~.5 MT per ton of missile mass, IIRC. Photorps from here are 7-24 MT yield, and only mass ~.25 tons, for a yield of 28-96 MT per ton of ammo.

Honorverse missiles are mostly drive, measured by weight; the nuclear warhead is practically an afterthought. They wouldn't even bother with warheads if they didn't have to worry about sidewalls; at top speed the missiles carry far more kinetic energy than they do nuclear energy.

Photon torpedoes are mostly warhead by weight, in contrast; the drive is much smaller and more compact (and far, far shorter ranged).

The other nice part about PD lasers, is that photorps don't have a wedge to protect themselves with. So what would be misses normally (due to missile wedge interference) turn into hits.

Yes, but since missiles have to come screaming down your throat anyway, you already get relatively clear shots at them most of the time, wedge or no wedge.

The other fun would be that if they did machine gun style rather than claymore style laser PD firing, so as the photons got closer they'd keep getting killed. Using laser clusters claymore style would mean more shots at longer range, but the capacitors recharging (and lasers cooling) as the photons continue to close.

Yes, but you'd have a better chance of scoring multiple kills at long range, once you rewrote the tactical doctrine to target multiple missiles with each cluster. Might be a toss-up, though I'd be inclined to go for claymore shots at close range for optimum kill rates. Sure, keep up some laser fire at long range, but make sure you have something in reserve for when they get close, because they are small targets and they won't even scratch the paint if they go off more than a few dozen kilometers away. At that range, a laser cluster capable of engaging at a hundred thousand kilometers can't miss, so your final defensive fire will be devastating.

This is one situation where the Trekkie's vaunted Warp Strafing maneuver would come in handy

Oh, God, would it ever. With warp strafing they could actually win... Hell, the one form of warp strafing they can actually do is firing photon torpedoes at FTL speeds while in warp. That would be extremely useful here because it would offset the torpedoes' speed disadvantage (and make them nigh-invisible because they've already hit you by the time you see their massive glowiness).

-Photon torpedoes are not only painfully visible, they're also BLASTED SLOW. Even in the long range TOS engagements they IIRC needed several seconds to cover a few 10,000 km, giving PD plenty of time to engage unless the Trek ship warps in REALLY close.

Too close; at that point they're in point defense range themselves, though I'm not sure PD laser clusters actually have the firepower to hammer down a Trek ship's shielding in the time available. The main energy battery does, no question- the shields might soak one hit but that's it, and even that may be pushing it- but the point defense? Those aren't designed to penetrate capital ship armor; they're for killing soft-skinned missiles.

Again, it might only be possible to do this from warp, and that's going have vicious effects on their hit rate. Do we have a solid figure on torpedo speed that isn't contradicted by other examples?

-How quickly can the Trek ship get a firing solution, release her torpedoes, and warp out again? All it takes is ONE chaser energy mount getting a lock and the party is over.

Very true. On the other hand, don't underestimate the problem here from the Honorverse ship's point of view. Taking the sensor array off, say, a Star Knight, it's designed to do a lot of things, but suddenly lock onto a target that teleported into energy range 100,000 km astern isn't one of them.

In the initial engagements, the sheer tactical surprise could allow Trek ships to get away with it; they're used to dealing with ships that have to make a relatively leisurely, easy to track emergence from FTL drive... and which are extremely vulnerable as they reconfigure the drive from FTL to STL mode. That's not just going to be an expectation designed into the equipment; it's going to be part of their tactical doctrine: their ships normally have more than a few seconds to identify targets for fire control.

Once the Honorverse ships get used to having to put their chase energy weapons on immediate standby to be fired on short notice, things are going to get a lot riskier for the Trekkers, unless they can fire from warp. Which, again, will do very bad things for their hit rate.
(are photorps self-guided, or do they require guidance from the launch platform?)

-Honorverse ships routinely survive hits from their own weapons (they're damaged, but they don't die instantly). Those are energy weapon hits even for missiles (the standard missile warhead is a laser head). A photon torpedo spreads its already comparatively meager yield over the entire frontal area of the target ship. I wouldn't be surprised if Honorverse ships could simply take that on their armour.

Depends. Remember the effects of contact nukes on Sirius and Thunder of God? Those were ships with a battlecruiser-grade armor scheme, and a close range explosion in the megaton range still did a lot of surface damage. You won't punch into the core hull that way, but surface hits will do a lot of damage to sensors and weapon mounts... which, as I noted earlier, greatly reduces the ship's ability to defend itself against another pass.

Laser heads and grasers show much better penetration characteristics, it's true, but the main reason that nukes and "energy torpedoes" went out of style in the Honorverse isn't that they can't do damage. It's that they can't get them to the target, because neither of them is good at punching through sidewalls. If they weren't limited to normal-space approaches that give the target time to interpose the wedge against that type of attack, it would still be (somewhat) useful.

In any event, if this were to be tried, almost everything would depend on getting a few solid torpedo hits on the bow or after hammerhead in the opening engagement, when the Trek attacker still has tactical surprise. If not, continuing the attack is liable to lead to "Point defense free, splash one." Risky as hell- though I said that before.

[Batman]

-Photon torpedoes are not only painfully visible, they're also BLASTED SLOW. Even in the long range TOS engagements they IIRC needed several seconds to cover a few 10,000 km, giving PD plenty of time to engage unless the Trek ship warps in REALLY close.

Too close; at that point they're in point defense range themselves, though I'm not sure PD laser clusters actually have the firepower to hammer down a Trek ship's shielding in the time available. The main energy battery does, no question- the shields might soak one hit but that's it, and even that may be pushing it- but the point defense? Those aren't designed to penetrate capital ship armor; they're for killing soft-skinned missiles.

Concur. The one time we've seen PDLs used against anything OTHER than missiles they killed the armament on a slaver and blew holes in her unarmoured hull in the process but that's about it.

Again, it might only be possible to do this from warp, and that's going have vicious effects on their hit rate. Do we have a solid figure on torpedo speed that isn't contradicted by other examples?

You gotta be kidding me. You get everything from the 'makes a modern day missile look speedy' TOS movie/TNG torpedoes through the 'couple 1000 kps' TOS torpedoes to the one-off never seen again '8 million km in under half a minute' photorp from VOY. Chances are there's NOTHING in TNG+ Trek that ISN'T contradicted by some episode or other.

-How quickly can the Trek ship get a firing solution, release her torpedoes, and warp out again? All it takes is ONE chaser energy mount getting a lock and the party is over.

Very true. On the other hand, don't underestimate the problem here from the Honorverse ship's point of view. Taking the sensor array off, say, a Star Knight, it's designed to do a lot of things, but suddenly lock onto a target that teleported into energy range 100,000 km astern isn't one of them.

That's why I phrased it as a question. I'm theoretically inclined to give it to the Trek crew because they're going in KNOWING they'll have to set up a snapshot while the HHverse crew has to first establish the target is a hostile to begin with (at least for the initial engagements) and then establish a lock. Once it has been established that ships popping in out of nowhere ARE invariably hostile I predict things getting rough on the Trek side though-they HHverse side can set up their systems so that targets doing that are immediately engaged on autopilot with nobody of the crew having to lift a finger.

Once the Honorverse ships get used to having to put their chase energy weapons on immediate standby to be fired on short notice, things are going to get a lot riskier for the Trekkers, unless they can fire from warp. Which, again, will do very bad things for their hit rate.
(are photorps self-guided, or do they require guidance from the launch platform?)

Never explicitly stated but given the ease with which that torpedo in TUC was modified to be self-guiding and no mention whatsoever of the launching ship having to paint the target/guide the torpedo I'm inclined to consider photon torpedoes fire-and-forget or at worst fire-and-update weapons.

-Honorverse ships routinely survive hits from their own weapons (they're damaged, but they don't die instantly). Those are energy weapon hits even for missiles (the standard missile warhead is a laser head). A photon torpedo spreads its already comparatively meager yield over the entire frontal area of the target ship. I wouldn't be surprised if Honorverse ships could simply take that on their armour.

Depends. Remember the effects of contact nukes on Sirius and Thunder of God? Those were ships with a battlecruiser-grade armor scheme, and a close range explosion in the megaton range still did a lot of surface damage.

Sirius had battlecruiser grade WEAPONRY, nothing more. And while Thunder of God was a proper battlecruiser, not only was the damage pretty superficial in both cases, but without knowing the yield of the warheads used that doesn't tell us much. MT range is a pretty wide margin.

You won't punch into the core hull that way, but surface hits will do a lot of damage to sensors and weapon mounts... which, as I noted earlier, greatly reduces the ship's ability to defend itself against another pass.

Assuming you achieve that damage to begin with. Photorps are midrange KT to maybe low single figure MT. Honorverse contact nukes are undetermined MT range.

[Mr Bean]

Assuming you achieve that damage to begin with. Photorps are midrange KT to maybe low single figure MT. Honorverse contact nukes are undetermined MT range.

Incorrect we know from Storm from the Shadows the pre-war Mark 16 had a 15 megaton warhead for their laserheads. And it was stated in At all Costs that contact nukes had a three to one size on the laser heads because all the extra space for the cones and generators was filled with a bigger nuke. Note even "contact" nukes are not contact but rather proximity nukes. Getting a skin on skin contact is regarded as almost impossible before pod design.

But now, thanks primarily to fallout from the Star Kingdom’s ongoing emphasis on improving its grav-pulse FTL communications capability, BuWeaps had completed field testing and begun production of a new generation of substantially more powerful gravity generators for the cruiser-weight Mark 16. In fact, they’d almost doubled the grav lens amplification factor, and while they were at it, they’d increased the yield of the missile warhead, as well. With its fifteen megaton warhead, the Mark 16 had been capable of dealing with heavy cruiser or battlecruiser armor, although punching through to the interior of a battlecruiser had pushed it almost to the limit. Now, with the new Mod G’s forty megaton warhead and improved grav lensing, the Mark 16 had very nearly as much punch as an all-up capital missile from as recently as five or six T-years ago.

[Batman]

I haven't read 'Storm from the Shadows' yet, so thanks, especially as that mainly reinforces my point-Honorverse 'contact' nukes are apparently midrange double-digit MT range for cruiser weight missiles.

[eyl]

-Photon torpedoes are not only painfully visible, they're also BLASTED SLOW. Even in the long range TOS engagements they IIRC needed several seconds to cover a few 10,000 km, giving PD plenty of time to engage unless the Trek ship warps in REALLY close.

Too close; at that point they're in point defense range themselves, though I'm not sure PD laser clusters actually have the firepower to hammer down a Trek ship's shielding in the time available. The main energy battery does, no question- the shields might soak one hit but that's it, and even that may be pushing it- but the point defense? Those aren't designed to penetrate capital ship armor; they're for killing soft-skinned missiles.

Concur. The one time we've seen PDLs used against anything OTHER than missiles they killed the armament on a slaver and blew holes in her unarmoured hull in the process but that's about it.

I don't know if that can be taken as an upper limit, though, as Terekhov specified "force neutralization" when ordering the PDCs be used (after the slaver had opened fire) - they were trying to disarm the ship rather without destroying it.

[Sheridan]

Something to consider about the warp strafing aspect of this.

If I recall correctly, gravitational effects often impinge upon subspace in Trek episodes. Since warp fields rely on subspace for their generation and photon torpedoes are warp capable, wouldn't that imply that the (gravity-based) sidewalls and wedges of the Honorverse ships would have an effect upon the torpedoes' function--even if the Trek ships could fire from warp at an STL target?

That would make the strafing runs enormously more difficult (not that they're easy right now, needing the Trek ship to drop from warp at a very specific point and engage right then).

[The Dark]

Assuming you achieve that damage to begin with. Photorps are midrange KT to maybe low single figure MT. Honorverse contact nukes are undetermined MT range.

Incorrect we know from Storm from the Shadows the pre-war Mark 16 had a 15 megaton warhead for their laserheads. And it was stated in At all Costs that contact nukes had a three to one size on the laser heads because all the extra space for the cones and generators was filled with a bigger nuke. Note even "contact" nukes are not contact but rather proximity nukes. Getting a skin on skin contact is regarded as almost impossible before pod design.

Mark 16 is post-First Manticore-Haven War (there are so many wars, pre-war's a bit fuzzy now ); it's one of the dual-drive missiles that replaced MDMs. The significant upgrade in your quote was the Mod G 40 megaton warhead. It's probable the original Mark 16 was primarily a drive upgrade to the standard cruiser missile; the Mod G was a firepower upgrade to the Mark 16.

Now, that also explicitly states the Mark 16 is a cruiser warhead. A capital ship will have a heavier warhead. Additionally, a laser head will provide a higher energy density on a smaller area - a standard nuke is like a hammer. A shaped-charge nuke is like an axe. A laser head is like a rapier. You lose some total energy, because the hafnium lasing rods won't receive 100% of the energy of the nuke, but it will focus ridiculously tightly. And it's not the total energy that matters, but the energy density you can put on the target.

There's also the Mistletoe recon drone from At All Costs, which can carry a 500 megaton warhead. It's not as fast as a missile, but it's stealthy.

Regarding the "open wedge" issue:
Both the front and the back of a ship CAN be protected with a sidewall.
It's just that they do not do it until the CLAC-era, since it prevents acceleration, deceleration and course changes with their impeller wedges (tough it is still possible with reaction drives) - which normally costs too much tactical advantage to be worthwile.

The Saganami-C class (Hexapuma and her sisters) can put up a partial bow wall that doesn't prevent acceleration. Things can still get through at acute angles, but it fills most of the throat of the wedge without causing problems.

True, but it won't be nearly as easy as targeting that massive glaring impeller wedge. There are good reasons they rely on gravitics as their main passive sensors.

Sure there are - and the main one is because in the Honorverse, gravitics are FTL sensors. Torch of Freedom clearly shows that's not their sole sensor, though. With gravitics, Luff and Rozsak are able to tell when ships' wedges drop, but don't know exactly what they hit:

Adrian Luff knew his first wave of missiles had just ripped into the enemy formation. He'd seen their impeller signatures vanishing from his FTL gravitic detectors as they were picked off by defenders or reached the ends of their runs and detonated, and those same gravtics also told him three of the enemy starships' wedges had also disappeared. But that was all the information he had, and it would be another half-minute before his light-speed sensors could tell him how much more damage they might have done.

It's not directly referenced in the quote, but a combination of radar, lidar, and gravitics are used for detection and targeting.

My impression is that photon torpedoes have a cyclic rate of about one per second, whereas Sirius was firing one salvo per fifteen. That could make a noticeable difference in the point defense capabilities, especially with their long range countermissile acquisition ability degraded by the fact that their targets don't have wedges.

In Torch of Freedom, a small task force of cruisers is able to salvo 360 missiles per 12 seconds, or 30 missiles per second. There would also be the issue of small payloads on many of the Trek ships - an Intrepid-class cruiser (such as Voyager) only carries about 40 torpedoes. A Galaxy-class carries 250. Sure, you can fire a missile a second - but for a cruiser, less than a minute's combat will take up all your missile resources. A Galaxy can keep it up for just over 4 minutes.
Also, PD laser clusters can fire once every two seconds. Therefore, half the point defense weapons can fire on every missile if they can only fire once during the approach. If the missiles fly slowly enough that multiple shots can be attempted, it goes up proportionally. A Nike carries 30 PD lasers per broadside, allowing at least 15 shots against each torpedo. The obsolete Jean Bart has 16 clusters, allowing 8 shots per missile.

[Mr Bean]

The Dark per the books the Mark 16 was a range upgrade not a warhead upgrade it's mentioned several times the first MDM's were simply standard missiles on a new propulsion body. IE the warhead was the same until the MK 40 upgrade. So at the start of "On Basilisk Station" the missiles the Fearless were tossing about were still 15 megaton warheads except on a 5 million kilometer ranged missile instead of a 60 million kilometer ranged missile.

[Simon_Jester]

Incorrect we know from Storm from the Shadows the pre-war Mark 16 had a 15 megaton warhead for their laserheads. And it was stated in At all Costs that contact nukes had a three to one size on the laser heads because all the extra space for the cones and generators was filled with a bigger nuke. Note even "contact" nukes are not contact but rather proximity nukes. Getting a skin on skin contact is regarded as almost impossible before pod design...

And after, which is why they keep using laser heads.

Thing is, from the point of view of Honorverse weapons, there's no difference between 100, 1000, and 10000 meters, tactically speaking. Everything can hit at ranges far greater than that, after all, and at the speeds involved it's a matter of milliseconds to close that distance. If you can get a proximity hit with a nuke on a warship at all, you can get close enough for your ~100 kt or ~1 Mt nuke to do significant damage to surface features. Again, I'm not talking about penetrating the armor, except possibly with sustained barrages.

Something to consider about the warp strafing aspect of this.

If I recall correctly, gravitational effects often impinge upon subspace in Trek episodes. Since warp fields rely on subspace for their generation and photon torpedoes are warp capable, wouldn't that imply that the (gravity-based) sidewalls and wedges of the Honorverse ships would have an effect upon the torpedoes' function--even if the Trek ships could fire from warp at an STL target?

That would make the strafing runs enormously more difficult (not that they're easy right now, needing the Trek ship to drop from warp at a very specific point and engage right then).

I wouldn't expect them to be able to get through the sidewalls at all, let alone the wedge... but I'd been taking that for granted from day one. The only thing I can see working is a rather desperate tactic involving point-blank engagement from ahead and astern, where the wedge isn't. Firing from warp MIGHT (might!) allow the Trekkers to launch and leave with impunity, but even so they're going to have a lot of trouble stopping Honorverse ships, and it's quite conceivable that they could shoot their magazines dry and still not do more than minor damage, unless they have a major tonnage advantage.
________

True, but it won't be nearly as easy as targeting that massive glaring impeller wedge. There are good reasons they rely on gravitics as their main passive sensors.

Sure there are - and the main one is because in the Honorverse, gravitics are FTL sensors. Torch of Freedom clearly shows that's not their sole sensor, though...

Oh, of course not. Never thought otherwise. But practically speaking, Honorverse ships rely very heavily on gravitics for long-range detection and early warning. Radar, lidar, and (presumably) passive EM detection are secondary methods, because most interesting objects in the Honorverse are visible on gravitics long before they can be seen by other means. Tracking photon torpedoes via radar won't be as easy as tracking impeller-drive missiles via gravitics. Possible, I'm quite sure, but not easy.

In Torch of Freedom, a small task force of cruisers is able to salvo 360 missiles per 12 seconds, or 30 missiles per second. There would also be the issue of small payloads on many of the Trek ships - an Intrepid-class cruiser (such as Voyager) only carries about 40 torpedoes. A Galaxy-class carries 250. Sure, you can fire a missile a second - but for a cruiser, less than a minute's combat will take up all your missile resources. A Galaxy can keep it up for just over 4 minutes.

Yes. Remember, I'm envisioning this as a desperation tactic: warp into torpedo range, ripple-fire as many torpedoes as is consistent with safety, then warp out. Shooting your magazines dry in one massive launch in hopes that some of your shots will score is a perfectly valid tactic if you're thinking like a fighter-bomber pilot rather than a naval officer... and the Trekkers have to think like that if they want to make a dent.

Also, PD laser clusters can fire once every two seconds. Therefore, half the point defense weapons can fire on every missile if they can only fire once during the approach. If the missiles fly slowly enough that multiple shots can be attempted, it goes up proportionally. A Nike carries 30 PD lasers per broadside, allowing at least 15 shots against each torpedo. The obsolete Jean Bart has 16 clusters, allowing 8 shots per missile.

Keep in mind that I'm proposing approach from ahead or astern. Trek ships stand no chance of winning an engagement against Honorverse ships when approaching in their broadside firing arc, not at any range.

[Batman]

Thing is, from the point of view of Honorverse weapons, there's no difference between 100, 1000, and 10000 meters, tactically speaking. Everything can hit at ranges far greater than that, after all, and at the speeds involved it's a matter of milliseconds to close that distance. If you can get a proximity hit with a nuke on a warship at all, you can get close enough for your ~100 kt or ~1 Mt nuke to do significant damage to surface features.

As evidenced by-what again? ALL damages done by proximity nukes against warships in the Honorverse were apparently done by double digit and up MT warheads and EVEN THEN they essentially annoyed a battlecruiser and moderately inconvenienced a battlecruiser-tonnage Q-ship.

Again, I'm not talking about penetrating the armor, except possibly with sustained barrages.

Um, if they're not penetrating the armour, they're not going to do anything worthwhile whatsoever.

[Mr Bean]

To second something Batman said. An Honorverse ship is built with damage control in mind. Per the books, a ship can be shot to @#$#@4 but unless it can get a hit on the Internal compensator or a fusion bottle it can keep on fighting until local power sources are exhausted. To the point at which their are internal runways to transfer missiles from tube to tube in the event of catastrophic damage. Their are complete stores of most key "breakables" on the weapon mounts store in separate areas from the weapons themselves. It's rare they can't salvage some part of the gun and get it halfway working despite taking hits from hundred plus kiloton to several megaton strength beams. In fact a key point of the books because we follow Honor around in several of them is the simple fact that Honorverse ships take lots to kill. And they can keep on fighting with 2/3rds of their crew dead and 90% of their weapons shot to scrap and still put up a fight.