Legend of Galactic Heroes vs. Honorverse

[Simon_Jester]

I can't help but wonder exactly what form these penetration aids might take, given that the missile warheads blow up twenty to thirty thousand kilometers from their targets- does the thing fire some kind of "soften up the shield" ray so that the relatively weak X-ray laser can get through where a ludicrous amount of high energy charged particles wouldn't?

I can accept that yes, this is what Weber intended. But it strikes me as incredibly inelegant- his ships expend enormous amounts of power to move their missiles, and only a tiny fraction of that actually reaches the target.

Let's just say it doesn't do any great wonders for my appreciation of the setting.

[takemeout_totheblack]

What would the first contact situation be like? What would the ideal economic and political situation be for both sides?

Best possible scenario for LoGH (my opinion):
Reinhard's 180,000 strong flatten-the-FPA fleet Spoiler

has just got finished doing just that and

discovers a wormhole to the Honorverse. Frustrated Spoiler

at Admiral Yang Wenli's untimely and ignominious death

Reinhard sees this new Verse as a potential opportunity to lead his forces to the victory he felt he was denied. So there's the drive to fight.
They have established a defense perimeter around the wormhole and sent in an advance fleet of a thousand ships. They have an extensive industrial base Spoiler

in the freshly conquered FPA territories and

in their territory and the region is more or less politically stable. So there's the logistics.

I pick this point in time as this is when the Empire is at its peak in terms of political solidarity and strength and is at it's most mobilized militarily, ideal in terms of performing an invasion of sizable amounts of territory.


I don't know much about the Honorverse, but what would be the best time for them to attempt to repel an invasion of this magnitude? Was there ever a political climate favorable enough for them to ally with the in-Verse heavy hitter the Solarian League? The Honorverse wiki (best I got, sorry) has it that their navy is greater than the combined forces of Manticore and Haven. Facing the Galactic Empire, I'd imagine they'd be the best bet at somewhat curbing the numerical advantage.

What would their reaction be to the Imperial advanced fleet? What kind of force would they be willing to assemble quickly?

[Simon_Jester]

Solarian ships have a major disadvantage- no MDMs; they simply don't have the range to whittle down LoGH fleets from outside LoGH fleets' effective range. Nor do they actually have more than a few thousand capital ships in active service, plus something like 8000 in reserve. They'd help, though; quite a bit.

The best time for the Honorverse to repel the invasion would have been before the outbreak of the second round of the Manticore-Haven War, at a time when a sudden invasion from another universe by extremely large enemy battlefleets would draw the Solarian League's attention- that they would take seriously, once they wrapped their brains around the fact that the enemy had even more ships than they did. And at a time when Manticore and Haven could at least suspend the march toward hostilities in principle, allowing the two powers that might enjoy a significant technological edge over the enemy to do something about it if the Great Crossover Wormhole opens anywhere near their space.

Though it's worth noting that this wormhole can't operate by Honorverse wormhole rules, or it would be practically useless for transferring LoGH-scale battlefleets; you'd be moving ships through for weeks...

[takemeout_totheblack]

Okay, let's say it's non-Honorverse portal of roughly equal dimensions to the Iserlohn Corridor at its narrowest (something like 1000 kilometers wide?) So it would be possible for both sides to defend with the usual fair of mines or big fuck-off stations and such.

For the sake of provocation let's say the negative space wedgie materializes outside both Manticore's and Haven's respective territories, but is closer to them than it is to anyone else, therefore any significant fleet movements would be perceived as an immediate threat to both.

In this scenario a mysterious fleet of 1000 ships has arrived in the territorially neutral Aphid system. While not an important system in and of itself, the fact that such a large fleet appeared from nowhere is. What kind of force could be expected to arrive at this system, a dozen ships, a hundred, a thousand? And which side is more likely to pick a fight?

[Simon_Jester]

The Imperials would be far more likely to pick a fight, because they have literally no concept of a legitimate human polity which they don't rule. Even if there's no systematic policy of conquest coming down to them from a high level, this will affect their actions in small-scale affairs to the point where war becomes more likely.

The FPA (while it exists) at least has a concept of diplomacy, and won't go looking for a new fight when they're already fighting for their lives against the Empire. Heck, they might even come asking for help, or at least technical support.

The Honorverse powers are relatively unlikely to push an offensive unless there's some kind of horrible misunderstanding; the default state in their setting is one of peace between nations that treat each other as approximate equals.

[takemeout_totheblack]

Would either the Havens or the Manticores meet the force with an equal force (in this case 1000 ships) or would they err on the side of caution and send a smaller diplomatic fleet with enough warships to put up a fight?

Once the inevitable battle occurs, how would the Honorverse fleet approach the situation tactically? How the Imperial ships would handle the situation depends on the commanding officer, it could either be a zerg-rush-smash-em-up a la Bittenfield or a segmented advance-attack-withdraw to gauge their defenses a la Mittermeyer/Ruenthal.

Also, would the lack of gravitic impeller systems affect Honorverse ship's ability to accurately target Imperial ships? I think one of the Honor Harrington threads here said something about FTL gravity sensors requiring the kind of gravitational distortion symptomatic of HH tech.

[takemeout_totheblack]

Their long range detection capabilities are totally dependent on gravitics- they cannot target an enemy ship at light-minute ranges without them. Since their own drives have very intense gravitic signatures that works for them... but LoGH ships which operate on different drive principles might be far less visible to them.

Disregard that last bit on my other post, I'm a forgetful schmuck!

[Batman]

Neither the Havenites nor the Manticorans ever had a fleet of a thousand capital ships (nevermind MDM armed ones) available for any fleet action (heck, available, period). The only ones who could (eventually) amass a fleet that size are the Solarian League, who are-let's call it 50 years behind on technology?

[takemeout_totheblack]

I thought the RMN had over a thousand ships with reserves taken into account?
But I see your point, even if they had over 1000 they probably wouldn't send *all* of them. But what kind of force would either side assemble if such an unthinkably huge (to them) fleet of 1000 ships appeared out of nowhere through unknown means and with unknown intent? 100? 200? More? I'm just wondering if they'd at least try to match a fraction of the advance fleet. Or would they send a smaller fleet in as a feeler to see what they're up against?
Like I said, I don't know much about how the Honorverse reacts to threats or the nitty gritty of military numbers. Also, is there a technological or population limit preventing them from getting their fleet strength into the 5th digit?

[Vympel]

Was thrashing co-op Portal 2 so I'm a bit behind on replies, so I'll just discuss what's still current:-

Anycase, we really need to pin down the specifics of LOGH missile use (and how it is countered) before comparing them to HV missile swarms (range, accel, how long it takes them to reach the target, size/mass, general agility, etc.) but given fleet sizes in LOGH, its quite possible they migth be able to at least blunt even the large missile barrages (especially if their lasers can fire out to several LS to intercept missiles, or if LOGH missiles travel quite fast. Judging by that asteroid scene Vympel and I are discussing, its quite possible they are familiar with relativistic attacks.)

There appear to be two ways to counter missiles - in the Alliance 13th Fleet vs the Kempf Fleet, they diverted the missile attacks with each ship firing a swarm of decoys (they look like small satellites), which attracted the missiles and detonated them. In the case of the Alliance supply fleet vs the Kircheis Fleet, they tried to shoot them down and had some success, but there were so many they were annihilated easily.

If its moving at any fraction of the speed of light, odds are its going to vaporize the minute it hits the atmosphere (KE is going to be MASSIVELY greater than momentum, insanely so, although momentum is going to be pretty ludicrous as well) It probably would end up massively heating the enviroment, lots of ejecta, but I dont think it would be an "impact" per se. If these asteroids are only a km or so long too... fuck that's going to be alot of energy I can tell you, regardless of the actual fraction of lightspeed. They're able to sling around quite a bit of power when they choose.

As Simon_Jester indicated, this was against defensive satellites, coated in LOGH's funky "hydro-metal" armor. A network of "mini" Iserlohn Fortresses, if you will, armed with energy weapons and missiles. The missiles from the satellites did hit some of the ice asteroids, but they had no discernible effect. Unfortunately its quite difficult to scale either of them. I'll have to check previous episodes.

Here's the video (from appropriate timestamp):- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjWZtUlAMog#t=7m29s

Well, yes, its sort of wacky, but its not totally unworkable, and again ti tells us alot. first off, you can drop fusion bombs into a star or even very close to one, and they function just fine despite the intense heat and radiation. I presume fusion bombs are not shielded the way starships are? If not that is.... impressive.. to say the least.. and would tell us alot about their armor capabilities.

Yeah, no evidence of munitions-shielding. Heck, most times you see starship shielding is if a deflection takes place. Though there's at least one incidence with the shields visibly blocking part of a shot, but the ship being destroyed anyway.

Secondly, those bombs are quite probably energetic. Think about it this way. They accelerated starships that are what - hundreds of meters long easily? - which means thta those ships must mass hundreds of thousands, if not millions of tons. They also had to accelerate them to a not-inconsiderable velocity I'm betting (tens if not hundreds of km/s, to account for the escape velocity of the Star) and that would only cover a fraction of the energy involved. Again I'm not going to bother calcing it without more data but... the implications could again be pretty impressive. Mind you those may not be missile warheads, but it would still give us a good idea of their fusion warhead capabilities that we could extrapolate from (scale down for example.)

Correct, battleships are in the ~600-700m range (depending on the class) whilst cruisers are in the ~380-580m range (again, depending on class). The flagships go from 700-1,200m.

As far as the ships themselves, it probably would set some upper limits on acceleration (the ships could not achieve those accelerations themselves in that same timeframe, else why bother with the missiles), their inertial damping technology (I'm betting these are some hefty accelerations), and the durability of starships again (they basically rode a nuclear shockwave into battle, without being blasted to pieces. you tell me.) Hell, they have to bleed off velocity and maintain a certain "altitude" over the start itself, which ought to set certain minimums (do they have an equivalent of SW repulsors or antigrav?)

Lastly: I gathered from reading your other LOGH thread this isnt the first time "solar wind" wackiness has occured. That could be further proof ot ehir ability to somehow generate "blast" effects from a nuclear explosion (see below)

Well, the other time the solar wind wackiness occurs, its entirely naturally occuring, and causes ships to be pelted with asteroids. Speaking of, courtesy of Rama:-

http://i849.photobucket.com/albums/ab60 ... caling.jpg (composite image of the asteroid both before and after bouncing off the battleship's hull)

However the composition (from which I used the most reliable scale image you gave me) should be taken as a low end, given that it only used the dimensions set by the minor surface details on the Cruiser[sic, its a battleship]; so in retrospect it would only be anything like my original eyeballing if we were to increase the mass by substituting for a larger scale image (for which there are a potential dozen other outcomes). However this was the only one which I felt was the most accurate and consistent representation.

For density I used a silicon-iron average mix, putting it in the 5100kg/m^3; whilst the impact energy was in the order of 75.3 gigajoules ... definitely significant for what essentially amounts to bare armor tanking said impact without even a sign of distortion.

Of course, in the same incident we see some much bigger asteroids "collect" warships, so need to have a look at that as well for some upper limits. The show is also filled with collisions between ships, but they're less explicit due to volatile substnaces and what not.

Anyways:-

Well I was joking but they probably have to be able to achieve it somehow. One possibility is something akin to the Casaba Howitzer or even perhpas just a variation on the Orion drive itself - not sure if that qualifies as "blast" though or a particle beam. Barring that, they have some means of generating a mechanical "blast" effect from nuclear explosives (not the first time some sci fi universe has been noted to "achieve" that... *snicker*) Some sort of force field or concussion effect perhaps. It actually makes a bit of sense, since blast effects tend to be more efficient than radiation/thermal effects also.

That could help to explain the persistent spherical white flash, too.

It also tells us they have a very mature understanding of both laser technology AND fusion tech, if they can compact it down like that. That may alone indicate they have weapons-grade laser technology available to them. (Hell they probably do - if they can make non-nuclear bomb pumped x-ray lasers - and something tells me they don't deliberately detonate nukes inside their fortresses - they HAVE to have some high end laser tech.)

Of course, this being ICF fusion can set certain other limits as well (EG power generation. You might have to either tone down or limit some of the more insane examples implied above - eg the near-c asteroids or the "surfing a solar shockwave" incident. Perhaps the latter two are exceptional/high end/hard to achieve uses of their power tech, or may involve uses of more dangerous materials like antimatter. Do they have practical antimatter technology of any kind in LOGH?)

Only mention of power generation in the show refers to one fortress (a minor one, built in an asteroid) having a fusion reactor, IIRC. Otherwise I can't remember. There's certainly no positive evidence of anything more advanced than fusion. Like the SW films, they most often just refer to "the reactor".

Plus, I really don't want to dominate what should be YOUR analysis. I'd love to help simply because it offers me an interesting and different challenge from what I do, but it should still be your work

Sure. I'm going to have to watch the series again from go to woah, because currently I'm just picking out the battle episodes, and it'd nice to do a commentary on every aspect, technically speaking.

Is it me or does the front nose of the ship that is getting blasted like that look rather.. solid? Given the rough estimation of ship sizes mentioned earlier, it looks like a good 20-50 meter diameter hole is being melted through, with a length several times that. (at least molten anyhow, there could be partial vaporization for all I know) Even if it was only "mostly" solid that's going to be a pretty hefty calc (of course its going tob e a pretty hefty mass as well.)

I wonder if their combat doctrine makes them design ships with something analogoues to a 40K armoured prow at the front of the ship (basically the nose is plated in thick heavy armour to absorb the brunt of damage they may take.) It has seemed to me that LOGH seem to go "nose-front" in combat in most of the images I've seen vympel post.

Most of the ship designs clearly put a premium on having a narrow frontal profile, though some flagships are notable exceptions. Both Alliance and Imperial ships have generous broadside armament (always more than what is facing direct front), but its simply not often used (a lot of it can be focused at a forward oblique angle, too) and if a fleet has been caught in the flank, then something has very clearly gone wrong and they are always at a disadvantage.

On the balance of that, it does seem possible they get up to at least single digit MT range shots. Bear in mind, this assumes a "heat ray" type weapon. A pulsed-laser "blaster" type (doing damage more by mechanical means) could easily be weaker than this but just as destructive.

Sometimes the lasers give the impression of being 'pulsed' because the beam will vary in intensity in space (i.e. "blinking") though this is very rare.

[Simon_Jester]

Would either the Havens or the Manticores meet the force with an equal force (in this case 1000 ships) or would they err on the side of caution and send a smaller diplomatic fleet with enough warships to put up a fight?

Depends on the period.

If the war is currently raging between them, they haven't got a thousand ships to send- they'll send whatever they can spare but that won't be a thousand ships, and probably not even a hundred. They're too busy fighting each other to send half the battlefleet off to investigate some random event far away.

And even in peacetime, a thousand ships is half the battlefleet; they don't have that many ships to begin with... unless they start breaking out hundreds of destroyers and light cruisers that probably aren't a match for average-sized LoGH ships one on one, on account of not having nearly enough per-ship missile launch capability.

[Of course, much depends on the size distribution of LoGH ships; what proportion of those grand fleets of fifty thousand ships are destroyers, versus cruisers and battleships?]

In any case, the combination of logistics and simply not having enough ships to meet the intruder on equal terms practically guarantee that the Honorverse powers will send smaller fleets- say, a few squadrons of the wall plus some screening elements, which is roughly equivalent in relative terms to the thousand ships LoGH sent- and about the maximum any Honorverse power is likely to commit to a theater of operations where they don't have a major shooting war on their hands.

Once the inevitable battle occurs, how would the Honorverse fleet approach the situation tactically? How the Imperial ships would handle the situation depends on the commanding officer, it could either be a zerg-rush-smash-em-up a la Bittenfield or a segmented advance-attack-withdraw to gauge their defenses a la Mittermeyer/Ruenthal.

The Honorverse will probably have some initial problems due to their new opposition being so hard to track via gravitics. Their tactics will probably be in many respects similar to what they'd do anyway: launch huge barrages of missiles at the longest feasible range and hope for the best. By the later books in the series, closing to energy range with an enemy battlefleet is Simply Not Done, and against the sheer numbers of a LoGH fleet the Manties or the Havenites wouldn't even try.

The main question is what volume of fire they can achieve, and what happens when that number of missiles approach a LoGH fleet? How many of those missiles get shot down, decoyed, or otherwise neutralized? And what range did the engagement open at? LoGH warship beams seem to be reasonably effective against each other at beam ranges of a million kilometers or more, and Honorverse ships are sluggish enough on the helm that targeting them at those ranges is actually practical... if you can localize them through sidewalls and put enough fire on target to knock said sidewalls down.

Too many of the unknowns here revolve around relative sensor capability, electronics, targeting systems... even my Magic 8-Ball is turning up "Reply hazy, try again."

We can come up with a proposed way for the battle to go down based on any given set of assumptions about the capability of the ships and all; it'd be an interesting story to read... but aside from that, I think we've hit the limit of our versus comparison.

[Simon_Jester]

Neither the Havenites nor the Manticorans ever had a fleet of a thousand capital ships (nevermind MDM armed ones) available for any fleet action (heck, available, period). The only ones who could (eventually) amass a fleet that size are the Solarian League, who are-let's call it 50 years behind on technology?

Fifteen, twenty years, tops. In PD 1920 they're fielding more or less the same kind of hardware the Manticorans had in 1905; we don't see evidence of Solarian FTL comms, but I suspect those simply haven't permeated to the front line (or to Monica, the other place we've seen top-of-the-line Solarian hardware).

The real difference is that the Solarians' high-end hardware hasn't entered mass production for their military yet, and so is not seen at the front.

Speculatively, the first generation of Solarian hardware that came close to matching Manticore's performance parameters would probably take advantage of physical manufacturing capability- rather than wait five or ten years to perfect miniaturized drives for MDM missile pods, they'll just build big missiles and fire them four or six to a pod instead of ten to sixteen... then stick the things on several hundred rush-built SD(P)s and hope for the best.

As noted by others in the series in a different context, SD(P)s are easy to build when you have the pods, and the Solarians have missile pods; we've seen that from the Battle of Monica. The only leg of the triad of "Modern Honorverse Warfare" they're really missing is the multiple-drive missile- and they can solve that problem by brute force in fairly short order if need be.

There appear to be two ways to counter missiles - in the Alliance 13th Fleet vs the Kempf Fleet, they diverted the missile attacks with each ship firing a swarm of decoys (they look like small satellites), which attracted the missiles and detonated them. In the case of the Alliance supply fleet vs the Kircheis Fleet, they tried to shoot them down and had some success, but there were so many they were annihilated easily.

Yeah, that's about the same as in any other setting... again, the question is how effective these defense measures will be against Honorverse missiles. Without that variable in the equation, we can't really say what will happen when the two sides square off- and it's kind of arbitrary, hard to say exactly what the numbers are, because as noted before so much depends on how generous we're willing to be with each side.

Hmm.

[Speculates about this topic, and considers starting to take notes for a crossover fic if I ever have the time to burn on it]

[Connor MacLeod]

The problem with calcs is that Weber rated missiles in G's not pure Kilometers per hour or per second. However the acceleration curve is pretty standard and weighs in at 200 kilometer per second to 450 kilometers per second(roughly) meaning that over 90 seconds the missile should from a dead stop get to a top speed of 40,500 kilometers per second or .13c. That's from a dead stop, toss in the fact that Honoverse ships are moving close to .05c to .1c in battle conditions means that a missile can get up to 20% of the speed of light which is pretty decent. The .9C figure is achieved ONLY during bombardment when ships go hyper out to deep in system then turn around and spend a day or two building up to .65 C then launch the drives at max speed settings which burns them out at 180 second mark meaning the missiles have time to get up to .91 C before their drives burn out and they go ballistic. They only use this to bombard static defenses otherwise all combat is in the .1C range. MDM's mean's missiles have longer legs and can get up to .25C before impact but .5C combat is non-existent except in high speed passes.

Well shit. That'll teach me to listen to someone on SB about that sort of shit (I'd gotten tired of hearing about .99c missile strikes against warships.. )

Mind you, I'm not sure .8c or such is a whole lot better.. relativstic mass starts getting significant, but I guess that depends on point defense tracking at one light second, which is a messy thing to argue even with the available evidence.

[Connor MacLeod]

I don't think Weber lists peak missile velocities anywhere near that high; at least I can't remember them.

I'd figure something down in the 0.5-0.8c range, where relativistic factors are very important but not totally dominant, from what I remember. At 0.95c, the relativistic kinetic energy of an object is a lot larger than its rest mass; as a practical matter "objects" traveling at those speeds might as well be a blob of cold neutral plasma- a pack of 1.5 MeV electrons and 3 GeV protons that all happen to be traveling in exactly the same direction.

Well its easily resolved, since I pretty much took the word of fans who are probably morons rather than looking myself (important lesson there, personal research is the most reliable!) For some bizarre reason I had a 900 second drive time stuck in my head. Don't ask me why

At those speeds the sheer disconnect in yield between the kinetic and warhead energy of an Honorverse missile becomes downright comical- why would a few megatons worth of X-ray laser be more effective at penetrating a sidewall than a few gigatons worth of neutral plasma delivered in the form of a missile?

Basically.. its best not to think on it too hard. Out of Universe, Weber wanted HV combat to happen and evolve THIS way, so everything is pretty much skewed that way, which is why everything seems so contrived or gets so "optimized"

I generally just think of the sidewalls as being a huge, indestructible barrier. The missiles are moving so fast and carry so much energy they pretty much self-vaporize on impact (or failing that, the missile drive vaporizes the missile.) Momentum gets transferred to the vessel, but the magical effects of the drive manage to soften and distribute it so that it doesn't prove lethal. It's *just* on the edge of believable given ship masses and accelerations (EG the "TOTQ" impacts wouldnt kill the crew outright through sheer momentum and acceleration). The "gravity" bit is just a side effect probably, or its not literal, real gravity.

Now if you want a real headache, consider the fact that in theory, an Impeller wedge is capable of accelerating any mass up to near-lightspeeds instantly, and the only limit on the rate of acceleration is how much the crew and systems can handle (they have to "dampen" the acceleration down to those levels.. somehow.) At the same time, the starships wedge is at least partly powered by fusion....

The implications of that one are the real headache inducer. Nevermind how they collectively managed to mind control people into not using relativistic impactors even WITH the Eridani edict (like that would really stop stealth attacks or anything like that if someone was determined enough. Such as ramping them up to near-c from several light months out.)

Put simply, the largest Honorverse powers have a few hundred of those ships, each carrying something like 20000 missiles. The LoGH powers each have fleets of a few hundred thousand ships. They can afford to lose ten or twenty thousand ships in each of several battles of an offensive campaign, if that's what it takes. If an SD(P) can't rack up kill ratios in the hundreds to one, it's not going to stand a chance against a comparable LoGH force.

It actually occured to me a far better way of engaging in an actual war is to pretty much engage in a series of multi-system attacks. Their numbers, and FTL (which I am willing to bet is no worse than HV, and quite probably better) give them a massive operational/strategic advantage. As you say, the HV has far fewer ships, and they can't cover every place.

Indeed, if you take out the infrastructure or shipping of say, the junction and wormholes around and connecting to Basilisk, you cna inflict some pretty significant economic damage on Manticore alone.

What's more, the existence of hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions?) of starships implies a TREMENDOUS industrial capacity, given the scale of ship losses.

What it comes down to is that it doesn't matter if LOGH loses one or two big battles, as long as they win alot of other,smaller ones and manage to take out the key logistics and infrastructure tied to it at the same time.

This is a known Havenite tactic; it works, but Honorverse missiles can be (and are) programmed to counter, to a point.

You mean the sunwall? I vaguely recalled that from the latter novels, but I didnt remember if it destroyed missiles outright, o rjust other things (drones and shrikes and shit.)

I expect the durability edge to go to the Honorverse ships ton for ton based on my impressions of the effect of shipboard beam weapons on ships in the respective universes, really. But I'm dubious of whether their defensive advantage in terms of "kilotons of missile warhead that must be fired at the ship to kill it per ton of ship mass" is going to be large enough to offset LoGH's numerical superiority.

Perhaps. Part of the problem is that there's a huge degree of "spray and pray" randomness built into HV combat where damage is concerned - even with laser heads (precise compared to nukes) they still have to use "area of effect" shotgun attacks and multiple missiles to ensure hits because of the sidewalls/wedges alone. Without the defenses, the story is different.

I'm also wonder if we're over-stating the missile threat. I mean yeah, we know they've demonstrated the capability of tossing out upwards of half a million missiles at once.. but that isn't a "typical" feat for them.. it requires alot of preparation meaning it is at best an "alpha strike", and one that requires a significant concentration of warships to achieve (which means those ships are unavailable to defend other systems from attack.) Tens of thousands seems more likely for any realistic pod ship massing (outside of protecting the capitals of your empire.) Non-pod ships probably won't even be a significant threat at range.

To tell the truth, they'll do it anyway- their fleet tactics tend to emphasize mass and formation quite rigorously. Deception, decoys, fighter attacks, all possible, but not going to be deployed routinely and decisively.

And if I were involved in a modern Honorverse fleet I would not be averse to accepting a duel between their fighters and my LACs, assuming comparable numbers- which would be at least somewhat more achievable; LoGH fleets don't carry all that many fighters per ship in the fleet as far as I can tell.

I dont think the LOGH side would have to change tactics *dramatically* to inconvenience the HV. Splitting your fleet up and coming at the enemy from different sides isn't that innovative, really - but they have the ships to do it quite easily.

Fighters and LACs do matter too.. LACS could help even the odds a bit for the HV, but I'm not sure how the two stack up really (we're still unsure about certain capabilities of the LOGH ships, after all.)

Ah, but in the former case it is one fuckton, while in the latter case it is one hundred thirty fucktons!

As to the rest, I would feel free to describe speeds of 25-30% of light speed as "near-relativistic," but really relativistic should be reserved for, say, 50-70%. 80-99% is "highly relativistic," and above .99c is "ultra-relativistic," speeds at which relativistic effects dominate entirely and you can approximate the behavior of the object as if it were a stream of massless energetic particles, unless you're interested in the exotica of particle physics which you're probably not.

I might revise those numbers later after some pen and paper work, but that's about what I'd call it.

Good enough. Precision of that magnitude is rare as it is, and I am still sure someone would nitpick the "intention" or claim hyperbole. Either side of the definition range will suit the scene - in fact I'm worried going too high might pose problems with the implications of that feat.

[Mr Bean]

Correction Connor the formation of Wedge's is powered by fusion but once the Wedge's are up and able to interact they can almost power themselves at which point the fusion generator's power everything else. It's the fact that Impeller wedge's somehow interact constantly with hyperspace that lets them be a semi-free energy device in the same way a sail is a free energy device, stick it in the wind and get blown someplace, but in this case the Wedge is interacting with very energetic hyperspace stuff instead of wind power.

[Connor MacLeod]

As Simon_Jester indicated, this was against defensive satellites, coated in LOGH's funky "hydro-metal" armor. A network of "mini" Iserlohn Fortresses, if you will, armed with energy weapons and missiles. The missiles from the satellites did hit some of the ice asteroids, but they had no discernible effect. Unfortunately its quite difficult to scale either of them. I'll have to check previous episodes.

Here's the video (from appropriate timestamp):- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjWZtUlAMog#t=7m29s

I watched bits of it.. yeah I know spoil myself yadda yadda.. I dont mind. I think when I watch I'm going to be paying attention to both technical and dramatic points anyhow.. so at least if I get the techincal aside. I think I'm going to have to think on it some, but some things do crop out as obvious:

- They're pretty much at least higher than .5-.6c, and probably much higehr than that, given Yang's comments. This rules out anything lower (at low fractions of c, say 10-20%, the relativistic mass gained is trivial.)

Indeed, Yang seemed to play up the "mass gain" as being quite significant, which may suggest that the firepower needed to destroy the asteroids was not dramatically overkill (eg nothing like thousands or millions of times what was needed.) But I'll need to re-watch this scene a bit and think over it some more before being definitive, I could be misinterpreting something (and the momentum is hefty too, its not just KE, though KE is more important there I think.)

- those bussard ramjets were almost without a doubt, ludicrously efficient. One of the interesting details of a ramjet is that its top speed is dictated by exhaust velocity (there's a sort of "terminal velocity")

Alternately, it wasn't a bussard ramjet. You need a pretty BIG field to catch interstellar debris for propellant (and fuel, if Yang's wordsa re to be believed and the interpretation is accurate.) but there was no such material field - if it was a forcefield or shield, then maybe (but wouldn't we see impacts?) So, its quite possible it wasn't a real ramjet. That said, I'm still pretty sure a near-c impactor is going to dictate a ridiculously efficient reaction drive system, simply to keep fuel and propellant requirements sane.

Also, despite what Yang said, I think its a safe bet that much of the fuel to power those engines had to come from elsewhere, like the fleet. Indeed, the efforts they put into putting this plan into motion were non-trivial, but didn't seem to require any special efforts beyond what the fleet already had. That has some interesting implications.

- the beam and missile weapons both fired on the targets and coudl hit them. The missiles had to be moving at a fair fraction of lightspeed as well, as they hit long before the asteroids impacted at near-c. How fast I'll hve to look again and think. We might be able to work out some missile parameters from that scene.

By the way, the hits did little or no damage to the asteroids. This COULD imply some hefty upper limits on firepower, but it may also hint that the asteroids were shielded or structurally reinfroced. Ice is not exactly a durable material, and I dont think you can just stick an engine on a chunk of ice and accelerate it and not have it stay intact (the stresses, impacts with interestellar debris, etc.) So they may have had to stick some sort of "navigational shield" on it. Hell, cooling those ramjets and keeping the asteroid from melting or shattering from simple thermodynamics should be an interesting challenge.

- Yang was confident that his near-c asteroids would not hit the planet or harm themselves. That says something about their targeting and guidance abilities, methinks, even against a stationary platform, even allowing for them considering the angle of approach (it only takes a slight deviation to turn something like that into a planet killer.)

- It looked like we saw them working on preparing the asteroids for this attack earlier in the scene (I skipped back looking around) and while I haven't found nay key scenes yet, I DID note that they look comparable in size (if not biggeR) tahn at least some of the starships. So they probably are not "trivial" in terms of mass, either.

- Acceleration. This is the.. interesting bit. Tenatively I am going to say, I don't believe we can treat this as a non-stop continuous scene. There are scene jumps, but I suspect it was "time compresseD" to allow for acceleration and travel time. Depending on how far away they started, of course. Otherwise, we could get some truly ludicrous (Anrdromeda-scale) accelerations, and that just is not feasible with a brute-force reaction drive, even a magically efficient one (you need some sort of "cheat" or external power source to pull that off, which in turn introduces its own problems...)

I'm pretty sure we could say the scene didn't take (for example) weeks, or months, so there are still some hefty accelerations to near-c involved, but there's still going to be some question (hours or days is still a somewhat large margin) but based on what I know from the SW/ICS stuff.. thousands of gees would be a hard upper limit for anything even remotely plausible (and even then I'm being very loose about "plausible.")

Between this scene and the crazy "nuke triggered" solar winds... there could be some interesting implications about firepower and durability and all that. I'm still leery of going "gigaton" range, but that is a distinct possibility (it may even be required on some level.)

Yeah, no evidence of munitions-shielding. Heck, most times you see starship shielding is if a deflection takes place. Though there's at least one incidence with the shields visibly blocking part of a shot, but the ship being destroyed anyway.

I'll have to pay attention to shield naturea nd see how it might work. I'm just guessing though based off what you observe, its not like a "absorbption and retransmission/heat sink" type mechanism like the ICS purports, but probably more like a "Sidewall" type static defense (it's meant to turn aside and degrade shots, but it does not actually absorb the energy.)

Correct, battleships are in the ~600-700m range (depending on the class) whilst cruisers are in the ~380-580m range (again, depending on class). The flagships go from 700-1,200m.

I'm getting a very "Lensman" universe type vibe from this.

Well, the other time the solar wind wackiness occurs, its entirely naturally occuring, and causes ships to be pelted with asteroids. Speaking of, courtesy of Rama:-

http://i849.photobucket.com/albums/ab60 ... caling.jpg (composite image of the asteroid both before and after bouncing off the battleship's hull)

I'll have to think on "naturally occuring". But in any case, KE isn't the only thing one should concern oneself with. Momentum is going to be quite signifiant (at those speeds, its going to be more important IMHO, and its something shields won't necesarily block. Think TESB asteroid incident.) especially if that is something like a stony/iron asteroid.

An interetsing thing there - what happened to the asteroids on impact. Did they break up or fragment, did they bounce off, what? That says something about both what the asteorids might be made of as well as the hull itself (which didn't even look dinged by the impact, I might say.)

Another question: Was the ship in question totally stationary? relative velocity and orientation always matter to these sorts of collisions.

All that said, there's implication for very.. high.. inteesting yields for warheads too, depending on how the assumptions and variables play out.

However the composition (from which I used the most reliable scale image you gave me) should be taken as a low end, given that it only used the dimensions set by the minor surface details on the Cruiser[sic, its a battleship]; so in retrospect it would only be anything like my original eyeballing if we were to increase the mass by substituting for a larger scale image (for which there are a potential dozen other outcomes). However this was the only one which I felt was the most accurate and consistent representation.

For density I used a silicon-iron average mix, putting it in the 5100kg/m^3; whilst the impact energy was in the order of 75.3 gigajoules ... definitely significant for what essentially amounts to bare armor tanking said impact without even a sign of distortion.

Sounds about right to me, aside from the fact momentum wasn't mentioned (not that I'm blaming him. It might not occur to him to mention that, because he assumes someone would know that already. I'm a layman, I've ignored it in the past, I make it a point of always recalling it and even belaboring it.)

Of course, in the same incident we see some much bigger asteroids "collect" warships, so need to have a look at that as well for some upper limits. The show is also filled with collisions between ships, but they're less explicit due to volatile substnaces and what not.

Ships by nature are not inert objects. You have reactors which may not be inherently volatile or explosive but produce/release energy, you have power distribution networks full of power, you have capacitors and batteries.. and so on.

you lost me on the "asteroids collecting warships" bit though. Please clarify?

That could help to explain the persistent spherical white flash, too.

I think "magic forcefield" is going to be required to explain their warheads in alot of ways. I'm not sure a "Orion drive" type shaped charge nuke would be sheer momentum or non-thermal damage like HE would. Either that or they have some exotic/magic warheads that perfectly simulate HE. Besides a shaped charge nuke like that probably would have a standoff range (its more like a particle beam in some respects.)

Only mention of power generation in the show refers to one fortress (a minor one, built in an asteroid) having a fusion reactor, IIRC. Otherwise I can't remember. There's certainly no positive evidence of anything more advanced than fusion. Like the SW films, they most often just refer to "the reactor".

Probably better that way most of the time, although I alwys feel better making certain about these details, because they can provide some framework (as long as everythign else, like the calcs, don't go out of whack too much.)

Sure. I'm going to have to watch the series again from go to woah, because currently I'm just picking out the battle episodes, and it'd nice to do a commentary on every aspect, technically speaking.

While at least the LOGH series has "ended" (as far as I know), you're still probably looking at a lengthy, uphill work. Not bad for a hobby, if you don't mind a few years, but its possible you'll get bored midway through it. (I Havent even hit "halfway" with my 40k analysis.. *sigh*)

Dunno if LOGH has a managa, but you may also end up looking at the text material at least for clarification or context, unless you're treating them as two separate continuities (not impossible.. I know of a number of series where the anime takes a different direction than the manga at some point or in some way.)

Most of the ship designs clearly put a premium on having a narrow frontal profile, though some flagships are notable exceptions. Both Alliance and Imperial ships have generous broadside armament (always more than what is facing direct front), but its simply not often used (a lot of it can be focused at a forward oblique angle, too) and if a fleet has been caught in the flank, then something has very clearly gone wrong and they are always at a disadvantage.

IT could be something like Mass Effect: the forward mounted stuff are more powerufl, longer ranged "spinal" mounts compared to the broadside stuff. On top of that the spinal mounts are along the axis of the ship, parallel to the engines, which I am pretty sure has plenty of benefits.

I'd have to watch more before thinking on combat tactics, but the design method at least suggests the bulk fo fighting is done with the fore guns on approach, perhaps only turning to broadside when you have weakened or crippled your enemy close up to finish them off (or in case you get flanked, especially by smaller craft.)

It also seems to me like "flank" attacks at the sides (or tops/bottoms) of the ships are more vulnerable than the fore/aft section simply because they would require correspondingly more mass to armor (more surface area) - a sort of "selective armoring" by necessity which could influence survival rates.

Sometimes the lasers give the impression of being 'pulsed' because the beam will vary in intensity in space (i.e. "blinking") though this is very rare.

Well as far as the human eye goes, it wouldnt be able to tell teh difference between a pulsed "continous" laser and a continuous "heat ray" type. "pulsed" lsaer in the Luke campbell (Eg the Death Ray website guy) sense are the lasers that fire pulses with micro- and nano-second duration to cause HE like effects. Hell "heat ray" is the term he adopted for pur ely thermal weapons as well, I like it because it makes sense.

[Connor MacLeod]

Correction Connor the formation of Wedge's is powered by fusion but once the Wedge's are up and able to interact they can almost power themselves at which point the fusion generator's power everything else. It's the fact that Impeller wedge's somehow interact constantly with hyperspace that lets them be a semi-free energy device in the same way a sail is a free energy device, stick it in the wind and get blown someplace, but in this case the Wedge is interacting with very energetic hyperspace stuff instead of wind power.

Was this stated in one of the more recent novels, because the only evidence I've ever had about that was this tidbit he shared, for whatever it is worth.

I get the impression he was trying to impose some finite limit on how long a wedge can run for whatever reason, but I dont think it works out (not the first time something like that happens.)

And if the wedge is entirely self powered, it IS a free energy device. That they can't tap it better in any way for combat purposes is a bit.. odd to say the least. (And I know once they're in Hyperspace they CAN tap it for infinite energy, at least in principle and for moving.)

[Simon_Jester]

For the record, LoGH ships hardly ever turn broadside-on to an enemy on purpose. You can watch entire battles and never see broadside armament fired at all, and fleets will fly head-on into each other and interpenetrate while firing forward rather than turn to deliver a broadside.

I'm not sure what the broadside guns are even for- missile defense might be a good bet, since for that application you need numerous smaller mounts instead of a handful of huge ones. Probably also for defense against smaller ships- fighters, gunships, destroyers and such.

This is a known Havenite tactic; it works, but Honorverse missiles can be (and are) programmed to counter, to a point.

You mean the sunwall? I vaguely recalled that from the latter novels, but I didnt remember if it destroyed missiles outright, o rjust other things (drones and shrikes and shit.)

I'd never heard it called a "sunwall," but yes. It definitely plays a missile defense role- not so much because it kills as because it blinds the things.

I'm also wonder if we're over-stating the missile threat. I mean yeah, we know they've demonstrated the capability of tossing out upwards of half a million missiles at once.. but that isn't a "typical" feat for them.. it requires alot of preparation meaning it is at best an "alpha strike", and one that requires a significant concentration of warships to achieve (which means those ships are unavailable to defend other systems from attack.) Tens of thousands seems more likely for any realistic pod ship massing (outside of protecting the capitals of your empire.) Non-pod ships probably won't even be a significant threat at range.

Yes, I know; my point is that we really need a sense for how much launch capability it takes per ship to start saturating defenses and inflicting significant casualties on a LoGH fleet.

If the answer is "you need to fire 500 missiles at each ship in the fleet to kill it," the Honorverse is screwed, because 10% of their line of battle physically can't carry enough munitions to reliably defeat 10% of the enemy's line of battle. If the answer is "one missile per ship," the LoGH powers are screwed, because they don't have more ships than the Honorverse has missiles.

To tell the truth, they'll do it anyway- their fleet tactics tend to emphasize mass and formation quite rigorously. Deception, decoys, fighter attacks, all possible, but not going to be deployed routinely and decisively.

And if I were involved in a modern Honorverse fleet I would not be averse to accepting a duel between their fighters and my LACs, assuming comparable numbers- which would be at least somewhat more achievable; LoGH fleets don't carry all that many fighters per ship in the fleet as far as I can tell.

I dont think the LOGH side would have to change tactics *dramatically* to inconvenience the HV. Splitting your fleet up and coming at the enemy from different sides isn't that innovative, really - but they have the ships to do it quite easily.

They have the capability, the adaptions will occur- but there are compromises at work. Split your fleet to get more firing angles and neutralize the advantage of their impeller wedge's impenetrable sides... but at the cost of splitting your missile defense. Things like that.

It'd take some exploration; I think the LoGH side would have more to learn and adapt to in order to fight Honorverse ships effectively than the other way round. On the other hand, they have the numbers and (probably) strategic mobility to have the luxury of learning this.

[Vympel]

I watched bits of it.. yeah I know spoil myself yadda yadda.. I dont mind. I think when I watch I'm going to be paying attention to both technical and dramatic points anyhow.. so at least if I get the techincal aside. I think I'm going to have to think on it some, but some things do crop out as obvious:

- They're pretty much at least higher than .5-.6c, and probably much higehr than that, given Yang's comments. This rules out anything lower (at low fractions of c, say 10-20%, the relativistic mass gained is trivial.)

Indeed, Yang seemed to play up the "mass gain" as being quite significant, which may suggest that the firepower needed to destroy the asteroids was not dramatically overkill (eg nothing like thousands or millions of times what was needed.) But I'll need to re-watch this scene a bit and think over it some more before being definitive, I could be misinterpreting something (and the momentum is hefty too, its not just KE, though KE is more important there I think.)

- those bussard ramjets were almost without a doubt, ludicrously efficient. One of the interesting details of a ramjet is that its top speed is dictated by exhaust velocity (there's a sort of "terminal velocity")

Alternately, it wasn't a bussard ramjet. You need a pretty BIG field to catch interstellar debris for propellant (and fuel, if Yang's wordsa re to be believed and the interpretation is accurate.) but there was no such material field - if it was a forcefield or shield, then maybe (but wouldn't we see impacts?) So, its quite possible it wasn't a real ramjet. That said, I'm still pretty sure a near-c impactor is going to dictate a ridiculously efficient reaction drive system, simply to keep fuel and propellant requirements sane.

Also, despite what Yang said, I think its a safe bet that much of the fuel to power those engines had to come from elsewhere, like the fleet. Indeed, the efforts they put into putting this plan into motion were non-trivial, but didn't seem to require any special efforts beyond what the fleet already had. That has some interesting implications.

- the beam and missile weapons both fired on the targets and coudl hit them. The missiles had to be moving at a fair fraction of lightspeed as well, as they hit long before the asteroids impacted at near-c. How fast I'll hve to look again and think. We might be able to work out some missile parameters from that scene.

By the way, the hits did little or no damage to the asteroids. This COULD imply some hefty upper limits on firepower, but it may also hint that the asteroids were shielded or structurally reinfroced. Ice is not exactly a durable material, and I dont think you can just stick an engine on a chunk of ice and accelerate it and not have it stay intact (the stresses, impacts with interestellar debris, etc.) So they may have had to stick some sort of "navigational shield" on it. Hell, cooling those ramjets and keeping the asteroid from melting or shattering from simple thermodynamics should be an interesting challenge.

- Yang was confident that his near-c asteroids would not hit the planet or harm themselves. That says something about their targeting and guidance abilities, methinks, even against a stationary platform, even allowing for them considering the angle of approach (it only takes a slight deviation to turn something like that into a planet killer.)

- It looked like we saw them working on preparing the asteroids for this attack earlier in the scene (I skipped back looking around) and while I haven't found nay key scenes yet, I DID note that they look comparable in size (if not biggeR) tahn at least some of the starships. So they probably are not "trivial" in terms of mass, either.

Watching the episode myself, I saw at least one shot where they appeared to dwarf the warships in size, but its hard to pin them down.

- Acceleration. This is the.. interesting bit. Tenatively I am going to say, I don't believe we can treat this as a non-stop continuous scene. There are scene jumps, but I suspect it was "time compresseD" to allow for acceleration and travel time. Depending on how far away they started, of course. Otherwise, we could get some truly ludicrous (Anrdromeda-scale) accelerations, and that just is not feasible with a brute-force reaction drive, even a magically efficient one (you need some sort of "cheat" or external power source to pull that off, which in turn introduces its own problems...)

I'm pretty sure we could say the scene didn't take (for example) weeks, or months, so there are still some hefty accelerations to near-c involved, but there's still going to be some question (hours or days is still a somewhat large margin) but based on what I know from the SW/ICS stuff.. thousands of gees would be a hard upper limit for anything even remotely plausible (and even then I'm being very loose about "plausible.")

Between this scene and the crazy "nuke triggered" solar winds... there could be some interesting implications about firepower and durability and all that. I'm still leery of going "gigaton" range, but that is a distinct possibility (it may even be required on some level.)

Interesting - thanks for the ideas.

I'll have to pay attention to shield naturea nd see how it might work. I'm just guessing though based off what you observe, its not like a "absorbption and retransmission/heat sink" type mechanism like the ICS purports, but probably more like a "Sidewall" type static defense (it's meant to turn aside and degrade shots, but it does not actually absorb the energy.)

Seems that way. Beams 'bouncing' off shields is far more common (and even then - not very) compared to beams being stopped by shields - which I can only remember a couple of incidents of.

I'll have to think on "naturally occuring". But in any case, KE isn't the only thing one should concern oneself with. Momentum is going to be quite signifiant (at those speeds, its going to be more important IMHO, and its something shields won't necesarily block. Think TESB asteroid incident.) especially if that is something like a stony/iron asteroid.

An interetsing thing there - what happened to the asteroids on impact. Did they break up or fragment, did they bounce off, what? That says something about both what the asteorids might be made of as well as the hull itself (which didn't even look dinged by the impact, I might say.)

The asteroid bounced off the hull, completely intact. Rama noted this as well, and on that basis discounted a pure silicon composition.

Another question: Was the ship in question totally stationary? relative velocity and orientation always matter to these sorts of collisions.

All that said, there's implication for very.. high.. inteesting yields for warheads too, depending on how the assumptions and variables play out.

Yeah stationary, it didn't appear to have any meaningful velocity.

Sounds about right to me, aside from the fact momentum wasn't mentioned (not that I'm blaming him. It might not occur to him to mention that, because he assumes someone would know that already. I'm a layman, I've ignored it in the past, I make it a point of always recalling it and even belaboring it.)

Yeah, this was just PM correspondence, I'm sure it went without saying.

Ships by nature are not inert objects. You have reactors which may not be inherently volatile or explosive but produce/release energy, you have power distribution networks full of power, you have capacitors and batteries.. and so on.

you lost me on the "asteroids collecting warships" bit though. Please clarify?

In the same episode, a fuck-off huge asteroid comes along that is almost as wide as a battleship is long - it collides with said battleship and takes it for a one-way ride to wherever the asteroid is going. The battleship crumple down the centre.

(never heard the term of a truck or bus "collecting" a pedestrian? Might be an Aussie term)

I think "magic forcefield" is going to be required to explain their warheads in alot of ways. I'm not sure a "Orion drive" type shaped charge nuke would be sheer momentum or non-thermal damage like HE would. Either that or they have some exotic/magic warheads that perfectly simulate HE. Besides a shaped charge nuke like that probably would have a standoff range (its more like a particle beam in some respects.)

Speaking of funky warheads, in the next battle post one ship fires an unidentified weapon at a building. The results are confined yet spectacular (its intended to be a targeted demonstration, not an annihilation). Need to figure out what that is - might be related.

While at least the LOGH series has "ended" (as far as I know), you're still probably looking at a lengthy, uphill work. Not bad for a hobby, if you don't mind a few years, but its possible you'll get bored midway through it. (I Havent even hit "halfway" with my 40k analysis.. *sigh*)

Yeah - currently the LOGH wiki and the battles thread is taking up most of my time in that regard, but we'll see.

Dunno if LOGH has a managa, but you may also end up looking at the text material at least for clarification or context, unless you're treating them as two separate continuities (not impossible.. I know of a number of series where the anime takes a different direction than the manga at some point or in some way.)

They appear to be two seperate universes. One anime OVA, called "Golden Wings", was based on the manga - and although it uses the same voice actors and the characters look the same, it looks incredibly different. All the ship / uniforms etc look like they're from the Twilight Zone. Curiously, however, the Gaiden Seasons (which are definitely the same universe as the original series, no doubt about it) refer to the events of "Golden Wings", so at least plot wise its valid.

Unfortunately, there's no way I could get my hands on the manga or the original novels on which the series is based - never been translated. (some of the original novels have been, but only the opening chapters of the first book).

IT could be something like Mass Effect: the forward mounted stuff are more powerufl, longer ranged "spinal" mounts compared to the broadside stuff. On top of that the spinal mounts are along the axis of the ship, parallel to the engines, which I am pretty sure has plenty of benefits.

I'd have to watch more before thinking on combat tactics, but the design method at least suggests the bulk fo fighting is done with the fore guns on approach, perhaps only turning to broadside when you have weakened or crippled your enemy close up to finish them off (or in case you get flanked, especially by smaller craft.)

It also seems to me like "flank" attacks at the sides (or tops/bottoms) of the ships are more vulnerable than the fore/aft section simply because they would require correspondingly more mass to armor (more surface area) - a sort of "selective armoring" by necessity which could influence survival rates.

True- an additional thought is that at the long engagement ranges, taking an enemy in the flank gives you a much greater chance to hit.

Re: broadsides, I'll mention something to Simon_Jester in next post in that regard.

Well as far as the human eye goes, it wouldnt be able to tell teh difference between a pulsed "continous" laser and a continuous "heat ray" type. "pulsed" lsaer in the Luke campbell (Eg the Death Ray website guy) sense are the lasers that fire pulses with micro- and nano-second duration to cause HE like effects. Hell "heat ray" is the term he adopted for pur ely thermal weapons as well, I like it because it makes sense.

Ah fair enough.

[Vympel]

For the record, LoGH ships hardly ever turn broadside-on to an enemy on purpose. You can watch entire battles and never see broadside armament fired at all, and fleets will fly head-on into each other and interpenetrate while firing forward rather than turn to deliver a broadside.

I'm not sure what the broadside guns are even for- missile defense might be a good bet, since for that application you need numerous smaller mounts instead of a handful of huge ones. Probably also for defense against smaller ships- fighters, gunships, destroyers and such.

I think the guns are also intended to assist "breakthroughs" into enemy fleet formations. We see Guen van Hugh's fleet in Episode 21 using their broadside armament (the Maurya in particular) to blast enemy battleships and cruisers on either side, which would indicate that if they're weaker, they're not substantially so.

We also see Reinhard's battleship Tannhauser fire them during a breakthrough in the Gaiden, and during Merkatz' counter-attack in Ep 22 of the main series.

Missile and fighter defence is definitely another use for them - we see Alliance ships using them to defend against fighter attack in the first episode of the series and in Overture to A New War - we see the Knapfstein Fleet using all guns to shoot down incoming enemy mines in Episode 71.

[KlavoHunter]

The broadside guns are also used in an anti-capital ship role in Overture to a New War, as we see the Pergamon's starboard broadside guns all blazing away back towards Lohengramm's oncoming fleet, though this is obviously vastly insufficient firepower to be getting the better end of this engagement. Returning fire from the broadside guns at an angle like that, not all the ships would have clear shots, lest they start hitting their comrades.

Vice-Admiral Moore is so desperate to bring his forward guns into action against the enemy that he orders his fleet back into the enemy - which is such a disorganized mess that he never gets to properly return fire.



Also, in the other movie, when we see Patroclus and Brunhilde pass each other in the gas giant, they fire on each other first with their forward guns, and then exchange broadsides in passing. Of course, this isn't enough to really damage either battleship with full shields and energy reserves at the very start of a battle, even though it's point-blank...



All indications seem to be that the axial-mounted forward guns on LoGH ships are more powerful and probably longer-ranged than the other weapons aboard the ships, as far as I can tell.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'd never heard it called a "sunwall," but yes. It definitely plays a missile defense role- not so much because it kills as because it blinds the things.

D'oh. I had to go back and look up Foraker's tactic. It was the "triple ripple" Sunwalls are from Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series (but still deal with setting off massed atomic detonations in formation for much of that same purpose.)

Anyhow, the big thing LOGH has in it's favor WRT this tactic is - it can fire its missiles VERY fast, and fire alot of them, and it complements the gravitics issue quite a bit.

Yes, I know; my point is that we really need a sense for how much launch capability it takes per ship to start saturating defenses and inflicting significant casualties on a LoGH fleet.

If the answer is "you need to fire 500 missiles at each ship in the fleet to kill it," the Honorverse is screwed, because 10% of their line of battle physically can't carry enough munitions to reliably defeat 10% of the enemy's line of battle. If the answer is "one missile per ship," the LoGH powers are screwed, because they don't have more ships than the Honorverse has missiles.

What you say is true. However, I'm still thinking LOGH could still gain a decisive victory even IF it somehow is completely unable to defeat a podnaught force except through sheer attrition. Mainly because there are so few of them. The Manties and (I think) Andermani have the high tech ones, but they're VERY few in number. Haven built far more (close on a thousand IIRC prior to At All Costs) but they are less capable. I remember some pod BCs (again manty only). And what makes them dangerous IS their potential to throw massive, near-c broadsides from long distance. It could be decisive, but it's also a very specialized (and inefficient) capability by it's the very nature (pod salvos are only so good as long as you have ammo, after all.)

Then there are all the non-pod ships, which I dont think have been discussed as much. Just how dangerous compared to the pod ships are they going to be? They can still throw relatively significant salvos (with off bore firing at least), but I don't think we're talking the same level of danger as a podnaught fleet. And of course you mentioned the LACs. Those are the more numerous forces (and the ones the LOGH forces will more often run across in significant numbers.)

They have the capability, the adaptions will occur- but there are compromises at work. Split your fleet to get more firing angles and neutralize the advantage of their impeller wedge's impenetrable sides... but at the cost of splitting your missile defense. Things like that.

It'd take some exploration; I think the LoGH side would have more to learn and adapt to in order to fight Honorverse ships effectively than the other way round. On the other hand, they have the numbers and (probably) strategic mobility to have the luxury of learning this.

I think it goes both way. Ex: the lack of gravitics we've both mentioned would be a huge shock, and require some work to get around. There would be alot of stumbling and inefficiencies as both sides adapt to unfamliar approaches, but that's largely tacitcal.

Beyond the tactical level things get dicier. LOGH's edge in ship numbers alone is a huge advantage over the HV, especially in an offensive war - even if they had to maintain a defensive force at the same time (although I'm not sure the HV side could manage offense and defense simultaneously without diluting their potential danger.) What if the LOGH side engages in a sort of combat more reminsicent of how Mike envisioned the Empire engaging the Federation, for example?

[phred]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet(It may have been, and I just missed it), is the fact that LOGH ships need 'lanes' or paths of some sort to travel through. This would seriously slow down an invasion of any other verse they travel to. I'm not entirely certain they even have a group that does that sort of thing during the time frame of the series, or how they would go about doing it. IIRC the only 'scouting' done consisted of pointing your ship at a star and hoping you didn't run into a wall.

[takemeout_totheblack]

Are you referring to the Phezzan and Iserlohn corridors? Because those are more a case of bridges across dangerous space anomalies found in the space between spiral arms.

LoGH FTL seems to be by-and-large safe and flexible, as travel within each nation's territory is never (as far as I know) treated as any sort of feat beyond 'enter coordinates, ba-boom'. The Iserlohn and Phezzan Corridors are so important because they are *unique*, they are not representative of LoGH FTL/sub-light travel as a whole.

[Connor MacLeod]

Watching the episode myself, I saw at least one shot where they appeared to dwarf the warships in size, but its hard to pin them down.

I'll watch and see if I can shoot you some screen grabs. I think I have the eps somewhere on one of my HDs (I have like only four of them...)

Interesting - thanks for the ideas.

Welcome. Bear in mind that it's all very tenative. Other ideas may occur to me only later on, as the info has sunk in, and I'm not sure some of my initial impressions are all that accurate (For example, I'm having second thoughts about the "relativiity" point.. I'm not sure the interpretatio suppors significant relativity, or that I should even be putting alot of stock in what is an interpretation of another language.. get too heavily into semantics and you have problems.)

There's also the distinct possibility that ship capabilities and firepower could end up ramped up far into SW territory, which could have its own unique and different sets of problems (esp if they do run on just fusion power...)

and evne then, that's just one particular scene. It could work in a very self contained manner and yet somehow contradict the rest of the series implies.

Seems that way. Beams 'bouncing' off shields is far more common (and even then - not very) compared to beams being stopped by shields - which I can only remember a couple of incidents of.

Maybe angle matters - eg only "direct" hits penetrate. Are there any indications that shields can be "angled" like SW shiels sometimes are? Or anything that suggests a shield geometry of any kind matters?

Another possibility is that shield strength is also influenced by ship design. Maybe shields are stronger from head on than on the sides.

The asteroid bounced off the hull, completely intact. Rama noted this as well, and on that basis discounted a pure silicon composition.

I was thinking iron as well based on that. It would definitley rule out ice.

It's also making me think they may be like Renegade Legion "flicker" shields or 40K void shields - they aren't designed to cope with high mass, high momentum impacts. Are tjhere any caes of low mass/high velocity kinetic attacks used at all? Otherwise it might also be that shields simply don't stop physical impactors. How do missiles interact with shields?

In the same episode, a fuck-off huge asteroid comes along that is almost as wide as a battleship is long - it collides with said battleship and takes it for a one-way ride to wherever the asteroid is going. The battleship crumple down the centre.

(never heard the term of a truck or bus "collecting" a pedestrian? Might be an Aussie term)

Its okay, I see what oyu mean now. I wouldn't be surprised at a km (or nearly that size) asteroid crumpling a battleship.. if its anything like near-spherical its going to have a tremendous mass even if it was just ice - hundreds of millions if not billions of tons, and even at a low velocity it would probably break anything less massive than itself.

if you can get a velocity estimate and measure how long it took to damage the battleship (and in what manner) it probably might establish some sort of upper limit (probably not too high of one - if the battleship is crushed but mostly intact, that still speaks of the thing being pretty durable.)

Speaking of funky warheads, in the next battle post one ship fires an unidentified weapon at a building. The results are confined yet spectacular (its intended to be a targeted demonstration, not an annihilation). Need to figure out what that is - might be related.

You mean something like how a SW thermal detonator is supposed to work? EG "everything inside is vaporized, but anything outside the radius is completely unharmed?"

They appear to be two seperate universes. One anime OVA, called "Golden Wings", was based on the manga - and although it uses the same voice actors and the characters look the same, it looks incredibly different. All the ship / uniforms etc look like they're from the Twilight Zone. Curiously, however, the Gaiden Seasons (which are definitely the same universe as the original series, no doubt about it) refer to the events of "Golden Wings", so at least plot wise its valid.

Ugh. That could provide problems with cross-universe analysis. Kinda like trying to link together TOS, TNG/DS9/Voyager, ENT, and NuTrek

Unfortunately, there's no way I could get my hands on the manga or the original novels on which the series is based - never been translated. (some of the original novels have been, but only the opening chapters of the first book).

For now. It was that way for Vampire Hunter D as well, but you never know. And barring that there's always some enterprising fans who will do translations eventually. OR it may already exist, you just gotta look hard enough. I had that problem hunting up some of the more esoteric Renegade Legion stuff too.

True- an additional thought is that at the long engagement ranges, taking an enemy in the flank gives you a much greater chance to hit.

Yes, but you have to get closer to be able to flank an enemy. At longer ranges, it takes you much longer (unless you can move a hell of alot faster in turning than the target ship can) to get into the flank. And getting close could be dangerous, esp given LOGH fleet sizes.

I think the guns are also intended to assist "breakthroughs" into enemy fleet formations. We see Guen van Hugh's fleet in Episode 21 using their broadside armament (the Maurya in particular) to blast enemy battleships and cruisers on either side, which would indicate that if they're weaker, they're not substantially so.

Depends on what you consider "substantial." The width of LOGH ships is significantly less than their overall length. Ex: I'd guess a battleship/cruiser is less than 100 m wide, whereas it might be 700-800m long by what you say. IF the accelerators run say, half or even a third of the length of the ship, they could easily be five or six times more powerful (for the same kind of weapon) since you have to split the width down the middle to account for two different broadsides.

Of course, they might be able to make them "short but squat" - short ranged but powreful, analogous to a carronade, depending on how the weapon works. For that matter, maybe they're a different beam weapon from the foreward mounts (particle beams for example.)

Missile and fighter defence is definitely another use for them - we see Alliance ships using them to defend against fighter attack in the first episode of the series and in Overture to A New War - we see the Knapfstein Fleet using all guns to shoot down incoming enemy mines in Episode 71.

Flank attacks may in fact be one of the main reasons they use fighters or missiles at all, and why they are closer ranged than the energy mounts. It could also be that missiles are closer ranged simply because they have very high accelerations and very little flight endurance - that was something that struck me when they took out the Artemis Necklace. Or, if they carry a big warhea,d there could simply be little room for fuel and sophisticatd guidance, limiting the ranges (more like a smart bullet.)