Legend of Galactic Heroes vs. Honorverse

[Connor MacLeod]

It seems to have some limits common to FTL in certain sci fi (like Weber's novels, or 40K) in the sense you can't get too close in system via FTL (unlike in SW or ST.) But this doesn't mean that it automatically works on a "jump point" type system like Wing commander, Vorkosigan, or the Starfire universe works. Descent freespace had a "node" type system, but those nodes were correspondingly quite fucking huge. And certain other sci fi series have taken similar approaches (again 40K warp is that way. In theory you can jump and travel anywhere in the warp, but in practicality you are constrained by certain routes. But evne then there's lots of latitude in term of entry and emergence points, even a bit of randomness.)

[Simon_Jester]

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...

Well, my "one missile fired per ship killed" point is that "sheer attrition" is no longer practical. While SD(P)s are few and far between, they're not the only ships that can fire long ranged missiles- any ship can tow missile pods that fire the long range MDM.

So while the Honorverse can't drop a battle squadron in every important star system, they can disperse cruisers and destroyers with a small pile of missile pods, which would deter small LoGH raiding forces.

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.)

LACs are a serious threat, possibly even on par with LoGH destroyers in physical size and firepower- though with much smaller crews due to higher automation. They are surprisingly big comparing the way they're pitched. On the other hand their weapons are short ranged, and they will have to get into firing range of a LoGH fleet to engage it effectively.

Non-pod ships will be a threat depending on their size, durability, relative numbers, and so on. Certain ship classes have the ability to fire MDM missile broadsides; this makes them a viable alternative to pod ships because they retain the long range missile punch, if not the same high rate of fire. Single-drive missiles (as fielded by the Solarians, by the Havenites up until some time after the First Manticore-Haven War ends, and so on) will still be long range weapons by LoGH standards, but the LoGH ships will at least be able to shoot back at the opposition while the missiles are being fired. The outcome depends, again, on relative numbers and accuracy- 1000 LoGH ships shooting at 10 Honorverse ships is very different from 50 shooting at 20, and the question of range, targeting, and how much volume of fire it takes to saturate the Honorverse ship's passive defenses and sidewalls is tricky.

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?

I'm not sure they have the strategic mobility advantage as decisively as the Empire does over the Federation. Another critical factor is that they don't enjoy overwhelming tactical superiority, which makes their high mobility less useful: their ships will not be able to casually brush aside modern Honorverse fixed system defenses (as seen in books 10 and 11), unless their raiding forces operate in very large numbers.

Another problem is that classically, going by the evidence of the series, LoGH fleets are extremely vulnerable to having their supply lines cut: even a few days without ongoing replenishment is enough to greatly weaken them. That makes it awkward for them to try deep raiding operations in large numbers.

Individual ships can penetrate deep into enemy territory, witness The Retriever from the Gaidens, but fleets generally move in the same ponderous, linear, one sector at a time way that they do in the Honorverse.

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

Well, it's really only the one movie. Aside from a few big things we can just ignore (Iserlohn Fortress is portrayed without its signature layer of liquid-metal armor in Golden Wings, while being portrayed with it everywhere else in the series), there's a good degree of consistency. So it's not hard to find a preponderance of evidence supporting a single interpretation of what the systems are capable of- though that interpretation may contain internal contradictions.

[takemeout_totheblack]

Non-pod ships will be a threat depending on their size, durability, relative numbers, and so on. Certain ship classes have the ability to fire MDM missile broadsides; this makes them a viable alternative to pod ships because they retain the long range missile punch, if not the same high rate of fire. Single-drive missiles (as fielded by the Solarians, by the Havenites up until some time after the First Manticore-Haven War ends, and so on) will still be long range weapons by LoGH standards, but the LoGH ships will at least be able to shoot back at the opposition while the missiles are being fired. The outcome depends, again, on relative numbers and accuracy- 1000 LoGH ships shooting at 10 Honorverse ships is very different from 50 shooting at 20, and the question of range, targeting, and how much volume of fire it takes to saturate the Honorverse ship's passive defenses and sidewalls is tricky.

Just how much can sidewalls stop anyhow? I know there's stuff about acute angles and all that, but there's also tell of things just beating it down via raw power.

Another problem is that classically, going by the evidence of the series, LoGH fleets are extremely vulnerable to having their supply lines cut: even a few days without ongoing replenishment is enough to greatly weaken them. That makes it awkward for them to try deep raiding operations in large numbers.

What is the nature of Honorverse system defense?

[Tanasinn]

LoGH battles definitely are time-compressed - the narrator and characters refer multiple times to this throughout the series, and they seem to last hours or days from what I remember, with characters knocking off for sleep mid-battle occasionally.

[Lord of the Abyss]

What is the nature of Honorverse system defense?

It varies, specially since not everyone has the same weapons. Just some ships in more lightly defended systems. Other defenses include orbital fortresses, moon stationed missiles, large arrays of stealthed missile pods, and LAC squadrons. Important planets also have drone ships whose function is to use their wedges as shields against missiles sent in ballistic as planet-killers.

[KlavoHunter]

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

If this were true, then why would Yang have his battleships present their flanks at Amlitzer to form a wall for the rest of his fleet? It would seem then that either the shields are omnidirectional generic "56% shields captain!" sort, or that they can be deliberately redirected to reinforce an arc, which presumably optimally be the forward ones most of the time.

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?

During Overture to a New War, in the initial assault against 4th Fleet, Admiral Merkatz moved up a short-range "Blitzkrieg group" of some of the smallest classes of Imperial ships, and one rapid-firing all its railguns into the belly of an FPA Battleship at point-blank range was sufficient to penetrate the armor and then ricochet around inside for even more damage, destroying the bridge before finally piercing out the other side. This did not destroy the Battleship, that took the intervention of its fellow FPA Battleship that it drifted in front of.

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.)

Well, the broadside guns consist of the big ports we can count and that we see firing often (And also being used to attempt to shoot fighters down), and then there are the very small antifighter weapons, like the one that pops out of a portal in the armor, looks at, and fails to see Julian's fighter, during his first battle.

[Vympel]

If this were true, then why would Yang have his battleships present their flanks at Amlitzer to form a wall for the rest of his fleet? It would seem then that either the shields are omnidirectional generic "56% shields captain!" sort, or that they can be deliberately redirected to reinforce an arc, which presumably optimally be the forward ones most of the time.

Maybe the flank armor / shields of the battleships are heavier than those of his cruisers and destroyers along the front? (remember, Yang's words were the "heavily armored battleships" - note we did see the ships, they're the standard FPA Battleships).

During Overture to a New War, in the initial assault against 4th Fleet, Admiral Merkatz moved up a short-range "Blitzkrieg group" of some of the smallest classes of Imperial ships, and one rapid-firing all its railguns into the belly of an FPA Battleship at point-blank range was sufficient to penetrate the armor and then ricochet around inside for even more damage, destroying the bridge before finally piercing out the other side. This did not destroy the Battleship, that took the intervention of its fellow FPA Battleship that it drifted in front of.

Yup, Merkatz loves his gunships (launched from carriers, incidentally, so they're basically heavy bombers). That's the only time we see those weapons (no indication that they're rail guns, really, but they're definitely some sort of armor piercing projectile) - other times we've seen those gunships shoot typical energy beams from the same place, and also have their weapon cells completely replaced with huge bombs.

Good point re the smaller PD weapons, we see them pop out of a battleship hull at Vermillion too.

EDIT: general info:- the fansub of LOGH Season 2 The Retriever (Chapter 3) refers to zephyr paticles being set off by "lasers and beam cannons".

[Simon_Jester]

The outcome depends, again, on relative numbers and accuracy- 1000 LoGH ships shooting at 10 Honorverse ships is very different from 50 shooting at 20, and the question of range, targeting, and how much volume of fire it takes to saturate the Honorverse ship's passive defenses and sidewalls is tricky.

Just how much can sidewalls stop anyhow? I know there's stuff about acute angles and all that, but there's also tell of things just beating it down via raw power.

Most of the cases of sidewall failure I can remember off the top of my head involve physical damage to the underlying generators- you have to somehow penetrate the barrier and knock out the generator rather than simply demolishing the sidewall by brute energy transfer. On the other hand, I don't remember everything, and am really really unclear on the effect of brute energy transfer on sidewalls.

To take an obvious example, in Honor of the Queen, Rafe Cardones manages to score a couple of very close proximity hits with high-yield nuclear warheads on a Masadan battlecruiser. The hits destroyed a number of sidewall generators, greatly weakening the battlecruiser's ability to project a defensive shield on that side. But I am not sure whether those warheads blew up inside the sidewall, or outside the sidewall.

Another problem is that classically, going by the evidence of the series, LoGH fleets are extremely vulnerable to having their supply lines cut: even a few days without ongoing replenishment is enough to greatly weaken them. That makes it awkward for them to try deep raiding operations in large numbers.

What is the nature of Honorverse system defense?

Early in the series, static fortifications armed with beam weapons and missile launchers. At the high end, these forts are effectively supermassive but very slow ships- sort of like coast defense monitors on a larger scale. They are protected by defensive "bubble sidewall" generators. We see forts of this type used by the Manticorans to cover wormholes, where an attacking enemy might predictably emerge from the wormhole at close range. I've heard figures up to sixteen million tons cited for the Junction forts, and unlike normal Honorverse ships, the forts have no vulnerable 'throat' or 'kilt' because of the bubble sidewall.

Another common component of system defenses in all star systems, even primitive ones like Masada, is the Light Attack Craft (LAC) unit. These ships, weighing in at something like twenty to forty thousand tons (!) are too small to carry a hyperdrive and useful armament, so they are purely sublight craft; as a rule they carry a battery of missiles in box launchers and hope to fire them off before being destroyed, because they are very fragile compared to a starship. They also mount energy weapons, but in the early series LAC energy weapons are not very effective.

After the Manticorans invent missile pods early in the first round of the war, they begin reinforcing their system defenses with missile pods left in deep space, and launched when the enemy comes into close range.

LAC technology improves dramatically for Manticore in the later stages of the First Manticore-Haven War: LACs are equipped with more powerful energy weapons, higher performance missiles, and improved survivability from exotic sidewall variant schemes. The main change is that LACs gain increased popularity as an antiship strike unit, leading to the creation of dedicated LAC carriers and to increased production of LACs making them a more common feature of system defense, as an alternative to tying down hyper-capable starships. This doesn't change the role of LACs in system defense, but it does make them better at doing the job and more likely to be present in quantity to do the job.

During the same period, missile technology also improves dramatically, with advances in drive miniaturization allowing the creation of much longer-ranged missiles- as in interplanetary ranges; it would be quite possible to launch a multi-drive missile (MDM) from Earth and hit Mars* before the missile drive burns out. For system defense, the big application of this is that you can station defensive missile launchers many millions of kilometers apart and still have them all range on a single target.

This led to the evolution defense doctrines- Haven arguably led the way in this- with large numbers of missile pods left in open space to fire on enemy ships with concerted salvoes of thousands of missiles. Such a defense could be problematic for a LoGH fleet, unless their individual ships take a great many missiles to kill.
__________

*Well, when the planets are aligned properly .

[takemeout_totheblack]

I'm not sure what the veracity of this is, but the LoGH wiki seems to claim that the Galactic Empire has something called 'warp missiles' that allow them to perform nuclear attacks from lightyears away. Apparently they were used in the Westerland Incident when Prince Braunswieg (sp?) ordered its destruction. This possibly corresponds with visuals as no fleet is seen attacking the planet and at that point in time the Prince and his forces were cooped up in Geiresburg Fortress by Reinhard. However the missile in question is never explained or even mentioned by name, so it could be a case of wiki-syndrome.

I'm not claiming this to be true, perhaps Vympel can lend his knowledge of the series to this issue. It never seems to be mentioned in the anime, but there's always the possibility that it was in the books.

[Vympel]

Its not mentioned in the anime at all. I have no idea where it comes from. Except such stuff to be purged with fire given its lack of citations. (We're going for a Memory-Alpha style citation system, so anyone contributing, please check the site and make sure you understand the citation codes).

EDIT: re how it was nuked, the nobles could've simply sent a tiny patrol fleet. All their forces weren't exclusively concentrated at Geiersburg, or else Kircheis, Wahlen, Lutz and Steinmetz would've had nobody to fight against out on the frontier (we know from the show that though we only saw them defeat Littenheim, they fought a lot more).

[Vympel]

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...)

That's cool, I can grab them.

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.

Yeah, I doubt it would get into SW territory personally, my gut truthiness detector says.

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.

No indication of angling or shield geometry. As noted earlier, beam cannons fail to penetrate shields (and aren't deflected, they just stop) at extreme range (not stated, but explicitly in excess of 6 million km). So that's the other side of the coin.

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?

There's virtually no evidence in the show that shields can stop solid objects at all. The only indication is one episode when the supreme flagship Brunhild is under fire and it has IIRC (its near the end of the series so I haven't seen it in a while) a bubble shield - the weapons fire looks like cannon tracers (i.e. solid shells) but that's purely a guess.

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.)

Should be quite doable yeah.

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?"

That might be taking it too far- it resembles a tactical nuclear device, if I had to pin it down. There's no indication that everything outside the radius is completely unharmed. Its just an interesting weapon in that I simply can't pin down what it is from the four types of weapons LOGH has:-

* the beam cannons
* the missiles (there are nuclear and non-nuclear types - the Salamander fires a "tactical" missile at Mt Everest that blows a massive crater, but there's no nuclear effects)
* the photon torpedoes - I call them this because that's exactly what they look like. They're never named. Only Imperial Battleships are seen to fire them. (I think this one is a potential candidate)
* the AP projectiles fired from Imperial battleships

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

Luckily, I don't think Golden Wings adds anything to our understanding of the tech. Of course I've never seen the whole thing. Simon_Jester notes Iserlohn looks wrong, but its not just that - all the ships look totally different too. Its just ... twilight zone!

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.

I keep telling myself to send off my Fleet File booklets to a professional translator, but the potential cost is going to be big. Need to wait until I can better absorb the expense.

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.)

Yeah, unfortunately they don't look different when they fire. But the broadside shots were at short range, so its definitely possible that they're range limited.

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.)

Another use for fighters could be flying under the shields of enemy ships to slice them up - fighters as you would have seen from various screenshots are quite capable of slicing up even a standard battleship into swiss cheese if they get a good firing run going.

[Simon_Jester]

Its not mentioned in the anime at all. I have no idea where it comes from. Except such stuff to be purged with fire given its lack of citations. (We're going for a Memory-Alpha style citation system, so anyone contributing, please check the site and make sure you understand the citation codes).

Eep. Will get on that at some point; I went and wrote an article and didn't bother to cite.

[Connor MacLeod]

Quick update. I went around and looked at Ep 24 in some detail. I think I'll have a calc for you (suffice to say, it is BIG. Just how big I'll go over, hopefully, tomorrow.) I'll get to my replies tomorrow too, because there's alot of implications to go over this and I'm still digesting it all.

Out of curiosity, do we have any hard data on the Artemis necklace? dimensions, mass, etc? I noticed some of the other fortresses that look like that do have definite numbers (although I don't know how the validity stacks up.)

I'm also guessing the "hydor metal" or liquid metal stuff is what covers the surfaces of all those spherical forts as well (which the laser cannons sometimes stick out of.) I have some theories on that, but I'd be curious to know something about that as well (do they just use it on stations, or on starships as well?)

Also I've een meaning ot ask: I have seen maps of LOGH and it looks like they're spread across a fair chunk of the galaxy, but do we know how many systems/planets, etc the Empire and FPA have?

Edit: oh yeah one more question: What do we know about the fleet's logistical capabilities? do they have transport/freighters? Do they ever travel with the fleet (or close to it?) and if so do we know how big it is? I think those sorts of details will matter greatly in dealing with this scene, and I don't want to have to speculate too wildly.

[Vympel]

Out of curiosity, do we have any hard data on the Artemis necklace? dimensions, mass, etc? I noticed some of the other fortresses that look like that do have definite numbers (although I don't know how the validity stacks up.)

No data on the necklace size, but it might be possible to scale them from the episode (5?) where Kircheis destroys one with LOGH's magical zephyr particles - an Imperial fleet attempts to attack it and its weapon fire strikes them, might be possible to come up with something from that, but I'd have to double check.

The dimensions and mass of Geiersburg and Iserlohn are explicitly stated in the series by the narrator, so I suppose its as valid as one can get (I don't know if you read it, but we have Geiersburg's acceleration when its engines are being tested in one episode that I've covered - and IIRC we know its mass, so yay?)

I'm also guessing the "hydor metal" or liquid metal stuff is what covers the surfaces of all those spherical forts as well (which the laser cannons sometimes stick out of.) I have some theories on that, but I'd be curious to know something about that as well (do they just use it on stations, or on starships as well?)

Its used solely on the Artemis Necklace, Geiersburg and Iserlohn, as well as a sort of 'base' for an Imperial landing force in one of the gaiden. Oh and from the looks of it perhaps the Phezzan space elevator / space station.

Also I've een meaning ot ask: I have seen maps of LOGH and it looks like they're spread across a fair chunk of the galaxy, but do we know how many systems/planets, etc the Empire and FPA have?

The maps are one thing I havent' seen (except the regional maps in the show). The show isn't explicit - on one occasion it refers to the Alliance capturing 200 star systems, but not all of them are inhabited. The impression I get is that this is a fraction of Imperial territory, but total human popualtion in LOGH IIRC is not high.

Edit: oh yeah one more question: What do we know about the fleet's logistical capabilities? do they have transport/freighters? Do they ever travel with the fleet (or close to it?) and if so do we know how big it is? I think those sorts of details will matter greatly in dealing with this scene, and I don't want to have to speculate too wildly.

Both sides have enormous transports (flying boxes, really), much larger than their warships, that serve the fleets supply needs. They travel with the war fleets (Reinhard's main invasion force had 112,700 combat ships plus some 41,900 suport ships - which I assume would be a combination of engineering ships and supply ships) on campaign, but they aren't brough with on every battlefield - this will only be the case if a long engagement (lasting several days) is anticipated, they'll be placed in the rear, and ships will go to them for resupply.

[wautd]

How would LoGH boarding parties fare against Honorverse marines? In some cases we see shuttles being used to board/ram/torpedo into far bigger craft to cripple or capture enemy craft. The Rosenritter in particular were pretty damn effective in this, but both sides are known to do it.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

Manticoran and Havenite marines generally come in skinsuits or powered armour. Skinsuits are essentially armoured spacesuits, generally coming with a thruster pack and electronic HUD. They're also made of 'smart fabric', allowing the built-in computer to change its colour scheme (Wayne, Burnside, Pope, 'Jayne's Intelligence Review, The Royal Manticoran Star Navy, 1905 PD', Ad Astra Games, p. 56). Said computer can datalink with weapons, and the suit comes with a communications suite suitable for tactical coordination. Havenite skinsuits are not rated against infantry combat 'main arms' ('The Havenite Republican Navy', p. 54).

As for powered armour, I have info for the Havenite A6 and the Manticoran M21. The A6 is described as having a high-power EM field to disrupt plasma flow, along with layers of 'semiablative armorplast' to resist energy and kinetic attacks. Power supply ranges from 2 hours intense combat to 40 hours at minimal. It also comes with a built-in chaff and flare launcher, as well as communications and sensor drones. The sensor package has visual and IR sensors, passive ESM and active targetting arrays. The active camoflage has a refresh rate of 4-5 seconds. ('Havenite Republican Navy', p. 56).

The Manticoran M21 comes with thrusters and jump gear, consisting of countergrav and anti-intertial units. This is primarily for null-g, but allows the wearer to lope at up to 100km/h for a limited period in 1g, or to leap 7 metres vertically. The M21 can manage up to 50 hours in recon configuration, down to 4 hours with heavy weapons. The suit comes with onboard ECM, reduced radar cross-section, thermal management, and active camoflage. ('Royal Manticoran Navy', p. 58).

The standard Manticoran rifle is the M32A1 Pulse Rifle, in 4x37mm calibre. Ammunition is either solid anti-personnel or explosive anti-armour and suppression, in 100-round clips. Both can be loaded at the same time, with the user switching between them at will. The firing mechanism is described as 'linear-feed grav coil'. Muzzle velocity is adjustable up to 2200 MPS. Maximum rate of fire is 2500 RPM, with a default of 400 RPM for fully automatic and 2000 RPM for a 3-round burst. Max effective range is 3000m in 1G. It comes with a laser designator and range-finder, and a combination visual, IR and low-light sensor. (Royal Manticoran Navy, p. 70).

As for LOGH, Imperial troops seem to use laser small-arms as standard, and we've also seen portable missile-launchers (small enough to fit inside Braunschweig's vivisected torso, no less). FPA forces have a fixed light-artillery weapon of some kind (used by pro-coup soldiers on Shampool in episode 21). Both sides have AFVs and tanks, Imperial versions definately being armed with lasers (or whatever laser-esque energy weapon that is). Both sides have access to armoured space suits, which are used either in vacuum or when Zephyr particles have been deployed. In the latter case, soldiers fight hand-to-hand or with crossbows. Zephyr particles are only used in enclosed spaces (such as ships, space stations, and buildings) IIRC, as they would presumably blow away if used outside. That body armour is rarely used implies that it offers little protection against laser small-arms.

Imperial troops should stand a fair chance chance against Honorverse troops, especially with proper vehicular support. Powered armour is another matter, especially in enclosed environments like ships and space stations. Since pulsers work by gravity manipulation, there's no apparent reason to believe that they would detonate Zephyr particles, though plasma weapons almost certainly would. The first few clashes could be very unpleasant for the Reich if they start with their usual tactics (spray particles, then charge in with axes). Since Zephyr particle detonation is a problem for both sides, Imperial troops are better off not using them.

[Connor MacLeod]

Okay. Calc time!

First off, I decided to be a bit lazy. There are some other possible scaling cues during that little speech being given where we see the asteorids being prepared (we even see the engines and them being installed in the ship), but there was one already posted on spacebattles so I used that. If we wnat to double check or refine it, we probably could check one of the others.

I used the green vessels (I think they were cruisers, Vympel or someone else will have to correct me on that) in the background as my benchmark, as they were in the foreground but looked reasonably close to the two closest asteroid. I used two benchmarks. One was the smallest ship I could identify as an actual ship. The other was black lines in the backgrond which look like ships to me but I wasn't 100% sure on. I also did one approximate scaling based on the asteroid in the upper corner, just as a double check.

Assuming a ~300 meter length (I know it wasnt exact but I was going for orugh calcs anyhow), the first asteroid in the corner is between (I estimate) 800-1000 meters in diameter, based off the closest vessel (still in front of the asteroid, mind, so it could be larger.) While we can't see its length, the other asteroids are roughly identical for us to say it's about 1.5-2x the width... so 1-1.5 km in width seems likely. The second asteroid has two sets of calcs for the two different benchmarks. The first benchmark yields a width of around 1.4 km diameter and 1.9 km long. The second one (the black lines assumed to be warships) yields a diameter closer to 2.5 km, and a length of around 3.4 km.

Now, for the first asteorid, those dimensions yield a mass of ice somewhere btween half a billion and a billion tons. Whilst the second figures go between several billion (at least a billion) and several tens of billions of tons. No matter how you cut it, that's alot of ice.

Which brings us to velocity. They say it was near-c once, and Yang himself suggests the asteroids are at least approaching a significantly reletavistic fraction of lightspeed. I myself guessed they crossed the distance close to the planet and the Necklace in a few frames (~5-6 frames from the asteroid-eye view just prior to impact), covering a significant portion of the planet's diameter in that time. call it .2-.25seconds and maybe 6000-8000 km, or between 25,000-40,000 km/s. That's not "near-c" as we might think it, but I do have reasons for considering that value.

Velocity, however, is pretty irrelevant. The asteorids are clearly moving at least at a small fraction of ligthspeed and can be guessed to be covering thousands of km/s easily. And even at slow velocities, the KE is.. significant. I am going to ignore momentum (which is also considerable) for the moment, and focus on the KE.

We have asteorids taht are for the most part between 1e12-1e13 kg in mass (within an order of magnitude of that either way, at least.) Even at a few thousand km/s, we're talking hundreds if not thousands of teratons worth of KE.. per asteroid. AT tens of thousands of km/s.... we're getting well into the e26-e27 joule range (hundreds to thousands of petatons.) which is enough to boil and/or vaporize the Earth's oceans (those sorts of impacts haven't been since since the Hadean era, near as I can remember.) And if we get close to light speed... well.. we're starting to edge up into the e29-e30 joule range and greater, where you're actually blasting the oceans and atmosphere off the planet, if not outright vaporizing most or all of the planet itself.

Now, no matter which way you cut it, its a staggering amount of energy. And the implications behind this feat are pretty impressive.

- Yang's fleet assembles this little trick seemingly on their own resources, and without any apparent, significant drain on the fleet's resources. This is one reason I wanted to know about probable transport capacity, as it is quite likely that the fuel (and engines) came from them. Knowing fleet sizes and operational durations, we can tell QUITE a bit about their power generation from this. Obviously, the bigger the number, the more insane the calcs are.

Also worth noting is that I am only measuring the KE of the asteroids themselves, not the energy expended to move them that fast which, by reaction thruster, is going to be at LEAST twice as much (the calcs could get more complicated.)

- The Artmeis necklace, when hit by the asteroids, are not significantly disrupted or immediately vaporized. In fact, it looks like the asteroid remains intact for a few frames. This is... insane to say the least, if true. If we know how many ships might be required to destroy it, we might estimate firepower.

- momentum. As a illustrative example, a one billion ton asteroid moving at oh 10,000 km/s has a momentum of 1e19 kg*m/s. Now, this is interesting because when when impact seems to happen (we see several different renderings of this) the station isn't knocked back or out of orbit in the slighted. Not the least visible displacement. Even when they're destroyed, they do not seem to mvoe in place.

This tells me one of three things. One, what keeps them aloft and seemingly in a fixed orbit provides an anchoring that resists the impact. Two, the station is really just that fucking massive. We're probably talking orders of magnitude more massive than the asteroid itself. Possibility three, a combination of the two. Again the higher masses and velocities lead to higher figures, but they don't get quite as insane as the energy figures can (only in a relative sense, of course.)

- They had to have done something to not just anchor those engines to the asteroid, but to strengthen the asteroids themselves. I'm guessing some sort of inertial damper/structural enhancement field of some kind - I'm not sure a ice asteorid would hold up against the sort of thrust that would be required to move it, even at a relatively slow speed.

another interesting observation is that given the performance I estimate, the engine itself must generate tremendous amounts of heat (even a fraction of which). WE don't see any obvious radiators, which means that they shielded the asteroids, the engines are insanely insanely efficient, or their cooling systems are magical (SW neutrino radiator style magical.)

It's also quite likely they needed to shield the asteroid against interstellar debris and impacts, but that isn't quite as essential as the above.

Given the weapons do fuck all against the asteroid, I'm guessing on some sort of shielding and structural reinforcement.

- Weapons ranges and missile performance. Now, the continuous sequence I estimated was around 30 seconds or so, give or take a few seconds either way. First they fire lasers (to no effect) and then missiles (to no effect). I'm not sure if the beam weapons are near-c or not, but the missiles have some curious implications from the scene.

It's the missiles that really concern me, as the beams are variable (at least if particle beams, we can adjust the velocity) because I estimated a 5-6 (on screen) transit time for the missiles. Even given the fairly low velocities I estimated, I figured on them having to move at a fair fraction of the speed of light themselves. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the nearer to c the asteorids get, the faster the missiles have to be moving in order to intercept them before impact. (What's more, a near-c asteroid will pretty much prove that there are significant, random "scene cuts" or time compression, because the near-c asteroid still takes noticibly longer to hit than the missiles, yet once you get close to c, the differences in velocity are utterly trivial.)

Also to accelerate to even a fraction of the speed of light is going to require some.. interesting engines. Better acceleration than HV missiles quite probably (certainly not worse). Hell at near-c they're bordering on Andromeda verse missile accelerations (EG abusrd.) The KE of such a missile, envermind the energy expended to accelerate that fast... are pretty... interesting in and of themselves, and may in fact rule out any sort of nuclear warhead (there'd be no point.) Either the missiles were kinetic missiles or they had some (non-fusion) type warhead. Given their lack of effect on the asteroid, I'm guessing they could be kinetic.

Regardless, the missiles had to cover at least hundreds of thousands of kilometers s in a matter of seconds, meaning a velocity of tens of thousands of km/s is quite likely at a bare minimum. Whether this reflects on other missiles or not, I cannot say. Of course, if you assume the missiles took far longer than a few seconds to travle and we only saw part of their flight time, this can also settle matters quite nicely as long as one steers away from "near-c" asteroids.

Beam weapons fired took ~6-7 seconds of on screen time to "hit" the asteroid. Now, if beam weapons are at or near-c (EG if they are really lasers) then this might provide an independent lower limit on range and velocity (I calced around 25% c for the asteroid assuming this, and about .83c for the missiles that way. Don't ask me about acceleration.) On the other hand, if they can be stated to be particle beams or if we dont know, then it could just mean that the beam velocity is much lower than c (how much lower we don't know.) Internally, this doesnt make much difference (otehr than hinting at they have some good, bordering on magical, particle beam tech, as the only sorts of RL beam weapons that approach multi-LS ranges are REALLLY big x-ray lasers.)

That's all the "good" news. Now, there is some bad news, and some potential complications.

- The first complication is with the velocity. Obviously the faster it goes, the more energy/momentum and shit involved and this could cause problems with consistency along the line (I dont know. I'm only anticipating potential contradiction.) You can interpret this to provide som einsane abilities (high acceleration, heavy firepower, high durability, etc.) depending on how you handle it and the assumptions/variables you use, which leads to alot of the interesting bits (EG the missiles.) This means that the calc will ultimately depend on the velocity you settle upon (it's also something you're likely to get nitpicked on in a vs debate.)

- on that same note, watching frame by frame we see what looks to be glittery glowy bits or dust just prior to impact.. that is... problematic perhaps in terms of the impact. It just lasts for a frame or two maybe, but it might be interpreted to be the asteroid's impact velocity (scaling off the Necklace stations themsellves.) Unless these things are freaking huge by themselves, or one can explain away the glittery bit, the velocity probably isnt anywhere near-c. Hell it woudl be hard to argue tens of thousands of c. On the other hand, hundreds of km/s would be nicer calc-wise and lead to less insanity.

- The eps of LOGH I grabbed had.. interesting (read lousy) subtitling (HUGE ice BLOCKS AT LIGHTSPEED said several times had lead me to dub this the "relativistic ice cube attack") which in itself provides problems. Since LOGH has no "official" translations, there's that sticky canon issue, and since some of this analysis does depend on the dialogue, its VERY open to inteprretation, and hence argument/nitpickery/etc. So it probably is best nto to read too deeply into the dialogue. And if you want to avoid "insane" numbers, you're probalby going to HAVE to ignore or loosely interpret the dialogue anyhow.

The "bussard ramjet" bit was also missing from the subtitling I had, so that may be something you want to steer away from as well (at least, read too heavily into.) I am 99% sure that in any event it couldnt' be very much like a "real life" proposed ramjet either. If that bit can be verified, we might at least infer something about the velocity. Atomic rockets noted that ramjets need a certain minimum of velocity (thousands to several tens of thousands of km/s at leaast) to function effectively. But even then, I doubt you could rely on space to provide nearly enough fuel for the "insane" KEs involved, much less the energy for exhaust needed. Engine choice might depend on how you want to handle the absolute calcs. Bussard limits you if you want to revise calcs downwards, but non-Bussard leave sit much more open.

- without any conclusive proof of the asteorids being "enhanced" in any way, someone will probably point to the damage the weapons do (or rather the utter lack of) as a limit on firepower. you might mitigate this by claiming they were thermal in nature rather than mechanical (explosive) as it could take alot of energy to melt the asteroids even unaided, but.. again it's a sticking point for argument.

[Connor MacLeod]

That's cool, I can grab them.

I got lazy, so I still gotta find them. That guy who tried assasinating Yang (can you tell I didnt watch it front to back?) gave a speech to the planet, we see scenes of them preparing the asteroids during the speech. I'd grab from that. And probably double check mine to see if I didnt miss anything.

Yeah, I doubt it would get into SW territory personally, my gut truthiness detector says.

That probably means you're going to want to revise the numbers downwards. Which might require you going with less.. literal.. interpretations. (I outline this in my previous post though)

No indication of angling or shield geometry. As noted earlier, beam cannons fail to penetrate shields (and aren't deflected, they just stop) at extreme range (not stated, but explicitly in excess of 6 million km). So that's the other side of the coin.

Do they explicitly say that? Then you might infer that penetration of shields is highly dependent upon the coherency/focus of the beam weapon. Basically the more concentrated it is, the better the chances of penetrating. Range, esp with RL lasers and particle beams, has a huge impact on this (the further away you are the less focused your beam is) I'd guess that there's a sliding scale of probability of penetration, although how it works out I dunno. But basically the closer you get and the more focused your beams, the better chances of getting through. Spinal mounts (forward guns) being likely longer than the broadside guns, probably are better at this as well (and may explain the limited use of broadside guns)

It also hints at intensity mattering as far as other weapons types (EG proximity nukes) going off. This also means that they go for localized "burn throughs" of shields when possible. In this sense it explains the use of beam weapons over nukes (or at least one reason) they are going to be less wasteful of energy and more likely to penetrate (unless you can use a bomb pumped x-ray laser or a shaped charge nuke like the Casaba Howitzer) Of course, this interpretation means that if HV lasers are energetic enough, the shields probably won't do shit to stop them

There's virtually no evidence in the show that shields can stop solid objects at all. The only indication is one episode when the supreme flagship Brunhild is under fire and it has IIRC (its near the end of the series so I haven't seen it in a while) a bubble shield - the weapons fire looks like cannon tracers (i.e. solid shells) but that's purely a guess.

then that probably explains the use of projectiles. This does make me wonder, if they can chuck missiles pretty fast, why no kinetic warheads? Even if they're shorter ranged than beams, they should bea n ideal weapon to use against LOGH ships. They may not use them as a major weapon (range again, but also fuel usage and supply issues as well as targeting) but it would work as a secondary weapon, and probably be more efficient than nukes.

That might be taking it too far- it resembles a tactical nuclear device, if I had to pin it down. There's no indication that everything outside the radius is completely unharmed. Its just an interesting weapon in that I simply can't pin down what it is from the four types of weapons LOGH has:-

* the beam cannons
* the missiles (there are nuclear and non-nuclear types - the Salamander fires a "tactical" missile at Mt Everest that blows a massive crater, but there's no nuclear effects)

Turns the mountain into a crater, or just puts a huge crater in the mountain? that could be calcable.

* the photon torpedoes - I call them this because that's exactly what they look like. They're never named. Only Imperial Battleships are seen to fire them. (I think this one is a potential candidate)

What do they do? Explosive/non, or what? IT may just be a different kind of missile. I'm sure cruisers dont fire the same missiles as destroyers (unless they custom do that, perhaps to trade magazine size for firepower)

* the AP projectiles fired from Imperial battleships

Are those shown very often? They could just be a kind of missile.

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

Luckily, I don't think Golden Wings adds anything to our understanding of the tech. Of course I've never seen the whole thing. Simon_Jester notes Iserlohn looks wrong, but its not just that - all the ships look totally different too. Its just ... twilight zone![/quote]

Difference in artwork maybe. It is animation, so I suppose you could argue it's not *quite* a real life documentary, more like a.. animated re-enactment maybe. That could cast doubt on the source mateiral, though. I always hate that kinda stuff because it just gives fodder for nitpickery.

I keep telling myself to send off my Fleet File booklets to a professional translator, but the potential cost is going to be big. Need to wait until I can better absorb the expense.

Sounds expensive. Use an online translater to get a rough idea of what they say. If there is something more specific ten send it off to a translator (or the parts you want.)

That said, I wouldn't rely too heavily on dialogue, unless you get "official" translations. Again, too much potential for nitpicking (remember the SW debates over interpretation of dialogue?)

Yeah, unfortunately they don't look different when they fire. But the broadside shots were at short range, so its definitely possible that they're range limited.

Appearance doesn't mean much in this case, since IRL lasers and particle beams would be invisible in the vaccuum. Any beam we "see" would have to be by definition some sort of side effect or tracer or something.

Another use for fighters could be flying under the shields of enemy ships to slice them up - fighters as you would have seen from various screenshots are quite capable of slicing up even a standard battleship into swiss cheese if they get a good firing run going.

Shields aren't a uniform "bubble" type thing? EG they have gaps/openings in them? Or is there some sort of "velocity threshhold" like with SW and dune shields?

I've heard that fighters can damage capital ships in large numbers. That's going to be worth keeping a note of as well as it provides an indicator and broad limit on firepower (you can't get a fighter mounting multi-TT beam weapons, for example...) Alot of this depends on the size/mass/accelerative capabilities of the fighter though.

[Connor MacLeod]

Out of curiosity, do we have any hard data on the Artemis necklace? dimensions, mass, etc? I noticed some of the other fortresses that look like that do have definite numbers (although I don't know how the validity stacks up.)

No data on the necklace size, but it might be possible to scale them from the episode (5?) where Kircheis destroys one with LOGH's magical zephyr particles - an Imperial fleet attempts to attack it and its weapon fire strikes them, might be possible to come up with something from that, but I'd have to double check.

The dimensions and mass of Geiersburg and Iserlohn are explicitly stated in the series by the narrator, so I suppose its as valid as one can get (I don't know if you read it, but we have Geiersburg's acceleration when its engines are being tested in one episode that I've covered - and IIRC we know its mass, so yay?)

I'll look at ep 5 later. Its probably good to get an idea on scaling, because that may play a role with velocity.

And mass will.. matter, for the reasons of momentum and the station movement I outlined before. That could provide another potential benchmark/limiter (I doubt the Artemis necklace stations are going to be orders of magnitude heavier than Geirsburg or Iserlohn. You might be able to estimate their mass based on the dnesity of those two though if you can scale the size of the Necklace stations.)

Its used solely on the Artemis Necklace, Geiersburg and Iserlohn, as well as a sort of 'base' for an Imperial landing force in one of the gaiden. Oh and from the looks of it perhaps the Phezzan space elevator / space station.

It made me think of this stuff which I vaguely believe was the basis for Dale Brown's Tin men armor. It sometimes seems to act solid then.. not solid (like when you get point defense turrets sticking out of it) Pity it is only used on stations, because that could give you an interesting defense for starships.

The maps are one thing I havent' seen (except the regional maps in the show). The show isn't explicit - on one occasion it refers to the Alliance capturing 200 star systems, but not all of them are inhabited. The impression I get is that this is a fraction of Imperial territory, but total human popualtion in LOGH IIRC is not high.

this is the one I was thinking of - another posted on SB. They look like they're easily spread across an area tens of thousands of LY across, and thousands of LY wide. That's alot of space for planets, even with fairly wide separation (say tens of LY per plant/system.) That would fit with the scale of the starfleets.

By the way, do we know how many crew per ship? I'm guessing hundreds. They look pretty small but not very crew intensive.

Both sides have enormous transports (flying boxes, really), much larger than their warships, that serve the fleets supply needs. They travel with the war fleets (Reinhard's main invasion force had 112,700 combat ships plus some 41,900 suport ships - which I assume would be a combination of engineering ships and supply ships) on campaign, but they aren't brough with on every battlefield - this will only be the case if a long engagement (lasting several days) is anticipated, they'll be placed in the rear, and ships will go to them for resupply.

Then that probably provided all the stuff to pull off the asteroid trick, as I mentioned. Going with a ~10K ship fleet, a 2 day operational endurance, and assuming that what went into blasting the stations was the whole output (e27 joules, call it) we'd be looking at roughly e23 joules of fuel per ship, and a roughly e17 watt average sustained power output or thereabouts. That's not an absolute figure, but more an approximation.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well, my "one missile fired per ship killed" point is that "sheer attrition" is no longer practical. While SD(P)s are few and far between, they're not the only ships that can fire long ranged missiles- any ship can tow missile pods that fire the long range MDM.

Assuming a reasonable chance of getting missiles through to hit, of course. I think it's a bit unreasonable to assume near-perfect hit rates, and the only case where that won't matter will be alpha strikes or large podnaught fleets that can throw tens or hundreds of thousands of missiles per salvo.

So while the Honorverse can't drop a battle squadron in every important star system, they can disperse cruisers and destroyers with a small pile of missile pods, which would deter small LoGH raiding forces.

Yes, but how many per system, and how many pods? How many fire control links do those ships have (which is what really is going to dictate the throw weight.)

I'm actually thinking that if the HV is going to be able to mount any effective defence, they hold back their big ships and concentrate entirely on LACs in that regard. Its about the only way they can hope to match LOGH or fend it off. Missile pods can be remote controlled from stations anyhow.

]LACs are a serious threat, possibly even on par with LoGH destroyers in physical size and firepower- though with much smaller crews due to higher automation. They are surprisingly big comparing the way they're pitched. On the other hand their weapons are short ranged, and they will have to get into firing range of a LoGH fleet to engage it effectively.

I dont know what they may match up capability wise. I'd gues sbased on Echoes of Honor/Ashes of Victory And what Weber said about impeller wedge perfromance that you can espect ship power generation to be somewhere in the mid to high petawatt range (depending on ship, firepower, and how conservative you are.) I know I did calcs for this based off the 150 g thruster burn and cam eout about there. Of course, Fusion drives are ludicrously power hungry at that performance envelope. Single/double digit MT/sec for energy weapons seems likely (again depending on ship class.)

And agreed about LACs, at least. They're the closest LOGH equivalent they have.

Non-pod ships will be a threat depending on their size, durability, relative numbers, and so on. Certain ship classes have the ability to fire MDM missile broadsides; this makes them a viable alternative to pod ships because they retain the long range missile punch, if not the same high rate of fire. Single-drive missiles (as fielded by the Solarians, by the Havenites up until some time after the First Manticore-Haven War ends, and so on) will still be long range weapons by LoGH standards, but the LoGH ships will at least be able to shoot back at the opposition while the missiles are being fired. The outcome depends, again, on relative numbers and accuracy- 1000 LoGH ships shooting at 10 Honorverse ships is very different from 50 shooting at 20, and the question of range, targeting, and how much volume of fire it takes to saturate the Honorverse ship's passive defenses and sidewalls is tricky.

Yes, they'll have a potential range advantage, even without podnaughts, but how decsiive is that? They need to be able to track and target, and this depends greatly on a.) how many

That's kinda the thing. With Podnaughts they carry such an insane number of missiles that (barring vastly greater durability, manuverability or overall defense than HV, or target ranges shrink more than I think) even with only one out of a hundred Podnaught missiles hit their targets, you'll still kill something like 100 ships per every podnaught. That gives a sizable podnaught fleet a good chance of wiping them out. Standard dreadnoughts with flat pack pods might be able to come close to that as well. Other ships.. I'm not so sure of. They don't carry enough pods, fire control links, or missile tubes (even with off bore) to be that dangerous, even setting aside the issue of warheads and such. Fewer missiles per salvo is (I think) a bit of a drawback in the accuracy department.

That's why LACs are so potentially nasty defensively in this case. They can be easily built, easily manned, easily replaced, and have huge numbers close to or matching the number of LOG ships, and (importantly) throw out huge missile salvos rapidly to overwhelm defenses.

I'm not sure they have the strategic mobility advantage as decisively as the Empire does over the Federation. Another critical factor is that they don't enjoy overwhelming tactical superiority, which makes their high mobility less useful: their ships will not be able to casually brush aside modern Honorverse fixed system defenses (as seen in books 10 and 11), unless their raiding forces operate in very large numbers.

The tactical situation is more even, but I'm not sure that it really matters in the end. Looking at LOGH maps, they encompass a HUGE volume of space. They're spread across a significant fraction of the galaxy, unlike the HV. HV drives would have no hope of crossing those distances in any reasonable timeframe, so they are at BEST going to be glacial in any offensive (assuming they can amass the ships to do it. Nevermind locating targets) And if they can't attack, they're going to be on the defensive, which at best can be a draw, and at worst a slow attritional death, because LOGH can basically dictate the war on their terms (Where they attack, how big a fleet they throw, etc.) The HV can only try to guess where and defend as best as possible (or to abandon everything but the most crucial places like Manticore, although that isn't an alternative without repercussions.)

There is also the economic/trade factor to consider, as many of the polities in the honorverse are rather closely related in that regard (Trade, and the money generated, is important to Manticore, for example.) What happens when trade starts getting disrupted? Maybe small empires like Manticore and Andermani can handle that, but what about Haven, or the League?

Maybe I'm wrong, but stuff like that strikes me as a HUGE advantage, even if there is a parity or slight inferiority in ability. Hell even if their ships are vastly weaker (taking Iserlohn's cannon at face value as a 200 kiloton - fleet destroying doom weapon) they still have that edge.. and I'm betting they can build at least MORE ships than the HV can, even if they can't build faster. And, I'm betting they can amass more resources.

Another problem is that classically, going by the evidence of the series, LoGH fleets are extremely vulnerable to having their supply lines cut: even a few days without ongoing replenishment is enough to greatly weaken them. That makes it awkward for them to try deep raiding operations in large numbers.

That can be a limiting factor, true. But that's mostly logistics and only affects the speed with which they can move. They will have speed.

Individual ships can penetrate deep into enemy territory, witness The Retriever from the Gaidens, but fleets generally move in the same ponderous, linear, one sector at a time way that they do in the Honorverse.

But how is hte HV going to know which systems the LOGH side would attack? Even if they can, how long is it going to take them to amass large numbers of ships to match it? The only possible case where that might not matter is with the wormholes, and those aren't terribly common.

[Connor MacLeod]

By the way Simon, I don't expect an immediate reply. I kinda enjoy laid back debates, so if you want to take a few days replying (I know you talk around the other forums a bit too) don't feel like you need ot get me back an immediate reply.

[Lord of the Abyss]

That's kinda the thing. With Podnaughts they carry such an insane number of missiles that (barring vastly greater durability, manuverability or overall defense than HV, or target ranges shrink more than I think) even with only one out of a hundred Podnaught missiles hit their targets, you'll still kill something like 100 ships per every podnaught. That gives a sizable podnaught fleet a good chance of wiping them out. Standard dreadnoughts with flat pack pods might be able to come close to that as well. Other ships.. I'm not so sure of. They don't carry enough pods, fire control links, or missile tubes (even with off bore) to be that dangerous, even setting aside the issue of warheads and such. Fewer missiles per salvo is (I think) a bit of a drawback in the accuracy department.

That's why LACs are so potentially nasty defensively in this case. They can be easily built, easily manned, easily replaced, and have huge numbers close to or matching the number of LOG ships, and (importantly) throw out huge missile salvos rapidly to overwhelm defenses.

One other thing the Honorverse can do if they have a range advantage is what the Mayans did in Torch of Freedom. Build cruiser sized ships with extra fire control, and ammunition ships designed to be capable of deploying pod salvos. The ammunition ship (hopefully) stays out of range entirely, while the cruisers get in closer and take control of the missiles once fired. That lets you build more and cheaper (if much flimsier) ships than SDs, while having similar firepower.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

By the way, do we know how many crew per ship? I'm guessing hundreds. They look pretty small but not very crew intensive.

At one point in the series there is a public slogan of calling for a fleet of a million ships and a hundred million men, so while that's not a solid number it provides an order-of-magnitude ballpark for crew counts.

As for the size of the Empire, I recall the total population of the galaxy is around 40-50 billion with the empire in the 20-30 billion range.

[Lord of the Abyss]

As for the size of the Empire, I recall the total population of the galaxy is around 40-50 billion with the empire in the 20-30 billion range.

The only quote I have for Honorverse populations only mentions the Solarian League and the Star Kingdom.

"The Star Kingdom is a polity of five whole settled planets in only three star systems, since Trevor's Star's annexation—and assuming you can call Medusa a 'settled planet' in the first place. Even with San Martin added, your total population does not exceed six billion. There are five times that many people living in the Solar System alone—or Centauri, or Tau Delta, or Mithra, or any one of several dozen of the Solarian League's inner systems. The 'Old League,' as it's popularly known. The Solarian League as a whole has an official membership of 1,784 planets—that's not counting the hundreds more under Solarian rule in the Protectorates—which exist in a volume of galactic space measuring between three and four hundred light-years in diameter. Within that enormous volume, there are literally more stars than you can see here at night with the naked eye. No one has any idea what the total population might be. The Old League alone has a registered population of almost three trillion people, according to the last census—and that census grossly undercounted the population. No serious analyst even tries to claim they know how many more trillions of people live in the so-called 'Shell Worlds' or the Protectorates. I leave aside entirely the untold thousands—millions, rather—of artificial habitats scattered across thousands of solar systems. "

[Vympel]

Quick note:-

By the way, do we know how many crew per ship? I'm guessing hundreds. They look pretty small but not very crew intensive.

At one point in the series there is a public slogan of calling for a fleet of a million ships and a hundred million men, so while that's not a solid number it provides an order-of-magnitude ballpark for crew counts.

We have exact numbers from the Fleet Files Collection. I've listed some in the wiki already, but I'll post a good number of them (they vary by ship type) later tonight.