Legend of Galactic Heroes vs. Honorverse

[Simon_Jester]

Then its yet another case of Weber changing his mind retroactively. It's not going to bother me, although radiation weapons in space are a bit silly. I aint' gonna buy he turns plasma into x-rays by making each lasing rod into a miniaturized FEL though.

Likewise; I know enough about how FELs work to regard that as a "throw the book across the room and ignore it" crack. Weaponized FELs I can easily, easily believe; I know people who know people down at Jefferson Lab who sing that tune for their supper. But you are not going to get FEL effects out of a passive hunk of metal, or out of a gravitational field. Nor are you going to get an acceptable particle beam with adequate quality to do the job that way.

Except those figures don't remotely model what is happening, so those figures are suspect to worthless.

We do have in-universe declaration that a 15MT bomb-pumped laser head can deliver terajoules to petajoules to the target(also from "In Fire Forged") and we know those x-ray lasers are only poking small holes in the ships and not bathing the entire ship in X-rays at once because Weber explicitly tells us.

Could you try to be a bit more flexible about this? I'm with Simon on this, and Weber's words leave enough wiggle room for variation in the bomb pumping process (even he has flat out said they can't controll it perfectly), and we STILL hve to make everything fit with everything else even if he's being internally inconsistent, which isn't the first time something like this has occured (ship masses/volumes being fucked up, the general nature of the Impeller wedge being something that could kill everyone onboard if it isn't held down to a certain acceleration, etc.)

The calc in question, or any other (Such as mine) are not precise figures, they're "order of magnitude" figures. Which can fit well within the "terajoules to petajoules" estimate you cite, once allowanve for all the variables are made.

Actually, it fits smack dab in the middle of that energy range.

"Terajoules to petajoules" could conceivably be anywhere from 2 TJ to 999 PJ: 12.30 to 18.00 on a logarithmic scale (increase of one on the scale -> increase of an order of magnitude in energy).

Note that, yes, this is a factor of a million, which is probably why Weber said it: he's not really nailing anything meaningful down by saying it.

Strangelove's figure of ~190 kilotons per beam from a laser head would be at 14.90 on that same scale: as I said, very close to the middle of the cited energy range.

Now, more plausibly "terajoules to petajoules" implies a number that could logically be counted in either terajoules or petajoules, much as, say, the weight of a car could be counted in kilograms or (metric) tons. Which suggests something in the 100 TJ-10 PJ range, or 14.00 to 16.00 on that same logarithmic scale... still placing Strangelove's figure in the middle of the cited energy range.

So I'd say that Strangelove did a damned good job, and that his calculation fits quite well with Weber's stated figures for beam energy.

His figures for spot size, not so much, but that's because Strangelove did his calculation according to the laws of physics and Weber didn't. But unless Weber declared war on the law of conservation of energy while I wasn't looking, the beam energy calculations should still be just fine.

[Connor MacLeod]

It's also quite close to my own estimates for what their broadside energy armaments would be, scaled up for differences in the penetration rnage (lasers/grasers can penetrate sidewalls at roughly 15-20x greater range, assuming all other variables held even.) As I've said before, I have extreme doubts that the grasers are going to be chucking out gigatons of energy per shot even for Superdreadnoughts, based on the Reaction thruster performance.

Of course, I also suspect graser "yields" tend to vary from mount to mount, because they don't mount the same number of guns in every ship (The Medusa B had 50 grasers, but the Invictus had 80. Yet in theory both could have the same raw output. Which may be true, or not. I remember them treating the 80 grasers thing as a big deal, which in turn suggests that energy weapon output is probably far less than maximum engine output.)

There is of course, Weber's own words on Wedge performance and its relation to the "Hyperspace tap/fusion reactor" hybrid.. which is... not as impressive either.

[Connor MacLeod]

It doesn't really make much difference whether the enemy is flying "above" you or "to the left" of you; what matters is whether they are directly in front of you, behind you, or off to one side. The difference between "dorsal" and "starboard" is just a matter of rolling the ship about its long axis, after all.

Now, if the enemy disperses into multiple groups of targets/threats, you have to keep track of three dimensions, in that you may have enemy fire coming at you from several different axes at once... but LoGH fleets don't do this very often, and even when they do they usually don't split into enough groups that it becomes an issue.

On top of that, I think people over-value acceleration. Yes, if acceleration costs are trivial (like if you have a magical reactionless drive, or a "cheat" like mass lightening) it probably makes sense to keep acceleating or manuvering, but some universes are different. Andaccelerating (especially the ludicrously fast accelerations of some sci fi) has tradeoffs. The ship can move at potentially thousands of gravities, but that costs you fuel (if not propellant) and both are finite quantities, especially if you run the ship flat out. I'm betting this is true in LOGH.

Fuel isnt the only issue either. Reading through the "translated" novels, there are hints that LOGH ships employ a great deal of stealth/cloaking like measures (in the hull, possibly some sort of magic field systems, etc. The text is hard to decipher even tranlsated) I gather the super stealth plus super ECM gives it its "need for human assisted/manual targeting" explanation. If true, and ignoring the 'no stealth in space' argument, running your engines is likely to give away your position. (That may be what the "glowy dots in the distance" in the anime represent, given supposed engagement ranges.)

Lastly, keeping things simple (2 dimensional rathr than 3) probably simplifies training and coordination for such huge numbers of ships. (and if you don't plan to manuver much, who cares about the third dimension anyhow?) They're clearly AWARE of it, since they stack ships vertically and horizontally in their fleets, and fleets can be arranged at differing heights, but its not a big factor in their tactics.

There may also be a certain amount of data-compression going on in the portrayals we see on flag officers' tactical plots. They may be building the display in 2D and training the officers to read the details of position in the third dimension from detailed information beyond the gross position of objects. I know I'd be tempted to do it that way, depending on how flexible my free-air holography was.

I'd say that unless the battles occur at high fractions at the speed of light (unlikely) that alot of time compression and scene cutting goes on in the battles. I at least get that impression alot (like the bombardment of the Artemis necklace.)

The huge-ass ones are exactly that. A fort like Iserlohn (with said liquid metal armor, and about the size of a modest asteroid, ~60 km) is a major capital investment for the people who build it; they can't just spam dozens of the things, and based on the fact that none are constructed during the course of the main series I suspect they take many years to build. It's certainly doable, but it's not something that can be done in a year or two.

I was thinking they might more probably be built in decades. My point really was "its not something they just stumbled across that is ubertech" in the sense of say, Forerunner (Halo), or Dark Age of Technology (40K) ubertech. I'm perfectly fine if its a significant investment by their standards, since it isn't exactly "breaking" them either even if it does take awhile.
Hell, tens of trillions of tons spread out over say, 40 years is still a hell of alot of material to be flinging around, particularily when you consider how long they've been at war.

Point is, LOGH has some very impressive logistical and industrial capabilities, at least for its apparent scale.

The fans doing the subbing may screw things up, but they're not likely to misrepresent the numbers. Since the numbers more or less hang together (national populations in the 10-100 billion range, overall fleets in the hundreds of thousands, with some tens of millions or low-hundreds of millions of men under arms on each side), I don't see any reason to pick nits at them.

It does seem consistent yes, but years of having to deal with incessant nitpickery of the smallest detail, as well as the fact I HAVE gotten bitten in the ass when it comes to translations and word usage, make me wary of that (and also explain why I am being so picky/stubborn about this.) If it is consistent enough for ballpark figures, happy day. But there are still too many potential error points in the dialogue for me to be entirely comfortable. I mean hell, look at the problems translating Weber's intentions, and he speaks english

Well, the basic design paradigm is the same on both sides- large ships with high block coefficients, fixed axial main guns, and vectored thrust. Though there are details- for instance, Imperial fighters have large pintle-mounted guns that unfold from the sides while Alliance fighters are big boxes whose weapons have a somewhat more restricted firing arc.

yeah I've noticed that. not quite sure why they build such unique flagships but mass produce everything else (and they do it on BOTH sides!). The only thing that could stop them is ego (which could explain the Empire, sort of, but the FPA?) At best you're looking at a "they choose not to build more of them because of human reasons" rather than "they can't build more of them."

True to a point, but I wouldn't want to use information from the (incompletely translated, probably permanently incompletely translated, possibly entirely different from the TV series) books to contradict numbers in the complete translation of the TV series. Especially since, as noted before, those numbers hang together.

Curtis and the rest were always more insistent on throwing shit out than I was, but my general experience with sci fi analysis (and anime in general) is to take all the information in as we can, and then prune it when it needs pruning to fit it inot the larger, overall picture (the bit that matters.) The extra material at least fills in alot of useful background details that can help, especially on the technical side (which is all I really care abou tthem for. I'm happy to favor the historical events of the anime.)

[Connor MacLeod]

We have a fairly good idea - the total forces for the Empire (including those forces of the high nobles) didn't exceed 250,000 ships or so. The Alliance was probably around the same, before strings of defeats early in the series whittled their forces down significantly* There are more minor "patrol" and "defence" fleets which are hastily thrown together in emergencies to form full 'regular' fleets for lack of a better term.

I assume we're talking totally warships, and not warships+support for that number?

What are these "minor" patrol/defence fleets you spoke of? It makes sense (to police systems and protect commerce and the like). I've generally assumed that much of what is seen in the series tends to represent the assets they've been able to either build, repair, or otherwise free up from other commitments and duties to throw into the war. I dont think any navy routinely throws their full assets into a war and holds nothing back. Moreover the whole shipbuilding/losses angle and repairs will skew any precise number further, even if we don't factor in a possibility of any sort of reserves (mothballed or something.)

Yeah you see battlefields filled with scrap a lot, so that's possible.

End of Episode 15, it looks like there's a ton of debris in close proximity to the star. NONE of it is molten or even remotely glowing. That's literally insane/impressive.

I'm not sure whether that's a regular "sun" type star, or a red dwarf/giant/etc though. I keep vacillating between one or the other.

EDIT: oh, and I just remembered, in one episode we see a scene aboard a damaged Alliance ship where a crewman gets past a door and it closes down behind him - two more guys run over to the door and pound on it to no avail until an explosion occurs and they're cooked up against the door, so they definitely have dicrete sealable compartments.

Makes sense. They were able to rig up those ice asteroids somehow to be able to withstand the (probably insane, given I'm estimating the whole event took hours tops) accelerations to take out the Necklace. That would take some very (fast and crazy) engineering, or magic forcefields, either of which would apply to their starship design.

Another thing I've noticed is that it often seems like you get multiple beams hitting the target before it's destroyed. That tells me probably its more a matter of WHERE they are hit that decides whether a hit is fatal or not. And again, turning your side to the enemy seems to be a guaranteed kill.

What I mean is that the fleet / crew numbers used throughout the series are all consistent with each other. I'm not sure how the scripts for fansubbing are done (I assume from listening to the show, since the timing is always perfect) but the chances of them ballsing up say, "one million nine hundred and eight thousand" would be about the same as anyone listening to English and getting it wrong.

True. although I'm still going to advocate extreme caution and at best, taking them potential numbers. If there is nothing wrong you lose nothing. If not.. well.. you have to address it sooner or later. It also saves you greatly on the nitpicking (better me now than someone like Scooter later.)

Typos, however, are easy to spot - in one Gaiden episode, a fleet of 1,000 ships is said to take 1/3 losses- and then we see the relevant Admiral say he just lost "30" ships. Clearly when they were tpying out the transcript they left out a 0 - that sort of stuff is easy to spot. (its also pretty much the only obvious error I've ever seen).

I've currently got at least 2-3 different translations by now, two of them are roughly similar, one is dramatically different (Eg ep 21.) and it seems to be a mix of stuff. I'm more inclined to follow the translation you showed me on Youtube, but I'm looking and there's some pretty hefty differences between the two, and since none of them are official, this just screams "point of contention" to me. LOGH has been around a long time in fansubbed form, but I dont know which one is to be considered the "authentic" and I suspect this is largely going to be a matter of opinion.

(the version on my HD decribed oversized ice cubes travelling more or less at c to hit the target, which is silly. The other one you showed me was less silly in that it only implied it was moving at some fraction of lightspeed, which fits, although near-c is still problematic from a consistency standpoint.)

Also, tech terminology is vague and doesn't permeate the series - we know "warp" means "warp" because they're clearly saying "warp" in the dialog in English - same with "energy" and "missiles".

I tend to hate listening to the japanese and I'm usually multitasking anyhow, so I have the audio turned down.

I'm not sure. Given all the Admirals are Vice Admirals, it seems excessive for them to have that many warships each, so they may well have a greater proportion of support ships. One problem with that battle is that the strength of the Imperial fleet that goes to meet them (eight fleets themselves, also all commanded by Vice Admirals) is never explicitly stated, save that at least two of them were confirmed to be more numerous than their opponents.

You already mentioned thta some "fleets" are made up of smaller detachments. It occurs to me the big "fleets" (like what Yang, or Reinhard command) are semi-permanant formations, but ones that don't have a fixed size or strength. They probably add or remove forces as needed depending on circumstances (whether its in the tens, hundreds, or thousands of ships per detachment, I dont know.) Even if its not truly "galactic" there's a huge slice of space to cover, and you can't have 99% of your fleet focused on two major points and ignore everything else. Especially, I suspect, in the Empire.

Which gets back to what I was saying about the fleet sizes and the possibility of stuff like reserves/mothballed extras. Or fleet distribution for that matter - this can play into the ratios you and Simon were talking about (They might have 90% of the Battleships in the Empire fixated on the war, but only a smaller overall percentage of the escorts.)

They appear to do things the same way. They're the same in terms of warship convention though not ship design, IMO. Both sides have one type of fighter (Valkyrie and Spartanian) destroyers, cruisers, battleships, fighter carriers, and unique flagships. Where they differ is the Empire has 'fast battleships' and gunships in addition to its Valkyrie fighters.

So in other words, there was yet more speculation on the Wiki and this is going to be a lengthy process for you to keep fixing. I hope you aren't having any disagreements over that, because it could get very messy.

True that. As we were disucssing in the PM, one of the reasons the handful of novel chapter translations don't do it for me is that they're so raw and inelegant.

The main value of the novels is that they fill in the technical holes in the universe, and in most of that you don't have to worry too much about precision or numbers or the exact wording. General dialogue, character descriptions, and all the other non-technical stuff can be completely disregarded for all I care Especially since I'm advocating only a broad, vague interpretation of the dialogue anyhow, when possible.

[Connor MacLeod]

Oh, I can confirm warships are fusion powered. In Episode 51 there's an explicit reference to the Lubeck's fusion reactor being damaged.

That helps and complicates matters.

Also in that episode, after the Lubeck is destroyed, Muller transfers from regular battleship to regular battleship twice (from the Lubeck to the Neustat, then the Neustat to the Offenburg, then the Offenburg to the Helten), and has the opportunity to abandon each when they're successively damaged/ destroyed. So there's that.

Is that just said or do we see the state of the ships by the end?

I looked at episode 15 and Amlitzer with the nukes and fighting near the star. As I said, I'm still deciding whether or not its a red giant or a normal (sun type) star. But either way, some things are apparent.

- Yang drops 4 rows of what I estimate to be 6 missiles/bombs/whatever each. They take levitate above the star, then shoot straight down ( a powered descent, it looks like) taking about 4-5 seconds to cross the distance. Assuming they take

- When they go off, I estimate that each ship had a vertical acceleration equal to ~3 times the height of the nearest ship on screen (a FPA battleship, it looks like to me.) It also seems to move forward about half its ship length. I estimate it took between 1.5-2 seconds (leaning more towards the lower end, possibly a bit less, but no less than a second.) Given their roughly diagnol ascent (which was.. odd to say the least.. still working on that) they endured an acceleration (onscreen at least) of between 20-30 gees by my estimate, low end.

If the Star above is a normal "Sun-type" star, the fact that they were able to hold stable above the star indefinitely also hints at being able to generate/counter accelerations in that magnitude (I think its safe to assume AG and inertial compensation, at least in this case, would be related.) I saw no retros firing to keep them aloft, so it had to be some sort of AG.

There is also the question of why they didn't use engines, although evidence suggests they should have engines capable of that. One guess is that they could, but lighting off the engines would have given away their position. My impression was Yang was launching a counterattack, and his tactic was designed to give him maximum cover (and surprise.)

- Yield of the bombs (disregarding teh funky aspects of this whole event) depends on alot of factors (was it shaped or omnidirectional, I'm betting shaped) the method of acceleration (some sort of shaped plume or jet of hot gasses might take more energy than a magic forcefield pushing upwards.) as well as how many ships are present (several fleets worth, it looks like.) It appears to be at least kiloton range per bomb, more probably low megaton range. But it could rise to gigaton (or higher, especially if the "plume" is fast moving and there are alot of ships.) Part of me is thinking that more ships than just Yang's dropped those bombs, but we only see Yang's ship doing it.

Lastly: If we take the Ice asteroid engine performance as being a ballpark figure for what their ships are capable of, they ought to be able to at least pull a good 15-20 gees acceleration even for Battleships Assuming a roungly 1-2 million ton battleship (givne the dimensions and a ship mass roughly on part with a Weberverse ship).. well the energy outputs range somewhere in the e18-e19 watt range for most of the numbers I did, which is.. interesting. Interesting meaning "how the fuck did they do that with only fusion?" I've been having to play with the numbers a bit and assume "magically efficient" fusion (as efficient as what you get from a star, in fact) and even then they're throwing out at least tens or hundreds of tons of fuel each second (which probably doesn't hurt, since they have no other use for the plasma it probably can double as propellant, and the more propellant used, the less exhaust velocity hou get.)

The Exhaust velocity I figured on was something like .8-.12c, getting much above .25-.3c starts getting messy, as does higher accelerations (say 50-100 gees.) without some "alternative" power source. I have some ideas on that, but I',m still playing with it, and even then it probably means cutting into their fuel supply pretty sharply. As far as performance goes, I'm figuring on something like 1-2 days worth of continuous acceleration before running out of fuel. That is tenative of course, and I'd actually like to get more closer to the e18 watt range.

(Note as well that this is power generation for the engines. This won't neccesarily correspond to the weapons. Given that the ships don't get knocked around when firing or hit by beams, I'm betting the max output of most guns is going to be a fraction of what the engines pump out. Of course even then its quite possible we're talking e16-e17 watts, which is pretty respectable.)

Oh, and one last thing. It seems like fighting that close to a star was utterly TRIVIIAL for them. No mention of the radiation interefereing with systems, burning away sensors or gun ports, not even heating the hull noticably. The crews inside were perfectly fine. Shielding apparently wasn't even strained. That suggests their firepower and durability is many, many times (probably orders of magnitude) greater than what they absorbed from the star (bearing in mind my earlier caveat about not being sure what kind of star it is.)

[Xon]

His figures for spot size, not so much, but that's because Strangelove did his calculation according to the laws of physics and Weber didn't

I should have been more clear, I'm not debating the energy transfer values (because TJ-PJ is 6 orders of magnitude) but the spot size being ~4 orders of magnitude out which directly translates into 4 orders of magnitude difference in energy density of the laser impact on the hull.

There is a damn vast difference between poking holes in the ship generally only take out very small sections, and require a lucky reactor hit to actually kill the ship compared to bathing half the ship in a beam which then immolates that facing section.

But unless Weber declared war on the law of conservation of energy while I wasn't looking, the beam energy calculations should still be just fine.

Honorverse ships generate a wedge/funky hyperspace gravity event which pushes/pulls the ship. Said wedge is relative to the ship itself, so by moving the ship the wedge is also moved. From a purely realspace perspective it is free energy, it's only once you read the inane details that you can eventually work out the energy is coming from hyperspace.

[Simon_Jester]

His figures for spot size, not so much, but that's because Strangelove did his calculation according to the laws of physics and Weber didn't

I should have been more clear, I'm not debating the energy transfer values (because TJ-PJ is 6 orders of magnitude) but the spot size being ~4 orders of magnitude out which directly translates into 4 orders of magnitude difference in energy density of the laser impact on the hull.

There is a damn vast difference between poking holes in the ship generally only take out very small sections, and require a lucky reactor hit to actually kill the ship compared to bathing half the ship in a beam which then immolates that facing section.

Well, more like "lightly bakes" that facing section. Relative to the implied durability of the armor, the actual effect of a ~1 gigajoule per square meter beam wouldn't be all that impressive. But I take your meaning.

Thing is, the spot size calculations are irrelevant to the beam energy calculations and vice versa, and for this context both are important.

But unless Weber declared war on the law of conservation of energy while I wasn't looking, the beam energy calculations should still be just fine.

Honorverse ships generate a wedge/funky hyperspace gravity event which pushes/pulls the ship. Said wedge is relative to the ship itself, so by moving the ship the wedge is also moved. From a purely realspace perspective it is free energy, it's only once you read the inane details that you can eventually work out the energy is coming from hyperspace.

Yes, which has no effect on the energy of a beam projected from an Honorverse warhead, which was my point.

[Vympel]

I assume we're talking totally warships, and not warships+support for that number?

Unfortunately the only time both warships and support ships are counted seperately is the 112,700 / 41,900 figure from one part of the episode.

My impression is that normally when it gives ship numbers it isn't including support ships. For example, in Episode 22 three Imperial fleets (Reinhard faction) totalling 40,000 ships face off against 50,000 ships from the Imperial high noble faction. The dialog in the episode seems to support the interpretation of these numbers as pure warships - Lutz (Reinhard admiral) comments on Kircheis making a mockery of 50,000 ships with 800 - soon after the high nobles are crushed one of them runs away and fires on his own supply ships, which aren't part of the battle.

However, its hard to be sure.

What are these "minor" patrol/defence fleets you spoke of? It makes sense (to police systems and protect commerce and the like). I've generally assumed that much of what is seen in the series tends to represent the assets they've been able to either build, repair, or otherwise free up from other commitments and duties to throw into the war. I dont think any navy routinely throws their full assets into a war and holds nothing back. Moreover the whole shipbuilding/losses angle and repairs will skew any precise number further, even if we don't factor in a possibility of any sort of reserves (mothballed or something.)

The "numbered" fleets of the Alliance and the "named" fleets of the Empire (all Imperial fleets are named after their admiral, with the exception of the elite Black Lancers) are all permanent formations throughout the course of the series, though elements of them may be detached to do certain things (i.e. like Rear Admiral Eihendorf's 2,000 ships from the Kempf Fleet skirmishing with Rear Admiral Attenborough's portion of the Yang Fleet in Episode 27)

However, with the Alliance fleet smashed thoroughly in Episode 15 (i.e. those 200,000 ships), the intact Alliance fleets were reduced to the 13th Fleet (which was renamed the Yang Fleet and was permanently stationed at Iserlohn), the 11th Fleet (destroyed in Episode 21), and the 1st Fleet (permanently guarding the capital). To bring up the numbers, the 14th and the 15th fleets (10,000 ships each) were formed by throwing together what the fansub calls "defence fleets, patrol fleets, worn out fleets, and untested new fleets". So before that, these ships weren't part of the major 'numbered' formations.

End of Episode 15, it looks like there's a ton of debris in close proximity to the star. NONE of it is molten or even remotely glowing. That's literally insane/impressive.

I'm not sure whether that's a regular "sun" type star, or a red dwarf/giant/etc though. I keep vacillating between one or the other.

Would be nice if we had the book translation for that, at least.

Makes sense. They were able to rig up those ice asteroids somehow to be able to withstand the (probably insane, given I'm estimating the whole event took hours tops) accelerations to take out the Necklace. That would take some very (fast and crazy) engineering, or magic forcefields, either of which would apply to their starship design.

Another thing I've noticed is that it often seems like you get multiple beams hitting the target before it's destroyed. That tells me probably its more a matter of WHERE they are hit that decides whether a hit is fatal or not. And again, turning your side to the enemy seems to be a guaranteed kill.

Yup.

I've currently got at least 2-3 different translations by now, two of them are roughly similar, one is dramatically different (Eg ep 21.) and it seems to be a mix of stuff. I'm more inclined to follow the translation you showed me on Youtube, but I'm looking and there's some pretty hefty differences between the two, and since none of them are official, this just screams "point of contention" to me. LOGH has been around a long time in fansubbed form, but I dont know which one is to be considered the "authentic" and I suspect this is largely going to be a matter of opinion.

(the version on my HD decribed oversized ice cubes travelling more or less at c to hit the target, which is silly. The other one you showed me was less silly in that it only implied it was moving at some fraction of lightspeed, which fits, although near-c is still problematic from a consistency standpoint.)

I've heard of this awful translation, but haven't seen it myself. AFAIK there are two translations - that one, and Central Anime's translation. Central Anime's is way better, and has none of that nonsense.

Note Central Anime has done two fansubs of the show - the laserdisc rip (which is almost certainly what you have on your HDD, and is what is on youtube) and the DVD rip (which is still being done and is up to Episode 86 right now). The scripts for these are identical (though in the DVD rip they added a few extra "next time on LOGH" segments at the end of the credits, necessitating new translations).

You already mentioned thta some "fleets" are made up of smaller detachments. It occurs to me the big "fleets" (like what Yang, or Reinhard command) are semi-permanant formations, but ones that don't have a fixed size or strength. They probably add or remove forces as needed depending on circumstances (whether its in the tens, hundreds, or thousands of ships per detachment, I dont know.) Even if its not truly "galactic" there's a huge slice of space to cover, and you can't have 99% of your fleet focused on two major points and ignore everything else. Especially, I suspect, in the Empire.

Which gets back to what I was saying about the fleet sizes and the possibility of stuff like reserves/mothballed extras. Or fleet distribution for that matter - this can play into the ratios you and Simon were talking about (They might have 90% of the Battleships in the Empire fixated on the war, but only a smaller overall percentage of the escorts.)

Oh yeah, thats definitely a possibility. I think I just got overly fixated on the 'standard' fleet size for an Imperial High Admiral in the latter half of the series, which is 15,900 ships exactly stated for two seperate fleets (Mecklinger and Black Lancers). Fahrenheit had 15,200 ships at the same time - but he had just fought a battle a few episodes prior which would account for the loss of 700 ships. No need for those numbers to be set in stone. Besides, Alliance fleets led by Vice Admirals had 15,000 ships early in the series. High Admiral Mittermeyer when invading Alliance space had 20,000 ships all to himself - and Reinhard when he himself was a High Admiral had 20,000 at Astarte.

When I get home I'm going to go through all the fleet numbers I've listed in the battles thread, its good that I've got them all written down.

So in other words, there was yet more speculation on the Wiki and this is going to be a lengthy process for you to keep fixing. I hope you aren't having any disagreements over that, because it could get very messy.

So far there's only three of us working permanently (though Simon has made some edits, tyvm) and I'm default "ship guy", so things are going pretty swimmingly atm. Still don't know who put that stuff in. *shrug*

[Vympel]

Is that just said or do we see the state of the ships by the end?

You see the Neustat before it explodes (the narrator states it was hit by alliance fire and lost navigational capability, and was destroyed after Muller left it) but you don't see the Offenburg. The Neustat has vapor / smoke coming out of a few places. Oh and you see the Lubeck, obviously (unique hero ship and all) - no immediately obvious damage before it goes up.

I looked at episode 15 and Amlitzer with the nukes and fighting near the star. As I said, I'm still deciding whether or not its a red giant or a normal (sun type) star. But either way, some things are apparent.

- Yang drops 4 rows of what I estimate to be 6 missiles/bombs/whatever each. They take levitate above the star, then shoot straight down ( a powered descent, it looks like) taking about 4-5 seconds to cross the distance. Assuming they take

You accidentally deleted the balance of your paragraph there I think.

If the Star above is a normal "Sun-type" star, the fact that they were able to hold stable above the star indefinitely also hints at being able to generate/counter accelerations in that magnitude (I think its safe to assume AG and inertial compensation, at least in this case, would be related.) I saw no retros firing to keep them aloft, so it had to be some sort of AG.

There is also the question of why they didn't use engines, although evidence suggests they should have engines capable of that. One guess is that they could, but lighting off the engines would have given away their position. My impression was Yang was launching a counterattack, and his tactic was designed to give him maximum cover (and surprise.)

That makes sense - Mittermeyer, who he attacks, is one of the greatest Admirals in the series, and is uber fast himself (nickname being Wulf der Sturm) at fleet deployments, so if they had lit off their engines it might've given him sufficient time to counter.

*cut post for brevity*

Fascinating. We should discuss in more detail down the line.

yeah I've noticed that. not quite sure why they build such unique flagships but mass produce everything else (and they do it on BOTH sides!). The only thing that could stop them is ego (which could explain the Empire, sort of, but the FPA?) At best you're looking at a "they choose not to build more of them because of human reasons" rather than "they can't build more of them."

The Alliance gets somewhat more of a pass than the Empire in this regard. Their flagships, whilst all different, are sometimes different in only very subtle ways:-

http://www.geocities.jp/izelone0079/mei ... i-gif.html

Japanese fan site, but from what I've seen, quite accurate (referring to the official material, not all of this page's dimensions in relation to some Imperial ships are exactly correct, but otherwise its good). That's a list of the Alliance flagships, from 1st fleet down to the 15th fleet, and then after that, ships of Yang's subordinates, then variants of standard battleships (some have structural differences, some are just discrete battleships of the standard type), then cruisers, the destroyer, the carrier, and then some ships from about 70 years prior to the events of the main series.

So most of the (modern) Alliance flagships were all built from the same template. That must cut costs down somewhat. The historical ships are as bad as the Empire though - I think given those ships are the personal ships of the Alliance's "730 Mafia" (i.e. officer class of 730) who dominated the battles of the period with lots of victories, it may be a question of personal clout.

[DrStrangelove]

I'm busy with schoolwork so I'll try to post a reply to Xon's crying later.
Needless to say,
1. beam diameter is not constant, and the quote doesn't specifically mention the beams being 5cm or whatever at impact.
2. the gravity generators on focus the explosion not the lasing rods.
3. In Ch 30 of SftS the standoff distance is specifically stated to be 150m. The illustration most likely isn't drawn to scale

There is really no reason to assume Honorverse just rapes physics for no reason.

[Connor MacLeod]

You see the Neustat before it explodes (the narrator states it was hit by alliance fire and lost navigational capability, and was destroyed after Muller left it) but you don't see the Offenburg. The Neustat has vapor / smoke coming out of a few places. Oh and you see the Lubeck, obviously (unique hero ship and all) - no immediately obvious damage before it goes up.

Neustat was maybe hit by beam fire and it hit something volatile but perhaps wasn't immediately fatal (electircal short, or fire, or it wasn't an immediate failure.) Lubeck perhaps was either damaged on the either side or the damage was inflicted without peentrating (blast perhaps, or highly penetrating radiation, non nuclear EMP, or something.)

You accidentally deleted the balance of your paragraph there I think.

Ah I was going to say "assuming they cross a distance of ~1000 km (someone mentioned that before) you'd be looking at an acceleartion on the order of.. 8-10 thousand geesm and an average velocity in the hundreds of km/s (so they not only penetrated inside a star, but they did it at quite a fast clip.)

On top of that, the artificial "solar wind/flare" Yang triggered did absolutely dick to the starships, which says something about their durability against related type attacks (nukes, I think.)

Fascinating. We should discuss in more detail down the line.

Sure, if I remember all that shit. I probably will forget most of this until I watch the series from start to finish.

The Alliance gets somewhat more of a pass than the Empire in this regard. Their flagships, whilst all different, are sometimes different in only very subtle ways:-

http://www.geocities.jp/izelone0079/mei ... i-gif.html

Japanese fan site, but from what I've seen, quite accurate (referring to the official material, not all of this page's dimensions in relation to some Imperial ships are exactly correct, but otherwise its good). That's a list of the Alliance flagships, from 1st fleet down to the 15th fleet, and then after that, ships of Yang's subordinates, then variants of standard battleships (some have structural differences, some are just discrete battleships of the standard type), then cruisers, the destroyer, the carrier, and then some ships from about 70 years prior to the events of the main series.

So most of the (modern) Alliance flagships were all built from the same template. That must cut costs down somewhat. The historical ships are as bad as the Empire though - I think given those ships are the personal ships of the Alliance's "730 Mafia" (i.e. officer class of 730) who dominated the battles of the period with lots of victories, it may be a question of personal clout.

Okay, but that still doesn't quite explain the Empire, so you have to go with Ego.

Pity, I think that a fleet of Reinhard's flagships would be neat. I like the Brunhild.

Unfortunately the only time both warships and support ships are counted seperately is the 112,700 / 41,900 figure from one part of the episode.

My impression is that normally when it gives ship numbers it isn't including support ships. For example, in Episode 22 three Imperial fleets (Reinhard faction) totalling 40,000 ships face off against 50,000 ships from the Imperial high noble faction. The dialog in the episode seems to support the interpretation of these numbers as pure warships - Lutz (Reinhard admiral) comments on Kircheis making a mockery of 50,000 ships with 800 - soon after the high nobles are crushed one of them runs away and fires on his own supply ships, which aren't part of the battle.

However, its hard to be sure.

That could skew any numbers you have then, because any "fleet" mentioned could potentially carry nonmilitary ships. The best thing you got going for you si that they seemingly are fewer in number than the warships. Although on the supply side that either means the transports are a hell of alot bigger, or they have some measure of onboard fabrication/building to offset limited space. Given what I've seen in various points, either is equally possible, but I'm leaning towards "onboard fabrication." - consider their feat with the ice asteroids yet again.

The "numbered" fleets of the Alliance and the "named" fleets of the Empire (all Imperial fleets are named after their admiral, with the exception of the elite Black Lancers) are all permanent formations throughout the course of the series, though elements of them may be detached to do certain things (i.e. like Rear Admiral Eihendorf's 2,000 ships from the Kempf Fleet skirmishing with Rear Admiral Attenborough's portion of the Yang Fleet in Episode 27)

However, with the Alliance fleet smashed thoroughly in Episode 15 (i.e. those 200,000 ships), the intact Alliance fleets were reduced to the 13th Fleet (which was renamed the Yang Fleet and was permanently stationed at Iserlohn), the 11th Fleet (destroyed in Episode 21), and the 1st Fleet (permanently guarding the capital). To bring up the numbers, the 14th and the 15th fleets (10,000 ships each) were formed by throwing together what the fansub calls "defence fleets, patrol fleets, worn out fleets, and untested new fleets". So before that, these ships weren't part of the major 'numbered' formations.

It sounds like they do in fact have reserves (including decomissioned/mothballed ships - or perhaps they could be considered second or third line warships like the old WW1/Age of sail distinctions) as well as purely defensive elements. And of course the new construction and repairs.

Now, all that said, I'd be hard pressed to argue it changes the numbers significantly. Its possible they throw around only say, 5-10% of their fleet at any one time, but that would be pushing the limit I think. They have huge fleets, and can trhow around alot of raw material, but the fleets they amass don't seem TOO trivial either. A million is perhaps an achievable goal, but not a standard for them.

Would be nice if we had the book translation for that, at least.

That's kinda why I think the books matter. And if not them, then at least the mangas. not only does it give more insight into what we see onscreen, but I think that all the numbers that do make it onscreen would come from either manga, novel, or both. And if they do, I'm betting they omit details. Who knows, they might even explain the 740 milloin MW figure somehow.

Besides you yourself mentioned that there are alot of different "weapon types" shown onscreen that you dont know about. Want to make a bet they get mentioned in the novels or manga?

I've heard of this awful translation, but haven't seen it myself. AFAIK there are two translations - that one, and Central Anime's translation. Central Anime's is way better, and has none of that nonsense.

Note Central Anime has done two fansubs of the show - the laserdisc rip (which is almost certainly what you have on your HDD, and is what is on youtube) and the DVD rip (which is still being done and is up to Episode 86 right now). The scripts for these are identical (though in the DVD rip they added a few extra "next time on LOGH" segments at the end of the credits, necessitating new translations).

If that's your take on it, then you probably should make it the wiki policy. Since they're both "fanon", this is going to be a potential argument/canon point, of the magnitude like the old SW ICS type debates, or the Clone Wars, or whatever, because they od make significant differences between the two, and if there are only two translations, its going to be hard to dismiss one as an outlier.

Hell, remembe rthat "laser-hydrogen" bit you mentioned that I interpreted as Inertial confinement (laser triggered) fusion? That is just an interpretation, and some literal minded fanboy might scream "THAT'S NOT RIGHT" and insist it be whatever the fuck it was. An alternate (and equally valid) interpretation would be say, some sort of chemical reaction involving hydrogen and a laser boosting efficiency. It would be a chemical rocket, but those do exist.

Another thing is the "x-ray beam cannons" - - they may not be lasers. It could just beam a beam of x-rays directed at the target. The two aren't neccesarily synonymous (although the "beam of x-rays" is probably not going to be all that effective.)

By the way speaking of beam weapons, bouncing aorund diff eps I do notice one mention in the first couple of eps about "neutron beams".. at least in the translation I have. That could mean that the beams AREN'T lasers... that would hcange this debate rather sharply.

[Connor MacLeod]

By the way, one thing that struck me about the fleet organization and possibly the popluation numbers... At least for the EMpire.. there's quite a bit of discrimination going on in there isnt there? At least some sort of "noble/rich" and "common/poor" type gap at least...

[Vympel]

Neustat was maybe hit by beam fire and it hit something volatile but perhaps wasn't immediately fatal (electircal short, or fire, or it wasn't an immediate failure.) Lubeck perhaps was either damaged on the either side or the damage was inflicted without peentrating (blast perhaps, or highly penetrating radiation, non nuclear EMP, or something.)

Yeah - the Lubeck is knocked about by an unseen hit just prior to this sequence (its a post credits sequence) but its unclear whether the ship's death is a result of this or not.

Ah I was going to say "assuming they cross a distance of ~1000 km (someone mentioned that before) you'd be looking at an acceleartion on the order of.. 8-10 thousand geesm and an average velocity in the hundreds of km/s (so they not only penetrated inside a star, but they did it at quite a fast clip.)

On top of that, the artificial "solar wind/flare" Yang triggered did absolutely dick to the starships, which says something about their durability against related type attacks (nukes, I think.)

Yeah. On the flip side, I think the writers may have succumbed to the "sun's surface is deadly" sci-fi trope, when the 8th Fleet flagship Kulishuna (Krishna) is lost after its engine goes out and it can't maintain orbit and descends towards the sun, though we don't see it destroyed.

Okay, but that still doesn't quite explain the Empire, so you have to go with Ego.

Oh, that goes without saying.

Pity, I think that a fleet of Reinhard's flagships would be neat. I like the Brunhild.

Yeah she's pretty schmick. I don't know if you saw my post about it, but the Season 2 Gaiden goes into some detail on her - she's an experimental prototype for a next generation warship, her armor design is based on 'new theories' (she bounces beams off her bare hull), and her design ignores mass production costs, so she's laden with unidentified gear you wouldn't normally see. Her design clearly inspires Muller's new hotness (she can also bounce beams).

That could skew any numbers you have then, because any "fleet" mentioned could potentially carry nonmilitary ships. The best thing you got going for you si that they seemingly are fewer in number than the warships. Although on the supply side that either means the transports are a hell of alot bigger, or they have some measure of onboard fabrication/building to offset limited space. Given what I've seen in various points, either is equally possible, but I'm leaning towards "onboard fabrication." - consider their feat with the ice asteroids yet again.

The transports are huge, as you may have seen with the previously linked page. We see Alliance transpors docked up next to warships in one episode, they dwarf them. But yeah, any fleet can potentially have non-combat ships. Engineering ships especially, since they're essential for carrying zephyr particle generators, and pulling damaged ships out of danger - and other tricks.

It sounds like they do in fact have reserves (including decomissioned/mothballed ships - or perhaps they could be considered second or third line warships like the old WW1/Age of sail distinctions) as well as purely defensive elements. And of course the new construction and repairs.

Now, all that said, I'd be hard pressed to argue it changes the numbers significantly. Its possible they throw around only say, 5-10% of their fleet at any one time, but that would be pushing the limit I think. They have huge fleets, and can trhow around alot of raw material, but the fleets they amass don't seem TOO trivial either. A million is perhaps an achievable goal, but not a standard for them.

Yeah I agree.

That's kinda why I think the books matter. And if not them, then at least the mangas. not only does it give more insight into what we see onscreen, but I think that all the numbers that do make it onscreen would come from either manga, novel, or both. And if they do, I'm betting they omit details. Who knows, they might even explain the 740 milloin MW figure somehow.

Besides you yourself mentioned that there are alot of different "weapon types" shown onscreen that you dont know about. Want to make a bet they get mentioned in the novels or manga?

I would hope so! It's driving me crazy what to call them. I can't very well create a weapons page on the wiki and just say "fuck it" and call those damn things "blatant photon torpedo ripoff"

If that's your take on it, then you probably should make it the wiki policy. Since they're both "fanon", this is going to be a potential argument/canon point, of the magnitude like the old SW ICS type debates, or the Clone Wars, or whatever, because they od make significant differences between the two, and if there are only two translations, its going to be hard to dismiss one as an outlier.

Hell, remembe rthat "laser-hydrogen" bit you mentioned that I interpreted as Inertial confinement (laser triggered) fusion? That is just an interpretation, and some literal minded fanboy might scream "THAT'S NOT RIGHT" and insist it be whatever the fuck it was. An alternate (and equally valid) interpretation would be say, some sort of chemical reaction involving hydrogen and a laser boosting efficiency. It would be a chemical rocket, but those do exist.

Another thing is the "x-ray beam cannons" - - they may not be lasers. It could just beam a beam of x-rays directed at the target. The two aren't neccesarily synonymous (although the "beam of x-rays" is probably not going to be all that effective.)

By the way speaking of beam weapons, bouncing aorund diff eps I do notice one mention in the first couple of eps about "neutron beams".. at least in the translation I have. That could mean that the beams AREN'T lasers... that would hcange this debate rather sharply.

Yeah, as I said in my last PM, our policy will be the CA fansub is the standard. I'd be amazed if anyone would actually argue the point, but who knows? One advantage we have is that we can always just go ask the fansubber about any given point (I've corrected typos in his script before) and he can clarify.

[takemeout_totheblack]

By the way speaking of beam weapons, bouncing aorund diff eps I do notice one mention in the first couple of eps about "neutron beams".. at least in the translation I have. That could mean that the beams AREN'T lasers... that would hcange this debate rather sharply.

Seeing as how I'm still (perplexingly) ignorant as to the mechanics/capacities of sidewalls, I feel the need to ask how that would affect the debate.
Seriously, despite wiki-ing and lurking I can't really pin down anything concrete about sidewalls other than they're some kind of gravity thingie and they are at least semipermeable to high-speed mass-less particle weapons (kind of). Everything else seems to be 'they work like this, except when they don't'!

Anyway, I've heard of the beam weapons be referred to as particle cannons and neutron beams too. But I've seen them referred to as lasers more often than not. So I'm more inclined to think of them as such.

[Simon_Jester]

I would hope so! It's driving me crazy what to call them. I can't very well create a weapons page on the wiki and just say "fuck it" and call those damn things "blatant photon torpedo ripoff"

Hmm. Can you talk to anyone in Japan who owns the books? Getting them translated would be a huge job, but a fellow fan who's read the books may be able to make useful suggestions about weapons names.

Better than nothing.

Seeing as how I'm still (perplexingly) ignorant as to the mechanics/capacities of sidewalls, I feel the need to ask how that would affect the debate.
Seriously, despite wiki-ing and lurking I can't really pin down anything concrete about sidewalls other than they're some kind of gravity thingie and they are at least semipermeable to high-speed mass-less particle weapons (kind of). Everything else seems to be 'they work like this, except when they don't'!

Yeah, that's about the size of it. To be honest they're shields; Weber just made them Magic Gravity Shields for the heck of it and so he could pull a few interesting tricks with them.

Personally, I suspect sidewalls would open when any kind of particle beam came knocking, as long as there was enough of it and/or the spot size was small enough. There's no logical reason why EM radiation should get through if ultra-relativistic electrons can't.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Seeing as how I'm still (perplexingly) ignorant as to the mechanics/capacities of sidewalls, I feel the need to ask how that would affect the debate.
Seriously, despite wiki-ing and lurking I can't really pin down anything concrete about sidewalls other than they're some kind of gravity thingie and they are at least semipermeable to high-speed mass-less particle weapons (kind of). Everything else seems to be 'they work like this, except when they don't'!

Yeah, that's about the size of it. To be honest they're shields; Weber just made them Magic Gravity Shields for the heck of it and so he could pull a few interesting tricks with them.

Well, I think also he makes a point of treating them as shaped gravity fields to distinguish them from all the "energy shields" in sci-fi that can be eroded like they were made of physical armor. Which is kind of like shooting at Earth's gravity or a ray of sunlight and expecting it to weaken.

Personally, I suspect sidewalls would open when any kind of particle beam came knocking, as long as there was enough of it and/or the spot size was small enough. There's no logical reason why EM radiation should get through if ultra-relativistic electrons can't.

I'd think that particles with mass would always be more affected. Also, they quite likely just don't have particle weapons anywhere near as good as their lasers; I don't recall particle weapons being used in the series. And on top of that, they have those "anti rad fields" which would presumably add another layer of defense against a particle weapons.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, I think also he makes a point of treating them as shaped gravity fields to distinguish them from all the "energy shields" in sci-fi that can be eroded like they were made of physical armor. Which is kind of like shooting at Earth's gravity or a ray of sunlight and expecting it to weaken.

My principle objection to this is that the sidewall is maintained and generated by shipboard equipment- there has to be some kind of action-reaction between sidewall and generator; you can't get something for nothing. Sidewalls will reduce damage to the ship on a percentage basis, but sufficient volume of fire thrown at it means that there will be, at a minimum, enough leakage to inflict damage to the ship underneath

Personally, I suspect sidewalls would open when any kind of particle beam came knocking, as long as there was enough of it and/or the spot size was small enough. There's no logical reason why EM radiation should get through if ultra-relativistic electrons can't.

I'd think that particles with mass would always be more affected. Also, they quite likely just don't have particle weapons anywhere near as good as their lasers; I don't recall particle weapons being used in the series. And on top of that, they have those "anti rad fields" which would presumably add another layer of defense against a particle weapons.

Anti-rad fields are fairly explicitly advertised as not being enough to adequately protect the ship against high-energy particles; there's a reason they don't fly above .8c, aside from "where the hell did we get enough kinetic energy to get the ship moving this fast?"

This is something I can understand not being well known, but for highly relativistic particles (relativistic gamma much greater than one), the behavior of a charged particle beam is really not that different from the behavior of photons as long as there's no electromagnetic fields around. And sidewalls don't generate such a field; they're specifically advertised as gravitational.

In either case, the rest energy of the particle (photon, electron, whatever) is small compared to the kinetic energy, and a gravitational lens will not be that much more effective at deflecting the massive particles than the massless ones.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah. On the flip side, I think the writers may have succumbed to the "sun's surface is deadly" sci-fi trope, when the 8th Fleet flagship Kulishuna (Krishna) is lost after its engine goes out and it can't maintain orbit and descends towards the sun, though we don't see it destroyed.

There's lots more to be "deadly" than just raw radiation. The gravity is quite strong there, and if a ship loses its AG or engines, it probably would be bad for anyone involved - the surface gravity is 30x what humans are used to (which would probably be fatal - yet another crucial detail that just occured to me as far as inertial damping goes!) but the ship is probably going to be pulled into said star (and gain quite a bit of velocity in the process) - just doing a rough estimate, at a "height" of 1000 km, I'd estimate the ship might hit the star at some 15-20 km/s... which is not going to be trivial in terms of kinetic energy. And even then if the ship just sinks into the star, there's the pressures to consider. Sooner or later something would destroy the ship.

Okay, but that still doesn't quite explain the Empire, so you have to go with Ego.

Oh, that goes without saying.

You mean it really IS done as a "Because we're admirals/commanders, so we're more specialier than you?"? Did they give that as the reason, or is it just that the Admirals act that way by nature?

Yeah she's pretty schmick. I don't know if you saw my post about it, but the Season 2 Gaiden goes into some detail on her - she's an experimental prototype for a next generation warship, her armor design is based on 'new theories' (she bounces beams off her bare hull), and her design ignores mass production costs, so she's laden with unidentified gear you wouldn't normally see. Her design clearly inspires Muller's new hotness (she can also bounce beams).

Huh. Interesting. I didn't see the Perceval but it isn't bad either. I still like Brunhild more though, even aside from the "innovation" bit. She's got alot of the inherent advantage of the ISd-esque "wedge" shape to her - not only does that give the obvious benefit when it comes to concentration of firepower, but the armor as well (The angling may even help with deflecting attacks, fo rall we know.) It DOES have somewhat of a bigger cross section than your typical phallic looking battleship, but not dramatically more so. It seems like it would be an ideal design for LOGH-style combat all around.

The transports are huge, as you may have seen with the previously linked page. We see Alliance transpors docked up next to warships in one episode, they dwarf them. But yeah, any fleet can potentially have non-combat ships. Engineering ships especially, since they're essential for carrying zephyr particle generators, and pulling damaged ships out of danger - and other tricks.

1.) Have you scaled the transports?

2.) I've seen mention of the engineering shps and you mentioned hospital ships. But I'm actually thinking they pretty much are designed to operate indepedently from any fixed base or station.. or at least as long as they can. In a way that makes some sense, in a war a long logistical tail can be a pain in the ass to protect, and it can leave you vulnerable. And a fixed location may not always be accessible.

40K (and Andromeda) ships had that ability, but it was built into the vessels themselves, and that means compromising the ship's capabilities. This way, you still can keep your warships optimized as warships without sacrificing that capability. As long as your enemy can't find your transports, at least.

I would hope so! It's driving me crazy what to call them. I can't very well create a weapons page on the wiki and just say "fuck it" and call those damn things "blatant photon torpedo ripoff"

Well I did run across this It has all of Book 1 (minus chapter 5, which seems to have gone byebye) and parts of book 2 and 4 done. It's a start, I suppose.

The stuff there I havent looked at in depth yet, but they mention "laser hydrogen bombs" which sounds like pure fusion devices from the description, but they also mention neutron bomb/neutron warheads as well. Which I think kinda justfies my belief

BTW did they actually ever put the entire novel series into anime form? THat kinda got me wondering, or if they got cut off in the middle of finishing it.

Yeah, as I said in my last PM, our policy will be the CA fansub is the standard. I'd be amazed if anyone would actually argue the point, but who knows? One advantage we have is that we can always just go ask the fansubber about any given point (I've corrected typos in his script before) and he can clarify.

[/quote]

Maybe you could persuade some of the fansubbers to do the novels? If the fansubbers liked the series that much I could see them wanting to do the novels. Of course, getting them might be troublesome...

Another thing occured to me is that I wonder how the war stacks up in terms of attrition and losses when its been playing out for over a century. Each battle tends to be costly for them (they lots ALOT of ships and men, even if the ships have small crews and most survive.) That could tell you something I think, although it would probably be a pain in the ass to estimate from the series (aside from the fact it would be just an estimate, of course.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Seeing as how I'm still (perplexingly) ignorant as to the mechanics/capacities of sidewalls, I feel the need to ask how that would affect the debate.
Seriously, despite wiki-ing and lurking I can't really pin down anything concrete about sidewalls other than they're some kind of gravity thingie and they are at least semipermeable to high-speed mass-less particle weapons (kind of). Everything else seems to be 'they work like this, except when they don't'!

Anyway, I've heard of the beam weapons be referred to as particle cannons and neutron beams too. But I've seen them referred to as lasers more often than not. So I'm more inclined to think of them as such.

In all probability? I'm guessing they'd do fuck all. Even if it is theoretically possible for a particle beam weapon to penetrate (and I'm not convinced of that. Sidewalls are SCI FI MAGIC and they don't really obey any laws as we know them, we can only observe their effects.) its unlikely the LOGH side generates enough raw firepower to punch them through.

That doesn't mean that HV ships would be totally invulnerable to LOGH if that's true. Like I said there's some indication they have massless beam weapons of some kind, and I'm not totally convinced starships don't have them (they seem to have mastered Pure fusion, like I said) but it might be requiring a change of tactics and redesigning ships.

One of the interesting things about the fact they have neutron beams is.. they clearly have some non-electromagnetic way to accelerate them and make them coherent, considering that they've got an insane multi-LS range. And with some damn good efficiency. I am confident they could probably adapt that into making a damn reliable FEL....

Hell for all we know they're hybrid laser/particle beam weapons. Maybe that's why we can see them (they could be the focused output of a fusion detonation or someting. Just sayin.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Hmm. Can you talk to anyone in Japan who owns the books? Getting them translated would be a huge job, but a fellow fan who's read the books may be able to make useful suggestions about weapons names.

Better than nothing.

I think the main problem, especially for Vympel considering where he lives, is obtaining them. There's something like 10 novels and some short stories, and getting that material is bound to be time consuming, expensive, and messy. Especially if they proved to be out of print.

That said, I think it would be eminently worth it from an analytical standpoint. If the novels and the anime follow *roughly* close together, you're likely to get more depth and illumination about what we see onscreen.

Yeah, that's about the size of it. To be honest they're shields; Weber just made them Magic Gravity Shields for the heck of it and so he could pull a few interesting tricks with them.

Personally, I suspect sidewalls would open when any kind of particle beam came knocking, as long as there was enough of it and/or the spot size was small enough. There's no logical reason why EM radiation should get through if ultra-relativistic electrons can't.

May or may not. The closest to a particle beam is an "energy torpedo", which is a near-c packet of plasma. Sidewalls are supposedly immune against them (at least against the output of what an HV ship could put out. considering how extraordinaryil destructive they are supposed to be and what their reaction engines can put out, I suspect its quite a bit.) Also at least some of their nukes are plasma (a freaking shuttle's impeller wedge took a 200 megaton plasma nuke blast and the shuttle was mostly unharmed. Wedges aren't sidewalls, but still..)

See, that's the thing. They probably aren't *totally* invulnerable in all regards - that would be a no limits fallacy. But they work on magic pixie dust, so we can't make much in the way of predictions about them (not very accurate ones anyhow) because we lack sufficient data.

My principle objection to this is that the sidewall is maintained and generated by shipboard equipment- there has to be some kind of action-reaction between sidewall and generator; you can't get something for nothing. Sidewalls will reduce damage to the ship on a percentage basis, but sufficient volume of fire thrown at it means that there will be, at a minimum, enough leakage to inflict damage to the ship underneath.

There is a action reaction. I distinctly remember impacts (like in THoTQ when missiles hit the sidewall) imparting a reaction on the ship (at least shaking it from the impact). For that matter we know the Wedge can impart momentum to ships and the ships can retain it even when the wedge is shut down or if the drive burns out (like on missiles), so that means that there is some sort of action/reaction between the wedge and the ship - they HAVE to be linked.

Which actually means that you can still kill a supposedly "invulnerable" wedge ship simply by extremes of acceleration (Crew can't take hundreds, components can't take thousands.), although ti woudl be a rather inefficient way to do it and you'd have to be alot more powerful to do it that way. But it oculd be done.

Other than that, though, like I said we just don't know enough.

Anti-rad fields are fairly explicitly advertised as not being enough to adequately protect the ship against high-energy particles; there's a reason they don't fly above .8c, aside from "where the hell did we get enough kinetic energy to get the ship moving this fast?"

OH god. Don't start me on that. The wedges can go evne faster than .8c though remember

This is something I can understand not being well known, but for highly relativistic particles (relativistic gamma much greater than one), the behavior of a charged particle beam is really not that different from the behavior of photons as long as there's no electromagnetic fields around. And sidewalls don't generate such a field; they're specifically advertised as gravitational.

Again this probably depends on whether a energy torpedo is a particle beam or a physical projectile. It's supposed to be able to be intact for nearly a second (whcih is why it has a ~300,000 km range) but part of me suspects that means it might be a projectile. Or, it is just a really fast moving bolt of plasma. Take your pick.

In either case, the rest energy of the particle (photon, electron, whatever) is small compared to the kinetic energy, and a gravitational lens will not be that much more effective at deflecting the massive particles than the massless ones.

I believe you when you say that (as I've said, not the first time WEber fucked something up), but making that argument in the face of the universe is like trying to fit Einstein into the Lensman universe (trust me, I tried there.) At best it's messy, and at worst it won't work. And you'll probably aggravate the fans in trying to do so.

[takemeout_totheblack]

Seeing as how I'm still (perplexingly) ignorant as to the mechanics/capacities of sidewalls, I feel the need to ask how that would affect the debate.
Seriously, despite wiki-ing and lurking I can't really pin down anything concrete about sidewalls other than they're some kind of gravity thingie and they are at least semipermeable to high-speed mass-less particle weapons (kind of). Everything else seems to be 'they work like this, except when they don't'!

Anyway, I've heard of the beam weapons be referred to as particle cannons and neutron beams too. But I've seen them referred to as lasers more often than not. So I'm more inclined to think of them as such.

In all probability? I'm guessing they'd do fuck all. Even if it is theoretically possible for a particle beam weapon to penetrate (and I'm not convinced of that. Sidewalls are SCI FI MAGIC and they don't really obey any laws as we know them, we can only observe their effects.) its unlikely the LOGH side generates enough raw firepower to punch them through.

That doesn't mean that HV ships would be totally invulnerable to LOGH if that's true. Like I said there's some indication they have massless beam weapons of some kind, and I'm not totally convinced starships don't have them (they seem to have mastered Pure fusion, like I said) but it might be requiring a change of tactics and redesigning ships.

One of the interesting things about the fact they have neutron beams is.. they clearly have some non-electromagnetic way to accelerate them and make them coherent, considering that they've got an insane multi-LS range. And with some damn good efficiency. I am confident they could probably adapt that into making a damn reliable FEL....

Hell for all we know they're hybrid laser/particle beam weapons. Maybe that's why we can see them (they could be the focused output of a fusion detonation or someting. Just sayin.)

*rubs temples* Okay. Forgive my ignorance here, but is 'completely fuck-off immune to particle weapons' one of the many things that sidewalls can do except for when the plot demands otherwise? Weber has a talent for getting under the skin of obsessive nerds like me...

On LoGH: why would they use neutron cannons on their ships but outfit their super-fortresses with X-Ray lasers? Is there a clear advantage of one over the other?

The fact that we can 'see' the beams tells us next to nothing about what they're made of, as the X-Ray lasers on Iserlohn and Gieresburg are rather visible phenomena despite their stated nature, it just seems to be the style of the show. Or we could assume that the whole 'laser' thing pertains to a lasing function in the weapon's mechanism rather than the mechanism itself.

[Simon_Jester]

In all probability? I'm guessing they'd do fuck all. Even if it is theoretically possible for a particle beam weapon to penetrate (and I'm not convinced of that. Sidewalls are SCI FI MAGIC and they don't really obey any laws as we know them, we can only observe their effects.) its unlikely the LOGH side generates enough raw firepower to punch them through.

I just flat out do not believe that sidewalls are totally immune to particle beams and radiation. I am not convinced that this claim is adequately supported either by the performance of nuclear weapons against Honorverse ships, or by the ability of sidewalls to absorb/block/ignore an arbitrarily large amount of energy.

Hmm. Can you talk to anyone in Japan who owns the books? Getting them translated would be a huge job, but a fellow fan who's read the books may be able to make useful suggestions about weapons names.

Better than nothing.

I think the main problem, especially for Vympel considering where he lives, is obtaining them. There's something like 10 novels and some short stories, and getting that material is bound to be time consuming, expensive, and messy. Especially if they proved to be out of print.

That said, I think it would be eminently worth it from an analytical standpoint. If the novels and the anime follow *roughly* close together, you're likely to get more depth and illumination about what we see onscreen.

Yes, which is why I suggested to him talking to someone who lives in Japan, via his contacts on the wiki- surely the show has as solid a fanbase in Japan as in the US.

May or may not. The closest to a particle beam is an "energy torpedo", which is a near-c packet of plasma. Sidewalls are supposedly immune against them (at least against the output of what an HV ship could put out. considering how extraordinaryil destructive they are supposed to be and what their reaction engines can put out, I suspect its quite a bit.) Also at least some of their nukes are plasma (a freaking shuttle's impeller wedge took a 200 megaton plasma nuke blast and the shuttle was mostly unharmed. Wedges aren't sidewalls, but still..)

See, that's the thing. They probably aren't *totally* invulnerable in all regards - that would be a no limits fallacy. But they work on magic pixie dust, so we can't make much in the way of predictions about them (not very accurate ones anyhow) because we lack sufficient data.

Well, fair enough.

If I ever write a crossover, ultra-relativistic particle beams are so knocking through sidewalls as equivalent lasers do, though... [grumbles about magic pixie dust written by partly-educated clowns].

In either case, the rest energy of the particle (photon, electron, whatever) is small compared to the kinetic energy, and a gravitational lens will not be that much more effective at deflecting the massive particles than the massless ones.

I believe you when you say that (as I've said, not the first time WEber fucked something up), but making that argument in the face of the universe is like trying to fit Einstein into the Lensman universe (trust me, I tried there.) At best it's messy, and at worst it won't work. And you'll probably aggravate the fans in trying to do so.

I'd've warned you you couldn't do it...

That said, there is a huge qualitative difference between a subatomic particle traveling at .8c and one traveling at .99c; this difference may well affect penetration characteristics. I don't know, but I'm not going to accept an argument of the form "sidewalls are functionally immune to anything with rest mass, yet far more vulnerable to photons" as an absolute argument.

[Vympel]

There's lots more to be "deadly" than just raw radiation. The gravity is quite strong there, and if a ship loses its AG or engines, it probably would be bad for anyone involved - the surface gravity is 30x what humans are used to (which would probably be fatal - yet another crucial detail that just occured to me as far as inertial damping goes!) but the ship is probably going to be pulled into said star (and gain quite a bit of velocity in the process) - just doing a rough estimate, at a "height" of 1000 km, I'd estimate the ship might hit the star at some 15-20 km/s... which is not going to be trivial in terms of kinetic energy. And even then if the ship just sinks into the star, there's the pressures to consider. Sooner or later something would destroy the ship.

Good point, didn't think of that.

You mean it really IS done as a "Because we're admirals/commanders, so we're more specialier than you?"? Did they give that as the reason, or is it just that the Admirals act that way by nature?

Its never explicitly stated, but there's significant implicit evidence that unique flagships serve as gifts to certain officers. Reinhard got Brunhild in recognition of his distinguished service at the Third Battle of Tiamat, whilst Muller got Perceval (Parzival, really, but following the wiki canoncity policy) for distinguished service at Vermilion. Note, not all Admirals have them by default simply because they're Admirals - Mittermeyer and Reuenthal had standard battleships (Grendel and Morholt, respectively) as their flagships until they were promoted to Vice Admiral and inducted into Reinhard's Admiralty and got Beowulf and Tristan.

While all of Reinhard's tier-one superfriends got unique ships, other Admirals in the series are seen with standard battleships even following their promotion to full Admiral, like the Sindur, which Brauhitz had as both Vice Admiral and full Admiral.

1.) Have you scaled the transports?

Nope - I believe we have the dimensions on that page, though.

2.) I've seen mention of the engineering shps and you mentioned hospital ships. But I'm actually thinking they pretty much are designed to operate indepedently from any fixed base or station.. or at least as long as they can. In a way that makes some sense, in a war a long logistical tail can be a pain in the ass to protect, and it can leave you vulnerable. And a fixed location may not always be accessible.

40K (and Andromeda) ships had that ability, but it was built into the vessels themselves, and that means compromising the ship's capabilities. This way, you still can keep your warships optimized as warships without sacrificing that capability. As long as your enemy can't find your transports, at least.

Do you mean "they pretty much are designed" in terms of support ships or the fleets? I assume fleets.

Well I did run across this It has all of Book 1 (minus chapter 5, which seems to have gone byebye) and parts of book 2 and 4 done. It's a start, I suppose.

Better than nothing.

The stuff there I havent looked at in depth yet, but they mention "laser hydrogen bombs" which sounds like pure fusion devices from the description, but they also mention neutron bomb/neutron warheads as well. Which I think kinda justfies my belief

BTW did they actually ever put the entire novel series into anime form? THat kinda got me wondering, or if they got cut off in the middle of finishing it.

The entire main series covers all the novels, so yeah, its all been told.

Maybe you could persuade some of the fansubbers to do the novels? If the fansubbers liked the series that much I could see them wanting to do the novels. Of course, getting them might be troublesome...

Yeah, its a bit of a bitch. Its a big ask. Basically the fansubber on the forum has a friend in Japan who does this stuff for him.

Another thing occured to me is that I wonder how the war stacks up in terms of attrition and losses when its been playing out for over a century. Each battle tends to be costly for them (they lots ALOT of ships and men, even if the ships have small crews and most survive.) That could tell you something I think, although it would probably be a pain in the ass to estimate from the series (aside from the fact it would be just an estimate, of course.)

In the Gaiden they actually state how many major battles have occured since the beginning of the war. Its over 100 or so. Something else I need to dig up.

[Xon]

2. the gravity generators on focus the explosion not the lasing rods.

The same gravity generators are capable of projecting a gravity wave extending thousand of km and bouncing the nuclear device's explosion from peak to peak of the wave. This is yet another operating mode compared to a contact nuke according to "In Fire Forged".

3. In Ch 30 of SftS the standoff distance is specifically stated to be 150m. The illustration most likely isn't drawn to scale

The gravity generators warp the explosion into a Gaussian distribution shaped charge not a cone, and the positioning of the laserhead is highly variable depending on where the laserhead thinks is the best angle of attack to actually hit the ship and how much time it actually has.

[Xon]

My principle objection to this is that the sidewall is maintained and generated by shipboard equipment- there has to be some kind of action-reaction between sidewall and generator; you can't get something for nothing. Sidewalls will reduce damage to the ship on a percentage basis, but sufficient volume of fire thrown at it means that there will be, at a minimum, enough leakage to inflict damage to the ship underneath

The wedge/sidewall is the explicit result of an offshoot of thier hyperdrive tech creating a hyperspace-in-realspace effect which then generates a standing gravity wave. The sidewall is casually connected to the ship, but the only example we have is 2x 40gigaton kinetic events hitting it with the sidewall penetrators failing. And sidewall penetrators are explicitly a gravity based affect and we know gravity waves impacting on other gravity waves will cause feedback into the generators. Infact enough feedback will outright vaporise +8megaton ships.

This feedback is presumably how Honorverse ships can practically turn thier fusion power plants off and get enough power from the impeller drives in sails configuration when riding a gravity wave in hyperspace. Followed by a lot of work to ensure the ship doesn't get vaporised because they hit a gravity wave too hard.

What the sidewall does is generate a standing gravity wave which deflects the fuck out of anything hitting it, and since it's a gravity wave it's also constantly changing. They do not pay the energy cost as it's being powered by hyperspace magic dust.

Anti-rad fields are fairly explicitly advertised as not being enough to adequately protect the ship against high-energy particles; there's a reason they don't fly above .8c,

Those fields are good for 2 metric tons @ 0.6c which is ~10gt of relativistic KE. It's going to take a lot of really fast particles to match that.

aside from "where the hell did we get enough kinetic energy to get the ship moving this fast?"

Magic hyperspace dust. That is the energy is bleeding into realspace which is canonically a lower energy domain that hyperspace, so all they need todo is poke a tap into hyperspace and recieve free energy.

In either case, the rest energy of the particle (photon, electron, whatever) is small compared to the kinetic energy, and a gravitational lens will not be that much more effective at deflecting the massive particles than the massless ones.

It's a batshit insane gravity wave. From an Honorverse prespective, aiming through a sidewall is a bloody hard task. That a sidewall can generate a window lasting 'milliseconds' means the overall wave is alternating very fast and targetting data will go stale stupidly fast. And fundumentally you need to see the target before you can figure out how to hit it, especially with a rather small beam compared to the total volumn.