The Dispatch Boat Appreciation Thread

That was an austere military courier boat from a cash-strapped nation used to communicating across large distances without the benefit of any wormholes. Civilian, commercial or diplomatic boats probably come fitted with better creature comforts.

Very much so indeed.

Especially considering how the Malign d-boats manage to include a hypergenerator that is a good bit larger than usual but still achieves being close in enough in size to the usual ones that it didn´t stand out.

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Yes you can accelerate faster but grav waves don't help with top speed, that's all rad shielding. So you can hit your top speed in about 1/10th the time.
But that shaves only about 7.5 hours from any given trip, for a DB, it just doesn't take that long to hit 0.6c. Not at the accel a dispatch boat can pull.

Does it have standard particle shielding though?
One way to clearly up speeds would be to use the best possible shielding AND then add some minimal armour in optimal places to let it ride at the edge of what the shielding can handle.

Aside from a streakdrive upgrade, it´s probably the best upgrade you can get?

Of course, i think it´s also mentioned somewhere that d-boats are the ones surfing higher than common in the hyperbands.

Isn´t there a quote in HotQ that the reinforcements came quickly by going "where usually only d-boats go" or some such?

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Now we know the secret of the improved hyper generator. And why the Mesans call it a Streak Drive.

Tenshinai wrote:Of course, i think it´s also mentioned somewhere that d-boats are the ones surfing higher than common in the hyperbands.

That is the defining feature of dispatch boats. They regularly go one band higher than warships are normally authorized for. It is dangerous for warships to go that high, because they don't have the extremely high level of maintenance and training to make it safe enough.

Tenshinai wrote:Does it have standard particle shielding though?
One way to clearly up speeds would be to use the best possible shielding AND then add some minimal armour in optimal places to let it ride at the edge of what the shielding can handle.

Yes, dispatch boats have military-grade particle shielding. Otherwise, their effective speed in the Theta band would be less than the effective speed of warships in the Eta band.

SWM wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:Does it have standard particle shielding though?
One way to clearly up speeds would be to use the best possible shielding AND then add some minimal armour in optimal places to let it ride at the edge of what the shielding can handle.

Yes, dispatch boats have military-grade particle shielding. Otherwise, their effective speed in the Theta band would be less than the effective speed of warships in the Eta band.

For those wondering here's a link to the Speed by Hyper Band table which does show that a ship with merchant grade rad shielding (0.5c max) would max out at 2147.0x effective c in the Theta bands; while a ship with warship grade rad shielding (0.6c max) in the Zeta bands edges that out at 2153.4x effective c.

But since warships already mount the most capable rad shielding that has been devised a dispatch boat's isn't going to be any better. (And if there was a breakthrough in rad shielding it would quickly be retrofit into warships; or a minimum incorporated in all new builds - it wouldn't be reserved just for dispatch boats)

Jonathan_S wrote:For those wondering here's a link to the Speed by Hyper Band table which does show that a ship with merchant grade rad shielding (0.5c max) would max out at 2147.0x effective c in the Theta bands; while a ship with warship grade rad shielding (0.6c max) in the Zeta bands edges that out at 2153.4x effective c.

But since warships already mount the most capable rad shielding that has been devised a dispatch boat's isn't going to be any better. (And if there was a breakthrough in rad shielding it would quickly be retrofit into warships; or a minimum incorporated in all new builds - it wouldn't be reserved just for dispatch boats)

As long as the improved shielding doesn´t affect the warship´s other abilities too much at least.

That was really my point about mentioning it, the question of whether it might be possible to "fiddle" a bit in ways that would be a BAD IDEA for other ships...

Like if, just as a wild idea, make a d-boat twice the size, and use nearly all the extra room for better shielding(and anything that might make it easier to move in higher hyperbands)...?
Maybe achieve 0.65C actual or something?

It´s not a huge difference so no, i definitely think that warships do not use the best possible, but the best possible that doesn´t use up ridiculously much space/tonnage or energy or something.

An 8% speedbonus for a doubling in size might be worth it for d-boats, but it´s not going to be anywhere close to worth it for anything else.

Just hypothetical musings of course.

Tenshinai wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:For those wondering here's a link to the Speed by Hyper Band table which does show that a ship with merchant grade rad shielding (0.5c max) would max out at 2147.0x effective c in the Theta bands; while a ship with warship grade rad shielding (0.6c max) in the Zeta bands edges that out at 2153.4x effective c.

But since warships already mount the most capable rad shielding that has been devised a dispatch boat's isn't going to be any better. (And if there was a breakthrough in rad shielding it would quickly be retrofit into warships; or a minimum incorporated in all new builds - it wouldn't be reserved just for dispatch boats)

As long as the improved shielding doesn´t affect the warship´s other abilities too much at least.

That was really my point about mentioning it, the question of whether it might be possible to "fiddle" a bit in ways that would be a BAD IDEA for other ships...

Like if, just as a wild idea, make a d-boat twice the size, and use nearly all the extra room for better shielding(and anything that might make it easier to move in higher hyperbands)...?
Maybe achieve 0.65C actual or something?

It´s not a huge difference so no, i definitely think that warships do not use the best possible, but the best possible that doesn´t use up ridiculously much space/tonnage or energy or something.

An 8% speedbonus for a doubling in size might be worth it for d-boats, but it´s not going to be anywhere close to worth it for anything else.

Just hypothetical musings of course.

You can't get extra shielding by going larger. If that were possible, superdreadnoughts would have a higher max speed than destroyers. If there were any way to increase the rad shielding, warships would implement it--extra rad shielding helps against weapons as well as against particles at high velocities. Military grade shielding is the best currently available, and that is what dispatch boats use, too.

SWM wrote:You can't get extra shielding by going larger. If that were possible, superdreadnoughts would have a higher max speed than destroyers. If there were any way to increase the rad shielding, warships would implement it--extra rad shielding helps against weapons as well as against particles at high velocities. Military grade shielding is the best currently available, and that is what dispatch boats use, too.

And how do you know that?

Really, real world tech is almost never that binary. Even if something scales really bad, in some cases it is still of interest.
But the probability of there being something which does not scale at all? That would be extremely weird.

Unless RFC has said it, i don´t agree, because there´s zero logic in it.

--snpping--

Tenshinai wrote:...

Very much so indeed.

Especially considering how the Malign d-boats manage to include a hypergenerator that is a good bit larger than usual but still achieves being close in enough in size to the usual ones that it didn´t stand out.

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I'm disagreeing here a little bit. I think their dispatch boats would stand out which is why they aren't just zipping them all over the galaxy where folks can look. It seems like there's a reference to a specific "conduit" or galactic routing that they've used but don't want to very often just for that reason.

Thoughts?

SharkHunter wrote: I'm disagreeing here a little bit. I think their dispatch boats would stand out which is why they aren't just zipping them all over the galaxy where folks can look. It seems like there's a reference to a specific "conduit" or galactic routing that they've used but don't want to very often just for that reason.

Thoughts?

The conduit they refer to is an intelligence source who sends his/her messages from Manticore to Beowulf and then (likely) from there to Visigoth and Mesa. Not any more, though, Mesa has been abandoned.

The reason they were careful about using that conduit? Manticore keeps a record of Junction users.

Tenshinai wrote:

SWM wrote:You can't get extra shielding by going larger. If that were possible, superdreadnoughts would have a higher max speed than destroyers. If there were any way to increase the rad shielding, warships would implement it--extra rad shielding helps against weapons as well as against particles at high velocities. Military grade shielding is the best currently available, and that is what dispatch boats use, too.

And how do you know that?

Really, real world tech is almost never that binary. Even if something scales really bad, in some cases it is still of interest.
But the probability of there being something which does not scale at all? That would be extremely weird.

Unless RFC has said it, i don´t agree, because there´s zero logic in it.

If it scaled, then larger ships would be able to have a higher maximum speed. Instead, David has specifically said that all ships with military-grade shielding have the same maximum speed in a given particle density. For military-grade shielding, that maximum is about 0.8c in normal space and 0.6c in hyperspace, but it does vary slightly depending on the medium (the text notes that particle density is particularly low in the Selker Rift, so speeds are slightly higher there). But the text indicates that it does not depend on the size of the ship.

Yes, it doesn't make sense from a realistic point of view. You would expect ships to be able to adjust and compromise on how much shielding they could implement. But David apparently wanted to keep things simple for the story.