Honorverse ramblings and musings

When Klaus Hauptman is meeting with Honor and McKeon, McKeon responds to Hauptman's egotistical behavior with a several paragraph explanation on how it could easily be considered treason.

I always wondered about this. If Hauptman would have been found guilty of treason, it is unlikely he would have received anything more than a healthy fine.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:Unlikely isn't the same as definitely. It could have been a one in a million event, as an enemy hypering in on top of your carriers that are held back. I just think it inefficient to not be able to utilize all that free space on a collier, in a pinch.

IIRC, in one case of LACs requiring recovery by other than their CLAC, the crews bailed out to be picked up by friendly warships and set the self-destruct for the LAC itself.

If there is time and peace enough to load a LAC into a collier, there is time and peace enough to utilize any freighter -- which might be less complicated than using a collier optimized for fast transfer of missiles and pods. <shrugs>

Current doctrine appears to be for the CLAC to launch its wings and hyper out to a predesignated rendezvous point away from the battle zone. That doctrine would make the need for alternative transport for a LAC unnecessary.

Hi Weird Harold,

I think that the occasion you are referring to was when Diamato conducted a probing raid on Zanzibar and had to pick up some LAC crews after LACs were scuttled. That was in ACC.

Don

cthia wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
IIRC, in one case of LACs requiring recovery by other than their CLAC, the crews bailed out to be picked up by friendly warships and set the self-destruct for the LAC itself.

If there is time and peace enough to load a LAC into a collier, there is time and peace enough to utilize any freighter -- which might be less complicated than using a collier optimized for fast transfer of missiles and pods. <shrugs>

Current doctrine appears to be for the CLAC to launch its wings and hyper out to a predesignated rendezvous point away from the battle zone. That doctrine would make the need for alternative transport for a LAC unnecessary.

I suppose you're right. I guess I was thinking about the CLACS fighting in the Battle of Manticore. But certainly that was a special case. Better to save your home system than a CLAC.

Anyway, it is that tendency to abandon and destroy them that I tried to suggest a solution. Seems wasteful. What about captured Solly junk? Too much trouble to convert the SDs into transports?

If you've lost your CLACs it seems to me that you've got two likely scenarios.

1) You can hold the system indefinitely. In which case you do so and send for new CLACs or freighters to removed your stranded LACs.

2) (and more likely) you need to get the F out because things have gone, or will shortly go, horribly wrong. That's the scenario most people have been focusing on. In that scenario grabbing as many LAC crewmen as possible has been the focus.

I seriously doubt its even possible to stick LACs into an ammo ship, and it would certainly take longer than you'd likely have in an emergency.


RFC once described an emergency evacuation technique for detached LAC screening a wall; once outside the hyper limit cut the SD(P)s' wedges, let the LACs tractor themselves on a few layers deep, and redline your hyper-generators to jump the whole ugly mess up into hyper. (Warning; to not attempt in a system location within a grav wave)

If the CLACs were safe, but too far away to make a hot-LZ rendezvous (or it was too dangerous) then they can hook back up with the fleet in hyper and board their LACs. If they were lost, or are unable to make rendezvous, then the LAC crewmen would likely abandon ship, scuttle the LACs, and ride home on the SD(P)s.



Although I guess, once you get them into hyper, you've got the option of shepherding the LACs to a friendly system (as long as you can avoid all grav waves). Once you got there you could repeat the en-globing trick to get them all back into n-space. (Probably have to repair some sensors and surface emplacements on the LACs and the ships they glommed onto; but way better than losing all the LACs and their crews)

Ammo ships should be just as capable of performing the later as SD(P)s; but with the downside that if something goes wrong, or you exceed the LACs onboard endurance or supplies, the ammo ships would have a lot less life-support and couldn't handle as many evacuees as an SD(P).

A 8MT freighter has a LOT of empty space. With the compensator running the interior is always free fall. So with a couple of km of kevlar straps and a few tens of tons of bracing etc you can load and secure a lot of LAC sized objects. But it would be slow.

kzt wrote:A 8MT freighter has a LOT of empty space. With the compensator running the interior is always free fall. So with a couple of km of kevlar straps and a few tens of tons of bracing etc you can load and secure a lot of LAC sized objects. But it would be slow.

That is definitely possible, since the RMN has used freighters to haul empty LACs into the Talbott Sector. But as you imply, you can't load them into a freighter in the time constraints of an emergency.

Jonathan_S wrote: <snip>

Ammo ships should be just as capable of performing the later as SD(P)s; but with the downside that if something goes wrong, or you exceed the LACs onboard endurance or supplies, the ammo ships would have a lot less life-support and couldn't handle as many evacuees as an SD(P).

All the RMN ammo ships we've seen in the last 6-7 books have been on 4.5 Mton JMNT Hulls. While large, they are alot smaller than an SD and could handle far fewer LACs in a bug out.

We havn't seen a Havenite ammo ship "on-screen" yet, so no word on their size or "bug out" capability.

But one thing to think about - you never see ammo ships on raids because they are safely back with the fleet train, NOT with the invasion fleet (normally - Monica seems like a different situation). Why - so it isn't risked - fleet trains are usually considered worth 2-3x their weight in warships.

So in a Bug out:
1) anything in the Fleet train is perhaps light years away - you would need to leave the target system, rendevous with the fleet train, then return with the rescue ships.
2) To hide the rendevous points, you will probably go in cold - Fleet trains are not risked for a reason, If things are so bad you don't have the warship resources left to lift the LACs out - can you justify risking the fleet train?

If you need to leave LACs behind but are not facing absolutely crushing levels of superiority you have the LACs run past the hyperlimit. It's really kind of scary to chase someone out there, because you never know when a bunch of their friends might step over the alpha wall to say hi. Not going to always work, but often you'll get a chance to pick them up.

kzt wrote:If you need to leave LACs behind but are not facing absolutely crushing levels of superiority you have the LACs run past the hyperlimit. It's really kind of scary to chase someone out there, because you never know when a bunch of their friends might step over the alpha wall to say hi. Not going to always work, but often you'll get a chance to pick them up.

I was about to wonder how you of all people could forget that LACs are sublight ships, and then I read the rest of your post.

That's actually quite clever, though - isn't it just so unpleasant, never knowing when an unfriendly warship might drop out of hyperspace?

The MAlign had the first treecat in captivity. Although the cat died, I wonder if DNA was kept. I worry that Mesa could engineer a strain of virus or disease affecting celery that will prolifically spread infecting the treecats, causing a catastrophic epidemic of death.

cthia wrote:The MAlign had the first treecat in captivity. Although the cat died, I wonder if DNA was kept. I worry that Mesa could engineer a strain of virus or disease affecting celery that will prolifically spread infecting the treecats, causing a catastrophic epidemic of death.

ISTR a mention that some material from that treecat was still around, but that research was fairly desultory - somewhat ongoing, but not much in the way of expectations that anything will come of it.