Honorverse ramblings and musings

tonyz wrote:

cthia wrote:Considering the second "Battle of Manticore," where so many opposing missiles are in flight, and textev mentions on occasions where these missiles must 'pass' each other in flight, why aren't there collisions and collective desruction from mutual annihilation?

Short answer. space is big. Really big.

If we assume a missile wedge requires 100 km of space, which is almost certainly way too much but is easy to calculate with, and that missiles need to be within 50,000 km of their target, then you can have a wave-front of missile 100,000 km wide, spaced 100 km apart, allowing (100,000/100) 1000 missiles wide and 1000 missiles long, or one million missiles coming in in a plane. That's not counting any use of the third dimension, with missiles coming one behind another.

Note that none of the missile waves at the Battle of Manticore were nearly that size. There's a lot of space for missiles to pass each other en route. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some collisions in e confusion, but ... Space is big. Really big. And both sides share an interest in routing missiles so they don't run into the other side's missiles.

If you want to play with accurate numbers, a missile wedge is 10km wide. That doesn't negate your point though, and actually, about 100km separation between missiles seems pretty logical, as it would allow some maneuvering room for dodging and such.

Overall, though, I'd say that with massive salvos such as BoMA2, that there actually *is* some fratricide, but the amount is so low as to be negligible, and is probably accounted for in setting up the targeting. It just all happens "off camera".

Also, as you mentioned, there is a third dimension to think of. Because of separation issues, when a salvo is launched, there's a slight delay from one missile to the next, as well as angled tubes in the pods (both vertically and horizontally) to assist with separation.

So, while there *is* a chance of collisions, the amount is so small as to be considered nonexistent, but probably only for extremely large salvos.

cthia wrote:My concern was a bit more superficial than that perhaps, but just as poignant. Being a part of the league, couldn't the SLN consider that Beowulf had an 'obligation' to share with them the superiority of Manty tech, and even allow them access to hardware? The league could even loosely, misconstrue, Beowulf's actions as traitorous?

Several SDF observers DID report tech advances in the "Haven Sector Wars" which were ignored, derided, dismissed, and otherwise disparaged by the SLN hierarchy. It would seem probable that given the proximity of Beowulf to Manticore, some (if not most) of those SDF observer reports came from Beowulf.

tonyz wrote:

cthia wrote:Considering the second "Battle of Manticore," where so many opposing missiles are in flight, and textev mentions on occasions where these missiles must 'pass' each other in flight, why aren't there collisions and collective desruction from mutual annihilation?

Short answer. space is big. Really big.

If we assume a missile wedge requires 100 km of space, which is almost certainly way too much but is easy to calculate with, and that missiles need to be within 50,000 km of their target, then you can have a wave-front of missile 100,000 km wide, spaced 100 km apart, allowing (100,000/100) 1000 missiles wide and 1000 missiles long, or one million missiles coming in in a plane. That's not counting any use of the third dimension, with missiles coming one behind another.

Note that none of the missile waves at the Battle of Manticore were nearly that size. There's a lot of space for missiles to pass each other en route. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some collisions in e confusion, but ... Space is big. Really big. And both sides share an interest in routing missiles so they don't run into the other side's missiles.

MaxxQ wrote:If you want to play with accurate numbers, a missile wedge is 10km wide. That doesn't negate your point though, and actually, about 100km separation between missiles seems pretty logical, as it would allow some maneuvering room for dodging and such.

Overall, though, I'd say that with massive salvos such as BoMA2, that there actually *is* some fratricide, but the amount is so low as to be negligible, and is probably accounted for in setting up the targeting. It just all happens "off camera".

Also, as you mentioned, there is a third dimension to think of. Because of separation issues, when a salvo is launched, there's a slight delay from one missile to the next, as well as angled tubes in the pods (both vertically and horizontally) to assist with separation.

So, while there *is* a chance of collisions, the amount is so small as to be considered nonexistent, but probably only for extremely large salvos.

Thanks to everyone who responded to this. My friends offer their "thanks."

They realized that they were thinking in terms of stationary targets firing at each other, instead of moving ships with ever changing attack vectors.

Something I always thought odd was the passage denoting the lack of general maintenance aboard SLN ships, such as corrider doors not easily opening. It led me to consider something else. With so many SLN ships, proper maintenance would be a copper-plated Cordelia wouldn't it? Just keeping Warshawski tuners properly running would take a huge commitment in resources. There must be plenty of space stations in the league, to service such a huge fleet, especially if the many moth balled were reactivated. Just building a huge fleet is just the beginning of your commitment. With their maintenance habits, the SLN should probably lose more than the average ship to system failures. Removing safety-interlocks from the hyper generators is probably like playing russian roulette with 5 bullets!

cthia wrote:Something I always thought odd was the passage denoting the lack of general maintenance aboard SLN ships, such as corrider doors not easily opening. It led me to consider something else. With so many SLN ships, proper maintenance would be a copper-plated Cordelia wouldn't it? Just keeping Warshawski tuners properly running would take a huge commitment in resources. There must be plenty of space stations in the league, to service such a huge fleet, especially if the many moth balled were reactivated. Just building a huge fleet is just the beginning of your commitment. With their maintenance habits, the SLN should probably lose more than the average ship to system failures. Removing safety-interlocks from the hyper generators is probably like playing russian roulette with 5 bullets!

....in a 5 shot automatic, with no safety.

cthia wrote:Something I always thought odd was the passage denoting the lack of general maintenance aboard SLN ships, such as corrider doors not easily opening. It led me to consider something else. With so many SLN ships, proper maintenance would be a copper-plated Cordelia wouldn't it? Just keeping Warshawski tuners properly running would take a huge commitment in resources. There must be plenty of space stations in the league, to service such a huge fleet, especially if the many moth balled were reactivated. Just building a huge fleet is just the beginning of your commitment. With their maintenance habits, the SLN should probably lose more than the average ship to system failures. Removing safety-interlocks from the hyper generators is probably like playing russian roulette with 5 bullets!

A lot of this should be done by the crew. Due to poor leadership it isn't done.

I suspect the maintenance issues are similar to the way the soviet army handled them. Which is to not use their weapons with a limited operating lifetime. The US mostly trained with their actual "go to war" gear, the Red Army had training equipment and did little training that would involve wear on their actual combat equipment.

Note the comments in the text about how unusual the MA inspired deployments were. I suspect that BF mostly didn't move much.

cthia wrote:Something I always thought odd was the passage denoting the lack of general maintenance aboard SLN ships, such as corrider doors not easily opening. It led me to consider something else. With so many SLN ships, proper maintenance would be a copper-plated Cordelia wouldn't it?

The SLN has been depicted as a "Peace-time Fleet," more concerned with appearance than function. The corridors and hatches commented on unfavorably were in areas of the ship seldom visited by inspectors and not vital for day to day operation. The "public" areas of the ship were probably spotless and gleaming with fresh polish and wax.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:Something I always thought odd was the passage denoting the lack of general maintenance aboard SLN ships, such as corrider doors not easily opening. It led me to consider something else. With so many SLN ships, proper maintenance would be a copper-plated Cordelia wouldn't it?

The SLN has been depicted as a "Peace-time Fleet," more concerned with appearance than function. The corridors and hatches commented on unfavorably were in areas of the ship seldom visited by inspectors and not vital for day to day operation. The "public" areas of the ship were probably spotless and gleaming with fresh polish and wax.

Even, or maybe especially, when that lovingly polished shininess is counterproductive to actual usability (or safety)

Weird Harold wrote:The SLN has been depicted as a "Peace-time Fleet," more concerned with appearance than function. The corridors and hatches commented on unfavorably were in areas of the ship seldom visited by inspectors and not vital for day to day operation. The "public" areas of the ship were probably spotless and gleaming with fresh polish and wax.

Well, Battle Fleet is like that. Frontier Fleet does real work, but actually fighting anyone close to a peer is not part of that work.

Weird Harold wrote:Several SDF observers DID report tech advances in the "Haven Sector Wars" which were ignored, derided, dismissed, and otherwise disparaged by the SLN hierarchy. It would seem probable that given the proximity of Beowulf to Manticore, some (if not most) of those SDF observer reports came from Beowulf.

Erm... Beowulf was noted as sending no observers to the Havenite wars, because they had no need to due to various formal and informal information-sharing agreements.