Honorverse ramblings and musings

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Surely the MAlign aren't twiddling its thumbs while the GA dons its inventers cap. If the MAlign develops technology that can jam Apollo then the entire GA may be headed for the breakers.

Anything that can jam Apollo is going to be very noisy; gravametrically. And it's probably going to have to be pretty decent sized; since it's most likely going to have to be producing high bandwidth semi-random 'ripples' along the alpha wall.

And since missiles have sensors capable of seeing powerful artificial grav fields it shouldn't be hard to fire missiles in a "home on jam" mode to kill individual jammers.
You might need a lot of jammers to keep FTL fire control shut down in the face of HARM-style fire.

That said, you can't target them until they go active, and the first time someone lit them up it'd totally screw up the in-flight Apollo salvos.


But even worst case you just force the follow-up waves to fall back on lightspeed control - where they're still the most capable and dangerous missiles known. Because the most effective are Mk23s + Mk23Es in Apollo FTL control, the 2nd most effective are those same missiles in light-speed control mode (the Mk23E'a "AI", sensor fusion, and local inter-missile synchronization still boosting the effectiveness more than enough to offset the 2 fewer missiles per pod). Being forced to go from the most effective to 2nd most effective missile fire control known is a long way from "headed for the breakers".

Brigade XO wrote:The standard system sensor nets appear to be primarily designed to detect ships comming out of hyper and to pick up impeller drives. They then get down to various types of communication, other energy discharges and probably some manner of optical tracking (for all that stuff that occurs naturally in systems like comets, asteroids and misc. "natural" stuff that you really don't want hitting your planets or orbital installations.

If I understand it corretly, the RMN FTL communication is based on gravity pulses.

Could it be possible to do a variation of radar/echo location based on gravity pulses? The trick would be finding a way to make it work. Generation of the pulses might not be that hard, the difficult part would be finding some "frequency" that wouldreflect off a ship, even one as heavily stealthed as the Ghosts, Sharks and presumably the Lenny Detts. and give you an indication that at least something was there and moving (things sitting still are also suspect since dam near everything in a star system is moving in relation to something else).

There is also the fact that ships have mass and so have at least some minor gravitational effect. Nothing like a planet or a moon but some. Making something sensitive enough to detect such a point source of gravity and let a ship(or ships) go looking for it would help. Again, the trick is figuring out how to identify a mass by it's gravity/the effect of that mass on the surrounding space. This one is unlikely but a line of thought.

munroburton wrote:Surround the manticoran binary system, up to about 10 light minutes beyond the combined hyper limit(including Junction), with an ellipsoid made of paper. Place a divider between the two stars to eliminate light interference.

Now everything within the ellipsoid's two chambers should cast a single shadow. Penetrators from outside the sphere would end up punching a very noticeable hole, as well as giftwrapping their ship for perimeter security forces.

cthia wrote:Yes, but are you assuming that the MAlign won't have missiles of their own? Perhaps they've significantly improved on those bigass offerings from Technodyne or better yet, completely redesigned missile tech of their own. All they need to do is level the playing field by nullifying Apollo. And what if their missiles are FTL as well, yet they accomplished it in a completely different manner. If Apollo is nullified, their FTL won't be. Advantage, MAlign.


Then they can win by attrition. Lots more ships! And the added element of tech surprise - a MAlign application of Alvin Toffler's Future Shock!

Brigade XO wrote:If I understand it corretly, the RMN FTL communication is based on gravity pulses.

Could it be possible to do a variation of radar/echo location based on gravity pulses? The trick would be finding a way to make it work. Generation of the pulses might not be that hard, the difficult part would be finding some "frequency" that wouldreflect off a ship, even one as heavily stealthed as the Ghosts, Sharks and presumably the Lenny Detts. and give you an indication that at least something was there and moving (things sitting still are also suspect since dam near everything in a star system is moving in relation to something else).

"Permission to come aboard to join the ship's company, Ma'am?" Ragnhild requested crisply.

The lieutenant returned their salutes, and Ragnhild handed over the record chips again. The BBOD cycled them through her own memo board. It took a bit longer than it had for the sentry, but not a lot. It looked to Helen as if she'd actually read Ragnhild's orders—or skimmed them, at least—but only checked the visual imagery on the others. That seemed a little slack to Helen, but she reminded herself that she was only a snotty. By definition, no one aboard Hexapuma could be wetter behind the ears than she was, and perhaps the lieutenant had simply learned to recognize the Mickey Mouse crap and treat it accordingly.

"You seem to be running a little late, Ms. Pavletic," she observed as she passed the chips back. Ragnhild didn't respond, since there wasn't really much of a response she could make, and MacIntyre smiled thinly.

"Well, you're here now, which is the important thing, I suppose," she said after a moment. She turned her head and beckoned to an environmental tech. "Jankovich!"

"Yes, Lieutenant." Jankovich's pronounced Gryphon accent was like a breath of home to Helen, straight from the Highlands of her childhood. And there was something else she recognized in it—an edge of deep-seated dislike. There was nothing especially overt about it, but Highlanders were remarkably bad at hiding their true feelings . . . from other Highlanders. The rest of the Star Kingdom found everyone from Gryphon rough-edged enough that they seldom picked up on the subtle signs that were unmistakable to fellow Gryphons.

"Escort these snotties to their quarters," the lieutenant said briskly, obviously unaware of the subliminal vibrations Helen was receiving from the environmental tech.

"Aye, aye, Lieutenant," Jankovich replied, and looked at the midshipmen. "If the Ladies and Gentlemen would follow me?" he invited, and led off towards the boat bay's central bank of lifts.

Everyone else laughed, including Helen, but there was a cold core of ugly memory under her laughter. She loved Neue-Stil Handgemenge, the judo derivative developed on New Berlin several centuries earlier, and she'd been fortunate enough during the time she and her father had spent on Old Earth to study under sensei Robert Tye, who was probably one of the galaxy's two or three most experienced practitioners of the Neue-Stil. She was intensely grateful for the discipline, physical and mental, and the sense of inner serenity the Neue-Stil had given her, and her workouts and training katas were like a soothing, graceful dance. But she had also used that same training to kill three men with her bare hands before she was fifteen T-years old, defending not simply herself, but also her adopted sister and brother.

"As you know," Commander Ginger Lewis said, sitting very upright in the chair at the head of the table in the captain's briefing room immediately off of Hexapuma's bridge, "it's traditional for midshipmen and midshipwomen on their graduation cruises to be formally welcomed aboard their ships. Usually, that duty falls to either the executive officer or to the assistant tac officer, since she's normally the one who will serve as their officer candidate training officer for the deployment. Unfortunately, at the moment Commander FitzGerald, our XO, finds himself detained dealing with the yard dogs, and our ATO hasn't reported aboard yet. And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, you find yourselves stuck with me."

She smiled with a curious blend of impishness, sympathy, and cool command.

"I find myself at something of a disadvantage, in some ways," she continued, "because I never attended the Academy. I was directly commissioned, and they put me through OCS aboard Vulcan. As a result, I never made a snotty cruise, so this particular rite of passage is outside my direct personal experience."

Helen didn't move a single muscle, but she found herself studying Lewis much more intently. The commander looked young for her rank, even in a society with prolong. And now that Helen was paying attention to the medal ribbons on the breast of the Engineer's space-black tunic, she was impressed. They were headed by the Osterman Cross. The Osterman was about one notch below the Manticore Cross, and, like the MC, it could be awarded only for valor. Unlike the MC, however, it could be awarded only to enlisted personnel or noncommissioned officers. The Conspicuous Gallantry Medal kept the OC company, as did the red sleeve stripe which indicated the commander had been wounded in action and the additional stripe which indicated someone who had been mentioned in dispatches.

An impressive collection, Helen thought. And one which almost certainly helped explain Lewis' commission. The RMN had always had a higher percentage of "mustangs"—officers who'd been promoted from the enlisted ranks—than most navies, but it appeared Ginger Lewis was something out of the ordinary even for the Star Kingdom.

munroburton wrote:Surround the manticoran binary system, up to about 10 light minutes beyond the combined hyper limit(including Junction), with an ellipsoid made of paper. Place a divider between the two stars to eliminate light interference.

Now everything within the ellipsoid's two chambers should cast a single shadow. Penetrators from outside the sphere would end up punching a very noticeable hole, as well as giftwrapping their ship for perimeter security forces.

cthia wrote:Shadow of Saganami - Ch. 3

"Permission to come aboard to join the ship's company, Ma'am?" Ragnhild requested crisply.

The lieutenant returned their salutes, and Ragnhild handed over the record chips again. The BBOD cycled them through her own memo board. It took a bit longer than it had for the sentry, but not a lot. It looked to Helen as if she'd actually read Ragnhild's orders—or skimmed them, at least—but only checked the visual imagery on the others. That seemed a little slack to Helen, but she reminded herself that she was only a snotty. By definition, no one aboard Hexapuma could be wetter behind the ears than she was, and perhaps the lieutenant had simply learned to recognize the Mickey Mouse crap and treat it accordingly.

"You seem to be running a little late, Ms. Pavletic," she observed as she passed the chips back. Ragnhild didn't respond, since there wasn't really much of a response she could make, and MacIntyre smiled thinly.

"Well, you're here now, which is the important thing, I suppose," she said after a moment. She turned her head and beckoned to an environmental tech. "Jankovich!"

"Yes, Lieutenant." Jankovich's pronounced Gryphon accent was like a breath of home to Helen, straight from the Highlands of her childhood. And there was something else she recognized in it—an edge of deep-seated dislike. There was nothing especially overt about it, but Highlanders were remarkably bad at hiding their true feelings . . . from other Highlanders. The rest of the Star Kingdom found everyone from Gryphon rough-edged enough that they seldom picked up on the subtle signs that were unmistakable to fellow Gryphons.

"Escort these snotties to their quarters," the lieutenant said briskly, obviously unaware of the subliminal vibrations Helen was receiving from the environmental tech.

"Aye, aye, Lieutenant," Jankovich replied, and looked at the midshipmen. "If the Ladies and Gentlemen would follow me?" he invited, and led off towards the boat bay's central bank of lifts.

What's eating Highlanders?


Shadow of Saganami - Ch. 3

Everyone else laughed, including Helen, but there was a cold core of ugly memory under her laughter. She loved Neue-Stil Handgemenge, the judo derivative developed on New Berlin several centuries earlier, and she'd been fortunate enough during the time she and her father had spent on Old Earth to study under sensei Robert Tye, who was probably one of the galaxy's two or three most experienced practitioners of the Neue-Stil. She was intensely grateful for the discipline, physical and mental, and the sense of inner serenity the Neue-Stil had given her, and her workouts and training katas were like a soothing, graceful dance. But she had also used that same training to kill three men with her bare hands before she was fifteen T-years old, defending not simply herself, but also her adopted sister and brother.

Where do you get the feeling that Helen's Neue-Stil Handgemenge stacks up against Honor's Coup de Vitesse?

cthia wrote:What's eating Highlanders?


Where do you get the feeling that Helen's Neue-Stil Handgemenge stacks up against Honor's Coup de Vitesse?