Talk:Spacecraft in the Honorverse

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[edit] Nike BB/BC

I don't see that the description of the new Nike class BCs as battleships in all but name is justified. Although their size might well be approaching that of a BB, the latter are designed as wall-of-battle ships, now used for rear area protection. BCs in the honorverse are raiders and chasers, specifically with much higher acceleration than a BB, and a very different balance of weapons, speed and protection. Compare, for example, the classic HMS Dreadnought with the USS Alaska, or even the USS Des Moines. No one would ever doubt the last of those was definitely a cruiser, in spite of a much higher displacement than Dreadnought, the archetypal battleship, and likewise Alaska was very much a cruiser in design philosophy. Obviously these real life comparisons don't hold totally true because of the differences in ship classes in the honorverse but especially given Weber's comments about the BB/BC split, calling the Nike a battleship makes even less sense than describing a Saganami C as a battlecruiser.

Seeing how the Nike is used in action, it is used like a ship of the wall, made for endurance against massed missile attack. It is used as a BB in all but name. Besides, Weber divides his ships purely by tonnage, as long as they are built like a standard warship. The reason the Nike is faster is because it is newer. Is a WWII "Fast Battleship" a BB or a battlecruiser? They're BBs, their technology makes them as fast as the preceding generation of BCs, with the armor and armament of BBs, and the German High Seas Fleet projected BBs as commerce raiders.

Although Weber does differentiate by tonnage, he makes it reasonably clear on several occasions that this is a side effect of the roles fitting into quite discrete tonnage brackets - the reason a DD is different to a CL is because of their roles, one of which requires it to be larger. Where the state of the art progresses, so do the tonnages. As a case in point, the CL rated Fearless of OBS was of a class which were effectively re-rated as destroyers later on in the havenite wars, because they were no longer capable of fulfilling their old role and were a better (though not ideal) fit for one which used to require a smaller, weaker, ship. The WWII analogy you use is valid, for WWII - remember that the basis of the Battlecruiser used by the Royal Navy was based on speed and main armament, whereas the Honorverse uses it as a role. The example that springs to mind of an honorverse BC in real life would be the Deutchland class Panzerschiff/ Heavy Cruiser. Weber addresses the Nike's classification quite well in a post on Baens Bar - archived at http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/Harrington/pagenocss.php?page=hh_nike_clarification.htm

[edit] pods

Missle pods are a redevelopment because the RMN smaller more efficent launchers into the missle pods. They were used in the past until ship launched missle became far faster than pod launched but with the miniturisation they are able to be used again.Corustar 15:42, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LAC size

The article describes LACs as being between 40,000 and 60,000 tons. The glosseries of At All Costs and War of Honor agree, but the text of the actual novels are more ambiguous. The only agreement with that large mass I found was Peeps noting that an effective LAC had to be from 30,000 to 50,000 tons. In the same book (In Enemy Hands, I think), a Shrike is described as massing 20,000 tons. Old-style LACs were even smaller. Pre-alliance Grayson/Masada LACs were 9,000 to 11,000 tons. Honor's old LAC (LAC-103) was 10,000 tons. A 40,000+ ton massage for a Shrike is unrealistic anyway, because HMS Minotaur, which massed 6,000,000 tons, carryed 100 of them and later CLACs carried an even higher concentration of LACs. This is clearly impossible for LACs anywhere near the size described in the article. Puck01 19:50, 1 January 2007 (UTC)