Re: Honor Harrington: Ideas for conversion?

I still have my Harrington books at home, so here goes:

On Tue, 20 Aug 1996 timj@uk.gdscorp.com wrote:

> 
> One of the conversion issues in the Honor Harrington Universe (HHU) is
the 
> ability of the ships to roll thus using the impenetrable impellor
wedge as an 
> unbreachable shield. As this 3D tactical manoeuvering is the essence
of many 
> encounters as well as the inertia/vector movement it would be nice to
capture 
> that in the FT conversion. The ships all have inertial dampers without
which you 
> could not survive the 500G accelerations. This equipment should be on
the SSD so 
> that if you loose it at hi-G - yucky (this event is mentioned in
ASVW).

OTOH, although many ships are battered to within an inch of exploding 
(and many more are utterly destroyed), NONE of them actually suffers 
damper failure. Inertial dampening seems to be more a function of speed 
(and ship size) rather than of battle damage.

> As to weapons what you summarise seems fine. In 'A Short Victorious
War' the 
> weapon systems I remember most were, scatter pack missle pods towed
behind ships 
> on tractor beams. 

Scatter packs with more than 10 times beam range, in that case... since 
our heroes in that battle never entered beam range of those peep DNs.
The 
missile pods fire ordinary ship missiles.

> Lots & lots of PDAF/ADAF ability for massive missile (800+) 
> swarms.

I'd add lots and lots of missiles. Harrington missiles behave much like 
MT missiles (but have a pre-set target), but use internal launchers (and

ships tend to have _lots_ of missiles aboard. Beam range is something to

be avoided (... if you have superior missile and point defence tech, of 
course) since it is so very deadly. Internal magazines and launchers are

vulnerable to battle damage, though.

> Also the use of Mines, that use single shot fusion bombs to fire high
enery 
> beams.

Pretty similar to FT mines, but cost less compared to ships (I think).
> 
> Ships of the 'Wall' Massive Super Dreadmoughts that destroy a 3xBC in
a single 
> salvo! 

Correction: On one occasion, a DREADNOUGHT destroys 4 BCs which are 
unfortunate enough to leave hyperspace within beam range of it. Had they

dropped out of hyper further away, the DN wouldn't have been able to 
catch it.

A SUPERdreadnought is 15-20% bigger than a Dreadnought...
...
> 
> Oh yes they have jump points, similar to B5. Jump engines have to
cycle.

Well... Jump points are like Starfire WPs, instantly transporting you 
from one specific point to another, but having some mass/time limits. 
'Normal' hyper travel, OTOH, takes measurable time; some speeds I recall

are 1000-1200 times light speed 'effectively' (ie, in normal space).

> For ship models - scratch build - ASVW gives a synopsis of what a ship
looks 
> like but it wasn't that clear to be - ASCII art anyone? 

Take a hammer head. Flatten the ends out a bit. Punch some marks in
along 
the side to represent weapon bays...

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson

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