Re: Honor Harrington

Regardless of what the warships look like....

The underlying implication is that only about 
5-10% of mass can be placed in the bow or the
stern of the gravity impeller driven ship.  Remaining
weapons bearing will be broadside weapons.

Fore and aft arcs will be unshielded to weapons
fire, either energy weapons or the X-ray warheads.
Port and starboard arcs will be shielded with the
gravity sidewalls and "top" and "bottom" will be 
covered by the impeller wedges, providing that the
nodes are active.

Alpha and beta nodes will have to be represented by 
internal systems, subject to threshold checks. Sidewalls,
if I recall, were independent on the port and starboard.

Fusion cells are also a critical item and the number 
onboard will be a function of the ship's mass.	A fusion
loss can result in catastrophic failure.

500G is approximately 5km/s2 = 5" of vector thrust

 Time (seconds)   Distance 1"	 Energy (in.)  Missile (in.)
    1		      1 km	  100,000      1,000,000
   10		     10 km	   10,000	 100,000
  100		    100 km	    1,000	  10,000
 1000		   1000 km	      100	   1,000

Another alternative would be to define 10" as energy range
and 100" as missile range.  You'd still need a large table
to play a game of HH Full Thrust. 

Jon Davis
davis@albany.net