NationStates Jolt Archive


The Commonwealth of the WIck

The WIck
10-05-2004, 19:46
This thread’s purpose is to provide information on my Nations navy and territory, to aid other in RP's with my Nation. Any comments or probes for further info or clarification are encouraged.


Notes on the Commonwealth Navy (C.N):

The Navy was formed 100 years ago, when our people revolted against the Vagrant overlords who kept the WIckian’s as slaves. The C.N was initially formed out of their capture garrison fleet.

The Navy was slowly built up to its modern day strength, mostly as a deterrent to the Vagrants return. When it was discovered that their existed a wormhole Termini in the Thetis system (WIckian's home system) the navy quickly expanded the sizes of it shipyards and began an impressive buildup of ships of all classes. For the first time in its history the Commonwealth is expanding its boarders.

It is now the role of the Navy to protect the Commonwealth interests abroad, such as the moon colonies in the Epsilon Pegasus system, and numerous trade convoys


Information on Technology of the C.N

***This information is taken from the Norse man website, he did all the factfinding for it, and deserves the credit for stated information***

Propulsion:

Major Honorverse ships use what is called an Impeller Wedge for normal-space propulsion. This wedge is a band of artificially generated gravity fields of unbelievable intensity both above and below the ship. These bands are so intense that they are impervious to all known weapons. Nothing can pass through them, not even light. (A ship's sensors can penetrate their own wedge, but only because the wedge's gravity shear is precisely known.) These bands are angled in such a way as to have their after aspect being narrower than the front. They are also huge, some of the larger vessels wedges can reach 100 kilometers in diameter. The sides of the bands are stitched together by much weaker gravity fields, called sidewalls, that offer protection to the ship's sides. The major drawback to the impeller wedge is that both the leading and trailing aspects of the impeller wedge must be open to allow any propulsion or maneuverability, not even a sidewall is allowed. This makes an 'up the kilt' shot, or more desirable, a 'down the throat' shot something that ships in combat will try to achieve against, and deny to, their opponent.

There is another level of protection that is designed to protect from particulate matter while traveling at high speeds, and another one to protect the crew from radiation from both nuclear warheads and cosmic radiation.

Speeds, Distances and Acceleration:

The speed of light is just under 299,837 kilometers per second. This speed is called Cee, or referenced with a lower case letter c, as in E=Mc2 (remember that one?)

Distances in space are normally immense, but can be referenced by using a time-fragment of light. Since light travels at 299,837 Kps, then a light second is 299,837 kilometers. A light minute is 60 times that value, etcetera. (The Earth is approximately eight and a half light minutes from our sun.)

The rate of acceleration is in Gravities and shown with a lower case g. One g of acceleration is just about 32 feet per second squared, or fps2. This however will not match the fact that everything else is going to be in metric, so a single g of acceleration will be 9.7536 meters per second squared, or mps2. Ships in normal space can accelerate at a very large number of gs. For example, the HMS Tramontane, an Edward Saganami class heavy cruiser has an official maximum acceleration of 604g in normal space. This equates to just under 5,981 mps2 or about 6kps2. (Acceleration is sometimes referred to as delta-v.)

The Tramontane, as do all of the Honorverse military ships have a maximum speed of .8c, or 8/10th the speed of light. This works out to about 239,918 Kps. From absolute rest, she can attain this speed in 11 hours, 2 minutes and 2 seconds. It also takes the same amount of time to decelerate from this speed.
Interplanetary Travel:

So the next question is, how do these people travel the vast distances of space without growing old? Hyperspace, or h-space. The great thing about hyperspace is, after you figure out how to get there, the physics of this level of the universe is just a tad bit off. You still cannot physically surpass the speed of light, but that speed is exponentially higher than normal.

How does one enter hyperspace? By tuning their Warshawski generators to a certain frequency. The kicker is, there is more than one level of hyperspace. Each distinct level, or band, is referenced by using the Greek alphabet.

Band Velocity Multiplier Military Effective Speed C
Travel in normal hyperspace (any band) also is under impellers, but travel is, instead normally done in what is called a Grav Wave. These are the currents that were the demons of hyperspace until that self-same Doctor Warshowski developed the Warshowski Sail. With the sail, ships could survive contact with a grav wave, and indeed use their immense power to propel the ship at astounding acceleration rates. As an example, using the Tramontane again, her Hyperspace acceleration is 5,832g or just under 57.9 Kps2!

Due to the increased particulate density within h-space, military maximum speed is only (only, heh!) .6c. (Civilians are limited to .5c.

Civillian Grade FTL drives can allow thier ships to enter only as high as the delta wave wich has a velocity multilier of 2,178 miliary drives can enter the Theta wave with a Velocity mutiplier of 5000.


Ship List of the C.N:
Home Fleet:
2 Squadrons of SD's 16SD
5 Squadrons of DN's 40DN
1 Squadron of CLAC-BB 8CLACs
5 Squadrons of BCs 40BC
3 Flotilla of CA 48 HC
1 Flotilla of LC 16 LC
3 Flotilla of DDs 48 DD
1000 preLACs
Total Ships Present: 216

This is the permanent fleet that is stationed in the Capital system of Thetis. Its forces are divided between the Five inhabited planets of the system with the largest concentration in orbit of Thetis itself the shipyards and the Wormhole termini. Various units of ships are often detached for patrol or convoy duties daily. It would take about 48 hours to concentrate the entire fleet at any given point in the system. The shortest distance from any point of the hyper limit to a planet is about 50 hours.

The Epsilon Pickett

1 Division of DN 2 DN
1 Lance of BB Tri-A 4 BB
1 Squadron CA 8 CA
1 Squadron LC 8 CL
1 Flotilla DD 16 DD

60 pre-LACs

This is the Task Force assigned to protect the moon colonies in EP. All the Ships of the Wall are in station near the largest moon Umbriel. 2 LC and 4 DD are in orbit of Dione with 16 preLACs. Rarely are these ships assigned to convoy duty though it can occur.

About 10% of the navy is being refit or upgraded at any given time, more ships exist under various other independent commands also but this is about all the ships in my navy.


Naval Assets of the C.N

Super Dreadnaughts: This class of ships are the largest available to the C.N. They typically displace about 8 million tons and are over 4 km in length. These are immense ships whose sidewall can defect all but the strongest of energy weapons. For those shots that do penetrate the armor of the vessels is incredibly thick.





***this is basic information for now and upon consultation with other HH powers it is subject to change.***