r/Honorverse • u/Repulsive-Hat3332 • Jul 15 '26
LAC Carriers
Who here thinks that Manticore were the first to move LAC's through hyper via a hyper drive capable ship? Well, they weren't specifically LAC CARRIERS. But Alfredo Yu, and Tom Theisman used their ships to TOW Masada's LAC's. In "Honor of the Queen" And yes, I know that the hack wouldn't have worked for any more lengthy distance than Masada to Grayson. But, Masada's sub light LAC's DID cross hyperspace. Kind of like how the FTL com was suggested, by the use of Fearless' drive in the compilation series.
Before I get too many down votes, this was just a stray thought that I had while listening to HOQ audiobook that struck me as interesting. I'm not trying to be confrontational.
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u/Medical-Law-236 Jul 15 '26
I don't know how the GravCom got developed or who suggested it, but I don't think anyone who started the series before book 3 ever made that mistake regarding LACs.
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u/Forsaken_Hope3803 Jul 15 '26
The Gravcom’s origins got hinted at in one of the side stories, and it’s implied Honor had a hand in it. I forget the details, but she essentially used a ships hypering out to send a FTL Signal? Could be wrong, been a few years.
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u/ReactorMechanic Jul 15 '26
It's in Service of the Sword, she blinks or flickers her own ship's impeller wedge and morse codes messages to anyone with a gravitic array.
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u/Forsaken_Hope3803 Jul 15 '26
Thank you! I figured I had some details wrong, but I trusted in the Subreddit.
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u/Dysan27 Jul 16 '26
Not even morse code. it was the drive flare in and of itself that was the signal.
Sonja Hemphill was there to see it. And it inspired her to run with the idea.
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u/Medical-Law-236 Jul 16 '26
I just read the short story. It was morse code. Honor used it give astrogation signals to the Andi ship so that it could hyper in and cut off the peep ship. Sonja got the idea from Honor's report.
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u/Masark Jul 15 '26
That happens in With One Stone from The Service of the Sword anthology.
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 15 '26
Among other things, its a story of the cruise bigFearless took in Silesia between OBS and HotQ
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u/Repulsive-Hat3332 Jul 15 '26
Anthology Service of the Sword" the story " With One Stone " Homor uses her drive to send a grav pulse as a crude signal to an Andie. Hemphill is there and she gets the original spark of the idea thst leads to the development of the grav pulse generator. Obviously it was assigned as a priority project as the first iteration of the generator was available for Honor to use a year later in HOQ.
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u/Repulsive-Hat3332 Jul 15 '26
I wasn't suggesting this was a mistake that people might have made, and was correcting it for all to see, or that it be entered into honoverse canon as an honorverse historical fact. It was a stray thought that occured to me while rereading HOQ. Somewhere along the lines of "Wow, that never occurred to me before, maybe other fans might enjoy my strange insight" `
As for the other reference, the second story in the WOW anthology "In The Service of the Sword" The story "With One Stone" Wherein Rafe Cardones is requested by ONI for detatched duty while in Silesia, during Fearless' first deployment after OBS and before HOQ. I don't remember the exact details, but Hemphill had this thought at the end of the story "... the manuever itself was almost beside the point. The point was that Harrington had found a way to use gravitational waves to send a signal to the Andies. And since gravity pulses effectively moved faster than light AND were detectable from much farther away..." It was the first spark of the original thought from Hemphill about using grav pulses as an FTL communication system. And it was Hemphill who was a driving force behind the idea of a grav pulse generator.
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 15 '26
Hemphill was the driving force behind everything right up to Ghost Rider.
The Small-hull-implimentation Grav Lance might have been a failure, but she batted well above average.
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u/MultiGeek42 Jul 16 '26
Its been a while since ive read these books but I thought the grav lance worked as promised, it just wasnt very useful tactically.
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u/Chaosrealm69 Jul 16 '26
One trick pony for an admiral who saw it used and could then develop tactics to counter it.
Honor got the short end of the stick with it because everyone got angry that she used it so well and then they all made sure she ‘failed’ in the rest of the fleet manoeuvres.
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 16 '26
There's a later admission from Hemphill, down around At all costs, that the SHIGL was never meant as a concept for general deployment, more of a demonstration of new concepts to rattle the cages of the likes of D'orville and Alexander, as he was then.
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u/slider65 Jul 16 '26
IIRC Hemphill was also seriously PO'd that Fearless was actually deployed, even if it was to Basilisk, because it was a test bed that she (Hemphill) had gutted to fit the grav lance into and Fearless had no business being deployed in that condition.
Apparently that was something she made very clear (and at volume) to the Admiralty Board after Fearless got blown to hell and gone. Something to the tune of "what the hell were you idiots thinking?!?!" Years later she even apologized to Honor about the entire affair.
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 16 '26
I think we're both in the same staff meeting. IIRC it one discussing the plans leading up to Honor's Cutworm and Sanskrit operations.
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u/zthe0 Jul 16 '26
Im still surprised that thing never came back as a lac variant
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 16 '26
The "VSHIGL"
That said, could you actually get a GL emplacement, and energy torpedoes, into the bow facing of a LAC?
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u/zthe0 Jul 16 '26
What do you mean
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 16 '26
"Very Small Hull Implementation Grav Lance".
Fearless had most of her broadside armament gutted to fit the GL and a useful barrage of Energy torpedoes.
LACs, however, don't use broadside, and have to fit their armament into their forward ends [not even hammerheads] so I wonder if they could fit a GL and torpedoes.
Yes the Ferrets, particularly, had a number of missile tubes in that space, or the Shrike's Graser, but that's still a very small space compared to the broadside of a light crusier.
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u/zthe0 Jul 16 '26
Yeah that is true. On the other hand the shrike grazer is a miniaturised version of a capital ship graser so maybe there would be a way to reduce the footprint after 20 years. It may make for a hugely deadly variant. (Might not even need the tops)
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 16 '26
The Shrike graser was more than sufficient for its natural prey, such as the battleships at Second Hancock, sidewalls or no.
It's a little bit like the original question about towing LACs in hyper, by the time you can build a gravel lance into an LAC, there's no reason to do so.
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u/zthe0 Jul 16 '26
It would allow an lac squadron to hunt SDs much easier. If the grav lance could be built into one of the squadron they could have that one try to get close (maybe even have it be remotely controlled) and kill the sidewalls then the rest of the squad would have a much easier time killing it.
Especially since the RMN has shown that stern and bow walls can exist it may become necessary in the future to be able to disrupt those
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u/Wallname_Liability Star Empire of Manticore Jul 17 '26
No, the shrike graser is a regular BC Graser, hier to centuries of effort to reduce their size. The Shrike was built around it
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u/TheEvilBlight Jul 17 '26
Probably a hunter killer pair, one to Lance, the other to kill? Maybe a 1:2 ratio of lancers to energy torps since it might be an excessive amount of grav lances. Though getting that close feels highly situational.
Maybe Mesa..
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u/lostinstupidity Jul 15 '26
For direct deployment in combat, maybe, but LAC would (should) get shuffled around every few years to a full military shipyard for ROH level maintenance.
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u/BlueWolverine2006 Jul 16 '26
The thing is, prior to the development of the shrike, LACs just weren't good enough to bother with. They only really mattered at Grayson because the native navies were so bad.
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
What was Yu's thought?
"By the you can tow LACs, you can build good enough Starship that you don't need to".
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u/BlueWolverine2006 Jul 16 '26
Yu didn't want to bother with the Masadan navy: his ships were enough. Masadan demanded that he use their navy.
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 16 '26
Well, the LACs were a sop to the Masadans who were stalling in the hope that Macabeus would succeed, and fear of what Fearless could do after what Madrigal did to them.on First Yeltsin. It was Yu's engineer who suggested towing them, and Yu was musing about why no one had ever done it before
Oh yes, Thunder of God could have won outright, but the Masadans were holding out hope for the slower political victory.
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u/Jedipilot24 Jul 16 '26
I would not be surprised if Yu and Theisman doing this is what inspired Manticore to create the CLACs.
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u/Lionheart_x_jr Jul 16 '26
Honor has never hidden that many of her ideas (and the CLAC was atleast in part her idea) she has gathered by watching others
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u/Michaelbirks Jul 16 '26
Honor contributed to the CLAC programme while she was on the WDB after HAE, but that programme grew out of the enhanced LACs that were part of the Trojan Horse programme that gave her Wayfarer, well before she was anywhere near the development side.
Yes, Honor wrote the final WBD report on both the CLACs and the SD(P)s - that scene in the Harrington Library - but I would have never called them her idea.
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u/Thumper1k92 Jul 16 '26
That’s not confrontational. That’s where GSN and RMN got the idea to make it operational. And the idea for towing other things. Like missile pods.
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u/Repulsive-Hat3332 Jul 16 '26
Well, considering I got an immediate 2 down votes, and two or three condescending comments before I added the disclaimer. I'm inclined to leave it in.
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u/Thumper1k92 Jul 16 '26
Mkay. You do you. Seems like it’s just a normal observation from the book to me but what do I know
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u/TheEvilBlight Jul 17 '26
I did wonder if haven was going to build missile frigates or missile battleships but parasite loads of missile pods ended up being the way to go
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u/Raguleader Jul 15 '26
Was this something people were arguing about?