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Since broadside fire was the only practical way to bring maximum fire to bear upon an enemy, admirals evolved the tactic of stacking their capital ships both vertically and in line at the smallest intervals their impeller wedge safety perimeters permitted. This produced the characteristic "wall"—an often enormous formation, one ship wide, which might extend for thousands of kilometers vertically and ahead and astern along the fleet's base vector. This was scarcely a maneuverable formation, but at least it allowed maximum fire to be brought to bear.
Unfortunately, the tactical formalism fostered by the wall of battle also meant that major fleet engagements tended to be frustratingly indecisive unless one side was tied down by the need to defend a target which it simply could not abandon, like a populated star system. If one fleet took the worst of it and had no overriding strategic reason to fight to the death, its commander simply turned the units of his wall up on their sides, presenting only the roofs or floors of their wedges to the enemy, and then bent all his efforts on breaking away. An opponent who turned towards him to close the range and prevent him from disengaging (the only possible counter) might actually cross its own "T", permitting his ships to roll back and fire their broadsides down the throat of the pursuing fleet with deadly effect.
On the rare occasions when warships clashed in hyper-space, the tactical environment was radically different. As a rule, starships in hyper tend to stay within the area of a grav wave, using their Warshawski sails to draw acceleration and deceleration from the wave, and normal impeller drives (including those of missiles) ca
The Warshawski sail is essentially a highly modified and very powerful impeller stress band projected in the form of a disk at right angles to the hull, not as a wedge above and below it. The sail, which is just as impenetrable as an impeller wedge, extends for three hundred kilometers (as much as five hundred for really large vessels) in all directions. This not only makes chase armaments even more important but also deprives the warship of the protection of its wedge against fire from "above" or "below." Indeed, it deprives a ship even of its sidewalls, for there are no roof and floor for the sidewall to stitch together.
One might expect admirals to avoid grav waves if forced to fight in hyper, but doing so is tantamount to breaking off the action. The reason is simple: a ship under Warshawski sail can pull almost ten times the acceleration it could under impeller drive. Withdrawing from the wave, then, allows a fleet which remains within it to run away with relative impunity.
A few navies have experimented with the idea of mounting the sidewall bubble generators used to generate 360° "sidewalls" around fixed fortifications in their capital ships for use in hyper-space engagements, but the sheer mass of the system is self-defeating. A ship so equipped has an enormous advantage in hyper, but the volume consumed by the generators cuts deeply into that available for weapons, which places the same vessel at an even greater disadvantage in normal-space combat. Since n-space combat is the rule and hyper-space combat is the exception, no navy has ever built a major class of warship with bubble generators.
Because warships in hyper are stripped of both their major passive defense against broadside fire and their longest ranged offensive weapons, conventional tactical wisdom calls for a head-on engagement, the exact reverse of n-space warfare. The idea is that the area of the ship ahead or astern of the impenetrable Warshawski sail is much smaller than its unprotected length, and that the reduction in target area (and hence vulnerability) more than compensates for any loss in firepower.
In terms of maneuver once combat is joined in hyper, the advantage of "altitude" can become even more crucial than "crossing the T" in n-space battles. If a portion of one fleet can curl "over" or "under" Us opponent, it can fire down (or up) upon the unarmed topsides or bottoms of enemy snips without receiving return fire.
Moreover, rolling ship is not an effective way to break off action under such circumstances, since there is no impeller wedge to hide behind. Obviously, then, any admiral engaged from more than one bearing in hyper-space is in serious trouble.
NAVAL WEAPONRY
The long-range normal-space shipkiller at the begi
Because even the highest missile velocities are well under that of light, they can be tracked and engaged by antimissile defenses as they close. The ranges at which they can be fired also require that they be capable of active, self-guided homing on their targets, since light-speed transmission limits would quickly render shipboard control arthritic and inaccurate. Because their onboard seeking systems simply can not be as sensitive and capable as those of a full-sized starship, they are particularly susceptible to electronic counter measures, and the fleet whose ECM is superior to its opponents has a marked edge in combat.
The tracking time enjoyed against missiles also means that a captain can employ evasive maneuvers against them. If nothing else, he can roll ship to take the incoming fire against the impenetrable roof or floor of his wedge. In longer range engagements, the flight time of the missile and the acceleration capability of his ship allow him to maneuver well clear of the position his opponent's fire control had predicted at the moment of fire, imposing a still greater strain on an attacking missiles drive and seekers.
All of this requires that for effective missile fire, the missile drive must still be active and capable of terminal attack maneuvers right up to the instant of detonation.
A missile's effective powered flight envelope can be increased by setting it for a lower rate of acceleration, which delays burnout time on its small but powerful impeller drive. Eighty-five thousand gravities represents the maximum attainable acceleration, used for snapshots at closer ranges in order to achieve the shortest possible flight times. At this acceleration rate, the missile has a maximum powered endurance of sixty seconds, which restricts it to a powered engagement envelope (assuming target and firer were at rest relative to one another at the moment of fire) of approximately 1,500,000 kilometers and a terminal velocity of approximately 50,000 KPS. By setting the drive down to 42,500 gravities, time to burnout can be extended to 180 seconds, producing a maximum powered engagement range of 6,755,000 kilometers and a terminal velocity of 75,000 KPS. Lower accelerations are possible, but the maximum range and velocity actually begin to drop as acceleration is further reduced, and most navies adopted hardwired minimum settings in the vicinity of 42,500 g. The RMN, however, had not, as it believed there were instances in which absolute engagement range and velocity were less important than powered flight time to follow an opponent's maneuvers. All of these attack envelopes, of course, can be radically extended or reduced by the relative velocities and accelerations of the ships engaged.
Because the chance of knocking a missile down increases geometrically in the last 50,000 or 60,000 kilometers of its run, as it steadies down on its final attack vector, direct hits against modern point defense are virtually unheard of. As a result, the standard megaton-range nuclear warhead was falling into general disuse for ship-to-ship combat by Honor Harrington's time, replaced by the laser head. The terminal bus of a laser head mounts sophisticated targeting systems and powerful attitude thrusters to enable it to align itself so as to direct the greatest number of bomb-pumped laser beams at the target, but it is also designed to have a "porcupine" effect, radiating lasers in all directions. Each laser inflicts less damage than a direct hit could have, but the chances of a hit—even multiple hits—from a single missile are greatly increased. Not only does a laser head's stand-off range lessen point defense s chance to kill it short of detonation, but the cluster effect allows each to cover a much greater volume of space.