Attached is the final version of Fearless (pre-refit, that is).

>> Sadly. the Fearless that I've been working up is still a stock
>> Courageous;  no Grav Lance, because I have no bloody idea what it may
>> look like.  All I know for sure is that the single weapon may fire to
>> either broadside.  Any ideas there?

> 	I have no real idea what it may look like either. I can see three
> possibilities, but none is really satisfactory:
> 
>  1. It's turret-mounted on the top or bottom or the ship, or maybe
> in one of the hammerheads. Problems:
>     - Conventional beam weapons are already too big to be mounted
>       in turrets. Somehow, I can't see the grav lance as being
>       smaller;
>     - Neither admiral d'Orvilles at the beginning of the book, nor
>       especially the captain of PNS Sirius later on saw anything
>       obviously strange about Fearless' appearance. However, a
>       turret-mounted weapon should be pretty obvious.

Not to mention, they had to rip out half her broadside to install it. 
Wouldn't make sense if the grav lance was in a turret.  Unless it's a 
really goofy turret that rotates *inside* the ship, where the broadside 
used to be, but damn certain someone would notice *that*.

>  2. Like Alain said, it crosses the ship from side to side and can
> fire from either end. Problems:
>     - Such a setup could not be aimed other than by positioning
>       the whole ship very precisely. That's completely
>       impractical;
>     - As an alternative, the weapon could be put inside a very
>       large hollow cylinder with some rotation slack allowing it
>       to move inside. However, we're back to a highly visible
>       change.

But what if instead of a beam, it fired a wedge or cone?

This would also explain why exactly a faster-than-light effect would be 
limited to such a short range.  If it is broadcast rather than focused, 
inverse-square would play havoc with the range.

Of course, a wedge or cone would have difficulty firing through a 
sidewall gunport without shorting out the attacking vessel's own 
sidewalls, unless it also includes gear to maximize the size of the 
gunport just before firing.

Another possibility is that the Grav Lance's "generator" can be rotated 
internally, to fire down one of two separate emitters.  Perhaps (given 
the size of the Grav Lance itself) this would be the only way to make it 
capable of firing on either broadside without installing a second Grav 
Lance (which, considering how Fearless' armament was gutted to fit the 
first, wouldn't be practical).

This has the additional bonus of allowing for the emitters to be 
trained, without needing to train the entire weapon.

>  3. Instead of having an actual, physical projector, the weapon
> works by inducing some kind of secondary effects from the impeller
> nodes. Problems:
>     - There's nothing in the book to support such a theory, except
>       that later on, other interesting effects were done that way
>       (the FTL com comes to mind);
>     - By the time Fearless used the grav lance against Sirius, she
>       had lost a large part of her drive (in fact, her forward
>       impeller ring is half destroyed at that point). Moreover,
>       the book explicitly states that the grav lance has burned
>       out afterwards, however the drive is still operating enough
>       to allow them to get back to Medusa.

Not to mention that her wedge was down when she hit King Roger with the 
Grav Lance.  Her points were hot, but the wedge itself was struck.

> 	Of course, it could always be suggested that it is fully internal
> and that it operates by creating its effect in hyperspace (so that
> it doesn't affect the sidewalls of the firing ship). That way, you
> won't even need to model it ;)

Yeah, but that's a cop-out.  :)

Thankks for the ideas, though.

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Timothy Groves wrote:
>>  2. Like Alain said, it crosses the ship from side to side and can
>> fire from either end. Problems:
>>     - Such a setup could not be aimed other than by positioning
>>       the whole ship very precisely. That's completely
>>       impractical;
>>     - As an alternative, the weapon could be put inside a very
>>       large hollow cylinder with some rotation slack allowing it
>>       to move inside. However, we're back to a highly visible
>>       change.
> 
> But what if instead of a beam, it fired a wedge or cone?
> 
> This would also explain why exactly a faster-than-light effect would be
> limited to such a short range.  If it is broadcast rather than focused,
> inverse-square would play havoc with the range.
> 
> Of course, a wedge or cone would have difficulty firing through a
> sidewall gunport without shorting out the attacking vessel's own
> sidewalls, unless it also includes gear to maximize the size of the
> gunport just before firing.
> 
	True. However, since it works by inducing a harmonic in the enemy
sidewall generator, it effect could conceivably be filtered in the
firing ship.

>>  3. Instead of having an actual, physical projector, the weapon
>> works by inducing some kind of secondary effects from the impeller
>> nodes. Problems:
>>     - There's nothing in the book to support such a theory, except
>>       that later on, other interesting effects were done that way
>>       (the FTL com comes to mind);
>>     - By the time Fearless used the grav lance against Sirius, she
>>       had lost a large part of her drive (in fact, her forward
>>       impeller ring is half destroyed at that point). Moreover,
>>       the book explicitly states that the grav lance has burned
>>       out afterwards, however the drive is still operating enough
>>       to allow them to get back to Medusa.
> 
> Not to mention that her wedge was down when she hit King Roger with the
> Grav Lance.  Her points were hot, but the wedge itself was struck.
> 
	True, I had forgotten that.

	Your model is pretty nice. Now all that's lacking is to see it
animated ;)

		Jerome

PS: BTW, all "official" representations of warships from the HH
universe have their broadside weapons clustered near the middle of
the ship just like yours. That always struck me as a little strange
(I had initially imagined them spread over the entire ship length)
especially since one of the acknowledged problems in having too
heavy a broadside is the minimum separation required between missile
to avoid wedge interference...

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