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On dartships

>From: Onno Meyer <Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Mon, 24 May 1993 07:54:55 +0200 (MET DST)

I allways assumed riders would have advantages in realspace combat because they saved the mass of the FTL-drive. We know there are small combat jumpships (dartships?). These craft should be capable of all ridership maneuvers, and with the possibilities of "boosting up" and independent missions they would be much more powerfull.
Do I miss some advantage of the ridrships?
(...)

Onno

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>Date: Mon, 24 May 93 11:52:59 +0200
>From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)
>Subject: Cherryhlist

(...)

What book are the dartships mentioned in? I don't recall them (I haven't read Hellburner yet).

	Markus

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>From: Onno Meyer <Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Fri, 28 May 1993 17:18:52 +0200 (MET DST)

> What book are the dartships mentioned in?  I don't recall them (I haven't
> read Hellburner yet).

I think _Merchanter's Luck_, one was mentioned to be docking at Viking.

	Onno

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>From: Onno Meyer <Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Sat, 29 May 1993 13:36:05 +0200 (MET DST)

> What book are the dartships mentioned in?  I don't recall them (I haven't
> read Hellburner yet).

_DS_, p.287
Twelve carriers left of the fourteen that had come in, a cloud of riderships and dartships, bore away from station ...

_ML_, p.25
Not so far away, a Union dartship stood off from dock, dull-surfaced and ominous, with vanes conspicuously larger than any merchanter afforded. It watched, it's frame bristling with armaments and receptors.

I think Talley came from a dartship, too, but I couldn't find the quote short of re-reading the entire book.

My interpretation of these quotes:

_DS_ shows that the union warships taking part in the assault are divided in three classes, and that riders and darts are lumped to- gether as "small ones" (they're just a cloud), compared to the carriers as "big ones" that are worth counting.
Thus, a dartship is similar in armament and combat value to a rider.

_ML_ shows that dartsips have jump-engines larger than any merchanters, but this could be a comparison of relative sizes. The dartship has a frame, a word used in _DS_ to describe the part of _Norway_ that was not the rotating cylinder. Because of this, I assume that a dart has a cylinder, too. Since the sensors are especially mentioned, the dartship might be build as a scoutship.

If Josh Talley came from a dartsihp, the darts were used for intelligence missions, too.

This points to an quite small, hard to detect jumpship with weapons similar to a rider and much better endurance.

(...)

	Onno

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>From: Onno Meyer <Onno.Meyer@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
>Subject: cherryhlist
>Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1993 09:29:33 +0200 (MET DST)

> _ML_ shows that dartsips have jump-engines larger than any merchanters,
> but this could be a comparison of relative sizes. The dartship has a
> frame, a word used in _DS_ to describe the part of _Norway_ that was
> not the rotating cylinder. Because of this, I assume that a dart has
> a cylinder, too. Since the sensors are especially mentioned, the
> dartship might be build as a scoutship.

I was wrong with this assumption :-(
_DS_ p. 148
"Scout and recon," he murmured, and saw in his mind the exact boards, the cramped interior of _Kite_, where the crew had to hand over hand their way in zero G. ... They had worked close - in more than one sense, for the dartships had no cabins, no privacy.
The names of three other crewmembers are mentioned, but there is no way to know if there were others.

(...)

	Onno