Fall 1924 – RMN/GSN Tactical changes

Sorry I have not responded to everyone, but in my posts and others, there is still something no one has truly brought up regarding 1924 tactics.

John post about a possible control missile for MK16, touches, brushes against it.

In recent battles going back as far as AAC and the Donkey(Technodyne doing same thing), or the RMN's ability to fire MK23E control missiles, the ability for ever smaller ships to fire ever BIGGER salvos of missiles dwarfs, absolutely dwarfs any ships ability to fire enough CM's using standard launchers.

Keyhole lite using Hermes/RD's helps, but is not a multiplier of 8X or more like mentioned above regarding active defense. Lorelie helps, but in no way is a multiplier of 8X or more like mentioned above regarding active defense.

The need for a absolutely gargantuan increase in CM launch numbers is required or ability to kill the donkies before they launch. Until this is addressed not even an SDP is any more survivable than a BC/CA

CM's with sub munitions? Brings up, what is the spacing for offensive missiles, and ever smaller CM's = ever smaller sensors and ever WORSE ability to differentiate real missiles from fakes. Maybe CM active communications between CM's with sub munitions? But at the closing speeds is this even pencil out mathematically(I have NOT done the numbers and honestly I expect answer is NO)

Relax wrote:In recent battles going back as far as AAC and the Donkey(Technodyne doing same thing), or the RMN's ability to fire MK23E control missiles, the ability for ever smaller ships to fire ever BIGGER salvos of missiles dwarfs, absolutely dwarfs any ships ability to fire enough CM's using standard launchers.

Keyhole lite using Hermes/RD's helps, but is not a multiplier of 8X or more like mentioned above regarding active defense. Lorelie helps, but in no way is a multiplier of 8X or more like mentioned above regarding active defense.

Full up Keyhole wasn't enough -- but it + Mk31s did seem to provide over a 7x boost to usable CMs.

At All Costs wrote:he Royal Manticoran Navy had added the Keyhole platforms to its bag of tricks.[...]
Javier Giscard's staff had anticipated [...] facing somewhere around a thousand ship-launched CMs[...] What they got was over seventy-two hundred

Actually a bit more than 7x because that was for Honor's whole formation at Solon[1] -- 2 SD(P)s, 5 BC(P)s, 6 CA, 5 CL, 3 DD; and it's unclear if any of the BC(P)s were still Flight I Agamemnons (w/o Keyhole) but certainly the CAs, CLs, and DDs don't have that Keyhole boost.

But you're right -- ships, and especially small ships, still need more missile defense; and the best defense we know is more and yet more CMs (plus the ability to control them)

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[1] The LAC screen's CMs were counted separately from this quote; and Honor had detached her 6 CLACs along with 3 CLs to cover them before heading in-system; so none of those ships were in play either.

Jonathan_S wrote:But you're right -- ships, and especially small ships, still need more missile defense; and the best defense we know is more and yet more CMs (plus the ability to control them)

Now for big ships, adding FTL-to-CM control platforms a million km or more downrange would significantly boost the accuracy in the Mk31's outer engagement zone (out to 3 million km); which would help.

But you need a ship large enough to carry Hermes Buoys, Keyhole II, or some future new high-bandwidth FTL link plus carry enough of these forward control platforms. Which probably restricts it to BC and above; leaving our light units still very vulnerable.

And those platforms would seem even more critical if the RMN (finally) takes inspiration from Galton and starts outfitting some of their ships with 2-drive CMs (something folks here have agitated for on and off for ages). But again that seems a big ship solution, as you need room for the platforms, the FTL to talk to them, and now also for significantly oversized CMs.

But those alone still may not be enough additional missile defense. And still leave the lighter units very vulnerable.


For smaller ships they might be able to fit CAs with a smaller defensive-only Keyhole-light platform that only controls their CMs; no offensive fire control and potentially no PDLCs. That'd hopefully give them the ability to more fully utilize the CM tubes they already carry; but I don't know if you could squeeze even a cut down defense only platform into a something the size of a DD or CL and still have a useful offensive and defensive weapons suite...

Jonathan_S wrote:But you're right -- ships, and especially small ships, still need more missile defense; and the best defense we know is more and yet more CMs (plus the ability to control them)

No CO is going to complain if they have more, but I must point out they already have plenty. During the battle of the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge, about 10 RMN cruisers and destroyers faced against 150 SLN ships, most of which were Nevada-class battlecruisers, towing pods of Cataphract-C. Mind you: the Cataphract-C are the versions carrying Trebuchet capital-grade anti-ship missiles and the SLN could only fire them from pods, not from internal launchers.

Adm. Jane Isotalo fired 6000 missiles on Commodore Sir Martin Lessem's force. The Sag-B and C that mostly comprised Lessem's force fired 5 full waves of CMs from 520 launchers among them (which should have been 2600 missiles, but the text says 2080). That blunted about one sixth of the incoming missiles; the Loreleis and other decoys fooled another thousand. The PDLCs had also exactly one opportunity to shoot, because the ships had rolled wedge and therefore the only time they'd have line of sight to the missiles was when they cleared the wedge walls. With the help of the Ghost Riders, they managed to shoot down half of what's left. The rest did fire, but with the sidewalls and bow-walls on, most ships took only light damage and there were only 4 fatalities.

Let me emphasise that this was 600 capital-ship-grade missiles per cruiser, streaking in at a significant fraction of light-speed (the text says 0.81c but that can't be right), and the cruisers merely shrugged it off.

I'm not going to say the problem is solved. It isn't. The CM pods will probably help a lot, if one can't have dedicated platforms like the Keyholes to fire them from.

But neither is the situation hopeless. A CruRun has no business facing off a task force composed of 3 BatCruRons, with 15x the number of hulls and something like 50x their mass. That this was possible at this particular point in time is a statistical anomaly.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:In recent battles going back as far as AAC and the Donkey(Technodyne doing same thing), or the RMN's ability to fire MK23E control missiles, the ability for ever smaller ships to fire ever BIGGER salvos of missiles dwarfs, absolutely dwarfs any ships ability to fire enough CM's using standard launchers.

Keyhole lite using Hermes/RD's helps, but is not a multiplier of 8X or more like mentioned above regarding active defense. Lorelie helps, but in no way is a multiplier of 8X or more like mentioned above regarding active defense.

Full up Keyhole wasn't enough -- but it + Mk31s did seem to provide over a 7x boost to usable CMs.

At All Costs wrote:he Royal Manticoran Navy had added the Keyhole platforms to its bag of tricks.[...]
Javier Giscard's staff had anticipated [...] facing somewhere around a thousand ship-launched CMs[...] What they got was over seventy-two hundred

Actually a bit more than 7x because that was for Honor's whole formation at Solon[1] -- 2 SD(P)s, 5 BC(P)s, 6 CA, 5 CL, 3 DD; and it's unclear if any of the BC(P)s were still Flight I Agamemnons (w/o Keyhole) but certainly the CAs, CLs, and DDs don't have that Keyhole boost.

But you're right -- ships, and especially small ships, still need more missile defense; and the best defense we know is more and yet more CMs (plus the ability to control them)

---
[1] The LAC screen's CMs were counted separately from this quote; and Honor had detached her 6 CLACs along with 3 CLs to cover them before heading in-system; so none of those ships were in play either.

All the additional missile defense added in AAC is just to address MDM alpha launch. We now have the additional boost to alpha launch or even follow on launches of Donkies and control missiles increasing alpha launch by 8X. This aspect has never been addressed other than to simply add more CM platforms. Obviously quantity does have an additional quality, but 8x additional? Is ruinous.

It should be pointed out that current Generation Keyhole is not maxed out and can increase an additional bit(seems 30% more or so), but not 800% additional bit. Still minus +700%

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But you're right -- ships, and especially small ships, still need more missile defense; and the best defense we know is more and yet more CMs (plus the ability to control them)

No CO is going to complain if they have more, but I must point out they already have plenty. During the battle of the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge, about 10 RMN cruisers and destroyers faced against 150 SLN ships, most of which were Nevada-class battlecruisers, towing pods of Cataphract-C. Mind you: the Cataphract-C are the versions carrying Trebuchet capital-grade anti-ship missiles and the SLN could only fire them from pods, not from internal launchers.

Adm. Jane Isotalo fired 6000 missiles on Commodore Sir Martin Lessem's force. The Sag-B and C that mostly comprised Lessem's force

And RFC also stated that if those were RHN missiles there is no way in Hell they would have stood there and taken it. Only because it was the Obsolete SLN without any application of ECM did they do so.

You can't base your defense assuming the other guys are incompetent forever. A MUCH superior battle would be Galton to base your assumptions upon and even they are behind but catching up fast.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But you're right -- ships, and especially small ships, still need more missile defense; and the best defense we know is more and yet more CMs (plus the ability to control them)

Now for big ships, adding FTL-to-CM control platforms a million km or more downrange would significantly boost the accuracy in the Mk31's outer engagement zone (out to 3 million km); which would help.

But you need a ship large enough to carry Hermes Buoys, Keyhole II, or some future new high-bandwidth FTL link plus carry enough of these forward control platforms. Which probably restricts it to BC and above; leaving our light units still very vulnerable.

Did you see page 5? Let me quote myself for baseline tonnage tradeoff requirements for even a Roland, let alone a larger ship.

Relax wrote:Right now, IIRC, at 3.5Mkm, CM interception rate is ~<20% while close in intereception rate is ~>80%

@ ~15t/CM per 100 CM's fired, we are talking a wastage of 60*15t or 900t every time 100Cm's are fired at range and inbetween an average of 50% is wasted on average.

An RD is ~200t(SoSAG) Hermes = ??? 200t? 100t? Built to be attached to an RD apparently judging by how many conversations in recent books we have over Hermes buoy's so, I am leaning towards 100t or so otherwise RD's could not be attached to said Hermes or we may as well give up as an RD can now stealth an entire pod of missiles and get them in position to fire... Oh right we have that happening in UH minus the stealth and Hastas and... its almost as if why bother with MDM's at this point. Ok, diatribe off, back to Hermes who could be a couple hundred tons just as easily. So, crudely speaking, the low end would be 300t worth of CM's would have to be saved at long range to pencil out without speaking of advantages of fighting on your side. 300t/15t = 20CM's of interception benefit.

Quick Q: Do we have to count the 200t of the RD? RMN etc are already using RD's to see incoming fire, why could this not also do that job with an attached Hermes as well? 3D position in space could be a problem, but we have also been told there are multiple layers of RD's watching close in so... <<meh>> For now, lets assume we cannot dual use said RD and its tonnage counts against total ship system active defense load.

Just as an example: A Roland carries 800CM's. A Hermes buoy attached to a RD would only have to increase interception rate 20/800 ~2.5% hit at rate to pencil out. All before we talk fighting on your side to the enemy.

Slam dunk! Sign me up.