The roof and belly of a ship is naked... here's a fix.

KNick wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:Ah... I must have missed that somewhere. Either that or age is making me... what was I saying?

Sorry, MaxxQ. You're not old enough to pull that one off. Now, having too many balls in air the to juggle, that I would believe.

Sure, I'll go with that.

KNick wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:Ah... I must have missed that somewhere. Either that or age is making me... what was I saying?

Sorry, MaxxQ. You're not old enough to pull that one off. Now, having too many balls in air the to juggle, that I would believe.

Max, re-read the Zavala action against the SLN battlecruisers when that FF Governor decided to grab off a few Manty freighters. In the action every one of his Rolands fired twelve missiles per salvo. Since a Roland only has 6 tube in each hammerhead they had to be firing 180 degrees offbore with at least half of them.

BrightSoul wrote:

KNick wrote:Sorry, MaxxQ. You're not old enough to pull that one off. Now, having too many balls in air the to juggle, that I would believe.

Max, re-read the Zavala action against the SLN battlecruisers when that FF Governor decided to grab off a few Manty freighters. In the action every one of his Rolands fired twelve missiles per salvo. Since a Roland only has 6 tube in each hammerhead they had to be firing 180 degrees offbore with at least half of them.

Okay... I figured it must be in one of the newer books. I'm currently re-reading the series, and I'm only up to SoS. I've only read everything after that once.

How often are turrets used on contemporary wet navy warships?

Rotating turret-like missile launchers have in many cases given way to fixed launch tubes - the complexity of the reload system, plus power supply, pivoting, aiming issues all eliminated by being able to fire off-bore.

How many submarines have used turrets for their primary armament (torpedo tubes)? Again, too large and awkward to handle, especially the reloads.

Another issue is that since turrets by definition can rotate to point in various directions, you would end up with horrendous and highly variable wedge interference problems.

BrightSoul wrote:
Max, re-read the Zavala action against the SLN battlecruisers when that FF Governor decided to grab off a few Manty freighters. In the action every one of his Rolands fired twelve missiles per salvo. Since a Roland only has 6 tube in each hammerhead they had to be firing 180 degrees offbore with at least half of them.

You'd only need to be able to fire 180 degrees off bore to achieve Zavala's salvos if you were flying directly toward or away from your target, i.e. if the other set of tubes was pointing right at it. If, say, your target was on your port or starboard beam then both sets of tubes would be firing at 90 degrees off-bore. 120 degrees means there's a 60 degree arc where the fields of fire overlap.

Dafmeister wrote:You'd only need to be able to fire 180 degrees off bore to achieve Zavala's salvos if you were flying directly toward or away from your target, i.e. if the other set of tubes was pointing right at it. If, say, your target was on your port or starboard beam then both sets of tubes would be firing at 90 degrees off-bore. 120 degrees means there's a 60 degree arc where the fields of fire overlap.

The business of "off-bore" missile firing arcs is a logical consequence of MDM technology. The more drives a missile has, the less importance there is to the initial velocity imparted by the launch tubes. (And in the case of pod-layers, the box launchers in the pods provide even less.)

With single-drive missiles of limited acceleration/duration, firing within 30 degrees or so of your target could make a meaningful difference in the engagement envelope. Now that it's possible to set a long ballistic phase between drives, the envelope is defined more by the ability to control missiles at extreme range, so launching 180 degrees away from the target doesn't really affect the envelope size at all (but it might require a few extra seconds of that ballistic flight to make up for having flown the wrong way before the first drive kicked in).

The only place I can see a turret being useful is in a pinnace, during air-to-ground operations. In space, the ships can probably turn faster than a turret could, and give gunners a better angle of fire. As well, turrets require a lot more space per weapon than a fixed emplacement. They require the mechanisms to move, as well as the extra space to move around in. I don't think it'd be wise to turret anything on ships, since the installations are already freaking massive.

Besides, the only place a turret would actually be useful is during energy combat. And that's not been seen in a long while, aside from Chatterjee's destroyers getting ambushed.

Uroboros wrote:The only place I can see a turret being useful is in a pinnace, during air-to-ground operations. In space, the ships can probably turn faster than a turret could, and give gunners a better angle of fire. As well, turrets require a lot more space per weapon than a fixed emplacement. They require the mechanisms to move, as well as the extra space to move around in. I don't think it'd be wise to turret anything on ships, since the installations are already freaking massive.

Besides, the only place a turret would actually be useful is during energy combat. And that's not been seen in a long while, aside from Chatterjee's destroyers getting ambushed.

I believe pinnaces and assault shuttles do have turrets for their tribarrels etc.

Another thing to keep in mind. The "gun" has to have a "gunport" to fire through the sidewall. Just like a missile. Without that, the beam would be degraded into ineffectiveness by the ship's own sidewall.

Dafmeister wrote:

Uroboros wrote:The only place I can see a turret being useful is in a pinnace, during air-to-ground operations.

I believe pinnaces and assault shuttles do have turrets for their tribarrels etc.

Yeah, I seem to remember the StateSec shuttles on Hades had turrets.

Wasn't one of the crew-members assigned to man the dorsal turret to cover the others while they make the food drop offs at each camp?