Technical questions re military hardware.

Amaroq wrote:
According to House of Steel an Invictus-class SD(P) can hold 1074 missile pods before needing to reload. I don't know if those are flatpack pods though. I assume they are.

I haven't found anything on the amount of pods that Manticoran ammunition ships carry. I remember a reference in Shadow of Saganami where Terekhov ordered the ammunition ship HMS Volcano to drop off a couple hundred missile pods to reload his ships. He doesn't mention exactly how many pods nor if that was all the ammo ship could carry though.

Okay, the Invictus is the latest class of podnaught, right? So those would be flatpacks, although the number seems a bit low. Anyhow, 1074 translates to 9666 missiles, of which 1074 (obviously) are Apollo control missiles (Mark 23-E), and 8592 are the actual Apollo missiles (about 2864 EW birds and 5728 shipkillers). I need to remember that those numbers do not include the pods tractored to the podnaughts' hulls nor any pods directly deployed from any ammo ships (should that be part of the tactical calculus).

Okay, thanks guys. Further questions will follow as they occur to me.

wastedfly wrote:

Amaroq wrote:According to House of Steel an Invictus-class SD(P) can hold 1074 missile pods before needing to reload. I don't know if those are flatpack pods though. I assume they are.

That number is before flatpack pods.

Numbers given in HoS are for initial production of the class.

For instance Medusa value is given as 492. That is its initial value. Due to all the changes in pod design, actual pods carried in 1922 are upwards of 700. An Invictus would tabulate around 1400-1500 pods. This would also increase BCP to around 500 pods.

Do we know the number of flatpack pods they can hold in their internal magazines? As for the number they can limpet to the hull I can only guess after trying to find something in the text (maybe between 100-150)?

Whoops, I didn't see your edited post before I posted.

Amaroq wrote:Do we know the number of flatpack pods they can hold in their internal magazines? As for the number they can limpet to the hull I can only guess after trying to find something in the text (maybe between 100-150)?

Whoops, I didn't see your edited post before I posted.

You can SWAG it from the load carried by Home Fleet at BoM. It is quite a few.

hanuman wrote: How many pods can be stocked by the RMN's standard ammunition ships?

Ammo ships seen in ART are 4M ton ships.

Pod minimum tonnage:

10X150tons + power + grav launcher + structure + attitude thrusters when launched. Minimum would be 1500 tons. A realistic value is 2000-2500 tons. What density/volume are the pods going to be?

4Mton ship. 20% structure, 15% impellers/fuel/warshawki sails. Leaves 65%. Lets call it 60%. 2.4M tons. Allows transport of around 1000 pods. Personally, I believe my 20% structural mass is way high as elsewhere MWW has stated the materials in HV are many times superior to materials today. Ship resides in 0g to single g, and is probably designed for no more than 3g under no compensator loads but external thrusters. It is a civilian design after all. Structural weight should be no more than 10%, but for all intensive purposes, arguing over 10% is rather petty in a fictional universe.

Call it 1000 pods for a typical JMMT ammo pod carrier. 2000 for an 8M ton carrier. Of course if we wish to dicker over the actual density, we could boost this value upwards. Contrary opinioned folks would point out it could be fewer. Lets just call it 1000 pods per 4M tons of carrier.

hanuman wrote:[
Okay, the Invictus is the latest class of podnaught, right? So those would be flatpacks, although the number seems a bit low. Anyhow, 1074 translates to 9666 missiles, of which 1074 (obviously) are Apollo control missiles (Mark 23-E), and 8592 are the actual Apollo missiles (about 2864 EW birds and 5728 shipkillers). I need to remember that those numbers do not include the pods tractored to the podnaughts' hulls nor any pods directly deployed from any ammo ships (should that be part of the tactical calculus).

Okay, thanks guys. Further questions will follow as they occur to me.

It seems you assign a 2/3 shipkiller to 1/3 EW missile ratio to the missiles in the pods. Is this a number you read somewhere or just an estimate?

Crunching the numbers from the Battle of Manticore gives a different breakdown. They fired 7776 pods. That means 69,984 missiles. Subtract the Apollo birds and you have 62,208 left. The text says that 54,208 of those were shipkillers. That's around 87% with only 13% or so as EW platforms. I'm uncertain if the pods' ratio of shipkiller to EW bird is fixed or if they can mix and match different ratios as the ops plan requires.

Duckk wrote:I'm sitting 2 chairs to the right of David right now. Trust me, both David and Baen are quite cool with it.

Does that make you Peter?

Annachie wrote:

Duckk wrote:I'm sitting 2 chairs to the right of David right now. Trust me, both David and Baen are quite cool with it.

Does that make you Peter?

No, that just makes him lucky.

KNick wrote:

Annachie wrote:Does that make you Peter?

No, that just makes him lucky.

I wasn't in the same room, or even the same state, but I was there too. Much more fun than I expected, having never done that before.

kzt wrote:

hanuman wrote:First question. How many Mark 23 flatpack pods can a SD(P) carry?

Before or after you cover the hull with multiple layers of tractored flatpacks?

kzt wrote:

hanuman wrote:First question. How many Mark 23 flatpack pods can a SD(P) carry?

Before or after you cover the hull with multiple layers of tractored flatpacks?

c'mon, k,

You know there has never been any textev for multiple layers of hull tractored pods.

However...

SftS says that Michelle arrived at New Tuscany with 40 flatpacks on each Sag-C, and 80 flatpacks on each Nike. If we assume that 10th Fleet was pasted up with maximum limpets, and then extrapolate from that ratio of increased tonnage/surface area, an SD should be able to haul somewhere between 130 up to under 200 pods.

However, AAC tells us that the older SDs of Home Fleet were hauling 600 pods apiece at BoMA.

So maybe SDs can stick on multiple layers of flatpacks.

Thomas, I know you hang around here sometimes. Can you clarify?

dreamrider

Hi Dreamrider,

Minor nit: the old SD's had 580 pods tractored to them, not 600.

For smaller ships, the tonnage ratio is less than 10Kt per pod; 10 per old DD at Monica, but larger ships are around 12Kt like Rolands and CL's that can carry 15, Star Knight CA's only 23, while the Sag-C handles 40.

By implication old BC's would be around 73, and Nike's almost 200, because the old SD's at 8-8.5 MT each are in the 13-14 Kt range.

L

dreamrider wrote:

kzt wrote:*quote="hanuman"*
First question. How many Mark 23 flatpack pods can a SD(P) carry? **quote*
Before or after you cover the hull with multiple layers of tractored flatpacks?

kzt wrote:*quote="hanuman"*
First question. How many Mark 23 flatpack pods can a SD(P) carry? **quote*
Before or after you cover the hull with multiple layers of tractored flatpacks?

c'mon, k,

You know there has never been any textev for multiple layers of hull tractored pods.

However...

SftS says that Michelle arrived at New Tuscany with 40 flatpacks on each Sag-C, and 80 flatpacks on each Nike. If we assume that 10th Fleet was pasted up with maximum limpets, and then extrapolate from that ratio of increased tonnage/surface area, an SD should be able to haul somewhere between 130 up to under 200 pods.

However, AAC tells us that the older SDs of Home Fleet were hauling 600 pods apiece at BoMA.

So maybe SDs can stick on multiple layers of flatpacks.

Thomas, I know you hang around here sometimes. Can you clarify?

dreamrider