Control Missile for shipboard launched missiles

munroburton wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:Actually, there is. It's like the rotating control links the RHN used to increase their missile salvo size. This is a more elegant modification of the same tactic. Since I am expecting RMN ships to be pounced upon by numerically superior SLN ships, it would help a lot to have the capability of throwing salvos whose size is the same as if they are launching from apollo missile pods. There is a need to swamp the enemy's defenses and if the light combatants are out of pods, the chances of being able to do that is very much lower.

Besides, imagine the reaction of the enemy commander who incorporated into his plan that the first salvo will take out a lot of his ships but the follow on salvo would only be a fraction of the initial 'ouchie' they're going receive. He'll be thinking, I'll lose a third of my ships the first salvo but the remaining 2/3 will be enough to survive and get into energy range. But once he sees a second salvo the same size as the first, his plan is toast.

Of course, once the Keyhole-lite upgrade is deployed, the control missile upgrade won't be needed anymore.

You mean, like Vice Admiral Dubroskaya at Saltash? Four 900,000-ton battlecruisers destroyed at extreme range by five 180,000-ton destroyers using nothing more than their internal magazines, launchers and current control links. With one salvo each, to boot.

Or New Tuscany, where 6 BCs and 8 CAs could've wiped out 17 Solarian BCs but settled for a flagship kill?

The thing is, RMN ships already have the control links they need for several salvos from all tubes, plus a healthy amount of redundancy in case they have pods along or battle damage knocks a few out, without also taking launchers out.

A control missile might have been more useful in the early Havenite war, used in pods. In fact, I vaguely recall something about Thomas Theisman allocating one control link to each missile pod controlled by his forts in Barnett.

To revisit Saltash:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 12 wrote:The Roland was the first destroyer class ever built to fire the Mark 16 dual-drive missile. That was the reason it was bigger than many navies’ light cruisers. And it was also the reason for some of the peculiarities of its design. Like the reason it had “only” twelve missile tubes, and all of them were arranged as chase armament, mounted in the hammerheads of its hull. And the reason it had so much more fire control than any other destroyer in space. It was designed to fire “off bore,” spitting missiles out of its “chase armament” to permit all its tubes to engage targets in both of a traditional ship’s broadside arcs. And its fire control redundancy was designed to let it “stack” salvos with staggered drive activations, the same way the much larger and more powerful Saganami-C-class heavy cruisers did. The Roland couldn’t control as many missiles as the Saganami-C; it was less than half the heavy cruiser’s size, and there were limits in everything. But it could stack a double salvo of twenty-four missiles, which was better than twice Captain Kelvin Diadoro’s worst-case estimate . . . and each of those missiles was just as deadly as anything a Saganami-C could have fired.

Minor quibble: Zavala's forces fired a stacked double salvo at each SLN BC.

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 12 wrote:In fact, their launch cycle estimates had been six seconds low, but that was only because Zavala’s destroyers were launching stacked broadsides. The cycle time on his launchers was only eighteen seconds, but sequencing doubled broadsides put thirty-six seconds between each incoming flight of missiles. Unfortunately for BatCruRon 491, it also meant each of those salvos was better than twice as large as Kelvin Diadoro’s worst-case estimate.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my empahsis.

munroburton wrote:You mean, like Vice Admiral Dubroskaya at Saltash? Four 900,000-ton battlecruisers destroyed at extreme range by five 180,000-ton destroyers using nothing more than their internal magazines, launchers and current control links. With one salvo each, to boot.

Or New Tuscany, where 6 BCs and 8 CAs could've wiped out 17 Solarian BCs but settled for a flagship kill?

I did say numerically inferior odds right?

Your first example is 4 solly vs 5 manty, is that numerically superior to you?

Your second example is 14 manty and 17 solly, more solly this time but not what I really mean.

Try 2 destroyers being jumped by a squadron of BCs. Or maybe a single CL/CA vs 3 divisions of BCs.

The thing is, RMN ships already have the control links they need for several salvos from all tubes, plus a healthy amount of redundancy in case they have pods along or battle damage knocks a few out, without also taking launchers out.

That is not true. Sag-C's only have enough control links to fire the designed double broadsides plus redundancey - 128 control links.

"The Saganami-C-class heavy cruiser massed four hundred and eighty thousand tons. It mounted forty missile launchers in each broadside, and it had been designed to fire double broadsides at its enemies, then provided with a sixty percent redundancy in control links as a reserve against battle damage. That gave each of Aivars Terekhov's cruisers one hundred and twenty eight telemetry links, and each of those links was assigned to one Mark 23-E missile, which, in turn, controlled eight standard Mark 23s."

That is just enough links to control a bit more than 3 broadsides. A single Sag-C launching 128 missiles at 8 BCs who have integrated their missile defenses together would have a hard time killing 1 BC before it runs out of missiles. With control missiles (each controlling 8 other missiles), it can launch a salvo of a thousand missiles at once saturating even the integrated defense of 8 solly BCs.

Vince wrote:To revisit Saltash:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 12 wrote:The Roland was the first destroyer class ever built to fire the Mark 16 dual-drive missile. That was the reason it was bigger than many navies’ light cruisers. And it was also the reason for some of the peculiarities of its design. Like the reason it had “only” twelve missile tubes, and all of them were arranged as chase armament, mounted in the hammerheads of its hull. And the reason it had so much more fire control than any other destroyer in space. It was designed to fire “off bore,” spitting missiles out of its “chase armament” to permit all its tubes to engage targets in both of a traditional ship’s broadside arcs. And its fire control redundancy was designed to let it “stack” salvos with staggered drive activations, the same way the much larger and more powerful Saganami-C-class heavy cruisers did. The Roland couldn’t control as many missiles as the Saganami-C; it was less than half the heavy cruiser’s size, and there were limits in everything. But it could stack a double salvo of twenty-four missiles, which was better than twice Captain Kelvin Diadoro’s worst-case estimate . . . and each of those missiles was just as deadly as anything a Saganami-C could have fired.

Minor quibble: Zavala's forces fired a stacked double salvo at each SLN BC.

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 12 wrote:In fact, their launch cycle estimates had been six seconds low, but that was only because Zavala’s destroyers were launching stacked broadsides. The cycle time on his launchers was only eighteen seconds, but sequencing doubled broadsides put thirty-six seconds between each incoming flight of missiles. Unfortunately for BatCruRon 491, it also meant each of those salvos was better than twice as large as Kelvin Diadoro’s worst-case estimate.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my empahsis.

Saltash is ~100 missiles per salvo vs the unprepared defenses of 4 BCs taking out 1 BC at a time. Decent enough saturation.

What about 2 Rolands vs 8 BCs. Do you think 48 missiles are going to saturate the interlocked defenses of 8 BCs? How many hits per salvo do you think the rolands are going to get away with?

The sollies know they are qualitatively inferior. They aren't going to jump manticoran ships if they do not have a huge numerical advantage. IMHO 4to1 might even be iffy. If I'm the solly, I'm going to pounce at 6-8 to 1 odds in numbers (and a hell of a lot more in tonnage) since the ships I am attacking are probably carrying pods.

The solly admirals might be totally inept, but im sure that solly navy ship captains are going to be very careful about numerical and tonnage superiority before they attack manty ships, it is their lives on the line after all. They got totally whipped the first few incidents because they didn't believe how outclassed they were. That surprising fact is now out the window. You can be sure those who are going to meet the manties would take that into consideration.

Rakhmamort wrote:That is not true. Sag-C's only have enough control links to fire the designed double broadsides plus redundancey - 128 control links.

"The Saganami-C-class heavy cruiser massed four hundred and eighty thousand tons. It mounted forty missile launchers in each broadside, and it had been designed to fire double broadsides at its enemies, then provided with a sixty percent redundancy in control links as a reserve against battle damage. That gave each of Aivars Terekhov's cruisers one hundred and twenty eight telemetry links, and each of those links was assigned to one Mark 23-E missile, which, in turn, controlled eight standard Mark 23s."

That is just enough links to control a bit more than 3 broadsides. A single Sag-C launching 128 missiles at 8 BCs who have integrated their missile defenses together would have a hard time killing 1 BC before it runs out of missiles. With control missiles (each controlling 8 other missiles), it can launch a salvo of a thousand missiles at once saturating even the integrated defense of 8 solly BCs.

House of Steel does't give ammunition capabilities, but it can be worked out for two ships from the Nike's description.

"Over 40 minutes of maximum rate fire", that rate being given elsewhere as around 15 seconds, comes out at ~160 missiles per tube. With 50 tubes, that's 8,000 missiles.

Then, in the same description, "While a Nike and a Saganami-C may carry the same missile, each of a Nike’s launchers has four times the magazine capacity of her smaller heavy cruiser counterpart."

So, about 40 per tube, of which there are also 40. 1,600 total.

Part of the reason I referred to Saltash and New Tuscany was that they were the only known instances of the MK16-G being used(or in the latter, vintage MK23s with the same destructive power used at MK16 ranges) and that's really put MK16-capable ships on steroids. At Saltash, 2.8 million tons of warship was blown apart by 900k tons of Manty magic ships.

What about 2 Rolands vs 8 BCs. Do you think 48 missiles are going to saturate the interlocked defenses of 8 BCs? How many hits per salvo do you think the rolands are going to get away with?

Also, New Tuscany demonstrated how pitiful SLN task group defensive fire was against a limited salvo. The RMN fired 250 missiles and all 20-plus ships of the SLN could only stop 73 of them, which wasn't enough to prevent outright destruction of Byng's flagship. In effect, it was only Gold Peak's flagship doing the shooting against Byng's entire task force - and given 8,000 missiles, there's a good chance a single Nike could've annihilated the Solarians even if it hadn't brought along any pods. This may not be the case in future when those BCs are re-armed with Cataphract missiles - but doing so weakens the hitting power to that of destroyers.

Same again when those six BCs couldn't stop more than a few missiles from hitting their wedges during Operation Laocoon.

There's also a rate of fire problem. Stacking a thousand missiles, whether with 12, 40 or 50 launchers takes time. You would be effectively holding your fire until the 1000th bird clears your wedge and they all go hot.

The Rolands may run out of ammo before they finish and be forced to retreat, though. I don't see how replacing ten percent of their magazine capacity with control missiles improves their odds of successfully taking on eight BCs.

--snipping--

Rakhmamort wrote:What about 2 Rolands vs 8 BCs. Do you think 48 missiles are going to saturate the interlocked defenses of 8 BCs? How many hits per salvo do you think the Rolands are going to get away with?

The only way those SLN ships win against the Rolands is if they jump them from within SDM range and even then, they're going to get hurt. That likely requires the RMN ship captain and crew to be pretty much be asleep at the wheel, so let's eliminate that from a "planned" tactical discussion:

To try to even the odds, I'll give the SLN BC's a full towed load of Cataphract C's, but only the Cat'C's have a range of 20MM km, the rest maybe a max at high fleet accel and a net velocity into the .2C range by the launching BC's. Which only works if the Rolands are closing head on, by the way. The add on for the RMN ships is that IIRC a Roland can also limpet 5 pods of 14 missiles, meaning that between the two of them they have around 700 shipkillers less ECM, for the sake of argument let's call it 600 shipkillers, enough for nearly 80 per BC, and they can engage anywhere from 30-45MM KM pretty easily.

At Saltash, we're told that the combined defenses of 4 BC's stopped ONE shipkiller, I'll be nice and let the 8 be 4 times as effective. So on average 1st salvo(s) they stop'll 4 shipkillers per salvo received. Woo Hoo! It goes down from there:

The Rolands launch double salvos from the Rolands, pods first, 2-2-1. Your first two salvo is of 56 ish missiles x 2. I'll assume that of those, 90 Mod-G shipkillers will get through, take out ALL of the towed pods, and kills the SLN squadron flagship.

By the time the third pod's salvo has arrived, a couple of the ships defending the flag have also been hit pretty hard, losing some tubes and CM/PDLC defenses in the process. Likely result at "strike + 1 minute": 1 mission kill, 2-4 SLN cruisers damaged. Call it a 25% degradation in squadron defenses and (being liberal) a 40% degradation in offensive firepower [all of the pods, 12% of the tubes in the killed flagship, and a few tubes each on the 2-4 damaged cruisers]. They might have closed 1.5MM kilometers depending on how strenuously the Rolands are maneuvering to keep the range open.

Time for the RMN ships to start playing the "stacked salvo tune" using tube launched Mark-16s, call it 40 shipkillers and 8 ECM/Penaid missiles per combined salvo, round robin on the 7 remaining BC's. (2 damaged, 5 intact) At strike + roughly 4 minutes, every remaining BC has been hit by one of those salvos, taking 40% damage, and the first SLN hit ships are likely mission killed.

The Rolands still have at least half of their missile load available and only 4-5 heavily damaged SLN BC's remain, I'll be liberal and give them 60% combat effectiveness. The SLN ships are no longer able to close the range, so the Rolands remain maybe 10MM km ouside engagement range. Etc. Etc. Etc. The RMN ships pause in firing to serve coffee and sandwiches, send in a few more drones to figure out WHICH ships need more of the treatment and a surrender order that they'll resume firing in X minutes...

Any questions what the ultimate result of this battle will be?

munroburton wrote:
*Same again when those six BCs couldn't stop more than a few missiles from hitting their wedges during Operation Laocoon.

**There's also a rate of fire problem. Stacking a thousand missiles, whether with 12, 40 or 50 launchers takes time. You would be effectively holding your fire until the 1000th bird clears your wedge and they all go hot.

***The Rolands may run out of ammo before they finish and be forced to retreat, though. I don't see how replacing ten percent of their magazine capacity with control missiles improves their odds of successfully taking on eight BCs.

*Those 6 BCs didn't know the capabilities of the enemy so they went in fat, dumb, and happy. If you think your opponents are going to continue being stupid and would not think of ways to overcome your advantages, the sollies are probably going to you what the RH navy did to Manticore when they first introduced the Cimeterre LACs. Underestimating the enemy's desire to win is a very stupid thing in war.

**Yes, it would take a long time to shoot out 1000 missiles from the ship's tubes. But Manticore has that range advantage. 1 Roland can do that in 25 minutes (if it had the magazine capacity), 2 Rolands would finish stacking in under 12.5 minutes. That's more than enough time before the enemy gets within their missile range.

***And what if the Rolands can't retreat? What if they are guarding a merchant train and if they retreat the damaged yet numerically still superior solly ships are free to take their time taking out the merchies'?

Saying it will never happen and they can always run is limiting one's capability to handle the difficult things. Manticore uses difficult training scenarios to improve their capabilities to handle unexpected events. If it is just run of the mill scenarios like outnumbering the underpowered, under-equipped, stupid enemy, then they might as well be using gimme-tac problems during training like the SLN.

As for having control missiles enabling 2 Rolands with no pods being able to take on 8 BCs. I already put out the numbers. 1000 Missiles broken down to ~800 attack missiles + ~200 control and ECM birds ---> ~100 attack missiles per BC in one salvo that overwhelms the BCs defenses.

Compare that with:
48 missiles per salvo 8 of which are probably ECM birds so the BC squadron has to take out only 5 missiles each to remain unscathed. That is well within the capabilities of solly defenses no matter how under-equipped they are.

My bad. Rolands only have 240 Missiles in their Magazines so 2 of them aren't going to be able to build up to 1000 missile salvo. Nevertheless, the logic for the control missile is sound, that is why the RMN is going to try and develop an Apollo-lite version as was posted earlier in the thread.

Rakhmamort wrote:My bad. Rolands only have 240 Missiles in their Magazines so 2 of them aren't going to be able to build up to 1000 missile salvo. Nevertheless, the logic for the control missile is sound, that is why the RMN is going to try and develop an Apollo-lite version as was posted earlier in the thread.

Yes, solid logic. "We don't have enough attack missiles, so lets take out some, and replace them with something else."

crewdude48 wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:My bad. Rolands only have 240 Missiles in their Magazines so 2 of them aren't going to be able to build up to 1000 missile salvo. Nevertheless, the logic for the control missile is sound, that is why the RMN is going to try and develop an Apollo-lite version as was posted earlier in the thread.

Yes, solid logic. "We don't have enough attack missiles, so lets take out some, and replace them with something else."

Saturating the enemy's defenses = more hits. You can fire 10 salvos of 24 missiles at a BC squadron and not even take one BC out. Send out 240 missiles at once and you'll mission kill at least 1, more likely 2 BCs. That is why we see stacked broadsides, which is severely limited by the number of control links the ship has.

Rakhmamort wrote:Saturating the enemy's defenses = more hits. You can fire 10 salvos of 24 missiles at a BC squadron and not even take one BC out. Send out 240 missiles at once and you'll mission kill at least 1, more likely 2 BCs. That is why we see stacked broadsides, which is severely limited by the number of control links the ship has.

One thing demonstrated at Saltash was that a double-stack salvo of Mk-16Gs from five Rolands was severe overkill against the defenses of four BCs. We can't quantify exactly how much overkill is demonstrated or how much SLN defenses or missile ranges might improve, but we know, positively, that Five Double-stacked Salvos of Mk-16Gs does a LOT more damage than a simple "mission kill."