Hybrid missile/Graser Torp

kzt wrote:By mysterious means having a nuke go off thousands of km away from a pod full of missiles designed to attack ships while thousands of other nuclear warheads are going off all around and much closer to the missiles will destroy the pod.

It’s the power of plot!

Which is why nobody shot at the RHN at BoM while they were building their salvos despite Home Fleet having hugely more missiles then they expected to be able to shoot and markedly more range than the RHN missiles. I guess nothing gets you a great OER then having your command obliterated with lots of unused ammo that you refused to shoot.

Because that was the first launch and I am NOT talking about the first launch. I am talking about the followup launches. Reading is OP, please nerf.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:I know the books are written as though the pods might be visible (except when the books are calling them stealthy), but if the pods are stealthy and as far from the ships as you say, then how are the missiles to target them? I can imagine hitting some by chance when targeting the ships, but that would be for ones that were close.

Kizarvexis wrote: You are dumping the pods out of the wedge at a set velocity. Then it is just tracking where the pods would be going and setting off nukes to trash them with collateral damage. You don't have to see them to target them with splash nuke damage. The wedge restricts the volume that the pods move into and the pods themselves can't move meaning that they keep the velocity the ship was moving at, so hitting that volume where the pods would be with nukes should not be hard.

If the pods are stealthy (as indicated by HAE, which prompted the suggestion of adding a beacon for after action recovery), then the enemy does not know when they are dropped and if the ship is accelerating or turning then they do not stay near the ship. You were the one that said:

Kizarvexis wrote:So, would the attacking ships have enough reach on their CMs and point defense to defend the pods they left behind while they stack them? You don't need much to get out of PD range and the further out from the ships, the harder the CM coverage is. Not to mention, if you are defending from incoming salvos, can you put out enough defense to save the pods as well?

That implies that having missiles get close enough for a proximity kill is not trivial.

Once again, talking about followup launches. Once the enemy starts shooting, then the pods they roll after that will be coming out of the butts of the ships. Since you can track the ships, then you know the volume that pods were dropped into. The ships velocity when dropping pods means you have a static volume to hit to get the pods. You then launch at the volume behind where the ships are going so as to worry them about pods being taken out. You can in a way direct where you want the enemy to go as they either have to take on the missiles that are gunning for where their pods are going to be, meaning less CMs for ship defense. Or the ships have to move to an area where your missiles vs pods won't be able to get to.

Since missile salvos are able to be vectored to maneuvering ships, vectoring missiles to pods that would essentially be ballistic once dropped should be easy. And once ships start firing, then figuring out where subsequent pods would be would not be as hard.

Realistically the warhead has a kill radius of at most several km. Space is big and honorverse missiles have terrible sensors and stupid guidance systems.

kzt wrote:Realistically the warhead has a kill radius of at most several km. Space is big and honorverse missiles have terrible sensors and stupid guidance systems.

Single missiles are said to destroy capital ships with a contact hit. A nuke should not destroy a metal ship like that, so the nukes in Honorverse have some handwavium to make them strong.

Kizarvexis wrote:

kzt wrote:Realistically the warhead has a kill radius of at most several km. Space is big and honorverse missiles have terrible sensors and stupid guidance systems.

Single missiles are said to destroy capital ships with a contact hit. A nuke should not destroy a metal ship like that, so the nukes in Honorverse have some handwavium to make them strong.

it’s the inverse square in action. At nuke at 10 meters delivers a million time more energy than one at 10km. And 100 million more than the same nuke at 100 km.

Plus the really lethal part of a missile is the wedge.

kzt wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:
Single missiles are said to destroy capital ships with a contact hit. A nuke should not destroy a metal ship like that, so the nukes in Honorverse have some handwavium to make them strong.

it’s the inverse square in action. At nuke at 10 meters delivers a million time more energy than one at 10km. And 100 million more than the same nuke at 100 km.

Plus the really lethal part of a missile is the wedge.

The wedge is very lethal yes. But for battle steel and armored ships hundreds of meters long, you really think a single nuke is going to destroy the whole thing? I know nuke are powerful, but I don't think that powerful.

Kizarvexis wrote:The wedge is very lethal yes. But for battle steel and armored ships hundreds of meters long, you really think a single nuke is going to destroy the whole thing? I know nuke are powerful, but I don't think that powerful.

You were claiming they were that lethal.

Nuke weapons radiate the majority of their energy in xrays. There is no blast until the xrays vaporize something (and there is no EMP in deep space unless the nuke is VERY close).

If you have a 1 megaton bomb going off at 500 meters you get enough energy to superheat the surface a an aluminum skin and that will induce shockwaves in the aluminum. And this will be very damaging.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... onvent.php

Honorverse combat ships don't have aluminum skins. The don't use battlesteel on the surface (which is carbon) they use assorted metals designed to deal with this stuff. And then they have parts of the armor system designed to soak that kind of effect. Still won't be good for sensors and weapons on that side.

So who knows. But I'd guess you would need to be under 500m range to severely structurally damage a large warship, even using 20-50 MT warheads.

At a range of single digit meters a 50MT weapon is going to be a really big deal no matter how big the ship in.

On the other hand, a 200 tom missile moving at 60% of the speed of light will ruin your entire weekend if it hits your ship no matter how big.

kzt wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:The wedge is very lethal yes. But for battle steel and armored ships hundreds of meters long, you really think a single nuke is going to destroy the whole thing? I know nuke are powerful, but I don't think that powerful.

You were claiming they were that lethal.

Nuke weapons radiate the majority of their energy in xrays. There is no blast until the xrays vaporize something (and there is no EMP in deep space unless the nuke is VERY close).

If you have a 1 megaton bomb going off at 500 meters you get enough energy to superheat the surface a an aluminum skin and that will induce shockwaves in the aluminum. And this will be very damaging.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... onvent.php

Honorverse combat ships don't have aluminum skins. The don't use battlesteel on the surface (which is carbon) they use assorted metals designed to deal with this stuff. And then they have parts of the armor system designed to soak that kind of effect. Still won't be good for sensors and weapons on that side.

So who knows. But I'd guess you would need to be under 500m range to severely structurally damage a large warship, even using 20-50 MT warheads.

At a range of single digit meters a 50MT weapon is going to be a really big deal no matter how big the ship in.

On the other hand, a 200 tom missile moving at 60% of the speed of light will ruin your entire weekend if it hits your ship no matter how big.

And pods are made of battlesteel at best. You have a definite volume to find the pods as the ship dumps them out the back of the wedge. They are ballistic when deployed, so you don't have a huge space to look for them in.

Kizarvexis wrote:And pods are made of battlesteel at best. You have a definite volume to find the pods as the ship dumps them out the back of the wedge. They are ballistic when deployed, so you don't have a huge space to look for them in.

You can use the tractors to toss them off at an angle. At a mere 50 meters per second they have moved 3 km in a minute in some random direction. So at 3,000 km/sec ship velocity now you have a 6 km wide target 180,000 km long. How many nukes will it take to get one warhead within 1 km of every possible pod location in a 6km by 180,000km long cylinder? Even at 300 km/sec it's an 18,000 km long cylinder.

But in Honorverse prox kills are essentially magic, its basically enough to shoot in their general direction.

kzt wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:And pods are made of battlesteel at best. You have a definite volume to find the pods as the ship dumps them out the back of the wedge. They are ballistic when deployed, so you don't have a huge space to look for them in.

You can use the tractors to toss them off at an angle. At a mere 50 meters per second they have moved 3 km in a minute in some random direction. So at 3,000 km/sec ship velocity now you have a 6 km wide target 180,000 km long. How many nukes will it take to get one warhead within 1 km of every possible pod location in a 6km by 180,000km long cylinder? Even at 300 km/sec it's an 18,000 km long cylinder.

But in Honorverse prox kills are essentially magic, its basically enough to shoot in their general direction.

And you will have pods all down that column as you stack a salvo

The nuisance question from the back of the class . . .

I should know this but for that recurrent memo problem I have. I always assumed the answer to the upcoming question is yes, but, to be sure! While rolled, a ship can fire off-bore, can said ship "roll pods" off-bore? Again, I don't see why not. A professor of mine was fond of saying . . .

"There are no stupid questions, just the stupidity of not asking the ignorant question."

Now there's this image in my head of desperate ships maneuvering wildly in the heat of battle taking each other out. Now I'm seeing desperate ships maneuvering into shoals of pods waiting to light off.