Apollo below the Wall

Maldorian wrote:

Maldorian wrote:
Does anyone know, how many missles a Apollo device can control? Normally a Apollo device controls 8 combat missles, but that´s the number of missles you can put in a pod with a Apollo, that doesn´t say, that Apollo maybe can control even more missles!


I don´t understand, why it isn´t possible, to send data to missles with the sensor platforms! Sensor Probes have a gravity comunicator like the Apollo and you send them to the enemy lines to overwatch the Situation. So, why you can´t use them as a com Relais to send target corrections or in Zavala´s case, the self destruct code?

I would think you could control as many missiles as you want with one Apollo command missile--it's just they act like one super-missile and you'll quickly run into overkill problems. Figure a dazzler and a jammer per pod, 6 real warheads. From what we saw at the Battle of Manticore this combo is enough to do serious damage to it's target. Why bring more bang?

My Suggestion was, why you use one pod with a Apollo and one or two pods without Apollo and give the Apollo device the control about the addidicional Missiles. A pod without Apollo has ten missles and a Apollo device is expensive, so if you can control more than the missles that are in the same pod as the Apollo you can fight more economical!

You're missing the point. While you could have more missiles piggyback on the Apollo control missile you could only deliver them to the same target. The Apollo salvo on it's own generally messes it up pretty well, that other pod would probably have served you better fired at something else.

As Cthia says, welcome and enjoy from a relative noob myself, who is a huge fan of figuring out ways to make all of the RMN missiles FTL controllable, and have had a few ways of doing so kindly or not so kindly shot from under meeself. Mostly kindly.

What I'd rather see is the multi-modal drone shell capable of passing targeting data to oncoming missiles. So far the "tech wizards" on the board have shot that down but I'm hoping that the "MWW" (Mad Wizard Weber) will let Hemphill et. all figure it out. Then you wire the ACM-16E "variant" to control as many missiles as need be per target.

The only time that doesn't work is if the RMN/GA has to fire off missiles before the GR drones can get close enough to assist, against a first tier navy (the RN or IAN are the only players so far) Other than that a mil-spec freighter stuffed with all sorts of pods and a Sag-C with it's own missiles becomes absolutely lethal to anything up to a decent size task group. Extended range plus accuracy plus hitting power.

There was a discussion some years back on the subject of why Nike had the Mk-16 instead of the Mk-23, why the RMN didn't and wouldn't build a DN(P) or a BB(L).

RFC posted on that some years back. in short, it was that a ship smaller than the current podnoughts wouldn't have the defensive capability of the larger ships, and wouldn't survive once the enemy (pick one) could field an SD(P); second, that the smallest ship you could build with a Nike's 6000+ missile load would be around 5-6Mtons somewhere, and wouldn't be much cheaper to build than the current SD(P)s and be a lot more fragile.

I think those were his major arguments, anyway.

I don't know if that one was in the Pearls, or not; for new people, Joe Buckley's site has a lot of collected posts--some from here, some from Baen's Bar--going back to around 1998. There is a link on the FAC page for the forum.

or try [url]]http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/[/url] and look around. He has other interesting things too.

Just don't blame me for the lost time you will spend reading it. . .

Rob

With all the focus on offensive firepower, like cramming Apollo into a BC(L) or even smaller, I think a lot of people are going to miss the next 'leap forward' in RMN tech.

While the SKM is certainly going to continue to try and ramp up their offensive capability as best as possible, I think where the next breakthrough is going to come is in the missile defense side of the spectrum. And I could be completely wrong, but I think it will come in 1 (or more) of 3 areas:

1- A great increase in the overpowered wedge of CMs. This would drastically increase the hit probabilities of each CM being fired. If each CM doubles its ability to take out an attack missile, ship security just increased by a huge margin.

2- Longer ranged CMs, potentially a modified MDCM that has ranges out to ~10m KM. That would give much more depth to the target zone and allow ships to fire multiple salvos of CMs at each salvo of attack birds. Hit probabilities would, of course, be worse the further out you go but the sooner you start thinning out the salvo the better your odds of surviving become.

The Katanas are outstanding in the anti-missile role, but at some point the ships themselves are going to have to increase their on-board capabilities. While this may not happen within the next two books (no real need as of now), I think this would be an area Manticore would be really focused on so that when another enemy did match their offensive firepower they would have an off-setting defensive trump card to stay a step ahead.

Erls wrote:With all the focus on offensive firepower, like cramming Apollo into a BC(L) or even smaller, I think a lot of people are going to miss the next 'leap forward' in RMN tech.

While the SKM is certainly going to continue to try and ramp up their offensive capability as best as possible, I think where the next breakthrough is going to come is in the missile defense side of the spectrum. And I could be completely wrong, but I think it will come in 1 (or more) of 3 areas:

1- A great increase in the overpowered wedge of CMs. This would drastically increase the hit probabilities of each CM being fired. If each CM doubles its ability to take out an attack missile, ship security just increased by a huge margin.

2- Longer ranged CMs, potentially a modified MDCM that has ranges out to ~10m KM. That would give much more depth to the target zone and allow ships to fire multiple salvos of CMs at each salvo of attack birds. Hit probabilities would, of course, be worse the further out you go but the sooner you start thinning out the salvo the better your odds of surviving become.

The Katanas are outstanding in the anti-missile role, but at some point the ships themselves are going to have to increase their on-board capabilities. While this may not happen within the next two books (no real need as of now), I think this would be an area Manticore would be really focused on so that when another enemy did match their offensive firepower they would have an off-setting defensive trump card to stay a step ahead.

I agree Manticore is largely going to focus on further improving their missile defense until they feel they can build an SD(P) whose defenses roughly balance it's Apollo offense.

But we're told the main problem with longer ranged CMs is that lightspeed control lag makes them much less effective at even the 3 million km the new Mk31s can reach. Going past that is going to take improvements in more than just nodes.

We've speculated plenty on what that could be, but it seems to boil down to three basic approaches.
1) cut the control lag from the launch ship via some form of FTL link (whether an FTL receiver on the CM or some kind of shell of drones able to act as an FTL-to-CM relay)
2) Hand off CM control to forward deployed LACs. (longer ranged CMs launched from the wall overfly the defensive LAC shell, but the LACs control those CMs to terminal intercept within 2.5-3 million KM past the LACs)
3) Vastly improved onboard sensors and ECCM so the CMs are far less reliant on shipboard control.

Of course RFC may have some other approach in mind

Jonathan_S wrote:

Erls wrote:With all the focus on offensive firepower, like cramming Apollo into a BC(L) or even smaller, I think a lot of people are going to miss the next 'leap forward' in RMN tech.

While the SKM is certainly going to continue to try and ramp up their offensive capability as best as possible, I think where the next breakthrough is going to come is in the missile defense side of the spectrum. And I could be completely wrong, but I think it will come in 1 (or more) of 3 areas:

1- A great increase in the overpowered wedge of CMs. This would drastically increase the hit probabilities of each CM being fired. If each CM doubles its ability to take out an attack missile, ship security just increased by a huge margin.

2- Longer ranged CMs, potentially a modified MDCM that has ranges out to ~10m KM. That would give much more depth to the target zone and allow ships to fire multiple salvos of CMs at each salvo of attack birds. Hit probabilities would, of course, be worse the further out you go but the sooner you start thinning out the salvo the better your odds of surviving become.

The Katanas are outstanding in the anti-missile role, but at some point the ships themselves are going to have to increase their on-board capabilities. While this may not happen within the next two books (no real need as of now), I think this would be an area Manticore would be really focused on so that when another enemy did match their offensive firepower they would have an off-setting defensive trump card to stay a step ahead.

I agree Manticore is largely going to focus on further improving their missile defense until they feel they can build an SD(P) whose defenses roughly balance it's Apollo offense.

But we're told the main problem with longer ranged CMs is that lightspeed control lag makes them much less effective at even the 3 million km the new Mk31s can reach. Going past that is going to take improvements in more than just nodes.

We've speculated plenty on what that could be, but it seems to boil down to three basic approaches.
1) cut the control lag from the launch ship via some form of FTL link (whether an FTL receiver on the CM or some kind of shell of drones able to act as an FTL-to-CM relay)
2) Hand off CM control to forward deployed LACs. (longer ranged CMs launched from the wall overfly the defensive LAC shell, but the LACs control those CMs to terminal intercept within 2.5-3 million KM past the LACs)
3) Vastly improved onboard sensors and ECCM so the CMs are far less reliant on shipboard control.

Of course RFC may have some other approach in mind

Funny enough, I was toying with adding "#3) FTL links to CMs."

I would have either said:
1- Miniature, receiver only links that can receive profile updates from the SDs via FTL. The SKM could then place GR drones in a loose shell at, say, the 3m and 6m ranges to provide FTL updates on the attack birds.
2- Stealthed Apollo-esque platforms that would be deployed in a shell and handle data transmission to the SDs regarding attack missiles and then handle control instructions to the CMs. Heck, maybe even a modified GR drone could handle that if you decreased its range (wouldn't need more than 30 minutes endurance, tbh) and packed in a ton of control links. Heck, follow Foraker's concept and do revolving control links. Short burst to CMs updating their profiles on a revolving basis would allow 1 link to control multiple CMs.

Another thought on the CMs:

How about dual-drive CMs. They're fired without targeting, simply timed to arrive at the right times. The first stage burns out and they go ballistic. After the LACs have taken their shot at the incoming missile swarm they start taking those incoming CMs, assigning them targets and guiding them in.

Normally CMs are only used at missiles in your face because they're a lot slower than the missiles they are targeting. They have to engage close to head on in order to catch their targets at all.

In the old days there was no reason to be going after such missiles anyway--a missile that was still going was a miss anyway, there was no reason to shoot at it. However, now we have the LAC wall out in front. Once the missiles go on past they still have perfectly good CM control capability, just no way to use it. Time thing so that the dual-drive CMs are in position to be picked up by the LACs and guided into their targets.

Loren Pechtel wrote:How about dual-drive CMs.

Launchers. Dual Drive CMs wouldn't fit in existing launchers, and would reduce the magazine capacity for CMs by (estimated) half

Loren Pechtel wrote:Normally CMs are only used at missiles in your face because they're a lot slower than the missiles they are targeting.

NIT: CMs are faster than attack missiles -- at least they accelerate much faster. ref: the "sprint stage" of cataphracts that uses a CM drive.

So the thought occurs to me that David had set the limiting factor on the use of Apollo as the supporting infrastructure on the ships needed to run Apollo. They needs many tens of thousands of tons of computers and hundreds of people in the tactical section and they need to located very close to the KH2 platform. If this isn't needed any more - which is implied by the idea of distributing modified KH2s across a system as a defensive system (unless each one of these distributed nodes has a platform parked nearby with a few hundred thousand tons of computers and crew accommodations for the hundreds of crew) - then you should be able to deploy this with lighter ships.

kzt wrote:So the thought occurs to me that David had set the limiting factor on the use of Apollo as the supporting infrastructure on the ships needed to run Apollo. They needs many tens of thousands of tons of computers and hundreds of people in the tactical section and they need to located very close to the KH2 platform. If this isn't needed any more - which is implied by the idea of distributing modified KH2s across a system as a defensive system (unless each one of these distributed nodes has a platform parked nearby with a few hundred thousand tons of computers and crew accommodations for the hundreds of crew) - then you should be able to deploy this with lighter ships.

I'm pretty sure the few hundred thousand tons of computer system is still required; but at the fort(s) controlling the Mycroft system; where the man in the loop exists. Each Keyhole II derived Mycroft node doesn't need the computers because they are only fire control relays. They "simply" rebroadcast FTL fire control signals across the system so the Apollo control missiles can maintain their fire control link. Beyond around 5LM.

I guess you could do the same thing with ships. Build something big enough to mount KH IIs but not to carry Mk23s or the support computers. You could deploy those ships 3-4 LM down range and relay from your wall to extend their Apollo control range. But my understanding is you'd still need ships with the full Apollo control suite of computers. And the new ships couldn't be that small; probably BC sized. And they'd have to be in range of return MDM fire; even if your wall isn't. Doesn't seem like such a great use case to me. But maybe I'm missing something.