New LAC's

Duckk wrote:You're missing the point. Your mass and size figures are incredibly off. Your 5 CA grasers by itself would mass nearly as much as an entire Shrike. It is literally impossible to fit them on a LAC sized platform.

Look at MaxxQ's Star Knight renderings. Look at how big those energy mounts are. Do you seriously think that you can fit those on a LAC while still having room for little things like a power plant or a crew?

There is more than a little bit of magic in how everything fits in a shrike while providing the kind of sustained power output needed to run the LAC. You certainly can't fit any more in it.

Duckk wrote:You're missing the point. Your mass and size figures are incredibly off. Your 5 CA grasers by itself would mass nearly as much as an entire Shrike. It is literally impossible to fit them on a LAC sized platform.

Look at MaxxQ's Star Knight renderings. Look at how big those energy mounts are. Do you seriously think that you can fit those on a LAC while still having room for little things like a power plant or a crew?

I looked at HoS quickly. The smallest ship with five chase energy weapons is a Saganami-C(and only two of those are grasers). The smallest ship with five or more grasers in its chase is a Manticore-class SD, followed closely by the (slightly larger and much younger) Gladiator DN. Even the Nikes and Agamemnons only mount four grasers.

In any case, check this out: http://www.suramya.com/mirror/Downloads ... ke_LAC.jpg

Number 2 is the graser. Pretty much occupies 80% of the Shrike's length.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The weapons modules should be significantly smaller than a LAC, so you should be able to carry the 100 LACs plus a number of spare modules.

each weapons module may be smaller than a LAC, say 10% of LAC volume when installed, but a full set of Shrike, Ferret, and Katana modules (@ five/LAC) is going to run 150% of LAC Volume. Therefore each full set is going to displace 1.5 LACs; every two modular LACs with associated modules takes as much space as five normal LACs. I don't think reducing LAC load from 100 to 40 is going to increase combat capability much.

Jonathan_S wrote:(Now whether this flexibility is worth the trouble is a different question; but I see some flexibility advantages)

I suspect that "weapons modules" will go the way of "FAST Packs" for the F-15C/D went. The aircraft still have the theoretical capability for the "sensors" and "tactical" part of that FAST acronym but the only (occasional) use is the "Fuel" part -- as in "Conformal Fuel Tanks."

You may well be right about them going the way of "FAST Packs" or how the LCS's mission modules appear to be going.

Though I wasn't thinking you'd need a full set per LAC (also where did you get 5 per LAC; I was thinking only 3: Viper heavy; LAC-Missile heavy; Energy heavy). And one of them would be installed in each LAC already, so even for full flexibility I was only thinking you'd need to carry 2 alternate packs per LAC.


But anyway, even carrying 2 alternate modules per LAC is trying to be perfect at the expense of good enough. Ferrets are pretty good all around units; much better than Shrikes in the anti-missile role (deeper CM magazines, rear CM launchers) and still needed to providing jamming, decoy, and CM support for anti-cruiser strikes. It's mostly the Katana's and Shrikes that suck at each other's roles.

You'd probably have around 40% of your LACs configured with 'Ferret modules'; and can leave them configured that way the whole cruise (since they're either needed, or at least good enough, for almost any mission) - so don't bother carrying alternate modules for those.

Then the remaining 60% would start off with either a 'Katana module' or a 'Shrike module'. Carrying even a single alternate for each, 60 spare modules, would let you change role from anywhere from 60% Katana to 60% Shrike; a huge swing in optimization for anti-missile/LAC or anti-cruiser.

Heck even if you could bring only half that being able to quickly reconfigure 30% of your brood from one extreme to the other is a significant change.



Still might not work out - the modules might be too slow to exchange, or more maintenance intensive or failure prone. But I still think you should be able to get some significant advantages from way less than the number of modules (and corresponding reduction in LAC capacity) you were discussing.

I keep wondering how many LAC's have to be dropped from the complement in order to have room to store all these alternative weapon modules. I rather think that most commanders would rather have (say) 5 complete squadrons than 3 squadrons and a batch of modules to be swapped around IF there's time, and IF the single squadron that's equipped to meet a particular threat can hold off the enemy long enough for the other two to be rearmed.
Cheers
John

You are bringing something in that I have not ever seen before, the fact that there is a minimum size for grasers. As most destroyers have grasers and most SD's have lasers I didn't consider that.

OK, change Graser to Energy weapon. Size the ENERGY WEAPON to the weapons volume. Make it the most powerful energy weapon with a volume (with capacitor rings and other support) that will fit within 1/5 of the offensive weapons volume.

Duckk wrote:Grasers have a minimum viable size. There is no such thing as a graser one-fifth the size of a Shrike's graser. If they were scalable in such a fashion, the RHN would have built their Cimeterre-A with them. Instead, they were forced to use a laser. Or for that matter, you'd see all warships regularly mount large numbers of grasers, instead of forced to utilize mixed energy batteries (in the prewar classes). Warships took mixed batteries in order to balance number of mounts against firepower, but that's contradictory against the idea of arbitrarily scalable grasers. Therefor, you aren't going to get grasers as small as you're saying.

darrell wrote:You are missing my point.

Size the GRASER to the weapons volume. Size the graser so that it's volume (with capacitor rings and other support) is 1/5 the offensive weapons volume.

I had ESTIMATED that the correct size, the size that would make a graser 1/5 of the offensive weapons volume approximatly the size of a SMALL heavy cruiser. If you are right, the graser size that would be 1/5 of the total offensive weapons tonnage would be midway between the the grasers for a light and a heavy cruiser.

The key is that the graser would not necessarily be a CA graser.

the key is that the graser would be 1/5 of the total LAC offensive armament, whatever the actual tonnage would be.

Most destroyers have grasers. In addition, "On Basilisk Station" the light cruiser fearless, before it was gutted had twice as many grasers than lasers in each broadside. That is 4 grasers and 2 lasers in each broadside. If the minimum size for a destroyer or small light cruisers graser is thousands of tons, than why did beauships build fearless with more grasers than lasers??? They could have gone with 1 graser and more than a dozen lasers.

You are bringing something in that I have not ever seen before, the fact that there is a minimum size for grasers. As most destroyers have grasers and most SD's have lasers I didn't consider that.

OK, change Graser to Energy weapon. Size the ENERGY WEAPON to the weapons volume. Make it the most powerful energy weapon with a volume (with capacitor rings and other support) that will fit within 1/5 of the offensive weapons volume.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3079&p=67147

Grasers: Grasers are longer-ranged and more powerful than lasers, both absolutely and on a ton-for-ton basis. Their minimum size and mass is greater than for an effective shipboard laser, but they are substantially more destructive.

Plus, again, logic indicates otherwise. If it were possible to scale graser down so small, we would have seen them somewhere. They would have been on older destroyers and cruisers. They would have been on Havenite LACs. They would have been somewhere. Their complete and utter absence everywhere should be proof enough that it's not possible.

Most destroyers have grasers. In addition, "On Basilisk Station" the light cruiser fearless, before it was gutted had twice as many grasers than lasers in each broadside. That is 4 grasers and 2 lasers in each broadside. If the minimum size for a destroyer or small light cruisers graser is thousands of tons, than why did beauships build fearless with more grasers than lasers??? They could have gone with 1 graser and more than a dozen lasers.

I looked over HoS again, and it takes until the Wolfhound - a 1919PD design nearly the size of a light cruiser - for a destroyer to mount a graser.

As for light cruisers, the Courageous was noted for being needlessly overgunned. None of the more modern classes mounted grasers until the Avalon-class, another 1919 design.

Not only that, SVW specifically says "Ships smaller than light cruisers are normally so cramped for weapons space that they have pure laser energy armaments."

ammunition storage should be about the same for both single use and component LAC's.

With three types of weapons packs, presuming that a LAC's offensive weaponry is 25% of it's hull volume, storage for the 10 unused weapons packs should be less than 50% of the full LAC. In other words, instead of 112 LAC's in a SD-CLAC, you would have 80 LAC's.

I do agree there is a trade off. with current LAC's and LAC carriers you can have more total LAC's, but they are probably of mixed types. For example, 64 katanana's plus 32 shrikes & 24 ferrets.

With a component LAC you would have fewer total LAC's, (112 vs 80) but you can optimize all your LAC's for the mission (80 vs 32-60)

I do agree that they would need a new carrier, so I don't expect them to show up in fleet actions for a few years, but would be a simple matter for the hauptman cartel to build stand alone bolt together "LAC bases" for places like the Talbert cluster.

John Prigent wrote:I keep wondering how many LAC's have to be dropped from the complement in order to have room to store all these alternative weapon modules. I rather think that most commanders would rather have (say) 5 complete squadrons than 3 squadrons and a batch of modules to be swapped around IF there's time, and IF the single squadron that's equipped to meet a particular threat can hold off the enemy long enough for the other two to be rearmed.
Cheers
John

Large energy weapons are pretty useless for LACs at this point. Essentially you can't get into range of anything needing that scale graser to inflict damage without getting killed. See how the vast majority of the Shrikes attacking 2nd fleet's SDs at BoM died while accomplishing nothing. They should have just rolled their wedges and escaped.

darrell wrote:Most destroyers have grasers. In addition, "On Basilisk Station" the light cruiser fearless, before it was gutted had twice as many grasers than lasers in each broadside. That is 4 grasers and 2 lasers in each broadside. If the minimum size for a destroyer or small light cruisers graser is thousands of tons, than why did beauships build fearless with more grasers than lasers??? They could have gone with 1 graser and more than a dozen lasers.

I'd also dispute that claim. Duckk went to HoS, while I went to my ship cheat-sheet which also pulls from the semi-cannonical SITS and Jayne's books.

Known destroyer armaments:
RMN Roland-class (size of a large modern CL) - 2 chase grasers; none broadside
GSN Joshua-class - 1 chase graser; none broadside
RMN Wolfhound-class - 2 chase; 3 broadside
RMN Culverin-class - none
PSN Desforge-class - none
RMN Javelin-class - none
PSN Bastogne-class - none
IAN Dolch-class - none chase; 2 broadside
RMN Chanson-class - none
SCN Joachim Cheslav-class - none
RMN Havoc-class - none
RMN Falcon-class - none
RMN Noblesse-class - none

It's really only the Wolfhound that mounts a significant number of grasers; and at 123,500 tons she's about the size of older (up to 1900 PD) light cruisers.
The Andie's Dolch -class is the real outlier being an older (1872 PD) design that still carries grasers in her broadsides; though she was pretty big especially for her day. The next DD known to mount grasers was the Grayson Joshua-class in 1905 PD which carried a chase graser on what was still a relatively small hull.

Even many CLs carry few to no grasers. Historically they went with the smaller less powerful lasers so they could engage more targets (or at least shotgun a single target to increase the change of hitting it during a swirling chaotic fight where you were unlikely to have a solid target lock)

kzt wrote:Large energy weapons are pretty useless for LACs at this point. Essentially you can't get into range of anything needing that scale graser to inflict damage without getting killed. See how the vast majority of the Shrikes attacking 2nd fleet's SDs at BoM died while accomplishing nothing. They should have just rolled their wedges and escaped.

I wouldn't say that. They were useless in a situation where both sides were prepared for them, but I don't think that sort of situation is likely to appear in the normal day-to-day operations in peacetime, or when fighting an enemy that doesn't have CLACs or a proper anti-LAC doctrine. Shrikes are still some of the most effective system defence platforms available right now, and are more than capable of eating unlucky pirates.

darrell wrote:With three types of weapons packs, presuming that a LAC's offensive weaponry is 25% of it's hull volume, storage for the 10 unused weapons packs should be less than 50% of the full LAC. In other words, instead of 112 LAC's in a SD-CLAC, you would have 80 LAC's.

Except for the small issue that LAC offensive systems take way more than 25% of its hull volume.

And you're still going to end up with a smaller number of individually inferior units. Noone's going to be happy about that, especially given that the supposed gains in flexibility come at an impressive cost in terms of infrastructure support.