Where's Haven?

munroburton wrote:
Yes, if split up, the DDs would lose. I was thinking all eight together at Tiberian under the same conditions Gauntlet faced - admittedly unlikely, as the pirates might have reacted differently to eight destroyers showing up.

A Saganami-B has 52 PD and 42 CMs, whereas 8 Culverins would have 96 PD and 112 CMs. It's a much tougher envelope to penetrate.

Still not betting.

Theemile wrote:

munroburton wrote:
Yes, if split up, the DDs would lose. I was thinking all eight together at Tiberian under the same conditions Gauntlet faced - admittedly unlikely, as the pirates might have reacted differently to eight destroyers showing up.

A Saganami-B has 52 PD and 42 CMs, whereas 8 Culverins would have 96 PD and 112 CMs. It's a much tougher envelope to penetrate.

Still not betting.

Don't forget, not all PDCLs are the same - DD PDCLs are the smallest of such installations, with 2-4 emitters in each cluster, depending on your technology. Classic CA usually had 6 - the Gauntlet probably had 8, and the "production" Sag-C actually had 12 emitters in a cluster, the same as a 1880s DN/SD.

So the Gauntlet still probably has more PDCL capability per unit time than the 8 Culverins.

munroburton wrote:True. But they use the same CMs and those count for more than PDLCs, due to their longer engagement range and potential for multiple CM interceptions per incoming missile salvos.

Assuming the Honorverse wiki is accurate about a Gladiator's 23-missile broadside(wow!), that gives the pirates 92-missile salvos. Gauntlet needed four to five CM salvos to counter this on a roughly 1-1 basis, whereas the Culverin squadron needs only two salvos to surpass that ratio. That makes the overall number of available PDLC shots less essential.

Galactic Sapper wrote:A Sang-B like Gauntlet has a 22 missile broadside. They downsized the Sang-C to 20 because the missiles are much larger.

I think you're also failing to account for the Culverin's much lighter missile warheads in this encounter. We don't know whether the ELMs can carry the same business end that a Mark 16 can, and even if they could the new warheads were not in service yet at the time. Destroyer weight warheads would have a difficult time finishing off heavy cruisers. Golf-balling them with lots of relatively shallow hits, yes, getting through to the core hull is another matter

munroburton wrote:

Galactic Sapper wrote:A Sang-B like Gauntlet has a 22 missile broadside. They downsized the Sang-C to 20 because the missiles are much larger.

I think you're also failing to account for the Culverin's much lighter missile warheads in this encounter. We don't know whether the ELMs can carry the same business end that a Mark 16 can, and even if they could the new warheads were not in service yet at the time. Destroyer weight warheads would have a difficult time finishing off heavy cruisers. Golf-balling them with lots of relatively shallow hits, yes, getting through to the core hull is another matter

I did account for that. The Culverin squadron can launch 40 missiles per salvo. If Gauntlet's ~22-missile broadsides can get through, then surely more of those 40 will get through. Hit weight might be lighter, but due to greater oversaturation I think the Gladiators would begin to take cumulative damage quickly. We've seen Havenite CAs blow up from numerous LAC missile strikes with warheads similar to DDs'.

Also, the Sag-C benefited from full off-bore technology - effectively giving it a salvo of 40. Not content with that, BuShips gave it at least 120 fire control links in all aspects - grossly exceeding the Sag-B's partial off-bore tech, which allowed it to fire half of its broadside forwards/backwards and incorporate both chase launchers into broadside salvos.

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:

Don't forget, not all PDCLs are the same - DD PDCLs are the smallest of such installations, with 2-4 emitters in each cluster, depending on your technology. Classic CA usually had 6 - the Gauntlet probably had 8, and the "production" Sag-C actually had 12 emitters in a cluster, the same as a 1880s DN/SD.

So the Gauntlet still probably has more PDCL capability per unit time than the 8 Culverins.

True. But they use the same CMs and those count for more than PDLCs, due to their longer engagement range and potential for multiple CM interceptions per incoming missile salvos.

Assuming the Honorverse wiki is accurate about a Gladiator's 23-missile broadside(wow!), that gives the pirates 92-missile salvos. Gauntlet needed four to five CM salvos to counter this on a roughly 1-1 basis, whereas the Culverin squadron needs only two salvos to surpass that ratio. That makes the overall number of available PDLC shots less essential.

Theemile wrote:Unfortunately, they might use different CMs. As we saw at Monica, The Culverin is a "Legacy" design which limited to the mk 29. Starting with the Medusas and the Minotaurs, we saw the mk 30s, quickly followed by the mk 31s and mk 32s. The Gladiator most assuredly can fire a mk 30, if not mk 31, though as we saw, legacy ships cannot fire them.

Since the legacy ships are so limited, the Gladiator has much greater intercept range, and the ability for multiple intercept tiers.

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:Unfortunately, they might use different CMs. As we saw at Monica, The Culverin is a "Legacy" design which limited to the mk 29. Starting with the Medusas and the Minotaurs, we saw the mk 30s, quickly followed by the mk 31s and mk 32s. The Gladiator most assuredly can fire a mk 30, if not mk 31, though as we saw, legacy ships cannot fire them.

Since the legacy ships are so limited, the Gladiator has much greater intercept range, and the ability for multiple intercept tiers.

Good point about the CMs not matching up. More of a straight-trade off then; ~40% less range, but still ~40% more CMs per salvo.

Saturation of missile defense is what mostly killed ships in this era of the Honorverse. Even with their oversized broadsides, four ex-SLN Gladiators can't achieve saturation against a squadron of Culverins. Meanwhile, they face even greater saturation of their own defenses than the Sag-B could produce.

Louis R wrote:Couple of points that are messing up assumptions in this discussion: first, there's a reason that destroyer and light cruiser formations are called flotillas, not squadrons, and it's not just that they are, in practice, primarily administrative units rather than tactical - they are made up of 12 ships. The discussions of throw weights and defensive capability are running 33% light, and that would affect the outcome. Also, emile seems to be overlooking the fact that Gladiators are a Solarian design that can not 'most assuredly' fire a Mk30. Even though it's a ship that is primarily used by the branch of the SLN that does the actual work, they still aren't getting shot _at_ all that frequently and will not have any better missile defense experience, systems or doctrine than the rest of their navy. In fact, their missile protection may well be no better than an up to date Culverin.

Aside from all that, of course, the discussion is rather pointless, since Ringstorff would not have engaged a flotilla even if it was DD vs CA, and probably wouldn't have engaged even a 3-ship division. With 3 ships there's too good a chance that one would get away, with 12 it's guaranteed. The open question is whether he'd stick around to signal his 2 missing Yahoos to get the heck out when they returned, or bugger off and let them survive or not as the universe willed it. If he thought he could signal before the intruders could get close enough for a good sensor read, my guess is he probably would stay.

Theemile wrote:Unfortunately, they might use different CMs. As we saw at Monica, The Culverin is a "Legacy" design which limited to the mk 29. Starting with the Medusas and the Minotaurs, we saw the mk 30s, quickly followed by the mk 31s and mk 32s. The Gladiator most assuredly can fire a mk 30, if not mk 31, though as we saw, legacy ships cannot fire them.

Since the legacy ships are so limited, the Gladiator has much greater intercept range, and the ability for multiple intercept tiers.

Good point about the CMs not matching up. More of a straight-trade off then; ~40% less range, but still ~40% more CMs per salvo.

Saturation of missile defense is what mostly killed ships in this era of the Honorverse. Even with their oversized broadsides, four ex-SLN Gladiators can't achieve saturation against a squadron of Culverins. Meanwhile, they face even greater saturation of their own defenses than the Sag-B could produce.

Louis R wrote:Couple of points that are messing up assumptions in this discussion: first, there's a reason that destroyer and light cruiser formations are called flotillas, not squadrons, and it's not just that they are, in practice, primarily administrative units rather than tactical - they are made up of 12 ships. The discussions of throw weights and defensive capability are running 33% light, and that would affect the outcome. Also, emile seems to be overlooking the fact that Gladiators are a Solarian design that can not 'most assuredly' fire a Mk30. Even though it's a ship that is primarily used by the branch of the SLN that does the actual work, they still aren't getting shot _at_ all that frequently and will not have any better missile defense experience, systems or doctrine than the rest of their navy. In fact, their missile protection may well be no better than an up to date Culverin.

Aside from all that, of course, the discussion is rather pointless, since Ringstorff would not have engaged a flotilla even if it was DD vs CA, and probably wouldn't have engaged even a 3-ship division. With 3 ships there's too good a chance that one would get away, with 12 it's guaranteed. The open question is whether he'd stick around to signal his 2 missing Yahoos to get the heck out when they returned, or bugger off and let them survive or not as the universe willed it. If he thought he could signal before the intruders could get close enough for a good sensor read, my guess is he probably would stay.