tlb wrote:Question: Do the missiles fired at shorter range shut down their drives when they reach the enemy or do the drives continue to run for as long as they can? If the later, then every intact missile of the same type and drive setting will have nearly the same speed at the end of its powered flight.
PS: I agree that any spent missile would be very hard to find. However consider a destroyer on the far side of the main body from an enemy force. If it records a missile that has come through intact and gets a good reading on its course, then it could jump ahead and try to capture the missile with a tractor after it becomes inert. I think that possibility is sufficient reason to force a detonation when the power drops to some preset minimum.
I kind of assumed a missile wouldn't bother accelerating after missing the enemy; but I don't actually know. Certainly they're capable of cutting off a drive early (they just can't ever restart it again)
(Though I guess if it had time left on the drive(s) it
might be programmed to try to twist its vector clear of anything and as such might continue to accelerate for a while -- though in that case peak velocity wouldn't be its goal -- it'd be accelerating perpendicular to its base velocity to most efficiently alter its vector)
But then I also assume that a missile would have a self-destruct mechanism which would pretty reliably blow it up if it missed -- both to avoid risk of capture and reverse engineering and to avoid leaving a multi-ton relativistic impactor flying who knows where.
So if you want to capture one for reverse engineering you'd need one where the self-destruct failed. Stationing some light ships well behind your own formation might be your best bet -- but pulling off the intercept is still going to be "fun". Most combat happens inside the hyper limit, where the DD can't jump ahead of the missile's trajectory -- it'd have to chase it.
I also would think that there's a maximum energy that a tractor can handle, so trying to snag a multi-ton relativistic missile as it screams past you ballistically is likely to vastly exceed that. I suspect you need to get pretty close to matching its vector before you can successfully snag it.
And in general jumping through hyper has two other problems:
1) It robs you of nearly all your velocity -- so if I'm right about the max speed/energy differential for tractors that'd make that differential worse.
2) Jump error -- there's a very good chance you'll end up well outside tractor range of the missile.
I think if you really want to snag one to attempt to reverse engineer you're probably best off with several well separated shells of lighter ships arrayed behind your formation.
The closest one spots a missile that failed to self destruct and tracks it long enough to get a reasonable vector -- then via radio (or ideally FTL comms) alerts the further shells of that trajectory. Then the further ships that are sufficiently close to its track start accelerating outwards while angling towards an intercept. The mid-field ones likely can't manage well enough to actually snag it but can pass along refined trajectory information leaving the most distant ships able to shape their course and speed so they
are in a spot to successfully slap a tractor on it as it overtakes them (but at a lot lower speed differential).
That's a huge amount of work -- but could be worth it if you've a good chance of learning useful things from dissecting an enemy weapon.
