Are missile pods obsolete?

Belial666 wrote:1) Bay is 20 x 25 x 120 meters. That's 12 million cubic meters for 200 bays.

2) 9-mt ship is 36 million cubic meters. Thus volume-wise the bays take up 33% of its cubage.




What's the other 66% of the cubage for? That's way more cubage left than what a podnought dedicates to stuff other than offense. Presumably, the Aviary CLACs use it for extra ammo/fuel reloads, umbilicals, spare parts, plus extra-large living spaces since they got over 3.000 crew just for their LACs alone.

But a missile ship would have none of those requirements and could dedicate that space/mass to defense instead.

Something seems off with your other numbers - but I know a LAC bay isn't 120 m long. Their long axis is towards the center of the ship, and the maximum width of a the RMN/GSN CLAC is only 188-189m. You're saying the LAC bays are wider than the ship they're mounted in.

SharkHunter wrote:Very minor nit...
--snipping--

kzt wrote:Oh, and the RHN used the donkeys to reload fast and deliver huge, massive salvos, which nobody noticed or felt was worth reporting to Intel.

My reading is that the "donkey" made it's first and only appearance at the Battle of Manticore; there isn't really textev that the RHN had time to put out second massively "reloaded" salvo in that battle. The RMN knew that if Tourville reached the hyper limit, he would resupply and come back in, possibly with enough to take out the system defenses and trash the stations, which is why Kuzak moved to cut him off.

And that's why everyone objected so much to that particular post from RFC's - in several ways it didn't make sense.

The defenders being worried about ballistic bombardment; somewhat believable. Worried enough to charge straight at the hyper limit to engage as far from the planet as possible; less believable. The RHN actually launching a significant amount of 8+ lightsecond ballistic fire not so believable.

Haven using Donkeys out of sight to pre-marshal pods for quick reloading; somewhat believable. RHN using Donkeys within view of the defenders and their existence still being unknown to Home Fleet not believable.

A LAC wouldn't need to be 100% inside its bay though, only enough to keep it secure while the carrier goes into hyper.

Shrikes are only 75-79m long however, so they could actually put bays on at least one side and keep them 100% sealed into launch bays. The only time we ever got detailed information about LAC's launching, were from the merchant Q-Ships Honor took into Silesia, which are pre-CLAC.


Superdreadnoughts (or at least Medusa's) have a beam of 202m, so slice over 90m on either side and you still have a skeletally thin section inbetween launch bays for the core frame to work from.

Relax wrote:Then we should have seen it in the books. Been throwing MDM's around for a very long time.

Eh. Maximum powered range for a three-stage MDM is currently beyond effective fire control range for anyone without Apollo, or at least recon drones with FTL comm.

--snipping--
re: LAC Bays

Somtaaw wrote:A LAC wouldn't need to be 100% inside its bay though, only enough to keep it secure while the carrier goes into hyper.

Shrikes are only 75-79m long however, so they could actually put bays on at least one side and keep them 100% sealed into launch bays. The only time we ever got detailed information about LAC's launching, were from the merchant Q-Ships Honor took into Silesia, which are pre-CLAC.

Actually, there's a bit more. Read in Echoes of Honor where they are servicing the LACs inside a bay in the original Minotaur. My impression is that they launch more than one LAC per, so that the tech(s) can reload and service them quickly, as well as replacing one with a spares as needed.

(Tried to look on deviantart but didn't find a CLAC) so if you know of one....)

Duckk wrote:Yeah, 200 bays...and damn near nothing else. Have fun taking your nigh undefended SD into a warzone and see how long that lasts.

There is easily enough broadside area for thousands of missile tubes on a SD broadside. Somehow I think some of those can be CM's eh? As for why Belial is talking cubes... go figure. All one has to do is rearrange MaxxQ's missile Feed que drawings and it is no problemo. The missile tubes themselves are small.

Jonathan_S wrote: And that's why everyone objected so much to that particular post from RFC's - in several ways it didn't make sense.

The defenders being worried about ballistic bombardment; somewhat believable. Worried enough to charge straight at the hyper limit to engage as far from the planet as possible; less believable. The RHN actually launching a significant amount of 8+ lightsecond ballistic fire not so believable.

Haven using Donkeys out of sight to pre-marshal pods for quick reloading; somewhat believable. RHN using Donkeys within view of the defenders and their existence still being unknown to Home Fleet not believable.

Well said. That whole post was completely unbelievable to me. I do not even know why he bothered to post it.

Why ANY defender would go "out" to the hyper limit to attack is beyond stupid. Same goes for BOMA.

If defenders can throw in ballistic missiles, why was Blackbird not blown away in the 1st Havenite war or 2nd Havenite war. Did not even need ballistic components in 2nd war and yet... Blackbird was still there.

IF ballistic missiles are viable options, why are there ANY defenders outside of forts INSIDE the hyperlimit at all?

If ballistic missiles are viable structure targeting options, then why is there any ship building around your planets that close to the Hyperlimit? They should all be built somewhere near Mercury equivalent.

--snipping

wastedfly wrote:Why ANY defender would go "out" to the hyper limit to attack is beyond stupid. Same goes for BOMA.

If defenders can throw in ballistic missiles, why was Blackbird not blown away in the 1st Havenite war or 2nd Havenite war. Did not even need ballistic components in 2nd war and yet... Blackbird was still there.

IF ballistic missiles are viable options, why are there ANY defenders outside of forts INSIDE the hyperlimit at all?

If ballistic missiles are viable structure targeting options, then why is there any ship building around your planets that close to the Hyperlimit? They should all be built somewhere near Mercury equivalent.

Lotta nits to pick.

First, Blackbird is within a Hyper Limit, I'd assume as it is a moon and Uriel has a five LM limit of it's own. Secondarily, to think that the GSN would leave that base undefended by extremely copious amounts of CM and PDLC fire not to mention mobile ships would require a level of incompetence that the Grayson's have never shown.

Next, by BoMA we can surmise that HMSS Vulcan in orbit around Sphinx might not have been the best idea had it been started in the era of MDMs, but prior to that it was millions of kilometers inside the hyper limit and well defended (we presume) by SDF missiles and pods. HMSS Hephaestus was WAY inside the hyper limit. At the Battle of Manticore, the RHN wasn't anywhere near close enough to attack Hephaestus; they had to through get Home Fleet and the system defense pods (never fired) before they could even think about it. The arrival of Eighth fleet made the 2nd part moot.

Oyster Bay worked because it got missiles and the graser torps in range by using VERY SLOW missiles sent in ballistically across a deep space range, that is outside of planetary sensor range using tiny tiny drives.

Finally, the reason your defensive fleet has to go out towards the hyper limit is stated clearly in HotQ, because that's the only way to keep an opposing fleet from launching a near C ballistic strike. It's also why your gravitic sensor arrays are WAY WAY out past the hyper limit so that your defenders have time to get into position.

SharkHunter wrote:Lotta nits to pick.

First, Blackbird is within a Hyper Limit, I'd assume as it is a moon and Uriel has a five LM limit of it's own. Secondarily, to think that the GSN would leave that base undefended by extremely copious amounts of CM and PDLC fire not to mention mobile ships would require a level of incompetence that the Grayson's have never shown.

Next, by BoMA we can surmise that HMSS Vulcan in orbit around Sphinx might not have been the best idea had it been started in the era of MDMs, but prior to that it was millions of kilometers inside the hyper limit and well defended (we presume) by SDF missiles and pods. HMSS Hephaestus was WAY inside the hyper limit. At the Battle of Manticore, the RHN wasn't anywhere near close enough to attack Hephaestus; they had to through get Home Fleet and the system defense pods (never fired) before they could even think about it. The arrival of Eighth fleet made the 2nd part moot.

Oyster Bay worked because it got missiles and the graser torps in range by using VERY SLOW missiles sent in ballistically across a deep space range, that is outside of planetary sensor range using tiny tiny drives.

Finally, the reason your defensive fleet has to go out towards the hyper limit is stated clearly in HotQ, because that's the only way to keep an opposing fleet from launching a near C ballistic strike. It's also why your gravitic sensor arrays are WAY WAY out past the hyper limit so that your defenders have time to get into position.

1) If you can fire ballistic MDM, then hypering in and launching SDM is just as effective.

2) This is EXACTLY the reasoning DW gave for Zanzibar being "vulnerable" at exactly the same range inside the hyper limit.

3) Oyster bay is irrelevant for this discussion

4) We already know how to easily protect against this. Wedges. One single tug wedge would protect all of Haephestus against C fractional strikes. Anyone can do it. The only real question is why such wedges are not positioned about ones orbital industry in a WAR 24/7/365. They make forts irrelevant. So ingress and egress to your orbital industry is harder to get to. It would have to be a z bend created. Still cheaper than forts.

So, sending your fleet against a force sitting on the hyperlimit who can choose to vanish into hyperspace anytime they choose in order to dodge all of your missiles fired is a very STUPID thing to do. If your ships are already in the gravity well of the hyperlimit you have to stay there. The end result is that one must base their majority of ships outside the hyperlimit in wartime.

kzt wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:So no, Adm Tourville did not attack from outside the hyper limit. Missile wedges have always been set it and forget it. Now, with MDMs, you can set one drive at full accel and another drive at half accel, but you can not change the wedge strength once started on a particular drive.

You obviously have missed the thread where David explained this in great detail.

Would you point me to said thread please?

Kizarvexis wrote:
Would you point me to said thread please?

Don't worry. You were right. Kzt did his too hasty skim thing with a one sentence post afterwards. I call em kztisms. ENT's call it being hasty.