Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)

MaxxQ wrote:
Not to mention, the armor just on the face of the hammerhead is 7 meters thick. Considering the hammerheads of any warship are the most heavily armored (due to no sidewall or wedge protection, bucklers notwithstanding), the rest of the hammerhead is equivalently armored*. Reduces the available internal volume quite a bit for tubes and such.

*Just checked - yep, 7 meters or more all around the entire hammerhead.

Historically hammerheads had very thick armor compared to broadsides. This juxtaposition in the modern era of Bucklers and end walls, could see a radical change in the degree of delta armor between the hammerhead and broadside. In fact, I would argue that there effectively should not be a large difference. Except very near the impeller nodes. The face of the hammerhead itself? Nah.

That being said, I do not see missile tubes being clustered anytime soon. For starters one does not save much mass. The main reason the ROLAND had them clustered in my opinion is because the beam of the Roland was too small to accommodate normal tubes forcing them into the hammerhead where a smaller form factor was decisive in the design considerations. It wasn't the tonnage that was the problem, it was the form. After all, the Roland was already 190,000 tons; adding another ~1000-10,000 tons would not have seriously impacted the viability of the design.

One issue is construction times. Which can be built faster pod SDs or regular SDs ?

Every piece of military equipment is a child of the comprise of the various design concerns.Many of thous concerns are often in opposition to each other. You will have to choose which design concerns have priority.

Relax wrote:After all, the Roland was already 190,000 tons; adding another ~1000-10,000 tons would not have seriously impacted the viability of the design.

RMMC regulations absolutely prohibit the quartering of marines in anything but spaces that have been personally sanctified by the SMMC and have never been sullied by the presence of any Navy pukes after that. Which is why the Roland cannot ever carry marines.

kzt wrote:

Relax wrote:After all, the Roland was already 190,000 tons; adding another ~1000-10,000 tons would not have seriously impacted the viability of the design.

RMMC regulations absolutely prohibit the quartering of marines in anything but spaces that have been personally sanctified by the SMMC and have never been sullied by the presence of any Navy pukes after that. Which is why the Roland cannot ever carry marines.

Except -

Honor Among Enemies, Ch. 8 wrote:"Good." She turned as if to leave, then paused. "There's just one more thing," she said calmly. "Wanderman's assigned to this bay because I didn't have anyplace else to put him. You'll find a half-dozen Marines joining you shortly, and I'd advise you to behave yourselves. I'd especially advise you to be very sure that nothing, ah, unfortunate happens to Wanderman. If he should as much as stub his toe, I personally promise you that every single one of you will wish you'd never been born. I don't care what you got away with in your last ship. I don't care what you'd like to get away with in mine. Because, people, what you will get away with is nothing."

jchilds wrote:Except -

Except, your quote has absolutely not one single thing to do with a ROLAND class destroyer...

Relax wrote:

jchilds wrote:Except -

Except, your quote has absolutely not one single thing to do with a ROLAND class destroyer...

Pretty sure jchilds was responding to kzt about the Rolands not having Marines.

Kytheros wrote:Pretty sure jchilds was responding to kzt about the Rolands not having Marines.

No, how it is impossible for Rolands to have marines. Becuase otherwise the majority of a couple of books becomes total bullshit, as you can easily fit a marine platoon in the space allocated for a squadron commander and staff and the flag bridge. Work with me on this, OK?

pnakasone wrote:One issue is construction times. Which can be built faster pod SDs or regular SDs ?

Every piece of military equipment is a child of the comprise of the various design concerns.Many of thous concerns are often in opposition to each other. You will have to choose which design concerns have priority.

A Superdreadnought is a superdreadnought, whether it's a podnought or standard design. They both have the same tonnage and displacement figures.

Both superdreadnoughts and podnoughts can be built every 10 months I think? But dreadnoughts can be built around 33% faster I believe is what Willie Alexander asked post-Thunderbolt. IF there was an existing design anyways, otherwise you have to spend the time making a pod-variant, which delays the first pod-dread until 6 months after the first SDP would have come out of the yards.

Good example, the Solarian Navy can either be stupid and keep building even more of their really bad superdreadnoughts (quickly), or figure out how Manticore/Haven do it, draw up plans while employing legions of architects, and put their first SDP into space..... 3-4 years down the road.

Relax wrote:snip
If anything, a ship might go the way of a fortress to defend against Alpha swarms of missiles. Using a spherical sidewall allowing more broadside area for counter missile PDLC fire. This would effectively ~ quadruple the number of counter missiles a ship is able to fire as right now the "arc" a CM missile can use is all of ~90 degrees out of 360. That 90 degrees is mighty generous. Number of CMs' say a Fort can fire is probably more than 8 times that of an SD'P currently.

And no, do not bring up Lorelie, why? Because other nations will soon have FTL RD's with decent enough stealth that Lorelie becomes utterly useless. In the short term it is useful against barbarians with myopic clubs. Otherwise, useless unless we are going to pretend that Lorelie can deceive RD's at less than a Million kilometers...

Lorelei's are simply advanced Ghost Rider decoy's, but don't openly seem to carry defenses. So their use is as limited as the decoy's a Commander Caslet used in Silesia when he attacked the pirates that were chasing Honor's Wayfarer. Or the decoy's used immediately pre-Buttercup in the defenses of Peep probes towards Grendlesbane. Very limited (and bad) used in low numbers, better and more efficient when used en masse, but not something to be truly relied upon for defense.

And that's essentially what Keyhole and Keyhole-II have done, without actually turning ships into highly mobile fortresses, relying on spherical bubble walls. Not just useful for their offensive telemetry links and deployment zone putting them outside the 'smokescreen' of out-going missiles, they are packed with all those PDLC's and counter missiles for that very reason. To defend the ship from extra angles and putting more defenses into the spherical volume a ship needs to guard most.


Ships can't truly give up their wedge, because wedge = TOTAL immunity to the top and bottom, spherical wedge can be penetrated everywhere. And we haven't exactly seen any evidence that a few sidewall penetrators can't do a COMPLETE drop of your spherical sidewall, so a repeat of either CL Fearless in Basilisk and/or Cardone's missiles against Saladin could result in a ship being naked to the next wave of missiles.


Additionally, are we 100% certain that fortresses actually use impeller's for their maneuvering, and not just a high-powered reaction thruster(s)?

Somtaaw wrote:Good example, the Solarian Navy can either be stupid and keep building even more of their really bad superdreadnoughts (quickly), or figure out how Manticore/Haven do it, draw up plans while employing legions of architects, and put their first SDP into space..... 3-4 years down the road.

They can't build their existing designs quickly though. Certainly quicker than new designs, but they're not set up for the kind of super-streamlined production pipeline the Manties had near the end of the havenite war; Think of the difference in US naval shipbuilding near the end of WW2 and what it is today. SLN shipyards are operating in a capability retention mode, which means that they build (at most) 2 or 3 SDs per decade. Ramping that up to what a Manty considers wartime production will likely take longer than the League has left to live....