Control Missile for shipboard launched missiles

Rakhmamort wrote: As for the number of escorts, we've seen a convoy being escorted by just 2 ships (HH2). If SLN will throw 3 squadrons at those two ships (to make sure of the outcome), what then?

Bill Woods wrote: Then I guess it sucks to be in that convoy. Meanwhile, a lot of other convoys, whose escorts were ready to deal with two or four BCs, arrive unscathed.

Rakhmamort wrote: And that is the point of the commerce harrassment. Tie up manty hulls. They use more hulls escorting merchies means those hulls are not wrecking havoc elsewhere.

Well, escorting merchant ships is more-or-less what destroyers are for. When the Manties want to wreak havoc, they use bigger ships.

And one of the goals of commerce raiding is supposed to be showing the public that — despite its track record to date — the SLN really is capable of taking on the Manties. The press release about how 18 BCs were successful against a couple of DDs — Woo-hoo! ... probably isn't going to impress.

Duckk wrote:

I know there is no instance yet of Mod Gs being used against solly BCs but it took less than that to destroy the first BC in Monica and the damage that BC took was staggered.

That was clearly a Golden BB. Plus the crews weren't all that competent. Subsequent books have mentioned how lucky that was.

Well, Terekhov ordered 5 * 35 missiles (155 warheads) fired against that ship. Presumably he expected them, if not to kill it, then to do enough damage that the following salvos would be more profitably used against one of the other two ships.

Rakhmamort wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:In this specific case, we know that 120 Mk 16 missiles, 100 attack missiles and 20 EWs, slipped through the interlocked defense of 4 BCs with almost 5 minutes of flight time to prepare, losing only one single attack missile. Even if, after they figure out what happened, update software, improve EW, and fix hardware, the SLN's missile defense becomes 20 times more effective, it will still not be enough to save the targeted ship with 120 missiles incoming on 4 BC targets.

Thank you for supporting my calculations. 120 missiles / 4 BCs = 30 missiles per BC ===> over saturation of the solly defenses.

Unless there is proof that a solly BC cannot even stop 5 missiles coming at it, then I am standing my ground that a 36 missile salvo is pissing in the wind vs an integrated defense of 8 BCs.

There obviously isn't proof that a BC can't stop 5 RMN missiles; because nobody's ever fired that few Mk16s at a BC.

But I'll point out a couple things.
1) I'm not so sure that Saltash was an example of saturating the BC's defenses; so much as beating them.
Simple saturation happens when the target can ideally track and attack x missiles per salvo and you send more than x. It doesn't really matter how good the ECM on the missiles is; you know all of them in excess of x won't be engaged by the defenses because there just aren't enough defenses.
And that kind of simple saturation is very very sensitive to raw missile numbers; you've vastly more effective if you can send 10 more missiles than they can target than if you only send 1.
But beating the enemy's defenses are a matter of ECM (jammers, decoys, and deceptive flight patterns). Thats much more reliant on emitter power, trickery, and an tac officer cunning than on raw numbers. So it's less sensitive to raw numbers than simple saturation. (Now of course these two things play off each other; and some of the ECM tricks work better if multiple missiles operate in a pre-coordinated manner)
But I don't know that cutting back on the number of missiles is going to be anywhere near as drastic a reduction in effectiveness (at least in the near-term) as you seem to be assuming.

2) We've seen that its easier to stop missiles aimed directly at you than at ships in company with you. And the Rolands wouldn't split their fire, they'd target everything on one BC at a time. So it's not 8 BC each stopping 5 missiles coming at it. It's 1 BC targeted by 40 missiles, and 7 other BCs trying desperately to help it beat back the fire.

That's harder to do; plus all the survivors hit a single target. So if several missiles survive then one BC takes major damage rather than several BCs taking potentially minor or superficial damage. That largely takes the first BC out of the equation by the 2nd or 3rd salvo -- reducing the whole squadron's effectiveness

I am not going to say that adding "daisy chain" control missiles wouldn't help. but IMO my suspicion is that the advantage may not be as wonderful as some people might believe.

I suspect that some of the issue that I "see" as a problem has to do with what the "spreaders" allow to happen. From what I remember the "real advantage" of extensive fire control links is that they allow the ships more powerful processors and systems to better react to the targets attempts to spoof the incoming missiles than the missiles onboard systems can. The problem is that if the fire control links are somewhat limited, then having 8 missiles effectively slaved to 1, may mean that that cluster of missiles are all going to get the same package of updated info as 1 normally would. while this does mean you can potentially control say 1024 missiles as if they were 128 I suspect you still don't have the control you would have with the 1024 links on the ship. On the other hand if the ship only carries ~240 missiles it might be worthwhile to have some "less capable "spreaders" that can only link 2-3 missiles without giving up all their own offensive capabilities.

if that allowed them to get their "links" to handle a quad broadside equivalent without major issues that might give them enough of an edge for the time being.

another point I kept seeing is the manticoran alliance really tries to have the best gear, and the best trained people to make the most of that better gear, IE fighting with bullets not bodies.

the Havenites were using a more brute force set of solutions but for a long time a lot of the other major powers didn't realize just how far the tech in that area had gone because of how far behind the curve Haven was at the beginning of the hostilities. My impression is (or was that the haven forces prior to any mantie tech transfers in most ways have caught up and in some (many) cases have actually surpassed solarian tech in a lot of ways.

Jonathan_S wrote:snip...

That's harder to do; plus all the survivors hit a single target. So if several missiles survive then one BC takes major damage rather than several BCs taking potentially minor or superficial damage. That largely takes the first BC out of the equation by the 2nd or 3rd salvo -- reducing the whole squadron's effectiveness

My bolding

But when the BC that is taken out is the Squadron Flagship the rest usually give up

Guardiandashi wrote:I am not going to say that adding "daisy chain" control missiles wouldn't help. but IMO my suspicion is that the advantage may not be as wonderful as some people might believe.

I suspect that some of the issue that I "see" as a problem has to do with what the "spreaders" allow to happen. From what I remember the "real advantage" of extensive fire control links is that they allow the ships more powerful processors and systems to better react to the targets attempts to spoof the incoming missiles than the missiles onboard systems can. The problem is that if the fire control links are somewhat limited, then having 8 missiles effectively slaved to 1, may mean that that cluster of missiles are all going to get the same package of updated info as 1 normally would. while this does mean you can potentially control say 1024 missiles as if they were 128 I suspect you still don't have the control you would have with the 1024 links on the ship. On the other hand if the ship only carries ~240 missiles it might be worthwhile to have some "less capable "spreaders" that can only link 2-3 missiles without giving up all their own offensive capabilities.

I think that's what the intelligent system "weak AI" computer in the Apollo Control missile is trying to offset. Even if lightspeed mode, it's taking the information and targetting that the ship's single control channel is providing and "intelligently" (aka applying expert system rules) to expand upon that in what it then tells each of the 8 missiles of it's brood to do. (That's why IIRC someone said that even in pure lightspeed control mode that an Apollo pod of missiles was still somewhat more effective than a pod of non-Apollo missiles)

But there's got to be a limit to how far even those 'brilliant' computers can expand upon the info provided by a single control link. So if you cascade ACMs together, so one control link is now handling not 8, but 64 attack/ECM birds, the ACMs probably (as you said) do a far worse job coordinating and providing details to each of those missiles.

Duckk wrote:

I know there is no instance yet of Mod Gs being used against solly BCs but it took less than that to destroy the first BC in Monica and the damage that BC took was staggered.

That was clearly a Golden BB. Plus the crews weren't all that competent. Subsequent books have mentioned how lucky that was.

True, but the number of hits was from way less than 30 weaker attack missiles and damage was not in one big sledgehammer hit but in installment pattern. I do not have any proof but I believe getting all the damage in one huge lump would be more destructive than in penny packet lumps where the ships systems can sort of 'reset' or re-establish some sort of equilibrium before getting hit again.

Bill Woods wrote:Well, escorting merchant ships is more-or-less what destroyers are for. When the Manties want to wreak havoc, they use bigger ships.

And one of the goals of commerce raiding is supposed to be showing the public that — despite its track record to date — the SLN really is capable of taking on the Manties. The press release about how 18 BCs were successful against a couple of DDs — Woo-hoo! ... probably isn't going to impress.

Nobody would be impressed but it would shatter the 'myth' that the Manty ships are inviolate. That would give hope to the SLN that they can take on RMN, they just need to hold on long enough to get newer and better ships.

It might not be important to you but we've seen the difference between a demoralized navy and one that is getting come sort of confidence/hope back.

Bill Woods wrote:Well, Terekhov ordered 5 * 35 missiles (155 warheads) fired against that ship. Presumably he expected them, if not to kill it, then to do enough damage that the following salvos would be more profitably used against one of the other two ships.

The ship died on the 3rd salvo. so that is only 105 missiles. And it needed a Golden BB.

The Saltash incident used 120 missiles per ship which didn't need a golden BB to mission kill BCs.

These info just highlights the probable use of control missiles.

You need 105 missiles, a hell of a lot of luck, an under-trained crew and the under-informed command staff to take out a BC with less than 120 missiles if your salvos are in the 35'ish size only.

You need only 120 missiles to mission kill a BC if you can throw all of them with one go.

Jonathan_S wrote:There obviously isn't proof that a BC can't stop 5 RMN missiles; because nobody's ever fired that few Mk16s at a BC.

But I'll point out a couple things.
1) I'm not so sure that Saltash was an example of saturating the BC's defenses; so much as beating them.
Simple saturation happens when the target can ideally track and attack x missiles per salvo and you send more than x. It doesn't really matter how good the ECM on the missiles is; you know all of them in excess of x won't be engaged by the defenses because there just aren't enough defenses.
And that kind of simple saturation is very very sensitive to raw missile numbers; you've vastly more effective if you can send 10 more missiles than they can target than if you only send 1.
But beating the enemy's defenses are a matter of ECM (jammers, decoys, and deceptive flight patterns). Thats much more reliant on emitter power, trickery, and an tac officer cunning than on raw numbers. So it's less sensitive to raw numbers than simple saturation. (Now of course these two things play off each other; and some of the ECM tricks work better if multiple missiles operate in a pre-coordinated manner)
But I don't know that cutting back on the number of missiles is going to be anywhere near as drastic a reduction in effectiveness (at least in the near-term) as you seem to be assuming.

That is very clear, thank you. I may be mis-using the word saturate. What I mean is to launch enough that the defenses cannot swat them all and those that survive will be enough to destroy the enemy.

2) We've seen that its easier to stop missiles aimed directly at you than at ships in company with you. And the Rolands wouldn't split their fire, they'd target everything on one BC at a time. So it's not 8 BC each stopping 5 missiles coming at it. It's 1 BC targeted by 40 missiles, and 7 other BCs trying desperately to help it beat back the fire.

That is true if we are talking about laser point defense. Counter missiles however just need to get a wedge on wedge collision. It may be harder to do if it's from an angle but if each BC target 1 attacking missile with several CMs, then the likelihood of taking that attack missile goes up. I know the current SOP is to assign 1 CM per attack missile but it would be a dumb move for sollies not to change that SOP if they have far more CM launchers than the attacking missiles.

That's harder to do; plus all the survivors hit a single target. So if several missiles survive then one BC takes major damage rather than several BCs taking potentially minor or superficial damage. That largely takes the first BC out of the equation by the 2nd or 3rd salvo -- reducing the whole squadron's effectiveness

I don't have any problem with this. That is why I have been modifying my estimates after I re-read parts of books with actual combat data.

Bottom line, a 120 salvo of Mark 16s will kill a solly BC (tied up in a division defense). Only 5-6 missiles out of a salvo of 35 can get through a damaged BC's defenses. There is a need for something to enable a lone ship or a pair of ships to thicken their salvo to reach the level of 100 or so missiles to get through BC defenses.