New Manty ship ideas.

The E wrote:

Relax wrote:SD verses LAC. WWII it was the Battleship verses the airplane.

That analogy doesn't work as well as you think it does. Unlike WW2 planes, LACs have no good way of dealing with the defences an active waller can deploy, from sidewalls to armor to weapon systems. Barring another big breakthrough in terms of how destructive an LAC-mounted weapon can be, LAC attacks against a waller will always end up with disproportionate losses on the part of the LAC wing.

Does everyone on the web always take half a post and disregard the framework and connotation given by the other half just so they can argue in their favor?

Sigh

The E wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:And that primary mission is what? Isn't it get into knife fighting range and deal as much damage as they can?

Sure. But as we've pointed out, an Energy Torpedo is a very situational weapon that is mostly useless, whereas a graser has a good chance of a) hitting the target and b) inflicting damage on it. So, if there's a choice between mounting an additional weapon system that you may get to use once in a blue moon, or improving the performance of a weapon system that is already proven useful, I know what I would choose. Because let us not forget: House of Steel shows that energy torps have always been a tertiary "can't hurt to have them" weapon system on Battlecruisers and Wallers, because the tonnage and room to mount them was more readily available in ships that size. Even so, current designs omit ET batteries from their loadout, concentrating on weapons that are more useful (or mounting more PD).

So, back to the question at hand: Is the addition of an ET launcher to the Shrike, or Shrike-like LACs, a worthwhile investment? From my perspective, no. The R&D time necessary to make it possible can be better spent improving the Shrike's graser, or making the Shrike more durable.

You've already stated that ETorps are situational weapons. They aren't that useful with capitals ships before because there were very few instances in history where capital ships were blasting at each other in knife fighting range. Now that capital ships have evolved into missile boats, such situations for them would be even more scarce.

LACs, however, are designed to be in the kind of combat environment that increase the chances of being in exactly the kind of situations that ETorps would be very very effective.

The main problem with your standard LACs is that their throw weight is limited by their magazine space. As far as I know, there hasn't been an extended battle of LACs vs light units where both sides start battle ready and undamaged. IMHO, that kind of clash would be the running battle type where a standard LACs' missile load would be empty way before the battle ends (given the opponent's CO has half a brain).

With their maneuverability, LACs can even use the unlimited ETorps to force their opponents into unfavorable positions/maneuvers by taking high deflection shots at the open ends of the wedges. They can't do that with their current missile loads because they are very limited in what they can carry. Snipe away with their grasers until one or more of the sidewall generators fail and then finish with a couple of ETorp salvos.

Except that against the light combatants against which this tactic would work, the standard graser mounted on the Shrike will perform the job quite handily already. Remember, these are Battlecruiser-grade grasers, and no Battlecruiser or below can take that many hits from them before either exploding or being taken out of combat. Basically, you are positing a solution for a problem that does not exist.

DO note, I never said that we should remove the graser from the LACs, just replace a pair of missile launchers with ETorp launchers. Note again how I was envisioning how the ETorp LACs are supposed to be used. Do what LACs usually do, albeit with slightly less missile throw weight (hell, you've got LAC missile boats, let them swarm the enemy with missiles). Pick at the enemy with the graser until the opportunity to use the ETorps presents itself.

Rakhmamort wrote:They can put in micro fusion plants in missiles. They can shoe horn a micro fusion plant in a LAC if you really need one to generate ETorps.

No, you can't. Missile/recon drone micro-fusion plants are not safe for use in manned craft.

Rakhmamort wrote:...snip...

DO note, I never said that we should remove the graser from the LACs, just replace a pair of missile launchers with ETorp launchers. Note again how I was envisioning how the ETorp LACs are supposed to be used. Do what LACs usually do, albeit with slightly less missile throw weight (hell, you've got LAC missile boats, let them swarm the enemy with missiles). Pick at the enemy with the graser until the opportunity to use the ETorps presents itself.

You are operating on a couple of flawed assumptions.

First up topic you mentioned using a missile fusion plant to provide plasma. Doesn't work in the Honorverse. Those plants have no shielding, none of the required hardware to siphon plasma off. Read "Blindman's Bluff" sometime for some of the stupid stuff that was done trying to operate a fission reactor without the shielding. Not a direct correspondence but ...

Second if you are pecking away to get a chance to use a weapon to drop the defenses so that you can get into position--and you are able to survive to do this--what the heck use is this weapon. Just keep pecking away and mission kill the target from 3 times the range.

Like many here, including me at times you are getting lost in the trees because the forest is blocking the view of the mission.

Last of all for those who think the aircraft in WW2 were the be all and end all. No they were not. Take a look at how many aircraft were lost sinking that last Japanese super BB without air cover. There were multiple carriers worth of aircraft attacking a relatively small task group.

Hell look at some of the examples of damage done by the Kamikaze's. A US Destroyer got hit by 5 aircraft when assigned to picket duty. I don't remember if they had to go off station. They certainly didn't sink and made it to port under their own power.

Enjoy,
T2M

PS Because it takes me so long to look up stuff someone already addressed one of those points. <shrug> Leaving it in anyway.

@drothgery & thinkstoomuch

I guess GA techs and planners are that dumb to not add shielding for the micro fusion plants if ever they will install one in a LAC. Yeah, I guess they are really that dumb.

Rakhmamort wrote:They can put in micro fusion plants in missiles. They can shoe horn a micro fusion plant in a LAC if you really need one to generate ETorps.

Wouldn't a micro fusion plant produce micro amounts of plasma?

Would it even have the output to provide plasma for a single etorp launcher?

(Even ignoring all the shielding / safety issues others have already brought up)

Another thing to consider. Where are you going to keep the bunkerage for the micro fusion plant? You would need to pull out some other things to fit that in, and there is really not that much room in an LAC. This would give the weapon an extremely limited number of uses before it ran out of fuel.

thinkstoomuch wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:...snip...

DO note, I never said that we should remove the graser from the LACs, just replace a pair of missile launchers with ETorp launchers. Note again how I was envisioning how the ETorp LACs are supposed to be used. Do what LACs usually do, albeit with slightly less missile throw weight (hell, you've got LAC missile boats, let them swarm the enemy with missiles). Pick at the enemy with the graser until the opportunity to use the ETorps presents itself.

You are operating on a couple of flawed assumptions.

First up topic you mentioned using a missile fusion plant to provide plasma. Doesn't work in the Honorverse. Those plants have no shielding, none of the required hardware to siphon plasma off. Read "Blindman's Bluff" sometime for some of the stupid stuff that was done trying to operate a fission reactor without the shielding. Not a direct correspondence but ...

Another obstacle in using ETs which no one has mentioned is the Plasma itself. Plasma is really nothing more than superheated material (usually Hydrogen), but it doesn't come from no where. For shipborne systems, the massive amount of hydrogen expelled in each blast is usually drawn through the reactors from the ships's hydrogen bunkers.

But modern LACS don't have large hydrogen bunkers - the limitations of which (coupled witht the minimum size of a grav pinched fusion reactor) was a LAC's traditional achillies heel, which the modern Fission pile solved. Even if you added a smallish, properly shielded fusion reactor to superheat the plasma, you still will need large extra tanks of hydrogen to provide ammo just for the ETs.

-shoot - Crewdude scooped me...

Rakhmamort wrote:@drothgery & thinkstoomuch

I guess GA techs and planners are that dumb to not add shielding for the micro fusion plants if ever they will install one in a LAC. Yeah, I guess they are really that dumb.

If it were possible to create man-rated versions of micro-fusion plants without growing them to the size of hyper-capable ship fusion plants, then there would be no niche for fission plants to occupy. Yes, based on everything we know of physics, this is purely a plot device. It's still how things work in the Honorverse.

Rakhmamort wrote:@drothgery & thinkstoomuch

I guess GA techs and planners are that dumb to not add shielding for the micro fusion plants if ever they will install one in a LAC. Yeah, I guess they are really that dumb.

Read the second half of this:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/145/1

Then maybe read Tourville's musings in AoV Chapter 13.

For my quick response.

Which costs what? Not price but tonnage, volume? On a ship where everything possible was done to make it as small as possible to perform its designed mission, which was never to take on wallers. Just a misuse of an asset because it worked once proposed by that towering naval strategist Janacek. This is from someone who can see LACs taking on SLN SD's with a reasonable loss rate as they are. Which many here agree to disagree with me about.

I have never advocated taking on a similar tech level waller. Elaborate death ride leading to failure, most likely, no matter what you do with it.

Well price too as you now that you have to add all those additional hardware pieces that aren't there, or most designed for the application. Then you have to put in all the stuff to route it through a tiny ship. (That as people have pointed out masses twice as much despite being half as big). Hell I got very limited understanding of why there are RF waveguides on today's "modern" warship. But I know what happens when somebody dings them. Not pretty.

Forest, tree ... "ouch who put that rock in the way on the ground?"

Damn I hate them rocks.

We know next to nothing about the hardware requirements for any of things we keep proposing. For very good reason in my mind stories would not be as interesting if we did know. Major reason vague is a author's friend.

Enjoy,
T2M

PS I stopped in the middle of composing/editing way TOO many posted in between the start when this was the last on the list and now. <grrrrr> I am way to slow!!!