Solly Fleet Advancements

Weird Harold wrote:I think it is probably being considered somewhere, but I think size would quickly get unmanageable -- As RFC pointed out in one of the pearls, "Smaller missile," is not the same thing as "Small Missile." CMs run around 15-20 tons each.

No. The only CM tonnage we have is 12 tons and even that we do not know which model it is. So, we can assume 15-20 tons for the longer CM's, but how do we know that additional drive time has not been due to increased drive efficiency? Same caps, same everything other than new impeller nodes.

Wasn't that long ago cars got 12mpg and no one thought this poor performance. Brings up the corollary: How mature technologically are missile impellers with built in compensators?

wastedfly wrote:Wasn't that long ago cars got 12mpg and no one thought this poor performance. Brings up the corollary: How mature technologically are missile impellers with built in compensators?

I'd suspect pretty damn mature. They have used the damn things for like 600 years.

kzt wrote:

wastedfly wrote:Wasn't that long ago cars got 12mpg and no one thought this poor performance. Brings up the corollary: How mature technologically are missile impellers with built in compensators?

I'd suspect pretty damn mature. They have used the damn things for like 600 years.

Large missiles, yes. Even they have been changing by leaps and bounds lately.

Not really in regards to CM's.

Auto canon used to rule the roost. There had to a very practical threshold reason for auto canon over a very small impeller wedge missile AKA counter missile.

wastedfly wrote:Auto canon used to rule the roost. There had to a very practical threshold reason for auto canon over a very small impeller wedge missile AKA counter missile.

Auto cannon, which are actually grav mass drivers, are very effective against sidewall penetrators or close in sidewall burners. CM numbers were greatly increased as as standoff ranges increased. PDLCs are also fairly recent development iirc, like 150 to 200 years.

kzt wrote:

wastedfly wrote:Wasn't that long ago cars got 12mpg and no one thought this poor performance. Brings up the corollary: How mature technologically are missile impellers with built in compensators?

I'd suspect pretty damn mature. They have used the damn things for like 600 years.

On the other hand there had been little incentive to put serious investment in missile R&D. When capital ships were next to invulnerable with their passive defense to missiles, an improved carrier system was of little use, and so were better active defenses.
Neither counter missiles nor laser clusters were new inventions, autocannons were just a cheap, adequate way to deal with the threat. Only the laser head required significant reevaluation of the active defenses.

wastedfly wrote:No. The only CM tonnage we have is 12 tons and even that we do not know which model it is.

Does an error of 3-7 tons invalidate the point that CMs aren't as small as a lot of people think?


also, while the sprint stage of a cataphract is described as "what amounted to an entire counter-missile drive unit", it isn't actually a CM. It may well be, and probably is to carry a decent warhead, larger than any CM.

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:Logically a CM should be able to accelerate a really big missile less then a small missile, but I'm not sure how much that matters with wedges etc.

My impression was that the Sprint Stage separated from the bigger missile section before accelerating. Essentially the finial stage is just a CM with a ship killer warhead; sort of like an up-gunned Viper.

That was also my impression of a Cataphract; that it has an actual second stage, not just a second drive ring like a Mk16. (Because the MAlign hadn't differed out the baffle trick to protect nearby drive rings from each other). Now at least by the time you get up to a Cataphract-C I assume that 2nd stage is larger than a 'normal' CM. But I don't know how much larger.


Also RFC has mentioned that the Manticoran 4-drive system defense variants of the Apollo missiles have a sprint drive as the final one. I assume that's a 4th drive ring; not a detachable stage - but I don't know that that's been confirmed. (And I don't know if it gets full CM accel or 'only' noticeably quicker than conventional missile accel)

Jonathan_S wrote:Also RFC has mentioned that the Manticoran 4-drive system defense variants of the Apollo missiles have a sprint drive as the final one. I assume that's a 4th drive ring; not a detachable stage - but I don't know that that's been confirmed. (And I don't know if it gets full CM accel or 'only' noticeably quicker than conventional missile accel)

Given that you're running up against the universe's speed limits after three drives at 96,000 gs, yeah, a shorter burst of high accell is more valuable than another standard missile drive,, yes ...

drothgery wrote:Given that you're running up against the universe's speed limits after three drives at 96,000 gs, yeah, a shorter burst of high accell is more valuable than another standard missile drive,, yes ...

Don't forget, 96,000g is the high-power setting, which normally burns out after a minute. Even four drives at that acceleration will only get you to around 0.75c, not accounting for relativistic effects. It's the three minutes per drive at 48,000g that gets you into trouble. Without accounting for relativity, four drives at that power setting would get you 12% past c if it were possible.

Personally, I suspect that a system defence missile at long range would use the first 2-3 drives at the low power, long-burn setting, then kick into high power on the last drive for extra maneuverability.

I believe the best use of the existing SLN fleet is as a source of the long lead-time components needed to build modern designs.

The sort of components the republic used in the pre-Thunderbolt build up are what I'm thinking of. They were able to produce so many so quickly because they had stocks of them to put into the every hull as it was built. Salvaging components from an existing SD might be a fair bit of work, but probably not that bad if you dont care about the condition of the hull afterwards. If you go in from the floor and roof and dont care about gutting it along the way you could get at stuff fairly quickly.

We have textev that fusion reactors are a very long lead time item, and the ones in the old SDs are probably perfectly serviceable for the new construction. Hyper generators, impeller nodes, and similar items are likely in the same category.