Do we actually need SD(P)s?

One other thing - doesn't a DDM launcher take about twice as long as a RMN capacitor missile launcher to cycle? Something about extra time to fire up those microfusion reactors safely.

If so, then 42 * 6 = 252. Add in Phantom's 50 and we've reached the ~300 per salvo used.

SharkHunter wrote:Love the timeline but disagree with your kill numbers, mostly with the accuracy assertion, based on the interception results from New Tuscany, Zunker, and Saltash at equivalent or greater ranges.

Thanks! I spent nearly 3 hours writing and rewriting as I found mistakes in my own logic. The timeline was the only way to get it all right.

From Saltash, we know that 120 Mk16 can kill a Nevada, when controlled by a Roland 2 light-minutes (36 Gm) downrange. Those were 5 ships firing double doubles from all their 12 tubes. I suppose a Nike has similar or better sensors than a Roland, so Phantom alone should have equivalent or better performance at the same distance. In the scenario I calculated, she started firing from even further out than 2 light-minutes, because the suggestion was accelerating from farther out. I don't think that was a good strategy. But I allowed for 1 kill with 100 missiles at that range, which is better than at Saltash.

SharkHunter wrote:Trying to keep it short, I used Excel and your missile flight times but different detection. I also decided to give Phantom a "three free shot" headstart designed to give Kotouc a better idea of "lower mission-kill missile requirements", aka how much can they spread their fire and still achieve mission kills for every ship targeted. I'll stipulate that the answer is 36 (Angrim's fire that killed Lepanto) but the lower count they'll settle on is 40 Mk16Gs per. She won't have time, but that would give a Nike enough ammunition to shoot the s--- out of all the BCs in TF-1030. Also note that my timeline uses T Zero as the time that each of the TUFT freighters eat a Manty RD. T- (T minus) before, T+ (T plus) after. and have Phantom start firing earlier.

Indeed, pre-deploying missiles and firing them in larger salvoes at the beginning is a strategy, so long as you don't light them off. Because as soon as you light the first missile, the SLN is going to know you're there, even if they can't tell where exactly. You can't hide an active wedge at that distance.

There's some controversy over how long a fired missile can loiter before lighting the wedge. Plus, there's the ship's acceleration or deceleration: she'd have to be coasting too in order to control the missiles, if you don't want them to be hundreds of km away when you tell them to turn the impellers on. So I skipped this scenario.

SharkHunter wrote:Pre-Kickoff, the Sag-Bs are moving into position, Phantom is divergent and at 30MM ish kilometers, with 6 Lorelies launching but dark, to imitate a Nike, two heavy cruisers, and 4 of those "big assed Many Destroyers". She's also spotted two quad launches of 200 missiles each that will fire and never go ballistic.

I concluded that the Loreleis are irrelevant. Either you fool the sollies or you don't. That only changes the time that Hajdu will fire any remaining pods, due to use-or-lose. It's either 4 minutes after the missiles are first fired (if you fool, at 30 Gm), or 6 minutes (travel time for the first missiles to arrive).

SharkHunter wrote:*T - 180 Salvo one lights up stacked 200 missiles at 4 BCs, Loreleis launched
*T - 156 Salvo two fires 200 missiles at 6 BCs,
*T - 144 Salvo 3 fires 100 Missiles at 4 BCs. Phantom turns to a mildly divergent course, goes dark, Loreleis activated.

Not much new happens or about a minute...

*T-60 As planned by Ilkova, the SLN detects the Lorelies
*T-30 TF-1030 fires the 120K missile salvo
*T-0 ==> Kerblooey! 3 TUFTS freighters go buh-Bye.
This is 30 seconds before the RMN missiles could have arrived. Consternation Ensues.
*T+30 to T+66: 11 B/Cs blown up or mission killed, three severely damaged. Phantom and the SagBs are still undetected.

I don't think it makes much of a difference when the TUFTs go boom, but I'd err on the side of caution: if Hajdu detects missile wedges at T=-180s, he might tell the freighters to dump everything overboard. Better to figure out how to use those scattering pods than to have them sitting ducks inside the freighter. Hajdu may not have the imagination to expect a Mistletoe strike because he may not figure Manticore could get a drone that close, but is this a risk that Kotouč would take?

Especially since the time of blowing the freighters up makes no difference in the outcome. It's the missiles lighting up their wedges that announce your rough location, not the freighters' explosions.

Anyway, the idea you had is what Petersen did later in the fight using Angrim: deploy missiles, deploy Loreleis, go on divergent course before they detect you, so the enemy counter-salvo goes after the Loreleis instead of the actual ship. Or ship(s), for that matter.

The question: will that fool the 98 BCs? Petersen fired a single salvo, as big as she could make it, then went dark. But she had reason for it and she was communicating her intentions to Gogunov. Would Hajdu fall for three salvos, however big they were, then silence? He might ponder why the Manties stopped firing. He was also angered by there being 9 salvos in flight coming at him before any ships were detected.

But I think he would fall for it. And if nothing else, use-or-lose triggers when those missiles arrive, at T+180s in your timeline. And even if he doesn't completely fall for it, it's still a worthwhile gamble that he'll fire a good chunk of his missiles before the actual ships were found. Given the nature of SLN control links, he would be able to redirect at most 1500 missiles: everything else is going for the decoys, whether he knows it or not.

Worst case scenario: sollies find out that the RMN has very good decoys.

SharkHunter wrote:*T+90ish, the SLN can no longer control ANY of their Alpha launch. ALL of the missiles are going to miss.

*T+120: Phantom raises her wedge 4, ignites more Lorelies, and sends the next 200 missile salvo. They've figured an optimum fire distribution of 40 missiles per B/C. Every salvo fired after will target a single ship with ten more attacking nearby ships just to raise mayhem. It's now tube on tube as soon as the SLN finds Phantom for real this time.

*T+132 to T 360: Phantom fires 28 total Mk-16 salvos, 50 apiece. 28 more mission kills. We're at 39 dead BCs.... maybe 10-25% damage on others. No golden BB shots here...

T+360: Phantom is discovered. She now has time for about 18 salvos before whatever missiles arrive from the remaining 60 BCs. Halfway the, the Cataphracts become uncontrolled.

The time between Phantom firing more salvos and being discovered has to be shorter. Unlike the first one, where it was a surprise, now the SLN is at Condition 1 with active scans at maximum. They're also scanning in the right direction (in-system, instead of out-system). In your timeline, she only had 300 seconds to change position, which isn't a lot (300s² * 650 G / 2 is less than 300,000 km). And now that I think about it, I would have to revise yesterday's numbers about the Saganamis being found too. Manticoran stealth is good, but if you're firing missiles at a ready enemy who's looking for you, you're going to be found.

SharkHunter wrote:T+480: Sag-Bs open up with full speed shots coordinated fire. These will arrive at roughly T+ 600, then arrive every 12-15 seconds in flights of 210. Mission killing around 4-5 BCs per minute...

120s flight time for the Mk14? That's only 3.2 million km away. They'd need an incredible base velocity to increase that range, which would make them sitting ducks really soon as the range closed. The full extended range of the Mk14 seems to be 4 minutes (240s) of flight time.

Also, 210 missiles every 12 seconds doesn't seem possible. I calculated yesterday that they could fire 252 every 20.

SharkHunter wrote:Also at T+480: Cataphract now uncontrolled. Phantom begins handing off tactical control of all their latter in-space salvo(s) to the Sag Bs, and is mission killed around T+540. She's killed 54 all by herself.... which is roughly correct for your 2300 count divided by my "40 per kill".

Handing off control is not possible. First, as others have pointed out, the Saganamis don't have enough redundant control links to take on the Nike's missiles. Second, they're in the wrong position: missiles are controlled by a telemetry transceiver located at the tail of the missile body. If the Saganamis are not directly behind the salvos (or, say, within a 5° cone), telemetry won't work.

SharkHunter wrote:Do you really think I wouldn't at least have one or two Sag Bs surviving alive at the end? Then again, what tactical genius decided to launch all of the deployed missiles three minutes before any RMN missiles could have arrived. Feller named Hadju Gyozo... about the same tactical skill as Crandall, methinks.
He musta been trained on Frontier Fleet's gimme sims.

Of course he fired: use-or-lose. Any unfired pods would be subject to proximity kills when the first missiles arrived. Heck, even the emissions from the Dazzlers might be sufficient to fry the molycircs in the pods. Hajdu wouldn't have known about Dazzlers, much less about their power, but he couldn't count on his deployed pods not being a target. If half the pods were destroyed unfired, TG110.2 stood a much better chance of survival.

Jonathan_S wrote:Whether the Cataphracts would have to coast would depend on which revision of them the SLN had at Hypatia.

We saw some (3rd gen? ones) earlier in UH that had, frankly, unbelievable performance[1]. Those were estimated, by the Manties being fired upon, to have about 31 million km of powered range. If that's right, that's actually further than the 29 million km range of the Mk16!

The Cataphracts wouldn't have to coast. Both they and the Mk16 are dual-drive missiles, so both have 6 minutes of endurance.

In my calculations, I used 65000 G for half-power for the Cataphracts (I think those are the Cataphract-Cs), which is 41% better than the Mk16. That's 41% more range for the same time or 15.8% less time to cover the same distance. If an RMN ship fired Mk16 at max range (whatever the initial velocity) and the SLN ship fired back immediately, the Cataphracts would arrive 57.1s seconds before the Mk16 would.

The Cataphracts would have to coast if the RMN ship was firing 3-stage MDMs, like the Mk23, from beyond 41 Gm range. But that would mean they were facing SD(P)s, not BCs.

-----------------------
[1] * First gen Duckk gave us the numbers for "Cataphracts go 467 KPS^2 for 180 seconds, then 961 for 75".
* Filareta’s were apparently 2nd gen ones since their first stage had improved to 561 KPS^2; though the 2nd stage seemed unchanged.
* But these ones, specifically noted have "better acceleration than Filareta’s" pulled a 1st stage accel of 841.8 KPS squared (85,898 gees); and that's apparently at half power.

In contrast Mk16 and Mk23s have a half-power setting of 450.8 KPS^2 (46,000 gees) and full power of 901.5 KPS^2 (92,000 gees). So the improved Cataphracts can run for three minutes at an accel that's 93.3% of that the RMN missiles can manage for only one.

Different speed settings seem impossible. The Cataphract is a CM bolted on the back of a shipkiller missile, so the drives are somewhat apart, which is how they've solved the problem without baffles. But I doubt they'd be so far apart that the harmonics wouldn't screw up the other drives, as per RFC.

I had the 130,000 G full power number in my mind. I don't know if it's accurate or not, it's just something I remembered.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Whether the Cataphracts would have to coast would depend on which revision of them the SLN had at Hypatia.

We saw some (3rd gen? ones) earlier in UH that had, frankly, unbelievable performance[1]. Those were estimated, by the Manties being fired upon, to have about 31 million km of powered range. If that's right, that's actually further than the 29 million km range of the Mk16!

The Cataphracts wouldn't have to coast. Both they and the Mk16 are dual-drive missiles, so both have 6 minutes of endurance.

In my calculations, I used 65000 G for half-power for the Cataphracts (I think those are the Cataphract-Cs), which is 41% better than the Mk16. That's 41% more range for the same time or 15.8% less time to cover the same distance. If an RMN ship fired Mk16 at max range (whatever the initial velocity) and the SLN ship fired back immediately, the Cataphracts would arrive 57.1s seconds before the Mk16 would.

The Cataphracts would have to coast if the RMN ship was firing 3-stage MDMs, like the Mk23, from beyond 41 Gm range. But that would mean they were facing SD(P)s, not BCs.

-----------------------
[1] * First gen Duckk gave us the numbers for "Cataphracts go 467 KPS^2 for 180 seconds, then 961 for 75".
* Filareta’s were apparently 2nd gen ones since their first stage had improved to 561 KPS^2; though the 2nd stage seemed unchanged.
* But these ones, specifically noted have "better acceleration than Filareta’s" pulled a 1st stage accel of 841.8 KPS squared (85,898 gees); and that's apparently at half power.

In contrast Mk16 and Mk23s have a half-power setting of 450.8 KPS^2 (46,000 gees) and full power of 901.5 KPS^2 (92,000 gees). So the improved Cataphracts can run for three minutes at an accel that's 93.3% of that the RMN missiles can manage for only one.

Different speed settings seem impossible. The Cataphract is a CM bolted on the back of a shipkiller missile, so the drives are somewhat apart, which is how they've solved the problem without baffles. But I doubt they'd be so far apart that the harmonics wouldn't screw up the other drives, as per RFC.

I had the 130,000 G full power number in my mind. I don't know if it's accurate or not, it's just something I remembered.

RFC said different speed setting in a “proper” DDM or MDM are currently impossible because the baffle can’t handle the shielding.

But Cataphracts don’t use a baffle. They are (apparently) 2 entirely separate missile stages using distance (and possibly also other unstated methods) to protect the 75 second endurance CM drive on the 2nd stage from the conventional missile drive on the first. (After all, something seems to force them to use a smaller diameter for the 2nd stage; forcing the warhead size reduction)
But I always envisioned the CM stage bolted to the front of the conventional missile.

And at least the Cataphracts we know about don’t have a 6 minute endurance. The 2nd stage uses a CM drive and one tradeoff those make to get their extra accel is that they can’t have their acceleration reduced to increase their run time. We have straight from the tech bible, by way of the board admin, that at least the original 2nd stage had on 75 seconds endurance. Not the 180 seconds of either Mk16 stage.

Jonathan_S wrote:RFC said different speed setting in a “proper” DDM or MDM are currently impossible because the baffle can’t handle the shielding.

But Cataphracts don’t use a baffle. They are (apparently) 2 entirely separate missile stages using distance (and possibly also other unstated methods) to protect the 75 second endurance CM drive on the 2nd stage from the conventional missile drive on the first. (After all, something seems to force them to use a smaller diameter for the 2nd stage; forcing the warhead size reduction)

Ok, first, if the CM time is 75 seconds instead of 180, everything changes. I simply considered it a faster drive on 2 x 180s bodies, like the Manticoran and Havenite missiles (and apparently Andermani). We definitely need more accurate info.

Second, how big is the CM body size? In A Call to Duty, Travis is faced with a DDM in a simulation and promptly calls it impossible. He's asked to explain to the Lieutenatn why it is so:

A Call to Duty, Ch. 7 wrote:“No,” Cyrus said flatly, years of practice enabling him to hold onto his temper. ”There is no physical reason such a missile couldn't be built. None.”

”I believe there is, Sir,” Long said, his voice respectiful but firm. ”Two impeller rings at such close proximity can’t avoid bleeding control flickers and capillary fields between them. The fact that the secondary set isn’t active yet doesn’t matter—it’ll still be misaligned when it does light up.”

“Then you shield the second set,” Cyrus bit out. “You put something between the two rings to keep that from happening.”

“You can’t, sir,” Long insisted doggedly. “It’s a quantum tunnelling effect. No known materiral or counterfield can block or suppress it. You’d need a good hundred meters of distance between the rings, which would either require an acceleration-resistant pylon that’s physially impossible to construct with any known material or else a much thicker pillar which will jump the costs with every square centimeter of cross-section thata you add. The missile would end up as big as a corvette and as expensive as a destroyer. Either way, it would not show up on sensors as a normal missile. Not the way it did on the simulation.”

Travis was only talking about the ability to light up a wedge at all, at 100 m. This seems to be how TIY and the MAlign figured out how to make a DDM, but we don't know if different power settings are possible even at that distance. We know that a warship's two impeller rings, which can be half a kilometre apart, need to be fine-tuned to each other.

So it's not a given that they can use different power settings if the Manticoran ones can't.

Side-note: I started the Honorverse with A Call to Duty and when I came to this passage, I was thinking "hmm... foreshadowing, this will be important in the future". That and the part when they talk about reaching the episilon and zeta band of hyperspace. I'd also been thinking about coming back to this passage ever since MDMs showed up in the main series and re-reading Travis's explanation. I hadn't done so until now.

But I always envisioned the CM stage bolted to the front of the conventional missile.

My first reaction is that it would be a bad idea, since you don't want the CM's warhead to fire at the enemy ship, but the shipkiller one. It seems to me that the warhead at the front is the one with the sensors and the lasing rods; the back one couldn't fire with the other in front. The Cataphract could have a system to eject the CM body, but if it ejected the front part while it's still accelerating, it would risk debris disabling the shipkiller. Better to eject backwards.

And at least the Cataphracts we know about don’t have a 6 minute endurance. The 2nd stage uses a CM drive and one tradeoff those make to get their extra accel is that they can’t have their acceleration reduced to increase their run time. We have straight from the tech bible, by way of the board admin, that at least the original 2nd stage had on 75 seconds endurance. Not the 180 seconds of either Mk16 stage.

Right. We need to revise the numbers and need actual performance parameters.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

But I always envisioned the CM stage bolted to the front of the conventional missile.

My first reaction is that it would be a bad idea, since you don't want the CM's warhead to fire at the enemy ship, but the shipkiller one. It seems to me that the warhead at the front is the one with the sensors and the lasing rods; the back one couldn't fire with the other in front. The Cataphract could have a system to eject the CM body, but if it ejected the front part while it's still accelerating, it would risk debris disabling the shipkiller. Better to eject backwards.

Based on the Torch of Freedom description:

"The Cataphract was a rather basic concept, actually—they'd simply grafted what amounted to an entire counter-missile drive unit onto the end of a standard shipkiller. Coming up with an arrangement which let them cram that much impeller power and a worthwhile laser head into something they could fit onto the end of a standard missile had demanded quite a bit of ingenuity (and not a few basic compromises), but it had been a far easier task than duplicating a full scale multidrive missile would have been."

Implying that the warhead and 'countermissile drive' are at the same end - i.e. the front.

"Worse, the Cataphract was twenty percent longer than a standard missile of any given weight, which meant it would no longer fit into launch tubes which had been designed to handle the single-drive missile upon which it was based"
As noted, a big part of the solution is just 'make it longer', with the Cataphract being essentially being a long-range/high-speed version, with a weaker warhead to boot, of the shipkiller missile from one 'class' below the equivalent 'standard' missile (so a system-defence pod is lobbing superdreadnought warheads, a superdreadnought fires battlecruiser warheads, and a battlecruiser fires cruiser warheads).

Jonathan_S wrote:(And while Honorverse telemetry arrays seem to be able to easily control multiple follow-on salvos -- they haven't been able to take the ability to control 5 or more salvos in flight to instead control a single massed salvo 5 times as large)

Speculation on my part, but I imagine it goes something like this:

Each "channel" on the emitter array is capable of talking to one missile at a time: to change the course, update attack profile or receive telemetry data, whatever. Less capable subassemblies associated with each "channel" transmitter are not capable of talking to missiles themselves but are capable of keeping a lock on a missile in a following salvo, such that after the first missile leaves practical control range the full-up emitter is passed the data from one of the "tracker" subassemblies, which it then takes over full control of.

Each of these "channel" assemblies might have 10+ tracking bits and only one laser transmitter, so the assembly can control one missile while keeping track of where the others are. The number of tracking bits determines how many salvos a ship can have in space at a time, as the transmitter isn't capable of picking out the correct missile it's supposed to control from the background of all the other missiles in the salvo.

A long missile engagement thus consists of the laser transmitter "talking" to a missile in the first salvo until transmission lag becomes crippling, then taking the data from the next tracker and "talking" to the assigned missile in the second salvo until it goes out of range, then talking to the assigned missile in the third salvo, etc. As the engagement goes on, trackers are recycled and reassigned to missiles of later salvos as the earlier salvos reach the target.

Foraker's "rotating targeting links" as used in the second war work slightly differently. It assigns 3-4 trackers from one telemetry "channel" assembly to 3-4 different missiles in the same salvo, so that the laser transmitter can update one missile, lock onto the second missile, update it, lock on the third, update it, lock back onto the first, update again, etc. etc. etc. The missiles suffer an accuracy penalty as they aren't being updated as frequently, but it lets you get 3-4 times as many missiles to the target in kinda-mostly controlled order. The down side is that you can't launch salvos as frequently, as there aren't any open trackers available to assign to the new missiles until the first salvo is released to it's own terminal guidance. So within the usual target control limit you might be able to keep up with 12 salvos in space at once but since sharing links takes up tracking assets you can only have 4 salvos in space at a time, and that only with an inherent accuracy penalty..

I hope that didn't ramble too much, but it's my sleep-deprived speculation on how missile telemetry works given the limited text data we have on it. It seems to match the bits we do know, anyway.

locarno24 wrote:Based on the Torch of Freedom description:

"The Cataphract was a rather basic concept, actually—they'd simply grafted what amounted to an entire counter-missile drive unit onto the end of a standard shipkiller. Coming up with an arrangement which let them cram that much impeller power and a worthwhile laser head into something they could fit onto the end of a standard missile had demanded quite a bit of ingenuity (and not a few basic compromises), but it had been a far easier task than duplicating a full scale multidrive missile would have been."

Implying that the warhead and 'countermissile drive' are at the same end - i.e. the front.

"Worse, the Cataphract was twenty percent longer than a standard missile of any given weight, which meant it would no longer fit into launch tubes which had been designed to handle the single-drive missile upon which it was based"
As noted, a big part of the solution is just 'make it longer', with the Cataphract being essentially being a long-range/high-speed version, with a weaker warhead to boot, of the shipkiller missile from one 'class' below the equivalent 'standard' missile (so a system-defence pod is lobbing superdreadnought warheads, a superdreadnought fires battlecruiser warheads, and a battlecruiser fires cruiser warheads).

We've been told by RFC that Manticoran missiless (and presumably everyone else's) are somewhat modular, with the back end being a common power/drive unit and the front end being the business end: either an explodey bit, and big ass flashbulb, or a decoy generator. Perhaps there are other business end modules in the works we don't know about yet.

Cataphracts seem to be the power/drive unit of a big missile, with "something" that prevents interference and then the power/drive unit of a counter missile strapped to the front of it. And stuck on the front of the counter missile drive/power unit is the explodey bit from a smaller missile. Presumably, the increased length added to the missile by the CM drive stage and shielding means that putting the original explodey bit back onto the front of the missile would make it too long, so they use the next smaller front end to save length.

Forgive my explodey bits, I've watched entirely too much Lindybeige and his style is infectious.

locarno24 wrote:[

Implying that the warhead and 'countermissile drive' are at the same end - i.e. the front.

It's not just a pretty dumb implementation when there is no exhaust issue. It's a "why would you possibly do that?" kind of thing.

locarno24 wrote:Implying that the warhead and 'countermissile drive' are at the same end - i.e. the front.

kzt wrote:It's not just a pretty dumb implementation when there is no exhaust issue. It's a "why would you possibly do that?" kind of thing.

Is it possible that the first stage is jettisoned, like current multi-state rockets to eliminate excess mass?