long ranged CM

Thanks for the salvo count corrections.


I'd certainly agree that the Invictus represents a massive upgrade in ability to throw out CMs. But if you can't control your maximum potential CM output before you've even taken damage, I have to call that insufficient CM fire control.


@ Relax,
I would assume that they didn't use their other Keyhole's channels because they were out of onboard CM fire control system computing power or out of some other CM fire control system resource. Which, before you say it, yes, is absurd. But that's really the only thing I can think of that would explain not using the second Keyhole.

Keep in mind that somewhere in the Pearls, RFC mentions that the CM problem is effectively "gunsmoke", but doesn't explain it much more than that. We tend to think that because "space is big", a ship can simply add more links and control more CM's, shipkillers, etc. but I think I finally understand.

Space by big. Antenna be small by comparison, in other words the gravitic criss cross of impeller drives anywhere between ship and downrange missile (ship or CM) is essentially like "cutting the wire" on a torpedo because of the accel rates and high -C fractional speed of the missiles. That's why LACs downrange are a more effective screen than an equivalent weight of DD's and cruiser's "back at the fleet".

So any long range CM fire HAS to be controlled further downrange than the gunsmoke. Like Maxqq says, at Bu-Nine they've toyed with the idea. Personally, I think that happens when some clever HonorVerse designer decides something along the lines of 'I can take one squarinsh pod-downrange with a single impeller drive, with enough on-pod power to light up all of it's contained missiles, whether CM or shipkiller. Including a control-missile optimized for the contents of the pod. So yeah, it's an "authorial constraint" and reader familiarity that makes a space-based missile round anyway... unless all honorverse freighters are cylindrical also. Which they're not.