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| Re: New Manty ship ideas. | |
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by Whitecold
» Wed Apr 16, 2014 1:53 am
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Whitecold
Posts: 173
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Skimper, Escort CLACs have been thoroughly shot down. Plans go along a DN-sized "hard" carrier that can accompany a wall and an SD-sized soft carrier that is supposed to stay outside the hyper limit.
And for building ships smaller than a Nike, because they are cheaper, and can be built in greater numbers. Same argument as in why build anything but SD's. |
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by Bill Woods
» Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:47 am
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Bill Woods
Posts: 571
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Do missile pods still need to exist? Back in olden days, you pointed your broadside at your target, launched your missiles, and off they went. Pods let you deploy a bunch of missiles and launch all of them at once in a direction which didn't need to match the way your ship was oriented. But now we've got missiles that can fired off-axis, with delayed launch. So a ship could pump out as many missiles as it chose -- in whatever mix of attack, EW, and FTL-equipped -- all set to launch at the same time in any direction. So is there any remaining advantage in packaging them in sets of eight (or whatever)? ----
Imagined conversation: Admiral [noting yet another Manty tech surprise]: XO, what's the budget for the ONI? Vice Admiral: I don't recall exactly, sir. Several billion quatloos. Admiral: ... What do you suppose they did with all that money? |
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by The E
» Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:58 am
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The E
Posts: 2704
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I think pods still fill a valuable role. They offer a large amount of flexibility in terms of deployment options, from normal salvo fire to massive staggered salvos, and in terms of the munitions fired. If a redesign comes along that radically changes the missile sizes, switching out pod loads is easier and quicker than trying to refit ships with new launchers and magazines. We've already seen this with Apollo: Given that Apollo needs two very different Missiles to work, this would mean that you'd have to mount fixed Launchers in your ships that can handle both. |
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| Re: New Manty ship ideas. | |
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by Whitecold
» Wed Apr 16, 2014 5:38 am
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Whitecold
Posts: 173
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As strap-on launchers and in the system defense role the pod seems to be here to stay.
Below the wall however the Agamemnon BC(P) experiment failed in favor of the Nike/Sanagami-C/Roland trio of tube armed ships. They don't have Apollo control birds, and the newest Mk 16 mods did not require changes to the tubes. With the Apollo pods it makes it easier as you need only one launch system, but then your ratio of Control and regular birds is fixed. Depending on the combat situation you might want to vary the ratio. Also FTL bandwidth has been massively rising, and transmitter size shrinking, so I would not be surprised if future missile generations are equipped with individual FTL telemetry, and skip the control birds. Engineering a missile to physically fit a certain tube should not be an impossible challenge. The break was the switch from capacitor to fusion plant which truly broke the compatibility. |
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| Re: New Manty ship ideas. | |
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by Lord Skimper
» Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:04 am
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Lord Skimper
Posts: 1736
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The comfort of Strangers.
I've argued many of these points but they, the Admirals, which now that I'm once again not one, don't like to talk about it. I ask how many pod based missiles can an Invictus control, books say no less than 200. I wonder? Didn't Torville have 250 pod layers but fired a million missiles? Maybe one is miss remembering that. As of right now the biggest problem is the Apollo control missile. While not too much larger than an Ordinary Mk23 it would need a special tube or require all tubes be large enough to fire it, then fire the smaller missiles in the larger tubes. Which apparently isn't a problem. Also considered using an Apollo missile as a nested missile with a set 2-4 sub missiles. LAC sized ship killers or EW or CM / Vipers. 4-8 per missile. One might also consider using Ghost rider missiles as nested missiles. Stealthy and relatively slow, but big enough to have multiple warheads. 2/4/6/8 Mk23 warheads without the need of multiple stages and with FTL 2 way sensors and coms. 20 per broadside and 5 per chase one could easily fire 200 of these without the enemy even knowing you've launched a missile. Then get in close take a good look at them and tell them surrender or be destroyed. Range is huge, they can get in very close, deploy let's say5 Mk23 warheads each and that's a 1000 - 8 lasing rod warheads from a single SD tubed ship. Expensive but, one can't shoot down a missile you can't see. Such missiles could have huge 100 million klicks ranges and without the enemy using active defenses you should have good hit capabilities. Plus they could sit in a system and don't have the one use wedge engine. Double your hit ratio, say 80%+ and scare any enemy even more in that they would not even know that you fired any weapons at them. 40 of these and Filareta would have been toast before he even crossed the hyper limit. 25,000 hits on 450 SD from a single 40 ship quad stacked stealthed launch. Who needs pods? ________________________________________
Just don't ask what is in the protein bars. |
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| Re: New Manty ship ideas. | |
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by Lord Skimper
» Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:24 am
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Lord Skimper
Posts: 1736
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Seems my math skills are really bad.
Not 25,000 8,000 missiles 40,000 Mk23 warheads. 80% hit ratio. 32,000 x 8 lasing rods. Equals about 711 lasing rods per ship if 450 ships are faced. Which should be enough to kill any ship. SD should be able to carry 2-4,000 missiles. No golden BB shot vulnerabilities. Finally if you don't fire off your missiles you should be able to recover and reuse them. Who says a modern SD is obsolete? ________________________________________
Just don't ask what is in the protein bars. |
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| Re: New Manty ship ideas. | |
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by WLBjork
» Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:11 pm
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WLBjork
Posts: 186
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Sorry Skimper, but even I think some of your ideas are ludicrous. Intact there's only one idea I remember seeing that I consider to be reasonable, but even there you went chasing off at the deep end instead of a measured approach.
Re:fewer small ship types: Remember Manticore has a large merchant marine. 150 Nikes can only be in 150 places at once, and there will be times when it would be inappropriate to send a BC, but you want something with a bit more... authority than a dispatch boat. Thus, destroyers and similar are still needed. SDs are intended to be in service for a couple of centuries. As The E points out, podnaughts would actually be better suited to this longevity as you can upgrade the missiles without needing to refit the ship - remember the issues with refitting the Gryphons. Ghost Rider drives accelerate too slowly for weapons use. Sure in an ambush situation they're nice and sneaky, but against an opponent with roughly equivalent capabilities they're worthless. Furthermore, they're going to need a sizable launch bay, they aren't exactly small... |
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by SWM
» Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:18 pm
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SWM
Posts: 5928
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A few points to consider, Skimper.
An Apollo missile is twice the size of a MK23. MIRV-style missiles carrying multiple smaller missiles have been discussed a few times in the past. I don't believe there was any consensus on whether it would work in the Honorverse. Not enough information, but might be a possibility. When you speak of Ghost Rider missiles, do you mean missiles or drones? Ghost rider missiles are not stealthy or slow--they are the Dazzler and Dragon's Teeth EW missiles. They can be launched from tubes, but are too small to have multiple warheads. If you put a warhead on it, you basically get a standard missile. If you mean Ghost Rider drones, they are not launched from tubes--they are floated out of docking bays and there is a limited supply of them. You can fit a warhead in them--that's what Mistletoe is. But there is not enough room for multiple warheads. They also cannot stay on station indefinitely--they can last a few weeks or months, but no longer. --------------------------------------------
Librarian: The Original Search Engine |
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by Theemile
» Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:37 pm
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Theemile
Posts: 5350
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Both the Fusion and Capacitor MDMs were children of the Ghostrider programs. So many items came out of the Ghostrider research programs; practically everything used by the RMN in the 2nd Havenite war was upgraded with tech from the Ghostrider programs. At this point, GhostRider should be dropped from the from the lexicon all together other than in instances where the projects themselves are specifically referenced. It's akin to people calling an FM radio a "Transistor Radio" or a TV a "Solid State" Teleision. Practically all electronics have transistors (be they ever so small) and tubes are only used for VERY specific applications, so virtually all electronics are now solid state. From communications to power to drives to missiles and drones, to sensors, detectors and electronic countermeasures - they are all children of Ghostrider. Using the label for modern RMN equipment is now indistinct and useless. ******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships." |
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| Re: New Manty ship ideas. | |
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by SWM
» Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:40 pm
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SWM
Posts: 5928
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Pretty much true. Near as I can tell, Ghost Rider comprises most of the things that developed out of Gram, except for FTL Comm and grav lances. I wonder if the name Ghost Rider derives from GRAM? --------------------------------------------
Librarian: The Original Search Engine |
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