Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

penny wrote:I only brought it up because of information obtained while at a party where I met the drunken wiki.

Launch mechanism

Originally, missile tubes merely housed the missile prior to launch. Missiles would receive pre-programmed instructions from their ship, and would then use reaction thrusters to move out beyond the ship's impeller wedge before activating their own. This severely limited the fire rate.

More modern tubes contained mass drivers that "flung" a missile out past a starship's wedge, allowing the missile to activate its own wedge without fear of interference.

At one point, curved tubes and drivers were considered for the "top" and "bottom" of a warship, in order to pack more launchers into a ship, allowing for a larger broadside. But this was deemed impractical, as the tonnage required was enormous. The idea was made obsolete by the re-introduction of the missile pod, as well as developments by the Royal Manticoran Navy. The Edward Saganami C class heavy cruiser could fire a double broadside of missiles out of its tubes, and they would re-orient themselves before activating their drives, allowing them to be fired "off-bore".[1] (SI1)

The wiki appears drunker than usual.

SI1 = Shadow of Saganami. And it doesn't say that the missile orient themselves before activating their drives. It might, maybe, hint at that -- but it appears abiguous.

Shadow of Saganami wrote:Now, even as she turned, a double broadside roared from her tubes, oriented itself, and drove headlong for Bogey Two.

You could read that as orienting before driving; meaning before drive activation -- but it could just as easily be read as making a hard pivot under wedge before continuing towards the enemy.

The off-bore references don't say anything about how the missile are launched

Shadow of Saganami wrote:[Hexapuma's bow grasers] were no longer required to share space with missile tubes now that the RMN's broadside tubes had acquired the ability to fire radically off-bore

Shadow of Saganami wrote:Hexapuma and Aegis were the only ships in Terekhov's riven Squadron with the off-bore capacity to fire both broadsides at a single target.

Shadow of Saganami wrote:Helen nodded. It took a little longer to set up for a double broadside, using the off-bore launch capability the RMN had developed, but it would permit her to put almost forty missiles on the destroyer.

penny wrote:I only brought it up because of information obtained while at a party where I met the drunken wiki.

Launch mechanism

Originally, missile tubes merely housed the missile prior to launch. Missiles would receive pre-programmed instructions from their ship, and would then use reaction thrusters to move out beyond the ship's impeller wedge before activating their own. This severely limited the fire rate.

More modern tubes contained mass drivers that "flung" a missile out past a starship's wedge, allowing the missile to activate its own wedge without fear of interference.

At one point, curved tubes and drivers were considered for the "top" and "bottom" of a warship, in order to pack more launchers into a ship, allowing for a larger broadside. But this was deemed impractical, as the tonnage required was enormous. The idea was made obsolete by the re-introduction of the missile pod, as well as developments by the Royal Manticoran Navy. The Edward Saganami C class heavy cruiser could fire a double broadside of missiles out of its tubes, and they would re-orient themselves before activating their drives, allowing them to be fired "off-bore".[1] (SI1)

Jonathan_S wrote:The wiki appears drunker than usual.

SI1 = Shadow of Saganami. And it doesn't say that the missile orient themselves before activating their drives. It might, maybe, hint at that -- but it appears abiguous.

Shadow of Saganami wrote:Now, even as she turned, a double broadside roared from her tubes, oriented itself, and drove headlong for Bogey Two.

You could read that as orienting before driving; meaning before drive activation -- but it could just as easily be read as making a hard pivot under wedge before continuing towards the enemy.

The off-bore references don't say anything about how the missile are launched

Shadow of Saganami wrote:[Hexapuma's bow grasers] were no longer required to share space with missile tubes now that the RMN's broadside tubes had acquired the ability to fire radically off-bore

Shadow of Saganami wrote:Hexapuma and Aegis were the only ships in Terekhov's riven Squadron with the off-bore capacity to fire both broadsides at a single target.

Shadow of Saganami wrote:Helen nodded. It took a little longer to set up for a double broadside, using the off-bore launch capability the RMN had developed, but it would permit her to put almost forty missiles on the destroyer.

Yeah, I probably should be more careful who I befriend at a drunken party.

Tlb said something upstream that confused me until I met the drunken wiki. He said something about offbore launches are usually fired from ships. I couldn't figure out where else an offbore launch could originate. LACs? The drunken wiki says LACs can fire offbore? I had no idea LACs could fire offbore.

Anyway, shouldn't those 10,000 platforms also be capable of antimissile defense around the junction?

penny wrote:Tlb said something upstream that confused me until I met the drunken wiki. He said something about offbore launches are usually fired from ships. I couldn't figure out where else an offbore launch could originate. LACs? The drunken wiki says LACs can fire offbore? I had no idea LACs could fire offbore.

You did suggest that missiles could be fired off-bore from pods, then Jonathan_S and I had a discussion about how often that would ever happen. We agreed that it would be rare, since pods could normally move to point at the target.

penny wrote:Tlb said something upstream that confused me until I met the drunken wiki. He said something about offbore launches are usually fired from ships. I couldn't figure out where else an offbore launch could originate. LACs? The drunken wiki says LACs can fire offbore? I had no idea LACs could fire offbore.

Anyway, shouldn't those 10,000 platforms also be capable of antimissile defense around the junction?

LACs can definitely fire off-bore. The Shrikes in EoH were the first vessels we ever saw pull off that trick

Echoes of Honor wrote:The new missile tubes, coupled with the recent improvements in seekers, molycircs that can handle higher-grav vector shifts, and a higher acceptable delay between launch and shipboard fire control's hand-off to the missile's on-board systems, will let them fire effectively at up to a hundred and twenty degrees off bore. That means the Shrikes can engage with missiles—and launch counter-missiles against incoming fire—even on an oblique approach.

The original Shrike design didn't have any rear-facing CM launchers. When breaking away they were expected to lob their CMs back 'over-the-shoulder' against any missiles chasing them. The CMs were capable of that off-bore launch; but the effectiveness was enough lower than the revised Shrikes gave up their cutters in exchange for some dedicated rear-facing point defense.

As for what else might be able to fire off-bore; presumably modern RMN forts also carry launchers and missiles capable of that feat -- though their primary missile punch is from their pod bays. And pods have little reason to care about off-bore capabilities.



As for missile defense platforms around the Junction. I don't recall any such capability being mentioned (though the new forts would have Keyhole II or similar so those local platforms provide additional PDLC fire in addition to everything else).

But I think it'd be harder to build useful anti-missile platforms than it is to build the mines and directed energy buoys that were described.

Energy platforms, and even more-so mines, are short ranged -- they can't engage a ship beyond 500,000 km for the platforms and more like 50,000 km for the mines. So they don't need particularly large or sophisticated sensors.

But even PDLC platforms need good enough sensors to lock on and start refining missile tracks at least 30 seconds out -- but against an MDM that potentially means locking on to something a heck of a lot smaller than a ship at upwards of 7 million km; before you can finally engage in the last half second or so of flight as the 0.8c missile breaches the 100,000 km line. And a CM platform would be even worse -- forts should already be able to fire more CMs than they can control; so a platform doesn't do any good unless it can do it's own fire control. So now you need a platform capable of tracking individual missiles far enough out to launch when they're about 18 million km out; so you achieve intercept at about 3 million km out. Tricky.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Tlb said something upstream that confused me until I met the drunken wiki. He said something about offbore launches are usually fired from ships. I couldn't figure out where else an offbore launch could originate. LACs? The drunken wiki says LACs can fire offbore? I had no idea LACs could fire offbore.

Anyway, shouldn't those 10,000 platforms also be capable of antimissile defense around the junction?

LACs can definitely fire off-bore. The Shrikes in EoH were the first vessels we ever saw pull off that trick

Echoes of Honor wrote:The new missile tubes, coupled with the recent improvements in seekers, molycircs that can handle higher-grav vector shifts, and a higher acceptable delay between launch and shipboard fire control's hand-off to the missile's on-board systems, will let them fire effectively at up to a hundred and twenty degrees off bore. That means the Shrikes can engage with missiles—and launch counter-missiles against incoming fire—even on an oblique approach.

The original Shrike design didn't have any rear-facing CM launchers. When breaking away they were expected to lob their CMs back 'over-the-shoulder' against any missiles chasing them. The CMs were capable of that off-bore launch; but the effectiveness was enough lower than the revised Shrikes gave up their cutters in exchange for some dedicated rear-facing point defense.

As for what else might be able to fire off-bore; presumably modern RMN forts also carry launchers and missiles capable of that feat -- though their primary missile punch is from their pod bays. And pods have little reason to care about off-bore capabilities.



As for missile defense platforms around the Junction. I don't recall any such capability being mentioned (though the new forts would have Keyhole II or similar so those local platforms provide additional PDLC fire in addition to everything else).

But I think it'd be harder to build useful anti-missile platforms than it is to build the mines and directed energy buoys that were described.

Energy platforms, and even more-so mines, are short ranged -- they can't engage a ship beyond 500,000 km for the platforms and more like 50,000 km for the mines. So they don't need particularly large or sophisticated sensors.

But even PDLC platforms need good enough sensors to lock on and start refining missile tracks at least 30 seconds out -- but against an MDM that potentially means locking on to something a heck of a lot smaller than a ship at upwards of 7 million km; before you can finally engage in the last half second or so of flight as the 0.8c missile breaches the 100,000 km line. And a CM platform would be even worse -- forts should already be able to fire more CMs than they can control; so a platform doesn't do any good unless it can do it's own fire control. So now you need a platform capable of tracking individual missiles far enough out to launch when they're about 18 million km out; so you achieve intercept at about 3 million km out. Tricky.

I was thinking the platforms could simply use the fire control system that is already tied into the forts; which should also make the platform capable of using the sensors of the forts and the forts ability to track missiles.

Let's recall Honor's quote:

In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

That should enable the platforms to act like PDLCs on steroids.

Late edit: You mentioned local PDLC fire. With 10,000 platforms why wouldn't that be significantly effective?

penny wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:As for what else might be able to fire off-bore; presumably modern RMN forts also carry launchers and missiles capable of that feat -- though their primary missile punch is from their pod bays. And pods have little reason to care about off-bore capabilities.



As for missile defense platforms around the Junction. I don't recall any such capability being mentioned (though the new forts would have Keyhole II or similar so those local platforms provide additional PDLC fire in addition to everything else).

But I think it'd be harder to build useful anti-missile platforms than it is to build the mines and directed energy buoys that were described.

Energy platforms, and even more-so mines, are short ranged -- they can't engage a ship beyond 500,000 km for the platforms and more like 50,000 km for the mines. So they don't need particularly large or sophisticated sensors.

But even PDLC platforms need good enough sensors to lock on and start refining missile tracks at least 30 seconds out -- but against an MDM that potentially means locking on to something a heck of a lot smaller than a ship at upwards of 7 million km; before you can finally engage in the last half second or so of flight as the 0.8c missile breaches the 100,000 km line. And a CM platform would be even worse -- forts should already be able to fire more CMs than they can control; so a platform doesn't do any good unless it can do it's own fire control. So now you need a platform capable of tracking individual missiles far enough out to launch when they're about 18 million km out; so you achieve intercept at about 3 million km out. Tricky.

I was thinking the platforms could simply use the fire control system that is already tied into the forts; which should also make the platform capable of using the sensors of the forts and the forts ability to track missiles.

Let's recall Honor's quote:

In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

That should enable the platforms to act like PDLCs on steroids.

Late edit: You mentioned local PDLC fire. With 10,000 platforms why wouldn't that be significantly effective?

For remote PDLCs you might be able to use the fort's fire control and sensors. Though if they're spread far enough from the forts you might start running into issues from parallax and transmission lag. You likely still need onboard sensors for the final half-second when the PDLC is firing on the MDM.


But for CMs, my assumption was that, like the Invictus-class SD(P)s, the fort would already be fire-control limited. (That they can launch more CMs than they can control)
Hence why I said that external CM platforms are only useful if they can provide their own fire control.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that a modern fort has about 50% more CM defenses than an Invictus. That'd give it 125 tubes, and if it can control the same 8 salvos an Invictus can that's a nice round 1,000 CMs. But its launchers would presumably still be able to pump out 11 salvos before an enemy strike could reach it -- so 1,375. It already can fire 375 more CMs than it can control. So adding external CM launch platforms to add, say, another 1,125 CMs seems pointless -- okay now it could throw 3,500 CMs at an incoming alpha strike; but it can still only control 1,000 of them. The other 2,500 are just wasted (and worse might degrade the control of the ones it has fire control links for by cutting lines of sight)

To be useful the remote CM platforms have to basically become unmanned ships -- they need the sensors, tactical computers, fire control links as well as magazines and CM launch tubes. That's not impossible, but it is far more expansive and time consuming to make than 10,000 mines. (Or even than 10,000 5-shot energy weapons platforms)

penny wrote:
I was thinking the platforms could simply use the fire control system that is already tied into the forts; which should also make the platform capable of using the sensors of the forts and the forts ability to track missiles.

Let's recall Honor's quote:

In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

That should enable the platforms to act like PDLCs on steroids.

Late edit: You mentioned local PDLC fire. With 10,000 platforms why wouldn't that be significantly effective?

While Grasers are used by the RHN for defense, they are not used as such by the RMN. Why? Their larger size makes them difficult to quickly track and reacquire fact moving targets. Do they work in a counter missile role - yes, but very poorly, and only if they are connected to a counter missile fire control system. But counter missile fire control is separate from ship killer fire control - which not saying it's can't be done, you just need to design it that way, and you can't whip it up on the fly.

In this case, the platforms will probably be out of place for the counter missile role - due to the relatively short range of the Graser, to protect forts, the platforms would either need to be integrated with the forts, or between the Forts and the attack vector. The Platforms will be arrayed between the forts and the Emergence lanes (which lay in the "middle" of the Junction zone) and missile threats will come from attacks originating outside the Junction hyper limit, so the platforms will be on the back side of the forts, and probably only able to range the missile targets in the last second or so of their flight.

penny wrote:
I was thinking the platforms could simply use the fire control system that is already tied into the forts; which should also make the platform capable of using the sensors of the forts and the forts ability to track missiles.

Let's recall Honor's quote:

In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

That should enable the platforms to act like PDLCs on steroids.

Late edit: You mentioned local PDLC fire. With 10,000 platforms why wouldn't that be significantly effective?

Theemile wrote:While Grasers are used by the RHN for defense, they are not used as such by the RMN. Why? Their larger size makes them difficult to quickly track and reacquire fact moving targets. Do they work in a counter missile role - yes, but very poorly, and only if they are connected to a counter missile fire control system. But counter missile fire control is separate from ship killer fire control - which not saying it's can't be done, you just need to design it that way, and you can't whip it up on the fly.

In this case, the platforms will probably be out of place for the counter missile role - due to the relatively short range of the Graser, to protect forts, the platforms would either need to be integrated with the forts, or between the Forts and the attack vector. The Platforms will be arrayed between the forts and the Emergence lanes (which lay in the "middle" of the Junction zone) and missile threats will come from attacks originating outside the Junction hyper limit, so the platforms will be on the back side of the forts, and probably only able to range the missile targets in the last second or so of their flight.

IINM the RMN uses a BC grade graser for an antimissile role on at least one of the LACs per the drunken, and as of late drunker, wiki.

penny wrote:I was thinking the platforms could simply use the fire control system that is already tied into the forts; which should also make the platform capable of using the sensors of the forts and the forts ability to track missiles.

Let's recall Honor's quote:

In fact, she’s already worked out the quickest way to run up a remote platform tied into the central fire control system of a standard terminus fort.”

That should enable the platforms to act like PDLCs on steroids.

Late edit: You mentioned local PDLC fire. With 10,000 platforms why wouldn't that be significantly effective?

Theemile wrote:While Grasers are used by the RHN for defense, they are not used as such by the RMN. Why? Their larger size makes them difficult to quickly track and reacquire fact moving targets. Do they work in a counter missile role - yes, but very poorly, and only if they are connected to a counter missile fire control system. But counter missile fire control is separate from ship killer fire control - which not saying it's can't be done, you just need to design it that way, and you can't whip it up on the fly.

In this case, the platforms will probably be out of place for the counter missile role - due to the relatively short range of the Graser, to protect forts, the platforms would either need to be integrated with the forts, or between the Forts and the attack vector. The Platforms will be arrayed between the forts and the Emergence lanes (which lay in the "middle" of the Junction zone) and missile threats will come from attacks originating outside the Junction hyper limit, so the platforms will be on the back side of the forts, and probably only able to range the missile targets in the last second or so of their flight.

penny wrote:IINM the RMN uses a BC grade graser for an antimissile role on at least one of the LACs, per the drunken and as of lately drunker wiki.

I believe that is correct, in fact I think that graser have always been a part of the anti-missile defense. With the trend to many more numerous grasers on ships, it with probably increase their use in an anti-missile role. I remember reading, a long time ago and have not found it since, that a graser is able to make multiple lower power shots in place of one big full power shot (something that an X-ray laser could not do).

Therefore, if the fire control is available, I would expect that these graser platforms will be used in an anti-missile role; something that a mine could never do.

PS: The threat analysis on incoming missiles occurs prior to the CM fire control and so it is not clear to me that the PDLC's are dependent on the CM controls; therefore I do not understand why a graser in anti-missile mode would need that tie either.

penny wrote:IINM the RMN uses a BC grade graser for an antimissile role on at least one of the LACs per the drunken, and as of late drunker, wiki.

IIRC the RMN will take shots with their main energy mounts against missiles (if they've nothing better to shoot at) -- but the Peeps are supposed to be more effective at that tactic. But in neither case is it anywhere near as effective as a PDLC mount at hitting an incoming missile.

The main energy mounts just lack the fast and fine control, or the cyclic rate, of a proper point defense energy mount.

(And if you're talking about using the platforms being build with ex-SLN grasers for anti-missile defense then those only have 5-6 shots before maintenance; so you're not even getting to take many of your low probability shots against incoming missiles. Well, unless they've some low power mode that would let them eke out more shots before going offline pending servicing)