New Manty ship ideas.

Rakhmamort wrote:Keep on thinking that enemy commanders would never realize that with the LACs adding depth to the missile defense, their salvos are worth nothing. Even a kid would lash out at the things he can take out instead of whacking against something whose paint he can't even scratch.

Ok.


You keep right on thinking that shooting at defenders instead of shooters give you any chance of survival.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:Keep on thinking that enemy commanders would never realize that with the LACs adding depth to the missile defense, their salvos are worth nothing. Even a kid would lash out at the things he can take out instead of whacking against something whose paint he can't even scratch.

Ok.


You keep right on thinking that shooting at defenders instead of shooters give you any chance of survival.

If the defenders are preventing your fire from reaching the shooters, then shooting at the defenders is your only chance of ever hitting the shooters.

kzt wrote:Compensators either work or don't work, they don't sort of work. Missiles are stated to have compensators built into the drive system. So the missile is in zero g for the entire trip, the only felt acceleration is the grav launcher. Which might also not impose a shock depending on how it works.

Which would be the case if missile "wedge compensation" worked the same way as starship compensators, it doesn't from this infodump:
"Missile wedges use a slightly different variant of impeller technology. They don't use inertial compensators at all. Or, rather, the minimal compensator effect needed to permit them to accelerate that such velocities without suffering serious damage is built into the nodes themselves, and not into a separate compensator. There have been efforts -- quite a few of them -- over the centuries to adapt this type of designed to starships, but without success, primarily because the amount of inertia which can be disposed of is insufficient for a manned vessel. Missile components can be engineered to survive the equivalent of thousands of gravities of acceleration; human beings can't. A portion of all of the man-centuries of research which has gone into trying to find some way to adapt missile propulsion systems to manned vessels did find its way into the "beta-squared" nodes of the RMN, but even Manticoran is still hopelessly far away of finding any way to build compensatorless manned vessels."

Lord Skimper wrote:One still wonders how a missile can survive 90,000 gees of acceleration. 900 yeah maybe, 9,000 if you say it has special technology that let's it but 90,000?

This also has one wondering how fast / far a keyhole system can travel. Supposedly it has a large battle computer could have powerful sidewalls and should be able to carry launch CM / Vipers. Plus all the PD. One could also put a LAC Shrike sized graser or two or three on it. With 3000+ gee acceleration, it has no crew, it would make a great defense CM PD platform and super Apollo. Plus with Grasers could sneak up for a surprise graser attack.

A CLAC type ship could carry 20 to 40 of these launch them then fall back. This might also counter the missile pods. With 6 CM / Viper launchers Roland Chase mounted style. Such a craft / Platform could cause all sorts of havok offensively and defensively in large groups without risking any lives and being very fast may replace LAC.

A Keyhole does not carry counter-missiles. Nor does it carry a graser. If you were to install those onto a Keyhole, you would greatly increase the size of the thing. In effect, what you are proposing is an unmanned AI controlled ship. David has stated several times that he will not do that in the Honorverse. I believe we have told you this several times.

You can't put 20 keyholes onto a ship. They are simply too big, even if we are talking about Keyhole II instead of your hypothetical offensive Keyhole.

SWM wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:One still wonders how a missile can survive 90,000 gees of acceleration. 900 yeah maybe, 9,000 if you say it has special technology that let's it but 90,000?

This also has one wondering how fast / far a keyhole system can travel. Supposedly it has a large battle computer could have powerful sidewalls and should be able to carry launch CM / Vipers. Plus all the PD. One could also put a LAC Shrike sized graser or two or three on it. With 3000+ gee acceleration, it has no crew, it would make a great defense CM PD platform and super Apollo. Plus with Grasers could sneak up for a surprise graser attack.

A CLAC type ship could carry 20 to 40 of these launch them then fall back. This might also counter the missile pods. With 6 CM / Viper launchers Roland Chase mounted style. Such a craft / Platform could cause all sorts of havok offensively and defensively in large groups without risking any lives and being very fast may replace LAC.

A Keyhole does not carry counter-missiles. Nor does it carry a graser. If you were to install those onto a Keyhole, you would greatly increase the size of the thing. In effect, what you are proposing is an unmanned AI controlled ship. David has stated several times that he will not do that in the Honorverse. I believe we have told you this several times.

You can't put 20 keyholes onto a ship. They are simply too big, even if we are talking about Keyhole II instead of your hypothetical offensive Keyhole.

Oh, you could drag them along behind a ship, no problem. It would just require really big donkeys like what was used in the Havenite attack on Manticore.

But you could probably build a destroyer for what it would cost to build a keyhole drone, and a destroyer is far, far more versatile.

That's not to say that the many multiple keyholes concept doesn't have a role anywhere. I could VERY easily see parasite keyhole drones assigned to junction forts, for example.

But for any application other than junction forts or perhaps fixed orbital defenses? I can't see something like this, and the idea of a highly advanced, mobile attack drone with real teeth is something we haven't seem a hint of in the Honorverse yet.

Better to build destroyers. They can do more roles.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:Keep on thinking that enemy commanders would never realize that with the LACs adding depth to the missile defense, their salvos are worth nothing. Even a kid would lash out at the things he can take out instead of whacking against something whose paint he can't even scratch.

Ok.


You keep right on thinking that shooting at defenders instead of shooters give you any chance of survival.

I suggest you go back and read the books again. Many of them emphasise the need to attrit the enemy screen to improve your chances of taking down the big boys.

Honor of the Queen specifically identifies the failure of Thunder to eliminate Trobadour in the initial engagement as a pointer that Fearless was up against a less capable crew.

If your opponent has a forward deployed shielding force, expending a couple salvos to degrade or eliminate said shield so that more of your shipkillers can reach their targets is certainly not a stupid idea.

Lord Skimper wrote:Energy torpedoes are big because they are made to be fired by people on a ship. Fired many times. A lighter smaller automated energy torpeodo made to be fired tens of times would be a lot smaller.

And what makes you think that Sonja/Shannon and the rest of R/D would spend their resources and time developing this system? As has been pointed out, there are more efficient systems available to use.

The E wrote:If your opponent has a forward deployed shielding force, expending a couple salvos to degrade or eliminate said shield so that more of your shipkillers can reach their targets is certainly not a stupid idea.

Yep, but, like most things military, it's a trade-off.

What percentage of your fire is that shielding force attriting, how many salvos will it take to eliminate them, and is it worth leaving the main target undamaged for that period of time?


Sometimes it's worth it to leave the main target alone for a few salvos to eliminate the shielding force (accepting that that means you'll likely be damaged, and they won't, when you're able to turn your fire on them).

And sometimes the shielding force would take too many missiles to eliminate and you're better off getting fewer but earlier hits in against the main offensive threat.


Then towed pods alter the variables again because you only get, at most, a couple heavy punches with them. Plus they've all got to go in the first couple minutes (before incoming fire reaches you). If you waste them all killing a defensive screen, then you've only got your internal tubes left to engage the main force, and you're likely going to take non-trivial damage from their initial pod launch.



The trick is correctly judging the situation your facing and determining the least bad target selection.

If the enemy force is so weak a lashing out at the screen is the only concern, then the LAC's can still be employed in the wall and there is still enough missile defense to block enemy fire.
In the end the LAC screen is expendable compared to the SD's. If the enemy is forced to expend significant amounts of his fire to strip the wall of his screen, then the screen fulfilled its purpose too. No one wants to waste LAC's but they are designed to be more expendable than full hyper capable ships, so if some need to be sacrificed to protect the wallers, then that is part of their mission.