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What about CM pods?

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What about CM pods?
Post by BarryKirk   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:35 am

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What about CM pods? Would that help for missile defense?

Or even better, put a low power impeller on a CM pod. That would allow them to be prepositioned before launch.
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by Potato   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:39 am

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There are already power missile pods. They are called "LACs."
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by Dafmeister   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:45 am

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RFCs view on the subject:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/163/1

It's an old post, but the fundamentals haven't changed much in the interim.
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 9:57 am

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Dafmeister wrote:RFCs view on the subject:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/163/1

It's an old post, but the fundamentals haven't changed much in the interim.
I'd also point out that at Solon, Honor's Keyhole equipped ships were already physically capable of launching more CMs than they could control. (Time to launch 11 salvos, but could only control 8)

"The Mod-2-XR counter-missile launcher had a cycle time of eight seconds, which meant there was time for eleven launches per tube. [snip keyhole description] They still couldn't control eleven salvos . . . but they could control eight, and each of those eight contained far more missiles than anyone else could have managed."

So as things are there's no point to further increasing the raw number of CMs you can launch without also providing additional fire control for them. CM Pods unfortunately fall into that former category; bringing no additional fire control.
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by BarryKirk   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 10:02 am

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Potato wrote:There are already power missile pods. They are called "LACs."



I was thinking more of a shorter range, really cheap unmanned version of a LAC.

It would be more to allow you to launch CMs from further out.

Also, this would increase the CM capability of a podnaught which doesn't carry LACs.

The idea is to launch the CM pods after an incoming long range missile wave has been launched at you. The CM pods head towards the incoming missiles and launch their CMs at a distance from the ship.

One can put an Apollo capability into the pod for CM control. You don't need an actuall Apollo missile because the CMs only operate at short range from the launching pod.
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by BarryKirk   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 10:08 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Dafmeister wrote:RFCs view on the subject:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/163/1

It's an old post, but the fundamentals haven't changed much in the interim.
I'd also point out that at Solon, Honor's Keyhole equipped ships were already physically capable of launching more CMs than they could control. (Time to launch 11 salvos, but could only control 8)

"The Mod-2-XR counter-missile launcher had a cycle time of eight seconds, which meant there was time for eleven launches per tube. [snip keyhole description] They still couldn't control eleven salvos . . . but they could control eight, and each of those eight contained far more missiles than anyone else could have managed."

So as things are there's no point to further increasing the raw number of CMs you can launch without also providing additional fire control for them. CM Pods unfortunately fall into that former category; bringing no additional fire control.


This allows your first wave of CMs to be launched earlier because the pod travels towards the missile wave before launching CMs.

You also have much more flexibility for missile defense.

Say you need to send one of your escort destroyers off to scout something out. You send it along with a CM pod.
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by BarryKirk   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 10:17 am

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Dafmeister wrote:RFCs view on the subject:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/163/1

It's an old post, but the fundamentals haven't changed much in the interim.



Aha, just read that article... Oh well... Guess this idea has been tried before.
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by kzt   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 2:28 pm

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There are some interesting ideas on how to increase anti-missile defenses that have been kicked around by us. There are use cases for regular CM in pods, but they are limited. My suspicion is that pods could be best used to create some sort of anti-missile layer out at 20M km+, but this would be a pretty expensive solution as I think you need to essentially use a Mk23 Apollo pod converted to AM purposes.

David has briefly mentioned some different ideas, but he likes to keep what is really going to happen as a surprise for the books.
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 4:20 pm

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kzt wrote:There are some interesting ideas on how to increase anti-missile defenses that have been kicked around by us. There are use cases for regular CM in pods, but they are limited. My suspicion is that pods could be best used to create some sort of anti-missile layer out at 20M km+, but this would be a pretty expensive solution as I think you need to essentially use a Mk23 Apollo pod converted to AM purposes.

David has briefly mentioned some different ideas, but he likes to keep what is really going to happen as a surprise for the books.
Yeah, we're going to need something new to increase defensive depth (and like you said plenty of us have advanced our favorites over the last few years :D).

But basically my understanding is that, with the current Keyhole II tech, Mantie CMs and CM tubes allow you to:
1) Potentially launch more than you can actually control
2) Fire them marginally farther than you can effectively control them (due to light-speed telemetry lag)

Any breakthrough is going to have to address at least one of theses limitations to be of real benefit. Increasing range without improving long range accuracy is useless, as is increasing numbers without the ability to control them.
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Re: What about CM pods?
Post by hanuman   » Tue Jul 08, 2014 7:45 pm

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I don't think CM-pods would be very economical. They are so much smaller than attack birds that they can be stored in relatively large numbers inside a ship's magazines, whereas the reason for missile pods is that they're so large that a ship's magazines can contain only a limited number of them.

The need to deploy more missiles during combat than what can be stored WITHIN a ship makes it worthwhile to spend the money to build housing, power plants and launchers for all those pods.

But because counter-missiles are so small, they can be stored in high enough numbers inside a ship's magazine to make it unnecessary to make that investment in pods.
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