Are missile pods obsolete?

Are missile pods obsolete?

Once upon a time, ships had to turn their broadsides toward their target to fire missiles. This limited their opportunities to fire and the size of their salvos. Ships needed launchers capable of throwing missiles beyond the ship's sidewall. Missiles were used to soften up the enemy, before closing to energy-weapon range.

Then the pod was invented. Ships could simply drop them off, using the ship's own acceleration to separate them from the ship. Pods could be pointed in almost any direction, and salvos were limited only by the number of fire controllers. The power of the first strike made missiles the dominant weapon.

But now, the latest missiles can delay activation after launching and be turned to fire "off-bore". In essence, they're one-missile pods. So why bother with pods? Dump as many missiles out the stern as you want in a salvo, in whatever mix of types. (And Apollo multiplies the number of missiles each controller can handle.)

Bill Woods wrote:Are missile pods obsolete?

Once upon a time, ships had to turn their broadsides toward their target to fire missiles. This limited their opportunities to fire and the size of their salvos. Ships needed launchers capable of throwing missiles beyond the ship's sidewall. Missiles were used to soften up the enemy, before closing to energy-weapon range.

Then the pod was invented. Ships could simply drop them off, using the ship's own acceleration to separate them from the ship. Pods could be pointed in almost any direction, and salvos were limited only by the number of fire controllers. The power of the first strike made missiles the dominant weapon.

But now, the latest missiles can delay activation after launching and be turned to fire "off-bore". In essence, they're one-missile pods. So why bother with pods? Dump as many missiles out the stern as you want in a salvo, in whatever mix of types. (And Apollo multiplies the number of missiles each controller can handle.)

Two SD(p)s going mano a mano are going to end up as mutually glowing fireballs, but an MDM firing SD(p) will reduce any other single ship or reasonable set of smaller ships to scrap metal and emerge relatively unscathed. That said, different classes of pod-layers short of a superdreadnought probably are outdated. A current generation Nike, for example is superior to an Agammemnon, for example, because not only can it carry the same missile count overall, it's tougher AND can add up to 80 Mark-23 pods for an extra punch if needed.

Same percentage kick roughly for the Sag-C and Roland vs. comparably sized ships in other space navies. But while freighters and ammo colliers don't fire missiles, they can support smaller ships with shoals of pods, a la the Battle of Spindle, with 12 Sag-C's acting as missile control platforms. There's also system defense pods which can be concealed usefully in a battle sequence as well.

What might be relatively obsolete is the ability to tow pods in a fleet engagement. At the Battle of Manticore, a strategy we forum dwellers have sort of come to the conclusion that an effective tactic for Home Fleet would have been to have some of ships to put out enough long range missile fire as a suppressor to keep Tourville's Second Fleet from deploying pods of their own. In Filerata's Folly, they allowed him to deploy pods, but Honor knew that even with 51K worth of in Cataphract C missiles, range plus her formations weren't in danger or she would have tasked some of her ships to do something earlier.

Bill Woods wrote:Are missile pods obsolete?

Once upon a time, ships had to turn their broadsides toward their target to fire missiles. This limited their opportunities to fire and the size of their salvos. Ships needed launchers capable of throwing missiles beyond the ship's sidewall. Missiles were used to soften up the enemy, before closing to energy-weapon range.

Then the pod was invented. Ships could simply drop them off, using the ship's own acceleration to separate them from the ship. Pods could be pointed in almost any direction, and salvos were limited only by the number of fire controllers. The power of the first strike made missiles the dominant weapon.

But now, the latest missiles can delay activation after launching and be turned to fire "off-bore". In essence, they're one-missile pods. So why bother with pods? Dump as many missiles out the stern as you want in a salvo, in whatever mix of types. (And Apollo multiplies the number of missiles each controller can handle.)

The point of the missile pod is to provide a mass-driver launcher that fires off the missiles clear of the wedge. The point of the missile tubes is to do the same thing.

Off-bore missile fire does mean that you can get the missiles clear of the wedge in whatever direction and then they take it from there. It doesn't mean that you can get as many missiles as you'd like as fast as you'd like clear of the wedge.

If you can count on accelerating way from the missiles, you can count on them clearing the wedge as you leave them behind. Someone better informed than I am with better calculating skills may be able to tell you how well that would work - in particular, we'd need some sort of figure for how many missiles can be tossed out the stern of a waller in what period of time. What you get there is a whole lot like a podlayer, only with the missiles going out one at a time instead of clustered in a pod. But when you have to accelerate to put any distance between you and the missiles, and you have to drop them in sequence to give them that distance from one another - well, the missile dump truck idea may not play out so well.

Bill Woods wrote:Are missile pods obsolete?

Once upon a time, ships had to turn their broadsides toward their target to fire missiles. This limited their opportunities to fire and the size of their salvos. Ships needed launchers capable of throwing missiles beyond the ship's sidewall. Missiles were used to soften up the enemy, before closing to energy-weapon range.

Then the pod was invented. Ships could simply drop them off, using the ship's own acceleration to separate them from the ship. Pods could be pointed in almost any direction, and salvos were limited only by the number of fire controllers. The power of the first strike made missiles the dominant weapon.

But now, the latest missiles can delay activation after launching and be turned to fire "off-bore". In essence, they're one-missile pods. So why bother with pods? Dump as many missiles out the stern as you want in a salvo, in whatever mix of types. (And Apollo multiplies the number of missiles each controller can handle.)

You can't just dump missiles out the back. Part of the reason for a missile tube (whether on a ship or on a pod) is to charge up the missile before it is launched. So you will still have to launch the missiles from some kind of tube that charges the missile.

There has been some discussion on the forum about whether a more traditional superdreadnought with tubes could be designed to fire effectively as fast as a podnought. It would require an awful lot of tubes, and not everyone was convinced that you could get that many on a ship.

Even if such a design were possible, pods would still be useful for other reasons. For one, you can tractor your pods to the ship, and drag them behind you--you would not be able to do that with all those individual missiles. For another, pods can be hauled or controlled by other ships too small to launch the capital missiles. And of course pods are useful in conjunction with forts and other fixed installations.

David has an infodump on the relative advantages of tubes versus pod launchers which may be relevant: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/287/1.

Pods very nearly double the mass requirements per missile though. You got 2000 pods costing 5 megatons of mass (not counting the central pod storage itself), thus 250 tons per capital missile.

Something that would save those extra 100 or so tons of mass would be awesome.

Bill Woods wrote:Are missile pods obsolete?

Once upon a time, ships had to turn their broadsides toward their target to fire missiles. This limited their opportunities to fire and the size of their salvos. Ships needed launchers capable of throwing missiles beyond the ship's sidewall. Missiles were used to soften up the enemy, before closing to energy-weapon range.

Then the pod was invented. Ships could simply drop them off, using the ship's own acceleration to separate them from the ship. Pods could be pointed in almost any direction, and salvos were limited only by the number of fire controllers. The power of the first strike made missiles the dominant weapon.

But now, the latest missiles can delay activation after launching and be turned to fire "off-bore". In essence, they're one-missile pods. So why bother with pods? Dump as many missiles out the stern as you want in a salvo, in whatever mix of types. (And Apollo multiplies the number of missiles each controller can handle.)

Well one advantage of pods is that it can be a lot easier to accommodate new missiles. Going from SDM to capacitor powered MDMs was a major shipyard refit for a SD; and it would have been almost as much work to upgrade it again to fusion powered MDMs.


But for SD(P)s it was almost (but not quite) as simple as dumping the pods of Mk41 capacitor powered birds, and loading up on new (higher capacity) pods designed for (smaller) Mk31 fusion powered ones.

And refitting a tube waller for oversized Apollo control missiles would have been it's own kind of hell to do; plus the design tradeoffs for all oversized tubes or else worrying that a freak hit or two to the Apollo control missile tubes have a disproportionate impact on your offensive fire control (as all the missiles that now don't have a controller chew up a lot more of your fire control slots and are a lot less effective; having been stripped of FTL control).

Who knows what the next revolution in missiles will bring; but pods will be the easiest way to quickly deploy it into your wallers.


So even though you could build something like an SD scale Nike, and it'd be a mean nasty customer, I don't think SD(P)s are obsolete yet. (Maybe revisit it once technology plateaus again, and you aren't worried about new major changes to missile size, power, or handling)

Dunno about that.


An SD-sized ship has a broadside 500+ meters long and 200 meters wide. That's 40 times the "frontage" of a Roland's hammerhead, on each broadside.


1) 480 tubes per broadside capable of firing Mark 16s or CM canisters of the same size, every 16 seconds.
2) Apollo tubes on the hammerheads.


You drown your opponent with numbers. Send a swarm of two thousand missiles (a single minute's or four broadsides worth of firing) and even with perfect kill rates on its CMs and PDLCs, the enemy will only kill half of them (assuming an Invictus SD as target). The surviving 600, (assuming its ECCM can spoof 40% even with Apollo guidance) will crush even a superdreadnought.

Defensively, same thing. 480 canisters of 3 CMs each is as many CMs as an Invictus-class could hope to fire in 10 CM broadsides and you're doing it in one.



And eventually, either MDMs will be miniaturized down to the 100-ton size range or SD tonnage will go to 12 megatons instead of 9 and you could afford to have 480 MDM-sized launchers on your ship.
(or both - I don't see either taking more than 20 years)

MDM + fusion/balistic ability turns initial velocity from a missile tube irrelevant as a factor in missile combat.

Therefore the only real need for a missile tube is to provide some amount of spread keeping fratricide checked.

Charging can happen anywhere. Per RFC, needs massive armor in case onboard fusion plant goes BOOM. Check, can still happen anywhere.

For alpha strike, I am assuming you are thinking in terms of charge(start fusion plant), dump out back, or however you do it, and then activate them all at once.

We know 60% of initial power for wedge activation comes from the ship(capacitor birds), but missiles are Fusion powered now with the ability to completely go ballistic between phases and Re-initiate their wedges. Something capacitor birds cannot do as they do not have the energy budget to RESTART their wedges. So, in effect, alpha strike still is a viable option assuming the wedge initiation fratricide issue can be ironed out.

The only question is: Once Micro fusion is initiated for on-board power, how long is it good for regarding wedge initiation? Well, at least 10minutes[2 stages + ballistic phase] A pod initiates 12/14 or 9 birds all at once in a 12s window. 12/12=1 14/12=1.17 or 9/12=.75 verses 1/18s = 0.005 cycle time and less numerous energy initiation points for DDM, we can assume it ~equivalent for MK-23.
0.75*6 = 3
1*6 = 6
1.17*6 = 7.02
verses 18*number of swiss cheese holes in your armor. Call it 80 0.05*80 = 4

Maybe the answer is revolver missile tube initiation points in SD broadsides instead of singular tubes, turning one missile sized hole in the armor into the ability to start as many rounds as you wish in your "revolver", on the exterior of your armor. This would solve the "problem" making pods for alpha strike in SD's irrelevant. Still have to figure out how to launch Apollo birds.

Belial666 wrote:Dunno about that.


An SD-sized ship has a broadside 500+ meters long and 200 meters wide. That's 40 times the "frontage" of a Roland's hammerhead, on each broadside.


1) 480 tubes per broadside capable of firing Mark 16s or CM canisters of the same size, every 16 seconds.
2) Apollo tubes on the hammerheads.


You drown your opponent with numbers. Send a swarm of two thousand missiles (a single minute's or four broadsides worth of firing) and even with perfect kill rates on its CMs and PDLCs, the enemy will only kill half of them (assuming an Invictus SD as target). The surviving 600, (assuming its ECCM can spoof 40% even with Apollo guidance) will crush even a superdreadnought.


Defensively, same thing. 480 canisters of 3 CMs each is as many CMs as an Invictus-class could hope to fire in 10 CM broadsides and you're doing it in one.

IIRC someone (might have been Lord Skimper) brought that comparison up before and got shot down by Duckk or RFC because (IIRC) the cluster pack of Mk16 tubes in a Roland's hammerhead doesn't scale past the 2x3 layout, and even if it did the missiles wouldn't be able to spread (in distance or time) enough to avoid wedge fratricide.


So don't expect SDs spraying thousands of DDMs [G]

Holes for missiles are 3 meters wide even for the largest, can have armored doors easily, can be at an angle and don't lead very deep into the ship.


Holes for pods are 12 meters wide, armoring them is more problematic, can't be at an angle, and lead all the way to the ship's core.