New Manty ship ideas.

Duckk wrote:Furthermore, energy torpedoes normally siphon plasma from the ship's fusion plant, which has plenty of plasma to spare. The microfusion plants Ghost Rider uses doesn't have that kind of excess juice to fire a weapon.

Oh good. I thought I remembered that, glad someone else did and already mentioned it.

Theemile wrote:Also, when have we seen a Apollo controlled missile fly with enough control to cross a ship's T? If you could do that, wouldn't it make more sense to hit it with a normal Laserhead - or better, just fly a contact nuke up there and do it right?

A third problem is the hammerhead is not completely undefended. During battle, ships usually try to take salvos on thier broadsides, so to hit the T , a missile (Traveling >.8c) needs to miss the ship and fire down the throat while it misses. This gives the Broadside PDCLs extra time to engage (since it's not firing at 50-30,000km) and the forward arc PDCLs can engage as well. in addition you need to fire a ballistic object down a narrow path created by the sidewalls and the wedge.

In addition, while I don't have the exact geometry in front of me to do the math, but I'm not certain at MDM velocities it is even possible to even hit the target ship - most likely, the only trajectories available would have the plasma smashing into the far sidewall.

Well, a ET appears to be significantly more damaging than a laser. If I magically had a ship across a target's unprotected 'T' I'd much rather to pouring ET fire on it than laser, or even graser, fire. But that doesn't change all the other problems with his idea.

I agree with your other points and I'd add that bow and stern sidewalls are ubiquitous in Haven sector warships, and once the concept is known it won't take long for others to copy. Those only degrade laser/graser fire but stop ET fire cold.
(Ok, sure the SLN doesn't have them, but you don't need new 'wonder weapons' to deal with them [G] )

So there's also a chance that (unless you can cross a ship's fore and aft T's simultaneously) there's also going to be a complete bow (or stern) wall up so you don't even have to 20ish km wide 'tunnel' to shoot down at the hammerhead.

Jonathan_S wrote:Well, a ET appears to be significantly more damaging than a laser. If I magically had a ship across a target's unprotected 'T' I'd much rather to pouring ET fire on it than laser, or even graser, fire.

I was actually implying that it would be a current tactic with current Apollo hardware if such driving could be done. On the other hand, the "uses of Apollo" have seemed hamfisted and like everyone is learning on the fly, instead of good sims working out uses in advance of the hardware being deployed, so we should not sell Apollo short. However, the 8 second 2-way FTL lag makes precision driving "difficult", especially in the environment we are discussing.

ET's seem to do damage comparable to a near miss with a "contact nuke". They're much, much more damaging than energy weapons of the same size. But they're useless..a graser outranges them by quite a bit and a graser isn't stopped by sidewalls. Given how everybody except the SLN now has bow and stern walls they're even more useless.

Or to put it another way....the first war actually saw a number of engagements that got into energy range. Not one made use of the grav lance/energy torpedo because the losing side was vaporized by conventional grasers and lasers through their sidewalls before they got that close (or, as at Nightengale, the energy range engagement was brief, as short as geometry would allow and at extreme energy range, so there was no intention to get close enough for an Etorp to find a way around a sidewall, and possibly not even close enough to get in range even if no sidewall was present)

The only exception was 4th Yeltsin, but neither side had ETs there, as the capital ships on both sides were designed by Haven, and the interpenetration only occurred because of deception. The BBs were slaughtered with massive overkill by 5 battered SDs..and the SD's survived only because BB's traditionally have light energy armaments for a capital ship. Had those been equivalent forces interpenetrating, both would have been vaporized by their conventional energy broadsides.

Given current fire control and lethality of grasers in their extreme effective range it is pointless to have any significant energy weapon with shorter range than a graser. Many would argue the Graser's day is done too in an era of MDMs, as no capital ship in the 2nd war ever got into energy range of another. However as long as Shrike-type ships can be built you'll at least need them to discourage mass assaults with LACs. LAC waves vs MDM-capable walls of battle did occur, and if the SD(P)s in those walls had skimped on energy weapons, they might have actually worked.

As for putting an ET on a missile...no. They need an all-up plasma bottle from a fusion plant for ammo.

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Well, a ET appears to be significantly more damaging than a laser. If I magically had a ship across a target's unprotected 'T' I'd much rather to pouring ET fire on it than laser, or even graser, fire.

I was actually implying that it would be a current tactic with current Apollo hardware if such driving could be done. On the other hand, the "uses of Apollo" have seemed hamfisted and like everyone is learning on the fly, instead of good sims working out uses in advance of the hardware being deployed, so we should not sell Apollo short. However, the 8 second 2-way FTL lag makes precision driving "difficult", especially in the environment we are discussing.

Ah, yes that I completely agreed with you on (but I guess I didn't actually say so.
Sorry about that omission.

I'd think the only time you'd bother going for a throat or kilt shot, even with an Apollo, is against targets that have rolled behind their wedges. You're going to have to overfly the wedge anyway to get an angle so you might as well send some of the missiles fore and aft of the target rather than sending them all over or under. But otherwise, yeah, the extra damage you might get from achieving that position doesn't seem worth the increased risk of not surviving to reach the laserhead's firing point.

I suppose it is just possible to put a laserhead nuke with a non-wedge manuvering system as an attachment on a Ghost Rider and then try and get it in front of an enemy ship. This would probably mean the Ghost Rider would have to manuver itself into a collision course like it was trying to ram the target from the front. It could drop the nuke and let the warhead's thrusters keep it heading into the throat of the target while the Ghost Rider veers off (not in the direction that would take it into the target's wedge).
That could just ruin the target's day up to and including doing serious damage that would make it an easier target of other strikes or take out enough nodes to keep it from escaping into hyper.
The major problem is getting the Ghost Rider into the right course and when could you use this approch other than the opening shots of an engagement where you can project the opponents course before they start manuvering. It might be usefull other time but you put the drone right in front of a warship intent on using active sensors to track it's targets.

Why not just ram the opening with the wedge of the ghost rider. Filereta commented that the Ghost rider / Hermes bout was within his wall 10,000 km out. Just have the wedge crash right trough the armour. It should be able to cut its way in as the wedge is invulnerable and the armour is not.

Alternatively a ghost rider should be able to get close enough to missile pods and either fly through them or detonate a nuke close enough to disable or destroy them.

Also if one can make a graser torpedo an energy torpedo shouldn't be a problem. Not good against sideways but it should take out anything not sidewall/ wedge protected like missile pods.

Alternatively instead of using a fast missile maybe a heavy stealth slow missile or torpedo might work good too. Ghost rider can fly out to well within laserhead range without detection. Why not put a laser head on a ghost rider drone or ghost rider stealth on a slow speed missile, with GR endurance. Then just do a Yawata like strike on their ships.

Talk to them and explain that they are about to die if they don't give up asap.

Also good is that if they are like ghost rider they could be recovered and reused.

Lord Skimper wrote:Why not just ram the opening with the wedge of the ghost rider. Filereta commented that the Ghost rider / Hermes bout was within his wall 10,000 km out. Just have the wedge crash right trough the armour. It should be able to cut its way in as the wedge is invulnerable and the armour is not.

"Within his wall" means within his wall of battle, not within his wedge. The wedge of the Ghost Rider is wider than the gap between the sidewalls of a ship. The Ghost Rider cannot get close to the target ship without ramming its wedge against the sidewalls, destroying the Ghost Rider.

Alternatively a ghost rider should be able to get close enough to missile pods and either fly through them or detonate a nuke close enough to disable or destroy them.

That is somewhat plausible, if you are going against Solarian technology. Of course, the SLN doesn't have pods, so it's kind of moot. Against Haven Quadrant level technology, Manticore would not be able to get a Ghost Rider that close.

Also if one can make a graser torpedo an energy torpedo shouldn't be a problem. Not good against sideways but it should take out anything not sidewall/ wedge protected like missile pods.

If one can make a graser missile, you would use a graser missile instead of an energy torpedo missile. A graser missile is much more powerful. Of course, only the Mesans can build a graser missile. And being able to build a graser missile has nothing to do with being able to build an energy torpedo missile. You've been told multiple times that an energy torpedo requires plasma from a great big fusion generator. They can't even fit a fusion generator that big in a LAC.

Alternatively instead of using a fast missile maybe a heavy stealth slow missile or torpedo might work good too. Ghost rider can fly out to well within laserhead range without detection. Why not put a laser head on a ghost rider drone or ghost rider stealth on a slow speed missile, with GR endurance. Then just do a Yawata like strike on their ships.

That's been done. In fact, it was Solarian tech--it killed the Manticoran Prime Minister at Grayson and nearly got the Queen.

Lord Skimper wrote:Why not just ram the opening with the wedge of the ghost rider. Filereta commented that the Ghost rider / Hermes bout was within his wall 10,000 km out. Just have the wedge crash right trough the armour. It should be able to cut its way in as the wedge is invulnerable and the armour is not.

First of all, that was Tsang, not Filareta.

Second, they were able to park that relay so close because the SLN task force was parked there for days, motionless, and not at action stations. They weren't looking for anything being inserted so close to them. Against someone who is at general quarters, with active sensors ready, it would have been a lot harder to get a Ghost Rider drone that close. At Saltash, the SLN battlecruisers knew about the Ghost Rider drones 1 and a half light seconds.

Third, if you did suspect someone was trying to get wedge kills on you, you would as a matter of routine perform evasive actions in order to get the missile/drone/whatever to impact the wedge or sidewalls. Long before the laser head or even the contact nuke, missiles used their wedges as the weapon, and countermeasures have long since been known. Even the SLN would be able to easily swat down ramming attacks.

Alternatively a ghost rider should be able to get close enough to missile pods and either fly through them or detonate a nuke close enough to disable or destroy them.

That's Mistletoe.

Also if one can make a graser torpedo an energy torpedo shouldn't be a problem. Not good against sideways but it should take out anything not sidewall/ wedge protected like missile pods.

And did you notice the part where the graser torpedo was much larger than any missile or drone, right?

Alternatively instead of using a fast missile maybe a heavy stealth slow missile or torpedo might work good too. Ghost rider can fly out to well within laserhead range without detection. Why not put a laser head on a ghost rider drone or ghost rider stealth on a slow speed missile, with GR endurance. Then just do a Yawata like strike on their ships.

Talk to them and explain that they are about to die if they don't give up asap.

Also good is that if they are like ghost rider they could be recovered and reused.

Go reread At All Costs. In order to get into attack range requires the drones to go active such that they burned through their stealth, and they had to loiter outside 1.5 million kilometers of their target. Those requirements mean that a prepared target is going to be a lot harder to take down.

Pg 288 A Rising Thunder

Line 26 hardcover.

"It just got worse and worse, he thought. She must have had her platforms practically inside his wall to get that kind of information, and his sensors had never ever seen the damned things!"

Filareta not Tsang.

If those platforms, which our best of the Sollies couldn't see, can get that close, with laser heads. Those platforms could punch out and ship before theother ship knew what happened. Let alone putting up active jamming to totally befuddle any sollie.

Dazzle and dragon teeth while the laser heads take out the ships or at least the pods. Although one wonders about a point defense laser cluster for taking out missile pods. And any missiles someone might fire.

Filareta's missile pods. Albeit Technodyne missile pods. Could be eliminated all at once. Katana Point defense clusters are powerful enough to knock out other LACs they should have no problem taking out pods or other sensor drone platforms as well as any fired missiles. Which will still be moving pretty slow, compared to their final run speed.

Perhaps a ghost rider platform is not big enough for a point defence cluster though?

Given the size of a ghost rider missile though, about half the size of a Shrike or Katana, one would speculate that it could carry either a point defense cluster or an energy torpedo or graser.
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Missile

I knew I saw ghost rider missiles somewhere.

Lord Skimper wrote:Perhaps a ghost rider platform is not big enough for a point defence cluster though?

Given the size of a ghost rider missile though, about half the size of a Shrike or Katana, one would speculate that it could carry either a point defense cluster or an energy torpedo or graser.
http://honorverse.wikia.com/wiki/Missile

I knew I saw ghost rider missiles somewhere.

Um, no.
[Edit 2 Oops, the picture is pre-Great Resizing so the missiles are really smaller than shown; making my calcs to compare with post-resizing LACs worthless]

/*----- Ignore -----
Sure it's about 43% the length of a Shrike (30.9 m vs 72 m) but it's more like 22% of the diameter (about 4.5 m vs 20 m).

And if you consider the volume; that more like 1/45th the size of a Shrike (500 m^3 vs 22619 m^3)
Although I admit in both cases that's actually an approximation; those are the volumes of cylinders with the same length and max diameter of the missile or LAC.
----- Ignore -----*/

Way, way smaller.

Edit: And we told you already - you need a full starship's fusion reactor to provide the plasma bleed for the energy torpedo. They don't just take electricity - they need a supply of the high temp, high energy plasma that they fire out. You're never going to get one onto a drone or missile; not even one the size of a graser torp.