New Manty ship ideas.

First of all, radio waves are not line of sight the way you think of them. Second, ships are small enough to fly right through your beams without significantly impacting the signal. Third, if you are constantly changing the signal pathway the entire idea is stupid, as the signal strength will be constantly varying, so you won't detect anything even if by mischance someone does sail into a beam.

Fourth, at light minute intervals you are projecting a beam every 18 million km. That's akin to the effectiveness of a guard service that drives by your place once a year at 60 mph while talking on a cell phone to their girlfriend. How many burglars do you think they will spot? How much a month are you willing to pay them for this level of service?

I agree with you about the spelling, but not the origin - unless RFC knows something about the Arthur legends that I've never heard, which is quite possible.

I've always (since the class was introduced) assumed that Roland refers to the Chanson de Roland depicting the fight at the pass of Roncevalles. Which was a losing battle, so perhaps not a good omen for the lead ship that the class is named for though it was a glorious rearguard action. And there should be a followup Oliver class to go with Roland - "a Roland for an Oliver" according to the song.

Roland should really be spent Hroudland, he was the Prefect of Britanny who died at Roncevalles. And possibly one of my remote ancestors.

Cheers

John

Grashtel wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:Rowland DD

Ok, this has been bugging me for a while. The Manty DDM equiped DD is the Roland class, note the lack of a 'w' in the name, the name is IIRC from a knight in the Arthurian myths. Anyway spelling rant over, just been making me twitch everytime I read it for a while

Lord Skimper wrote:Presumably the compensator operates in some kind of sphere the length of the Roland being 450 odd metres but only 50 metres wide and tall the LAC should be within the compensator range, the idea coming fromRFC's idea of attaching LAC to the outside hull of a freighter. (As mentioned by one of the admirals).

If that was true, then that would have severe implications on hull forms for freighters etc.

If not one speculates the compensators on the LAC might be able to be used.

No. This is mentioned as a hard constraint several times: Compensators need an active impeller wedge generated by the ship. There is no indication that it is possible to use a wedge generated by another ship in the same way.

Also as long as the crew are inside the DD they wouldn't need to have a compensator covering the LAC. Sure broadside weapons or defenses would be useless with LAC attached, but they would be inside the wedge, and wouldn't themselves be slowing down the DD.

Destroyers can pull several hundred gs of accel, several thousands in a grav wave. Yes, you do need some form of compensation for any parasite craft, else you either have to live with those parasites being scrap at the end of a journey, or you have to limit your strategic and tactical mobility quite severely.

There have been two game changers that should influence the thinking of Haven Quadrant major powers.

The first is FTL. Before FTL, even if an object traveling at a high fraction of c was detected, the object would arrive at almost the same time as the report. With FTL, there is a significant reduction in reporting time.

Second, OB has demonstrated that all previous detection systems are obsolete for some attacks.

The ante has been raised, and there is a new technology to be exploited.

The earliest detection possible is desirable. But every gain in time of detection requires an exponential increase in detection grid elements.

Still, it is not as dire as it has sometimes been described.

For example, in an active system, there certainly is no need for a one-to-one correlation between emitters and detectors for each beam path. Assuming a continuous beam, an emitter can use mirrors, prisms or waveguides to illuminate multiple detectors. And, detectors can have multiple detecting surfaces to receive beams from multiple emitters.

Each detector transmits to the nearest FTL relay. Adding FTL relays increases the cost and decrease the time lag of the report, and vice versa.

FTL transmitters could be really crude; just the direction the FTL signal come from tells you which grid made a detection. A more sophisticated system can indicate which individual detectors were activated and from which beam path.

A robot vehicle with a tractor could be dedicated to policing the station keeping of a large number of emitters, receivers and FTL relays.

A cheaper system would be to use a glorified nano fiber spider web with flash bulbs. The cells of the spider web could be 100 m across. A wide angle detector would monitor for flashes and signal the FTL relay. A robot vehicle would keep the components on station.

All of this is expensive. But, compared to what was lost in OB, not so much. Not at all compared to what would be lost to a massive high fractional c strike.

waddles for desert wrote:A cheaper system would be to use a glorified nano fiber spider web with flash bulbs. The cells of the spider web could be 100 m across. A wide angle detector would monitor for flashes and signal the FTL relay. A robot vehicle would keep the components on station.

All of this is expensive. But, compared to what was lost in OB, not so much. Not at all compared to what would be lost to a massive high fractional c strike.

Okay. At what range do you wish to deploy this net of yours? Up to the hyperlimit? A couple of lightminutes out from whatever it is you're trying to protect?

In either case, you're expending an unimaginable amount of effort guarding against one specific form of attack. This is what Bruce Schneier et al refer to as "Security Theater"; a whole bunch of noise that isn't going to stop an determined, resourceful attacker even at the best of times.

Consider this: OB was performed using highly stealthy assets that infiltrated the system over the course of several weeks. A followup attack, if there is one, would not be performed using the same approach. Building giant detector nets is equivalent to the nonsense air travellers have to go through post 9/11; while it will catch the clueless and the stupid, the people that are really dangerous to you will just choose a different tactic to get you.

The ugly truth is, a near-c projectile aimed at a planet and fired from several light-months out will always be a risk, and practically impossible to stop. Killing planets is frighteningly easy in the Honorverse, and any defensive planner has to be aware that a perfect defense simply isn't possible.

Lord Skimper wrote:Unless I'm mistaken, and its entirely possible that I am, an if the sensor grid is located in a sphere 20 light minutes out and 1 light minute apart, then it should only require less than 165,000 arrays.

Remember your not trying to fill the entire area just a random set of pathways. Constantly changing every few seconds. Also you have to remove the arrays that are where the solar system bodies are. And the inner most half likely are not needed, one could probably get away with 25,000. May not find one ship but 100's or 1000's would likely trip quite a few sensors, and we know they don't accelerate very fast.

You are very badly mistaken. First, changing the pathways every few seconds is not going to help--you would be much better off having all possible pathways detecting constantly. Switching pathways does not reduce the number of transmitters or receivers needed, since the receivers will still have to be there in between times when the beam is active. A stealth ship would have to transit into the system way beyond the detecting grid in order to avoid being detected when it translates from hyper. It needs to translate in light-hours away, at the least. So by the time it gets to your detection grid, it will already be moving at a measurable fraction of the speed of light. The ship will pass through any given beam in less than a millisecond.

There is no need to worry about planets--planets are miniscule when you are talking about detectors placed a light-minute apart.

If you have only 165,000 arrays on a sphere 20 light-minutes radius and separated 1 light-minute apart, you will only catch 1 ship out of 1 million ships, even if all of your beams are going constantly. And I'm talking about having those arrays on the surface of the sphere, trying to detect ships crossing from outside to inside. If instead you try to spread your array through the volume of the sphere (which is what it sounds like you intend), it will be even worse.

Jonathan_S wrote:

yanessa wrote:... if you design the ship as a highend SD, you might not loose to much of either Pod- and LAC-capacity ... and both LACs and (Apollo)-Pods are "Ranged Weapons" ...
Such a "Midway-Class" SD(P)-CLAC might be used as a Long-Range-Support-Division (2 ships) to either an Invictus-Class Battlesquadron; supplying Katanas for Missile-Defense (Manty-Battle-Squadrons being still down to 6 ships due to lack of replacements) or as Missile-Backup/Guardian to DN-CLAC-Squadrons, relieving Invictus/Medusa-Class-ships from this task ...
One critical question: how wide can the beam of the ship inside the impellerbands get without leaving the impeller-constraints ... if you can make the beam broad enough, you might fit a 2/3rds to nearly complete Pod-load in addition to 1-1,5 Standard LAC complements ... they might look "a bit broad in the beam" but pack enough punch in a long range fight to release normal SD(P)s from Carrier-Escort-Duty

Our understanding is that compensator efficiency is controlled by compensated volume, and that ship (by and large) fill the available volume as efficiently as possible.

If you make a ship 'fatter' it's max acceleration should fall exactly as if you simply enlarged it's entire diameter to match it's beam. If my understanding is correct there's no real advantage to making a 'fat' ship; you might as well just make an overall larger one.



But all that said, I never understood the benefit (in a battle squadron) to a hybrid design compared to simply attaching a couple of CLACs to the unit. You don't need to design and build an expensive, relatively fragile, hybrid compromise, and having your CLACs be separate platforms from your SD(P)s allows you the potential flexibility of placing them out of the line of fire or even detaching them to hide in hyper while heading in system.

Obviously the situation was a bit different for the Wayfarer-class AMC since they operated solo; which capital ships never do.

... the "operational" benefit would be its dual purpose for assisting normal SD(P)s in long-range missile fight while thickening the missile defenses with their Katanas AND protect the DN-size CLACS, while the Invictus/Medusas close in for energybattle-mop-up ... in certain stategic arenas (Lynx-Sector) the RMN also has to defend from INSIDE the hyperlimit, so hiding the CLACs in Hyper istn't always possible ... a SD-Size CLAC(P) would be designed as complete Long-Range-Battle optimized ship for freeing up SD(P)s for normal Battle Line Duty and giving CLAC-Squadrons more Stand-Off-FirePower ...
The RMN has to replace ships soon to regain enough numbers, and a CLAC who can defend itself against enemy SDs at longrange without sacrificing its LACs would be an alternative to covering the CLAC-Squadrons with ships you might need in the main battle line ... The SD(P)-CLACs would gradually replace older DN-CLACS (which could be relegated to smaller Alliance Members for System-Defense) ... Crewrequirements wouldn't be much larger as an normal CLAC plus the additional tactical crew for the Pod-System (given the SD-CLAC has a LAC-complement about as large as a normal CLAC ...) ...

It's a fundamental principle of naval design that you try to design a ship to stand up to its own guns. You never assume that you will have the advantage in any sense, especially doctrinally or technologically. A hybrid carrier/podlayer violates this principle quite significantly. LAC docking bays extend deep into the core hull, carving out huge chunks in the armoring scheme of the ship. Then the problem is further exacerbated by the pod hold which is a big empty spot running down the middle of the ship. Critical systems like power plants which would have been buried deep in the ship's hull are now either displaced further outward from the core and closer the surface, or clustered closer together in the remaining space forward of the pod hold. So combine the Swiss cheese armor with components which located in ways to make them much more susceptible to damage, and you have a ship which would be relatively easy to kill by a suitably armed opponent. Furthermore, the broadsides of a SD(P) are already jam packed with a slew of defensive systems, so there's no place to put LACs without massively compromising the defenses which are so critical in the missile pod era.

The RMN learned the hard way to not assume superiority when Theisman rebuilt the RHN, and they're not keen on letting it happen again. A hybrid carrier would very much be dead meat when faced against a foe of equal capability.

Lord Skimper wrote:Presumably the compensator operates in some kind of sphere the length of the Roland being 450 odd metres but only 50 metres wide and tall the LAC should be within the compensator range, the idea coming fromRFC's idea of attaching LAC to the outside hull of a freighter. (As mentioned by one of the admirals).

It's not a sphere. There is text that ships generally cannot extend the compensator field very far outside the hull. Larger ships have more leeway than smaller ships.

Im guessing from a sudden idea here, but could the shape be a small sphere at each end, the diameter of the alpha nodes, and then somehow the nodes at each end interact to form a pinched cylindrical area between them? that to me would describe the ship shapes.

SWM wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:Presumably the compensator operates in some kind of sphere the length of the Roland being 450 odd metres but only 50 metres wide and tall the LAC should be within the compensator range, the idea coming fromRFC's idea of attaching LAC to the outside hull of a freighter. (As mentioned by one of the admirals).

It's not a sphere. There is text that ships generally cannot extend the compensator field very far outside the hull. Larger ships have more leeway than smaller ships.