New Manty ship ideas.

Michael Everett wrote:I love reading all these solutions presented.
I seem to have missed out on the problems that they are meant to solve, though...

Well, the ship detection network is intended to address the problem of "how do we prevent a stealthed spider ship from attacking one of our systems?"

I can't say what most of the ship design proposals are supposed to address.

SWM wrote:Well, the ship detection network is intended to address the problem of "how do we prevent a stealthed spider ship from attacking one of our systems?"

I can't say what most of the ship design proposals are supposed to address.

I've just been going off on tangents and ignoring the ship design proposals ...

I know what the pod SD's started off as, but with the developments of tube launch ships with the Roland and such, is it perhaps time to shift back to the nonPod SD again.

Take the Gryphon SD. Remove all the lasers and chase missile tubes double or triple the counter missile and point defense and put 50 missile tubes per broadside. With the Roland's off bore firing and double stacking such an SD would be able to fire 200 missiles per wave. With added telemetry and keyhole 2, such a ship would be able to control as many missiles per wave as an Invictus without all the pod vulnerabilities. Newnodes and compensators & Automation to reduce crew levels, as many or more graser's and no aft pod bay vulnerability. Without any pods themselves such a ship would carry as many or more missiles, all under armour and able to wade into close combat and fire more graser's for and aft. Refits on the 163 current ships, plus the Sphinx SD, will take less time than building SD(P) from scratch and SD non pod have lots of marine compliment space, big berths and are made for close in combat.

There are maybe a dozen or so Gryphon's modified to fire Mk23s from their tubes per HoS. Presumably they have launchers sized to handle Apollo control missiles and KH2s.

They should also be able to carry flat pack pods on the hull for an even bigger first punch.

The previous work arounds for swapping control links should be a standard program option by now. They could launch more than the ship could control directly during the final attack runs.

They might let Apollo AI handle the missiles with high hit probabilities and use the ship's fire control to try to coax hits out of the rest.

Or, they might use the ship's fire control to try to ensure hits by the high hit probability missiles and let the Apollo AI do whatever it can with the others.

Or, maybe something in between. Thresholds for terminal Apollo AI control for missiles with hit probabilities so high and so low that the ship's fire control has little prospect for improving the outcomes; an intermediate range of hit probabilities where ship's fire control guides the attack runs of the missiles with the best prospects for outcomes improved by ship's fire control.

kzt wrote:There are maybe a dozen or so Gryphon's modified to fire Mk23s from their tubes per HoS. Presumably they have launchers sized to handle Apollo control missiles and KH2s.

Can the control missiles be fired from a broadside tube? I was under the impression that they were of a far larger diameter and wouldn't fit into a regular launch tube, which is why Apollo pods have fewer tubes than older pods - the larger-bore control missile tube doesn't leave as much room for shipkillers.

You definitely can't launch KH2 from a broadside tube, or even refit it into an older ship - the KH platform is the size of a pre-war destroyer and is carried in a semi-recessed bay on the side of the ship.

Dafmeister wrote:

kzt wrote:There are maybe a dozen or so Gryphon's modified to fire Mk23s from their tubes per HoS. Presumably they have launchers sized to handle Apollo control missiles and KH2s.

Can the control missiles be fired from a broadside tube? I was under the impression that they were of a far larger diameter and wouldn't fit into a regular launch tube, which is why Apollo pods have fewer tubes than older pods - the larger-bore control missile tube doesn't leave as much room for shipkillers.

You definitely can't launch KH2 from a broadside tube, or even refit it into an older ship - the KH platform is the size of a pre-war destroyer and is carried in a semi-recessed bay on the side of the ship.

Welcome to the forums. I hope you enjoy your time here.

There's no way you can fit all that into the broadside of a solid cored SD. While a missile launcher is quite smaller than a SD laser mount, once you factor in the magazines for it, the laser consumes much less volume.

Even supposing you could trade laser mounts 1-to-1 for launchers, you still need to figure out how you're going to stuff all that point defense and Keyhole into the ship. There's not a chance of that happening. An Invictus had to suppress all broadside tubes and limit its energy armament to get that level of increase. A solid cored SD does not have the surface area to fit all of that in. Take a look at the scaling between the Nikes and the Saganami-Cs.

Lord Skimper wrote:I know what the pod SD's started off as, but with the developments of tube launch ships with the Roland and such, is it perhaps time to shift back to the nonPod SD again.

Take the Gryphon SD. Remove all the lasers and chase missile tubes double or triple the counter missile and point defense and put 50 missile tubes per broadside. With the Roland's off bore firing and double stacking such an SD would be able to fire 200 missiles per wave. With added telemetry and keyhole 2, such a ship would be able to control as many missiles per wave as an Invictus without all the pod vulnerabilities. Newnodes and compensators & Automation to reduce crew levels, as many or more graser's and no aft pod bay vulnerability. Without any pods themselves such a ship would carry as many or more missiles, all under armour and able to wade into close combat and fire more graser's for and aft. Refits on the 163 current ships, plus the Sphinx SD, will take less time than building SD(P) from scratch and SD non pod have lots of marine compliment space, big berths and are made for close in combat.

Dafmeister wrote:

kzt wrote:There are maybe a dozen or so Gryphon's modified to fire Mk23s from their tubes per HoS. Presumably they have launchers sized to handle Apollo control missiles and KH2s.

Can the control missiles be fired from a broadside tube? I was under the impression that they were of a far larger diameter and wouldn't fit into a regular launch tube, which is why Apollo pods have fewer tubes than older pods - the larger-bore control missile tube doesn't leave as much room for shipkillers.

You definitely can't launch KH2 from a broadside tube, or even refit it into an older ship - the KH platform is the size of a pre-war destroyer and is carried in a semi-recessed bay on the side of the ship.

Correct. The Apollo control missile displaces two MK23 missiles. Since the length must remain almost the same to fit into a pod, this suggests the control missile is quite wide. Too wide to fire out of MK23 launchers.

I think the RMN found that retrofitting Gryphons to fire MK23s internally wasn't very effective and they preferred to build new SD(P)s because of all the other technical improvements that could be included in the design. Also, Gryphons aren't fitted with Keyhole 2(or even 1), which is essential to the operation of Apollo's FTL control links, so it seems very unlikely that they would be able to fire control missiles internally - not to mention Apollo is a relatively new innovation and the RMN hasn't had time to refit Gryphons with those. The MK23 firing Gryphons were converted before or during the Havenite ceasefire.

IMO, by the time they get around to fitting shipboard ACM launchers, each missile will be fitted with its own FTL communicator. This restores the 'dreadnought' principle of uniform main armament and eliminates the risk of a few early battle hits taking out the control missile launchers and crippling Apollo capability.

I doubt we'll ever see broadside launchers for Apollo control missiles, to be honest, especially given that there's a debate on whether an SD(P) even needs broadside launchers at all and no-one (at least not in the SEM, Grayson, RoH or Andermani Empire) is going to be building ships of the wall that can't lay pods any time soon (I'm not counting CLACs as ships of the wall here).

You can launch all the control missiles you need from your pod rails, and the hand-off ability of KH2 means that a ship which has lost the ability to launch its own control missiles can still contribute to the fleet's fire. Putting in a larger missile tube just means putting in a larger-diameter hole through your outer hull armour, to no real gain in capability.

I'm not sure that we'll see the full FTL comm setup in a missile, though. The Apollo control missile isn't just FTL comm, it also has a large tactical AI system on-board. If this was minaturised to the point that it could be fitted into a shipkiller, then the same minaturisation and increase in capability would also be applied to shipboard ECM and decoys, negating the effect.

munroburton wrote:Correct. The Apollo control missile displaces two MK23 missiles. Since the length must remain almost the same to fit into a pod, this suggests the control missile is quite wide. Too wide to fire out of MK23 launchers.

I think the RMN found that retrofitting Gryphons to fire MK23s internally wasn't very effective and they preferred to build new SD(P)s because of all the other technical improvements that could be included in the design. Also, Gryphons aren't fitted with Keyhole 2(or even 1), which is essential to the operation of Apollo's FTL control links, so it seems very unlikely that they would be able to fire control missiles internally - not to mention Apollo is a relatively new innovation and the RMN hasn't had time to refit Gryphons with those. The MK23 firing Gryphons were converted before or during the Havenite ceasefire.

IMO, by the time they get around to fitting shipboard ACM launchers, each missile will be fitted with its own FTL communicator. This restores the 'dreadnought' principle of uniform main armament and eliminates the risk of a few early battle hits taking out the control missile launchers and crippling Apollo capability.