New Manty ship ideas.

Because modular would be capacitor birds... which would mean that a very large part of their ECM advantage vanished and old style Ghost rider 3 stage MDM pre fusion were GIGANTIC! Now you want to make even LARGER missiles? Cutting missile storage even further? DUDE! Damn, need a much larger smilie block like... Hmm Hey, Duckk, is it possible to increase the number of smilies to say nwhikers.net, I really miss some of them, like the horse pooping or the smilies dueling, or...
[url]
http://www.nwhikers.net/forums/posting.php?mode=smilies[/url] There are some real gems in there...

Where does the material for said missiles come from? Where is that material processed? So, all major parts will be made in orbit. Is it possible that many of the very high tech missile head parts are made dirt side? Maybe. Wouldn't count on it. By the time you factor in transportation costs of moving said materials dirt side and back up... The kicker here is that the majority of their R&D is done in orbit. If even R&D is done in orbit then I would lay a VERY large bet that all parts are made in orbit as well. Transporting 1 100 ton missile worth of materials both DOWN and UP, is a LOT of human worker transport cycles for energy burned.

Lord Skimper wrote:OK weapons then, how about making modular mdm's.

Like an artillery gun or a big battleship gun how about making a missile that has a warhead with modular as many drive units attached as one may wish to mount and use. Similar to Land or Naval artillery with bags of powered propellant. 1 bag up close 3 for long range...

Also why can't planet side factories make missiles? Or ship parts?

What's the point in modular missiles? Up until Apollo, both Haven's and Manticore's fire control was breaking down at extended ranges. Even with Apollo, you're looking at limits to how far the FTL comm in the control missile can communicate. That's why even the system defense version is "only" a 4 drive design. And in both cases, you're now talking about even bigger missiles, which means bigger pods, and a reduction in total pods per ship. Make them big enough, and you're going to have to redesign the entire pod hold and ejection hatch. The three drive design is plenty sufficient for the foreseeable future, especially with a ballistic phase thrown in to extend the range, like at the end of the Battle of Manticore.

Lord Skimper wrote:OK weapons then, how about making modular mdm's.

Like an artillery gun or a big battleship gun how about making a missile that has a warhead with modular as many drive units attached as one may wish to mount and use. Similar to Land or Naval artillery with bags of powered propellant. 1 bag up close 3 for long range...

Also why can't planet side factories make missiles? Or ship parts?

How about stating the mission needs before going off and creating the ships you want to build? That's presuming that you are going to have the ability to build the ships in the short term.

Do you need anti-piracy (regular, normal, we put some weapons on civilian ships and are bad-ass because the targets can't shoot back kind) and generally keep the space lanes peaceful and be available to assist the people Manticore has been getting in place in Silesia capacity?
Already have those in the Avalon and other new but not MDM equiped cursers plus any number of older (think 15 years old) RMN ships below BC in class. What you don't have is the ability to replace or add to the numbers just yet.

Do you need ships to go hunting BF of FF forces that come into GA space? Have those in the newer BC and down to CL class ships. Again, you just don't have the ability to produce more (or crew more) yet. You are also faced with the need to maintain the Lacoon II posting to hold wormholes so you are limited on hulls you can detach but you are going to scrape them up somewhere even if you have to draw heavily on Haven to provide them.

What do you need to find and engage the Alignment ships? We don't really know since they are still effectivly invisible with the spider drive because perhaps 85 to 95% of the way you look for ships is related to their wedge. Difficult to build something to do a job when you don't know how it is going to do that job.

Are you going to go after the SLN in SLN controlled space? See above. You might want to concentrate the "better" ships (the RMN and we presume Grayson current MDM and similar) at the Lacoon chokepoints and send RHN ships into the SL.

How do you convince SL member systems and all those Independent or OFS controlled systems to at least be neutral if not become active partners with the GA? By making it a better choice for them than following the SL down the rat hole. That means diplomacy and demonstrating you can activly support them rather than parking a couple of SDs in their systems to force their compliance (that is a SL tactic).

At the moment, the best you are going to do as far as deploying new (as in designing them now) ships is get creative in modifications (not requiring a shipyard) and tactics. Want to trash a FF nodal base and hopefully catch a number of FF or BF ships there? Send a mixed force of most current and older ships and have them bring along what they can carry in terms of pods and flatpacks. Go in (after suitable recon and planning), shoot the crap out of what military assets are in-system and only stay (at least for a while) if you can dominate the system but send off the less capable ships. The idea is to eliminate SLNs capasity to hurt the GA. When you pull out, you might want to take a good selection of the highest ranking and most capable SL people with you to help cut the head off this hydra.
Just a thought.

Lord Skimper wrote:Also why can't planet side factories make missiles? Or ship parts?

They could but if most of your resources come from orbital mining, you've already got major construction / manficaturing capacity in your space stations, and the consumers of your weapons are spaceships docked there, then there are efficiency arguments for placing your missile construction there as well.

But, personally, I'm of the opinion that Manticore should and probably will, diversify their missile production locations in the post-Oyster Bay rebuild. Put a few of them in semi-remote locations planetside (so it'd be a clear EE violation to smash them from orbit during a raid)

That way, in the unlikely situation that this happens again, they won't be relying entirely on their existing stockpiles. But for most of Manticore's history it was basically inconceivable that a raid could hit those space stations without first defeating Home Fleet. And if it did that then the war was lost anyway; no reason to have backup missile production because you'd be surrendering in a few hours.

It was only Manticore's significant tech lead, and Haven's willingness to make peace that let them survive Oyster Bay. If OB had happened before the BoM Theisman probably wouldn't have felt the need to do an all or nothing gamble because Manticore would have lost the ability to supply and expand their Apollo equipped units - he could force them to the negotiating table because the power imbalance would just keep getting worse.

Manticore was from the start an ecologically minded society. Most of the heavy industry was moved off planet from the start to avoid pollution problems from getting started. They had learned from Earth's past. Once they were established in space, the efficiencies became more pronounced. All of this avoided planetary stress and allowed the environment to handle what pollution was generated without significant problems. The fact that this opened the way for OB was an unforeseeable consequence.

Jonathan_S wrote:But, personally, I'm of the opinion that Manticore should and probably will, diversify their missile production locations in the post-Oyster Bay rebuild. Put a few of them in semi-remote locations planetside (so it'd be a clear EE violation to smash them from orbit during a raid)

Except that missile factories would be a legitimate military target, and exempt from the EE. At least that's how I've read it.

"I have explained there[Baen Bar], repeatedly, that collateral damage from strikes on legitimate targets on planetary surfaces do not constitute Eridani Edict violations." -From the EE&OB infodump.


Matt

Edit for format

The roles ships undertake determine their size, but its the trade offs between armour, weapons, propulsion, sensors, communication and crew support functions that have to be factored in to the actual design.

Also don't forget Apollo was not the original goal of the project, shrinking the gravity telemetry system to fit into individual missiles was.
Presumable when RMN figure out how do this, any ship not keyhole 2 capable (i.e. smaller than 2.5M tons) will not be worth fielding.

Though the 'gun smoke' effect of the missile wedges will again become a problem (the main reason for the SDP success is that this issue is sort of resolved)

Also the laser head destructiveness is only going to improve (until you hit the physical limits) which means that ships will have to have better armour, tougher sidewalls etc.

Mobryan wrote:Except that missile factories would be a legitimate military target, and exempt from the EE. At least that's how I've read it.

"I have explained there[Baen Bar], repeatedly, that collateral damage from strikes on legitimate targets on planetary surfaces do not constitute Eridani Edict violations." -From the EE&OB infodump.


Matt

Edit for format

Except that legitimate targets are defined as those having the ability to attack the invading force. Production facilities are specifically excluded, since they do not pose an immediate threat to the attackers. It was stated that not all military targets were allowable just because they were military. Troop formations, anti-ship batteries and command and control facilities were OK targets no matter where they were. Factories were not.

KNick wrote:
Except that legitimate targets are defined as those having the ability to attack the invading force. Production facilities are specifically excluded, since they do not pose an immediate threat to the attackers. It was stated that not all military targets were allowable just because they were military. Troop formations, anti-ship batteries and command and control facilities were OK targets no matter where they were. Factories were not.

Ahh- ok.

Matt

Mobryan wrote:

KNick wrote:
Except that legitimate targets are defined as those having the ability to attack the invading force. Production facilities are specifically excluded, since they do not pose an immediate threat to the attackers. It was stated that not all military targets were allowable just because they were military. Troop formations, anti-ship batteries and command and control facilities were OK targets no matter where they were. Factories were not.

Ahh- ok.

Matt

Don't feel bad. I had to read it a couple of times to get the distinction myself. When I did it was a real Duhhh moment.