Jonathan_S wrote:Even if we accept that a 1890s era pod launched missiles have inferior range and terminal velocity, by the time we're talking about SD(P)s I don't know that it really matters.Theemile wrote:It was significant enough that missile pods fell out of favor because the the difference flight patterns between shipborn launchers and pod launchers.
And Yes, I ignored the relative capabilities of RMN versus SLN or PRH missiles.
And the nebulous # is closer to 10,000 than 10 - but you are right, it is a nebulous margin and could be offset by superior missiles.
But as you pointed out it wsan't until the MDM environment that that did not matter. In an era without MDMs or advanced grav launchers, the Podnaught would have far less of an advantage, even with longer ranged SDMs.
Remember, before pods missile fire from SDs was almost never decisive. It was attritional, and you used it for probing the other side and degrading their ships (although if you mission killed a couple that's a nice bonus) before closing to energy range.
But given the huge numbers of missiles any pod layer can fire off the increased effectiveness of the other side's point defense against the slower missiles is probably irrelevant. Something scaled to deal with less than 40 missile broadsides is going to get over-saturated and break down when faced with a 120 missile double pattern (assuming 10 missiles per pod, 6 pods per salvo) even if they are moving a bit slower.
Even if the SD(P) has to wade through as much as a million KM of unanswered fire it's still going to be relatively unscathed when it reaches a point where it can unleash a (shorter ranged) missile swarm.
The lightweight grav launchers matter more if an SD is towing only a couple pods; then achieving time on target, with full terminal velocity, of the pod and broadside missiles is somewhat important. But when you're throwing 12+ pods every 30 seconds shear numbers trump distance and terminal velocity.
I think you are forgetting one of the major points that actually made missile combat decisive (besides the SDP's ability to swamp the missile defense of the target) as an offensive tactic instead of the skirmishing to feel out the opposition (ECM, tactics, etc.) that it originally was.
That point is that prior to the recent development and deployment of an effective capital laser warhead for the missiles, missiles in even large numbers were seldom decisive against SDs. Standard SDs would concentrate all their missile fire against one or just a very few individual SDs in the opposing force, and the targets would be very difficult to even mission kill before the opposing forces would close to energy range (if they did at all, most of the time the forces that were getting the worst of it would break off combat).
The capital laser head, in combination with the new missile pods grav launchers, sensors with better discrimination (ECCM), use of dedicated ECM missiles and the SDPs ability to maintain heavy rates of fire changed missile combat not just in degree, but in type.
Imagine combat between two forces just 50 years ago before an effective capital laser head was in use. Give one side SDPs, and the other side standard SDs. Keep all the other technology the same. A lot of the advantage a modern SDP has is significantly reduced.
Instead of a 50,000km laser head standoff attack range that can punch through the sidewall and hit the target and damage it to some degree, you have a standoff attack range in (sidewall) burn mode of 10,000km, putting your missile much closer to the target's point defense where the chance of the missile being destroyed rises rapidly.
And even if it isn't destroyed all it can do is dump a large amount of energy towards the target with the objective of weakening the sidewall by overloading the sidewall generators (it won't penetrate to the SD and damage it).
If you can get enough of these missiles successfully targeting the SDs sidewalls fast enough eventually the sidewall generators burn out. And then the SD rolls ship (if it hasn't already done so) to point the other broadside with the unaffected sidewall at you.
Or if you fire the missile in boom (contact) mode, you have to get the missile up to the target's sidewall (only 10km from the SD you are targeting) where point defense has an excellent chance of destroying it. (The expression used in universe for a contact nuke to get through point defense around this time was the chance of the proverbial snowball in hell.)
Even if the target's point defense misses, the sidewall penetrators have to work perfectly at just the right time to get the warhead through the sidewall (when Fearless did this against Thunder of God in Second Yeltsin, only 2 of 4 missile's sidewall penetrators worked well enough to get the warheads through).
Then the contact nuke has to go off at the right time in less than the time it takes for the warhead to travel 10km (while the warhead is still traveling toward the SD, not after it has passed the target). A lot of contact nukes that did make it through the sidewalls historically had this problem.
So the SDP, by itself, wasn't the driving force that made missile combat the preeminent tactic it is now in the Honorverse. It took a lot of other improvements in many other technologies, in combination with the idea of the SDP to bring missile combat to the decisive tactic it is today.