New Manty ship ideas.

crewdude48 wrote:Another thing to consider. Where are you going to keep the bunkerage for the micro fusion plant? You would need to pull out some other things to fit that in, and there is really not that much room in an LAC. This would give the weapon an extremely limited number of uses before it ran out of fuel.

Big ships need a lot of bunkerage for fusion plant fuel because they are designed to fuel the ship for months of deployment. You want space for mini fusion plant fuel? use drop tanks. they can even be placed on the hull for easy replacement.

thinkstoomuch wrote:Read the second half of this:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/145/1

Then maybe read Tourville's musings in AoV Chapter 13.

For my quick response.

Which costs what? Not price but tonnage, volume? On a ship where everything possible was done to make it as small as possible to perform its designed mission, which was never to take on wallers. Just a misuse of an asset because it worked once proposed by that towering naval strategist Janacek. This is from someone who can see LACs taking on SLN SD's with a reasonable loss rate as they are. Which many here agree to disagree with me about.

I have never advocated taking on a similar tech level waller. Elaborate death ride leading to failure, most likely, no matter what you do with it.

Well price too as you now that you have to add all those additional hardware pieces that aren't there, or most designed for the application. Then you have to put in all the stuff to route it through a tiny ship. (That as people have pointed out masses twice as much despite being half as big). Hell I got very limited understanding of why there are RF waveguides on today's "modern" warship. But I know what happens when somebody dings them. Not pretty.

Forest, tree ... "ouch who put that rock in the way on the ground?"

Damn I hate them rocks.

We know next to nothing about the hardware requirements for any of things we keep proposing. For very good reason in my mind stories would not be as interesting if we did know. Major reason vague is a author's friend.

Enjoy,
T2M

PS I stopped in the middle of composing/editing way TOO many posted in between the start when this was the last on the list and now. <grrrrr> I am way to slow!!!

Thank you for saying that. If the universe creator deemed it possible to reduce the size of ETorp launchers, if he decided that some smart genius who was working on reactor improvement managed to create a small one which turns out to be a failure for some reason and yet generates the necessary requirements to incorporate it in an ETorp launcher, then it will happen.

The HMS Fearless experiment is a failure because putting such weapons on a light platform, gutting out its usual armament, means the ship has next to zero chance of using her weapons. It will get pounded into pieces before it gets close enough to use them.

These new LACs however have proven their ability to close with the enemy. Yes the sidewalls are there, but the chances of LACs finding opportunities to be at close combat range with an opponent whose sidewalls are down is magnitudes higher than that of proper warships. Not to mention that being very stealthy, they might get the chance to maneuver to cross the enemy's throat/kilt. Hell, since they attack in swarms, the enemy commander might simply get confused/overwhelmed by the evasive maneuvers that one or two might mask an up the kilt/down the throat move that gets the LAC a chance to fire off a torpedo.

What works against what depends a lot on when you are using it and what the capabilities are.
In a VERY rough sequence you had Battleships as the major warship in wet navies. Then Whitehead came up with his torpedo (vs. all the things that had been called torpedoes previously) and suddenly you had a self-propelled weapon carried to an engagement by a TINY ship (which evolved into the many variation of the Torpedo Boat) and could -if they hit the target- seriously damage if not sink a capital ship. Once you get to the “serious damage” level, said capital ship is quite likely to get mobbed by ships that it could normally defend against or destroy- think the Bismarck after the searing hit by an ariel torpedo.
So you got Torpedo Boats and then the Torpedo Boat Destroyer- which morphed into the multi-role Destroyer we know today in wet navy and in the Honorverse.
The came the ablility to use aircraft to deliver both bombs and, more importantly, torpedos in naval combat. That is power projection and hitting your targets from a distance in a brief engagement. The PT Boat slipped out of it’s anti- capital ship role and into the patrol and smaller vessel engagement role. In the interm you have the submarine which was an ambush hunter with torpedo. Subs can’t expect to go up against any warship on the surface (speed, gun range, ability to survive hits) but they could and did make surface only attacks on merchant shipping or torpedo a merchant ship and, once having stopped or significantly slowed it down, surfaced to finish it off with a deck gun (which is way less expensive than the torpedo.

The modern SMN or RHN LAC came out as a Torpedo Boat analog with the major benefit of also being a superb anti-missile platform. The problem with using LACs against SD sized warships (other than in the anti-missile role) is even a surprise attack is going to usually leave an SD (and they don’t generally travel alone) damaged but still able to respond with vastly more in the way of weapons. They are also tough buggers so it is going to take a lot of actual hits to seriously hurt one with any of the current LAC weaponry.

Now there is a way to change that a bit with tech we have already seen but other than the Alignment that will have to wait until either SEM/RH or somebody else works out the Spider Drive. You could take a LAC (well multiple LACs) and use them to tow or carry externally Graser Torpedoes into the path of an attacking force. The LACs release the GTs to motor in on an intercept course (which might be from straight ahead) and the LACs themselves just change vectors to move out of the way under stealth.
You are back to ambush hunting with something that isn’t going to expose the weapon to view until it fires. If the opposing force does see something of the LACs on their tactical, they see where the LACs are, not where the weapons are. From far enough ahead, the very sketchy LAC contacts could appear to be that dammed effective Manti anti-missile screen setting up but the targets will not see the Spider Drive weapons closing from much closer range.

For the Alignment, they could even use something like the Sharks to see GTs into the major traffic lanes of target systems and control them from just outside the hyper-limit. Drop the GTs on really slow ballistic paths that set up to remain in the most probable traffic pattern(s) for a System and hang around till a target comes through. The secondary target (you are going to need one) for each GT so dropped would be some piece of the System infrastructure that will allow you to use them instead of having them fly out the other side of the planetary target area on that same slow ballistic fall.

Rakhmamort wrote:Thank you for saying that. If the universe creator deemed it possible to reduce the size of ETorp launchers, if he decided that some smart genius who was working on reactor improvement managed to create a small one which turns out to be a failure for some reason and yet generates the necessary requirements to incorporate it in an ETorp launcher, then it will happen.

Sure, if the author decides it will be so, it will be. But we the readers cannot presuppose that such a thing is possible. When someone suggests some new design which requires a technological advance in the Honorverse, we have to reject it because it violates the canon as we understand it now. The only standards by which we can evaluate new designs are what David has told us about his universe, plus appropriate real-world knowledge which does not contradict the Honorverse canon.

We can speculate in a general way on potential future technological developments, and what the applications might be. But that is pure speculation and cannot be evaluated in any useful way. It is a separate topic.

The HMS Fearless experiment is a failure because putting such weapons on a light platform, gutting out its usual armament, means the ship has next to zero chance of using her weapons. It will get pounded into pieces before it gets close enough to use them.

These new LACs however have proven their ability to close with the enemy. Yes the sidewalls are there, but the chances of LACs finding opportunities to be at close combat range with an opponent whose sidewalls are down is magnitudes higher than that of proper warships. Not to mention that being very stealthy, they might get the chance to maneuver to cross the enemy's throat/kilt. Hell, since they attack in swarms, the enemy commander might simply get confused/overwhelmed by the evasive maneuvers that one or two might mask an up the kilt/down the throat move that gets the LAC a chance to fire off a torpedo.

I have to disagree. LACs have not shown a great ability to close with the enemy and do anything useful which could not be done safer from further away. Every times LACs have closed with the enemy, the losses among LACs have been tremendous, unless the enemy was badly crippled. And LACs have not shown any great ability to hit the kilt or throat of enemy ships, either.

You keep saying that LACs are designed to close with the enemy, but that is no longer true. Manticore gave up that idea, because it didn't work out as well as they hoped. That is why LACs are moving to the defensive role in fleet actions.

Manticore does have a large technological lead over their immediate enemy, the Solarian League. But Manticore will not (and never has) build a new design which depends on that technological lead, unless it is an experimental or transitional design. The Roland, for instance, is a transitional design. A LAC designed to close with Solarian ships will be useless against ships with the improved defenses Manticore already uses and the rest of the galaxy will use in the near future.

SWM wrote:You keep saying that LACs are designed to close with the enemy, but that is no longer true. Manticore gave up that idea, because it didn't work out as well as they hoped.

Erm... there was never any hope that LACs would be able to close with wallers. We saw a lot of LACs in the attack role early in the second war because they were mostly attacking places where wallers weren't. They'll still carve up their tonnage of sub-wallers just fine.

drothgery wrote:

SWM wrote:You keep saying that LACs are designed to close with the enemy, but that is no longer true. Manticore gave up that idea, because it didn't work out as well as they hoped.

Erm... there was never any hope that LACs would be able to close with wallers. We saw a lot of LACs in the attack role early in the second war because they were mostly attacking places where wallers weren't. They'll still carve up their tonnage of sub-wallers just fine.

Okay, I'll grant that. But I don't think you need energy torpedoes to carve up light ships, either. Viper missiles and battlecruiser-weight grasers do just fine, from safer ranges.

SWM wrote:Okay, I'll grant that. But I don't think you need energy torpedoes to carve up light ships, either. Viper missiles and battlecruiser-weight grasers do just fine, from safer ranges.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that I was arguing otherwise (though Vipers are mostly useful for LAC vs LAC; I don't think they'd scratch the paint of a Nike or even a Sag-C); I don't think eTorps on a LAC are even possible in Honorverse physics, let alone a good idea.

drothgery wrote:

SWM wrote:Okay, I'll grant that. But I don't think you need energy torpedoes to carve up light ships, either. Viper missiles and battlecruiser-weight grasers do just fine, from safer ranges.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that I was arguing otherwise (though Vipers are mostly useful for LAC vs LAC; I don't think they'd scratch the paint of a Nike or even a Sag-C); I don't think eTorps on a LAC are even possible in Honorverse physics, let alone a good idea.

Vipers won't do much against RMN/GSN, or even RHN cruisers and battlecruisers, but given the improvements in sidewal tech we've seen in the Haven sector I've often wondered how a Viper would do against a Solarian destroyer or cruiser.

thinkstoomuch wrote:
Last of all for those who think the aircraft in WW2 were the be all and end all. No they were not. Take a look at how many aircraft were lost sinking that last Japanese super BB without air cover. There were multiple carriers worth of aircraft attacking a relatively small task group.

Hell look at some of the examples of damage done by the Kamikaze's. A US Destroyer got hit by 5 aircraft when assigned to picket duty. I don't remember if they had to go off station. They certainly didn't sink and made it to port under their own power.

Enjoy,
T2M

SWM wrote:I have to disagree. LACs have not shown a great ability to close with the enemy and do anything useful which could not be done safer from further away. Every times LACs have closed with the enemy, the losses among LACs have been tremendous, unless the enemy was badly crippled. And LACs have not shown any great ability to hit the kilt or throat of enemy ships, either.

You keep saying that LACs are designed to close with the enemy, but that is no longer true. Manticore gave up that idea, because it didn't work out as well as they hoped. That is why LACs are moving to the defensive role in fleet actions.

Yes, seems mix of posts, but to clarify: Here we go: "You" among others seem to be implying that my point is that LAC's next generation of space superiority swiss army knife will pull magic pixie dust out of their tail pipes, and be immune to losses while inflicting immense damage. Then again, I think you didn't bother to contemplate the framework of my initial post, or more likely, forgot it all too quickly, and have your mind THOROUGHLY stuck in a rut, of CURRENT tech levels. Not that I haven't done that before

My point. My original point, is that new technology creates disproprtionate advantages to the side with the new technology. Are they immune? No. The Cannon was the first such tech that came along. I suppose you could say the long bow, but not really as the battleships of the time, the fort/castle were still immune. The cannon forced the fort/castle to become expensive beyond belief to adjust to the new tech. Did the canon completely negate forts? No. They are still valuable today. Their value is vastly reduced.

Did airplanes make BB's useless in WWII? No. It took hundreds of sorties, and 10's of hits to sink them. Did they have losses? Sure. Was a BB's value negated overnight? No. It was eroded to such an extent that no one has even contemplated building another. Its cost to value ratio as a useful tool of war was effectively destroyed.

LAC's are cheap. Dirt Cheap compared to SD's. What new tech will come along creating the new paridgm where SD's become too expensive for their usefulness? Well, I would put forth that such a technology exists. As I stated in my original post, the spider drive. Is it mature enough today? No. Was the airplane mature enough in WWI? Nope. Not even close. Was the canon mature enough to negate forts overnight? Nope, not even close.

What form of LAC would make SD's effectively too expensive compared to their battle value? A hybrid LAC with spider drive/wedge combined with a monster Graser, or E torps that fire exclusively down the throat/up kilt would do the job. Will SD tech be standing still? No. Did BB tech stand still between WWI and WWII? No. The airplane advanced far faster than BB tech did. SD tech will gain advanced compensators, therefore higher tonnage avaialble for tougher sidewalls and armor. But this is already at a near plateau with incremental advances. Of course their achilles heel, is still their throat/kilt. Yes, Bucklers cover percentage of the throat/kilt, but not all and everyone knows this. On BB's their achilles heel was flooding, steering.

So, under this scenario, we have these new hybrid LAC(wedge/spider) able to shoot down at the unarmored tops/bottoms, gutting a super expensive SD. The counter obviosly will be much greater armor on the top and bottom of the SD along with even more RD's and screening units. Of course this does not give much return on investment as the main armor in the Honorverse is the Sidewall, not physical armor.

Extrapolation.

Dafmeister wrote:

drothgery wrote:Oh, I didn't mean to imply that I was arguing otherwise (though Vipers are mostly useful for LAC vs LAC; I don't think they'd scratch the paint of a Nike or even a Sag-C); I don't think eTorps on a LAC are even possible in Honorverse physics, let alone a good idea.

Vipers won't do much against RMN/GSN, or even RHN cruisers and battlecruisers, but given the improvements in sidewal tech we've seen in the Haven sector I've often wondered how a Viper would do against a Solarian destroyer or cruiser.

Just for reference, the single laserhead carried by a Viper is the same as the laserheads carried by a Mk13, so whatever a Mk13 could damage, a Viper can as well - although at 1/6 the odds of hitting the target.