New Manty ship ideas.

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)

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.

They might but they're always going to do less damage than the larger missiles carried by Shrikes and Ferrets; those pack bigger warheads and more laser rods. Now if you've got Katanas along (and a resupply of missiles) I don't see where it can hurt to throw the Vipers into the mix, their higher accel should disrupt the anti-missile doctrine of the target and they might get some licks in. But count on the heavier missiles for most of the damage.

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.

Sorry, I meant the Shrike ship-killer missiles, not Vipers. Thanks for the corrections.

Relax wrote: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

I'm not sure why you quoted me. I wasn't talking about anything you said. I was responding to someone else entirely.

Relax wrote: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.

Even if you extrapolate like this, ignoring how much all the systems would have to shrink to fit into a single LAC, SD's have two-phase bow walls. Raise it fully, and the Etorp is useless, and the graser effectiveness is diminished, while the SD can fire Vipers as well as capital missiles during the entire approach.
But LACs are not going to kill SD's, quite the other way. LAC effectiveness has decreased since the introduction of the Shrike. Hancock had been a great victory, but by now the focus lies on rear-area protection, and missile screening, not the strike role, because they are no longer survivable.

SWM wrote: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.

That's an odd way of thinking up NEW designs. That's like moving your food around your plate. You aren't really doing anything, you are just changing he sequence which gets eaten first.

It's not exactly a NEW design if it's just adding a couple of launchers here and there or using a DN level graser on a BC instead of the standard BC class grasers.

You have NEW designs because advancement in tech made it possible to use improved weapons/equipment in a way that was not possible before.

If we aren't going to suggest NEW designs that would require some possible/logical/minor tech advancement, then we might as well stick with refining the existing ones so their damage potential is maximized. But it isn't what NEW really means.

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.

If you keep LACs 'further away' then you relegate them to nothing more than point defense booster packs. Such a big waste of offensive capability if you ask me.

And manticore didn't abandon the idea, even in the battle of manticore (vs Haven) LACs were still sent in to improve the chances that the Haven fleet would surrender. Apollo plus LACs just waiting on the wings to pounce on newly damaged SDs would be far too much of a disadvantage for a fleet that cannot hyper away.

Keep in mind, the current fleet mix is podnoughts pounding from afar, LACs, like piranhas, finishing off what the podnoughts started.

Rakhmamort wrote:And manticore didn't abandon the idea, even in the battle of manticore (vs Haven) LACs were still sent in to improve the chances that the Haven fleet would surrender.

And 95% of them DIED, doing exactly NO damage to the SDs.

Rakhmamort wrote:That's an odd way of thinking up NEW designs. That's like moving your food around your plate. You aren't really doing anything, you are just changing he sequence which gets eaten first.

It's not exactly a NEW design if it's just adding a couple of launchers here and there or using a DN level graser on a BC instead of the standard BC class grasers.

You have NEW designs because advancement in tech made it possible to use improved weapons/equipment in a way that was not possible before.

If we aren't going to suggest NEW designs that would require some possible/logical/minor tech advancement, then we might as well stick with refining the existing ones so their damage potential is maximized. But it isn't what NEW really means.

We have to use the Author's existing framework as a basis of this entire exercise or else conversations will just devolve to sillyness. Here are Logical reasons, which, inside the boundaries set by the author, prohibit or allow a design, idea or strategy.

If we do not use those boundaries - we quickly reach a point where all probabilities are equally possible and conversations are pointless. For instance, why not use Star Trek Warp drive? Why not use Star Wars TIE fighters? How about guns that shoot Hurricanes - Or Black Holes?

In a short time, we will have on the table a shipkiller missile 3 feet long which has a range of 3 light hours which can skip the entire point defense envelope by jumping into "null" space and jumping back again just meters before the target's hull (A hull which is made of super dense unobtanium which will fend off every attack possible).

Why not?

Theemile wrote:We have to use the Author's existing framework as a basis of this entire exercise or else conversations will just devolve to sillyness. Here are Logical reasons, which, inside the boundaries set by the author, prohibit or allow a design, idea or strategy.

If we do not use those boundaries - we quickly reach a point where all probabilities are equally possible and conversations are pointless. For instance, why not use Star Trek Warp drive? Why not use Star Wars TIE fighters? How about guns that shoot Hurricanes - Or Black Holes?

In a short time, we will have on the table a shipkiller missile 3 feet long which has a range of 3 light hours which can skip the entire point defense envelope by jumping into "null" space and jumping back again just meters before the target's hull (A hull which is made of super dense unobtanium which will fend off every attack possible).

Why not?

Don't go giving Skimper new ideas, now.

Theemile wrote:We have to use the Author's existing framework as a basis of this entire exercise or else conversations will just devolve to sillyness. Here are Logical reasons, which, inside the boundaries set by the author, prohibit or allow a design, idea or strategy.

I do think it can be reasonable to push those boundaries; within reason.

Hypothetically discuss what the impacts might be if technology we've seen is improved or combined. But that's still based fairly firmly in what RFC has shown us.


For example, after reading OBS it might have been plausible to debate whether the FTL nature of detecting a ship's wedge could ever be turned into a useful communication method. The in-universe fact that artificial grav can be detected at FTL speeds in established, so it's basically arguing implementation details about whether it can be turned into a useful signalling method. (Of course this particular example has the benefit of massive hindsight )

Equally with the benefit of hindsight there wasn't much keeping people from speculating about pod laying ships once pods and their 1st salvo effectiveness was introduced.


But some things we really have to wait for RFC to propose. For example bow walls and buckler walls. Everything in the text (prior to the introduction of the CLAC and Shrikes) simply said you couldn't close those aspects of a wedge. We didn't have the nuance to know that you could if you didn't care about accelerating while doing it. Then once the bow wall was introduced there was nothing in the text to hint it was possible to make a buckler that would let you keep acceleration. Someone could have speculated on how it would change tactics if such a thing existed, but the rest of us would probably have focused on the fact that it violated the rules of the universe (as they were then known).



Unfortunately it hard to see those potentials. To the extent that etorps and fusion powered LACs are both known technology, I think speculating about whether they could be combined (and whether it would be a good idea) is well within bounds. Now as it happens I think the answers to those are "maybe" and "even if so, definitely not". But it's a lot more reasonable than say Skimper's battlestar^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H hybrid Q-ship fixation:D

Rakhmamort wrote:Keep in mind, the current fleet mix is podnoughts pounding from afar, LACs, like piranhas, finishing off what the podnoughts started.

The current fleet mix is podnoughts pounding from afar, with LACs providing a large part of the missile defense. LACs will indeed go after cripples, but only after the enemy wall moves far enough away from those cripples. The massive losses of LACs in the Battle of Manticore shows the wisdom in that.