New Manty ship ideas.

Rakhmamort wrote:

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?

Now I understand why there is such a need to stick to what tech has been discovered/used. lol!

Ignoring your over the top and absurd suggestions:
The tech advances that I am inferring is simply more improvement of current tech items existing in Honorverse. They are not that far fetched as far as tech advances go. Hell, compared to a completely new drive system, the tech advances I'm suggesting is minor. Miniaturize ETorp launchers that use micro fusion plants so they can be installed in LACs. I don't know why there's such a huge effort that say
1) ETorp launchers cannot fit into LACs
2) micro fusion plants cannot be made to power ETorp launchers.

I've already said that it is perfectly fine to have a thread speculating about potential technological breakthroughs. Such a thread would be entirely hypothetical, a "what if" discussion. The problem is that this thread is specifically about "here is a design that Manticore should build." Throwing in technology that doesn't exist in the Honorverse does not work when we are trying to evaluate a design according to what Manticore has now. In this kind of evaluation, we have to toss out any design which requires new technology, even small ones.

Potato wrote:
The entire reason the new LACs are workable is because they are not trying to shoehorn in a fusion plant into such a tiny hull. The fission plants were such a revolution in LAC design because they did not have to sacrifice a quarter to a third of the tonnage of the ship to power generation. If you want to cram in a fusion plant, you just end up with the Havenite's first generation Cimeterre design which was massively limited in effectiveness.

Tourville in AoV explains why fusion plants in LACs are not a viable prospect. The grav-based fusing plants which are used for starships have an absolute tonnage and volume floor. The laser-based fusing plants can be made smaller, but are inefficient for powering larger vessels. Ergo, the microfusion plants in missiles and drones are worthless for anything larger, so you cannot power a LAC with them.

Who said the fusion plants are going to be used to power the LAC? Modified micro-fusion plants to provide the plasma for the ETorp launcher. Is that so difficult to understand?

You cannot guarantee that a sidewall will be down even on a cripple. I do not comprehend why this is so hard for you to understand. We have seen many instances where sidewalls have been brought back online when the damaged/destroyed generators are bypassed and the remain generators used to spread the load. The graser and missiles are weapons which are useful in every situation. (Yes, even when approaching a wall. As is explained in AoV, the missile cells are loaded with decoys instead.) The energy torpedo has zero application outside a very narrow band of circumstances.

Yes, the sidewalls may still be active, but you still have that big damned graser in your LAC's nose, use it. The current LACs mainly use their missile power at the start of their attacks and flush what's remaining when they see an opening for it. Their main weapon for taking down the enemy ship is the graser, which will remain. What they're getting would be a coup de grace weapon that would enable them to finish off a target quickly so they can move on to another target. With the current weapons mix, LACs have to pound the enemy into scrap with their grasers. With ETorps if one or two sidewall generators goes down, just a couple of salvos will turn that ship into a wreck freeing the LAC to find another target.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd actually be less surprised by a breakthrough in etorp range than one in miniaturization (without a corresponding reduction in effectiveness)...

My understanding is that an etorp is just a packet of reactor plasma wrapped by a containment field. Wouldn't reducing the size of the launcher reduce the size of the projectile? Which would in turn reduce the amount of plasma, which should reduce the damage.

I don't know which 'advancement' is easier or more probable. I know Manty's have a lot of experience in miniaturization and since I don't exactly know the size of an ETorp launcher, an advancement that would make them fit into a LAC in exchange for a missile launcher is what I preferred. Increasing it's range twice or even 10 times isn't exactly going to be useful if they are not in LACs considering the ranges that battles are being fought in Honorverse in the last few books.

You probably could put a current etorp launcher in a LAC, but my guess is that it'd be a single spinal mount (because it displaces at least one CL broadside mount), and that you'd have to go back to a classic LAC fission plant (as inefficiently scaled as that is) with the corresponding limitations on endurance. Like Whitecold, I really doubt that you can squeeze in both the fission reactor and sufficient supplementary microfusion reactors to act as plasma generators for an etorp; LACs just don't have that much room, and you'd need a vastly scaled up microfusion plant, or a lot of them, to generate enough plasma (or at least that's my assumption)

Engineering problem. They can build one so small to fit a drone, they can certainly build one to just provide plasma. I'm quite sure that size-wise, a fusion plant built to generate power is going to be bigger than one whose purpose is just to provide plama. You need other subsystems to convert the plasma into usable energy. A plasma supplier doesn't need those.

Now if I'm wrong and you can miniaturize an etorp launcher while still keeping a useful payload then maybe, maybe, you can displace a Shrike's rotary launcher and mount a few around the spinal graser. We don't have hard details on the size of those mounts, or on the size of current etorps (much less hypothetically minaturized ones) so we can't really know for sure.

IF you could put one in at only the cost of a rotary launcher or two I could see some arguments for doing so. I'm personally still not sure it's worth it, since the Shrike would have a lot more opportunities to use those (limited numbers of) LAC missiles - but it's at least a debatable tradeoff. (Although if you costs the Shrike all its onboard missiles, that also costs it it ability to launch it's own decoys and jammers to cover its approach; it's always have to pair with a Ferret to get that protection then...)

As I said in my early posts, I was proposing to replace only 2 of the existing 4 launchers. I do realize that LAC survival during approach is dependent on their ECM suite and their ability to launch LAC sized decoys care of the Ghost Rider program.

E torps work best with a grave lance. You need a bottle no fission pile and need to remove the sidewall. Would totally whipe out a non wedge protected ship though. Like a spiderdrive ship unless they also have sidewalls. Might work good on a graser torpedo. But then so would a SD level PD cluster.

Putting a grav lance on a spider drive ship and energy torpedo's would be very bad indeed.

No idea who this person is, and yes Skimper is a name I would and do use.

Lord Skimper wrote:Putting a grav lance on a spider drive ship and energy torpedo's would be very bad indeed.

I agree, it would be a very bad weapon combination as the grav lance would either be useless without a wedge or the wedge needed for it would negate the advantage of the Spider drive, and without being able to use the grav lance the etorps are useless.

Rakhmamort wrote:Engineering problem. They can build one so small to fit a drone, they can certainly build one to just provide plasma. I'm quite sure that size-wise, a fusion plant built to generate power is going to be bigger than one whose purpose is just to provide plama. You need other subsystems to convert the plasma into usable energy. A plasma supplier doesn't need those.

It's been stated by David that they don't use these on ships because they are extremely hot, as in radiation. So you turn it on and the crew dies. I see this a problem. Well, yet ANOTHER problem. In addition to minor issue that you intend to remove weapons that are always used in combat and replace them ones that virtually never will be able to be used. Because if you are in range of a down sidewall with an Etorp you know what else is in range and has been for several hundred thousand kms? DOZENS of SD grasers.

Remember that 95% fatality rate and no damage done to 2nd fleet's SDs? 2nd fleet was severely damaged, with almost no undamaged SDs and the average SD at about 50-60% combat power and STILL the shrikes got almost completely annihilated and did absolutely no damage.

kzt wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:Engineering problem. They can build one so small to fit a drone, they can certainly build one to just provide plasma. I'm quite sure that size-wise, a fusion plant built to generate power is going to be bigger than one whose purpose is just to provide plama. You need other subsystems to convert the plasma into usable energy. A plasma supplier doesn't need those.

It's been stated by David that they don't use these on ships because they are extremely hot, as in radiation. So you turn it on and the crew dies. I see this a problem. Well, yet ANOTHER problem. In addition to minor issue that you intend to remove weapons that are always used in combat and replace them ones that virtually never will be able to be used. Because if you are in range of a down sidewall with an Etorp you know what else is in range and has been for several hundred thousand kms? DOZENS of SD grasers.

They being used in recon drones that are supposed to be the stealthiest ones in the galaxy. I'm quite sure that they've got damping that radiation down to a minuscule, if not manageable level, otherwise those STEALTHY recon drones wouldn't be stealthy at all.

Remember that 95% fatality rate and no damage done to 2nd fleet's SDs? 2nd fleet was severely damaged, with almost no undamaged SDs and the average SD at about 50-60% combat power and STILL the shrikes got almost completely annihilated and did absolutely no damage.

Were the Shrikes approach undetected?
How many LACs did 2nd fleet have to counter Home Fleet's LACs?
Is 2nd fleet dealing with missile salvos from Home Fleet or are they free to concentrate on the incoming LACs?


(repeating myself again here)
You are using an incident where your LACs are attacking in a sub-optimal situation. Those LACs had no choice but to continue with their attack. As far as they know, they are the only mobile forces in the system and it is their HOME system they are defending.

If you send in LACs into such a situation, they are going to be swatted aside with prejudice, no matter what their offensive weapons mix are. Another point is this, your 'standard' LAC designs did little or no damage, the speed of their passage gave them little time to pound on the damaged SDs to destruction. If some of them had ETorps and they found some SDs with sidewalls down, they could probably have destroyed them with a concentrated barrage of ETorps and did some damage instead of little or none.

Rakhmamort, why are you so dead set on attacking a battle wall? You always have to expect being detected, Hancock is not representative.
The suboptimal circumstances are attacking a wall in the first place. And every wall should include a screen, so a screen being present is not suboptimal circumstances, you always should factor that in.
I admit there might have been a target of opportunity there, but this is not the main mission of a Shrike.
The focus has shifted to using Shrikes as rear area defense, and Katanas as missile defense bolster, and of course anti-LAC screen. The BoM was catastrophic for the LACs, how do you expect it would end for a Katana-screened wall, especially as Wallers can fire vipers too? The Havenite Lac's were massacred when they closed in on 8th Fleets wallers. I don't have the numbers, but they were near complete.

Whitecold wrote:Rakhmamort, why are you so dead set on attacking a battle wall? You always have to expect being detected, Hancock is not representative.
The suboptimal circumstances are attacking a wall in the first place. And every wall should include a screen, so a screen being present is not suboptimal circumstances, you always should factor that in.

Why do you say I'm dead set on attacking a wall of battle? The ones who are opposing my proposed LAC designs are the ones using the bad experience of LACs vs wall of battle as their counter argument (Battle of Manticore to be exact).

What I have been pointing out repeatedly is that LACs are designed to be in knife fighting range, to sweep in and clean up ships that have been damaged by missile attacks. If you are in very short range of damaged ships, you have a lot of opportunity to attack one whose sidewalls are down. Ergo, more opportunity to use ETorp launchers compared to proper warships who usually engage farther out and are not as maneuverable as LACs (which helps in getting far superior firing angles).

I admit there might have been a target of opportunity there, but this is not the main mission of a Shrike.
The focus has shifted to using Shrikes as rear area defense, and Katanas as missile defense bolster, and of course anti-LAC screen. The BoM was catastrophic for the LACs, how do you expect it would end for a Katana-screened wall, especially as Wallers can fire vipers too? The Havenite Lac's were massacred when they closed in on 8th Fleets wallers. I don't have the numbers, but they were near complete.

BoM was a battle between fleets who knew each other's capabilities and have developed counters for the other side's tactics. The SLN doesn't have LACs like the GA has. They don't have the battle experience to generate the tactics that made it very difficult for Manty LACs to attack a Havenite force.

Even if LACs are now taking over system defense tasks, the strategy stays the same if the system is attacked. The LACs are going to be in knife fighting range. System defense pods pound the invaders, LACs finish up the damaged ships.

Damaged ships ===> some sidewalls are down ===> Opportunity to finish them off using ETorps

Rakhmamort wrote:
They being used in recon drones that are supposed to be the stealthiest ones in the galaxy. I'm quite sure that they've got damping that radiation down to a minuscule, if not manageable level, otherwise those STEALTHY recon drones wouldn't be stealthy at all.

Ok, first of all, which part of the author has stated that micro-fusion reactors aren't used on ships because of the radiation they emit don't you understand?

Second, a hiding radiation signature that will fry a human like an egg is trivially easy for Honorverse military stealth fields. If a drone's stealth systems can keep a spacetime-wrenching impeller wedge from being detected, it can keep a few dozen Sieverts of radiation under wraps.