New Anti-Missile tactic

Dafmeister wrote:First of all, stow the insults.

You do not want to be insulted? Start by not insulting us.

It takes all of 30 seconds use of a human brain to completely destroy all of your "criticisms". Maybe next time, think first before throwing a knee jerk post.

Here is what you should have thought and typed. If you had bothered to use your fore-brain, instead of trying to gloss over your lazy stupidity leading to embarrassment.

You see a drone, has this thing called a wedge. This wedge allows it to move! So, under all battle conditions unless told to ROLL 90 and put itself in your line of sight, will remain out of the way. In fact said drones base code will have it revert to out of the way unless told specifically otherwise. That is the beauty of computers. They don't F' up like humans. They do as they are told every time, ON time. Therefore will not effect sensors or telemetry. Since you KNOW exactly(Within less than a thousandth of a second) when said incoming missiles will attack as you have these things called SENSORS tied to a tracking computer, you can place said wedge between you and their salvo. Since said RD has 10kps of accel, it will block only a portion/percentage of the time between salvos. Allowing the majority of the time between salvos to be used updating CM's, MDM's, tracking incoming, while firing your broadside tubes. Though the incoming is being tracked by RD's in far higher fidelity, so that is a null and void point anymore. Pretty much broadside sensors are only used for PDLC's anymore. Besides ships don't fight in singletons(turn on fore-brain and figure what this means for blocked sensors in a task force command environment where tracking etc is given out by the command ship)

Under pod warfare, pod salvos, currently average about one a minute. Give or take depending on situation. Out of that minute said Drone wedge shield would consume, 2 seconds out of 60 if you wish to be a complete stickler prickler about it. It is actually far less than this as said wedge roll rate is faster than its accel rate. Roll time would be all of a small fraction of said 2 seconds. Giving the majority of your broadside sensor ability, missile firing capability along with use for PDLC, etc. Ditto for lighter forces.

Of course, there is a lot of things done solely by the power of plot. The absurd pitch rates, for example. Do they really have to send out a horde of sailors with ropes and jet packs to turn?

So yeah, there are a few things in the honorverse that just are because of 'reasons'.

wastedfly wrote:You do not want to be insulted? Start by not insulting us.

At no point in this discussion have I insulted you or the group in general.

*snip further insults*

wastedfly wrote:You see a drone, has this thing called a wedge. This wedge allows it to move! So, under all battle conditions unless told to ROLL 90 and put itself in your line of sight, will remain out of the way. In fact said drones base code will have it revert to out of the way unless told specifically otherwise. That is the beauty of computers. They don't F' up like humans. They do as they are told every time, ON time.

Computers 'F' up all the time. Sometimes it's due to a flaw in the programming. Sometimes it's operator error. Sometimes they reach perfectly logical conclusions that are wrong due to incomplete data.

wastedfly wrote: Therefore will not effect sensors or telemetry. Since you KNOW exactly(Within less than a thousandth of a second) when said incoming missiles will attack as you have these things called SENSORS tied to a tracking computer, you can place said wedge between you and their salvo. Since said RD has 10kps of accel, it will block only a portion/percentage of the time between salvos. Allowing the majority of the time between salvos to be used updating CM's, MDM's, tracking incoming, while firing your broadside tubes. Though the incoming is being tracked by RD's in far higher fidelity, so that is a null and void point anymore. Pretty much broadside sensors are only used for PDLC's anymore. Besides ships don't fight in singletons(turn on fore-brain and figure what this means for blocked sensors in a task force command environment where tracking etc is given out by the command ship)

You mean the other ships in your force who are also currently coming under attack and employing their own shield walls? Also, I'd love to see what daisy-chaining your fire-control uplinks through a string of RDs is going to do to your accuracy. Terekhov was able to do it in Spindle, but he had direct line of sight to his RDs and wasn't under fire himself.

wastedfly wrote: Under pod warfare, pod salvos, currently average about one a minute. Give or take depending on situation. Out of that minute said Drone wedge shield would consume, 2 seconds out of 60 if you wish to be a complete stickler prickler about it. It is actually far less than this as said wedge roll rate is faster than its accel rate. Roll time would be all of a small fraction of said 2 seconds. Giving the majority of your broadside sensor ability, missile firing capability along with use for PDLC, etc. Ditto for lighter forces.

And then the enemy figures out what you're doing and starts taking advantage of the blind spots you're putting into your own sensor and CM/PDLC coverage. With timings as precise as you claim (which will never work out that way in a real-world combat environment, because nothing works as advertised in that environment) it's trivially easy to switch to new EW profiles and set up pre-programmed evasive maneuvers to mess with your responses while you've got your eyes closed and can't interfere, or even observe.

Fact is you can see through your wedge. Not in in high resolution, but adequate to detect the presence of the absurd grav and thermal signature of a missile. You can certainly also deploy a KH forward or behind the ship instead of on the flanks. The solution you are looking for is to go to a stream attack instead of a salvo attack. This would force the defender to always block their sidewalls.

Realistically the target for laser heads should be the nose. Trying to set up a snapshot on a rolled ship gives you a total engagement time of something on the order of 50 milliseconds with a long range MDM. The geometry, and hence the time to refine a solution for an attack, is a lot more favorable passing ahead of the target.

Dafmeister wrote:Computers 'F' up all the time. Sometimes it's due to a flaw in the programming. Sometimes it's operator error. Sometimes they reach perfectly logical conclusions that are wrong due to incomplete data.

In other words I would have to dump several semesters of basic engineering followed by a year of hands on training in building your own computer into your brain to differentiate between a purpose built computer and computer code to match, such as a missile and CNC, and a personnel computer that has to crunch massive amounts of data and therefore speed is preeminent leading to voltage leaking in the transistors added to its open hierarchical structure leading to errors.

One runs perfectly without any errors EVER and the other can create errors. See if you can figure out which one would be a drone...

PS. Such a drone wedge would still allow you to receive precise sensor data since said drone only covers a tiny portion of your periphery for the minute amount of time it actually shields your ship. The thinnest sidewall portion.

wastedfly wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:Computers 'F' up all the time. Sometimes it's due to a flaw in the programming. Sometimes it's operator error. Sometimes they reach perfectly logical conclusions that are wrong due to incomplete data.

In other words I would have to dump several semesters of basic engineering followed by a year of hands on training in building your own computer into your brain to differentiate between a purpose built computer and computer code to match, such as a missile and CNC, and a personnel computer that has to crunch massive amounts of data and therefore speed is preeminent leading to voltage leaking in the transistors added to its open hierarchical structure leading to errors.

One runs perfectly without any errors EVER and the other can create errors. See if you can figure out which one would be a drone...

PS. Such a drone wedge would still allow you to receive precise sensor data since said drone only covers a tiny portion of your periphery for the minute amount of time it actually shields your ship. The thinnest sidewall portion.

Having spent several decades designing and programming computer systems - errors and error handling are part of the game. Errors can be systematic - program bugs, hardware glitches (aka the legendary Pentium's Math Bug) and interactions between program modules - or transient - gamma rays, beta and alpha particles and stray protons and neutrons flipping bits in memory, flipping semiconductors to insulators or conductors and stray voltages from other sources are a constant battle in industrial systems - space based systems have it even worse - single bit error rates of 1 per kilobyte per hour are not unknown in silicon devices and then you add failures due to poor connections and corrosion.
The error correction overhead is significant and even with quin redundancy failures in flight control computers occur regularly - the Shuttle Columbia lost all five of its flight control computers on its first flight (the last as its wheels hit the runway). Industrial safety PLC's typically spend 70% of their time just checking that they are working correctly and the program in not corrupted to overcome this.
Where safety of life is involved multiple redundancy is taken for granted - tell me three times is standard
BTW humans also have glitches too - computers just have an unwavering concentration on a given task. Astronauts regularly get flashes in their eyes from radiation exposure and these are present in computer systems too.

There is a gigantic difference between a CNC and missile "computers" and what you are talking about Air Tech. CNC and missile comps are essentially hardwired for very specific tasks. They effectively are the exact same computer. 3 dims along with other imputs like a profile for cutter wear and which cutter is in which slot in the rack. Feed rates. On a missile its extra input will be its sensor look up table in its eprom. They have 0, nada, zilch, zippo error checking. A shield drone will likewise be hard wired as it has exactly one function. Could make said comp out of old relay's if one wished as they are both very simple(shield drone and missile homing systems) My first CNC I built was made from relays. Damned contacts... Thank God for Texas Instruments and eprom in the late 70's and 80s. Only thing had to worry about then were cracked circuit boards as didn't put enough vibration damping jacks on them. Learned my lesson quick. Worked like a charm afterwards. Now can pull a CNC out of a cracker jacks box...

PS> Honorverse has radiation shielding. There are no gamma radiation problems. I would assume it also stops neutrinos as well.

A certain someone used a practice missile wedge as a shield held in place by a tractor beam, whatever that is, to block a laser or graser. In beginnings somewhere.

I've always imagined that Rolands present the roof of their wedge towards the enemy and then send out their missile salvos from both ends. If it can track its missiles thru the roof of its wedge, it can certainly track them thru a weaker wedge of a drone-shield.

Rakhmamort wrote:I've always imagined that Rolands present the roof of their wedge towards the enemy and then send out their missile salvos from both ends. If it can track its missiles thru the roof of its wedge, it can certainly track them thru a weaker wedge of a drone-shield.

The problem is that, while you can see through your own wedge to a degree (because you know its properties pretty well, and can compensate for them), other wedges are still opaque to you. More importantly, while you can observe through a wedge, you can't send signals through it; this means that while it is possible to fire at a target with your wedge's roof or floor pointed at it, your fire will be much less accurate than it would be if your broadside or chase sensors had a good look at the target.