light ships number and type

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:Neither are SDs. What would the survival rate of Home Fleet been decreased if it was all composed of wayfarer equivalents?

It wouldn't have taken the entire RHN Second Fleet to destroy Home Fleet; a couple of RHN SDs would have done the job if they were civilian freighter designs.

No, because against a small number of attackers you can use massed long-range fire to destroy them and also can prevent them from stacking significant number of pods. So the incoming fire will be something you can handle using your point defenses and LAC screen.

Against a really large-scale attack nobody survives, so one solution is to build as many fire control channels and missile launchers as you can to ensure the destruction of huge numbers of attackers.

It's particularly useful when you don't have time for better solutions.

HungryKing wrote:Just found it. Yep, that is what you said. As for the focusing array, all I've found is that the 16G's array is much stronger than the 16E's, but it is also bigger ...

A 16G is five times as powerful as the 16E while the upgrade 16E1 only doubles the power.

The 16E1 only changes the grav lensing to get the doubling of power. the other 2.7 times increase comes from the large warhead.

If the Grav lensing scales up, the MK23 and MK25 would presumable also double in power without increasing the yield of the warhead's nuke.

But now, thanks primarily to fallout from the Star Kingdom's ongoing emphasis on improving its grav-pulse FTL communications capability, BuWeaps had completed field testing and begun production of a new generation of substantially more powerful gravity generators for the cruiser-weight Mark 16. In fact, they'd almost doubled the grav lens amplification factor, and while they were at it, they'd increased the yield of the missile warhead, as well, which had actually required at least as much ingenuity as the new amplification generators, given the way warheads scaled. They'd had to shift quite a few of the original Mark 16's components around to find a way to shoehorn all of that in, which had included shifting several weapons bus components aft, but Helen didn't expect anyone to complain about the final result. With its fifteen megaton warhead, the Mark 16 had been capable of dealing with heavy cruiser or battlecruiser armor, although punching through to the interior of a battlecruiser had pushed it almost to the limit. Now, with the new Mod G's forty megaton warhead and improved grav lensing, the Mark 16 had very nearly as much punch as an all-up capital missile from as recently as five or six T-years ago.

Producing the Mod G had required what amounted to a complete redesign of the older Mark 16 weapons buses, however, and BuWeaps had decided that it neither wanted to discard all of the existing weapons nor forgo the improvements, so Admiral Hemphill's minions had come up with a kit to convert the previous Mod E to the Mod E-1. (Exactly what had become of the Mod F designation was more than Helen was prepared to guess. It was well known to every tactical officer that BuWeaps nomenclature worked in mysterious ways.) The Mod E-1 was basically the existing Mod E with its original gravity generators replaced by the new, improved model. That was the only change, which had required no adjustments to buses or shifting of internal components, and the new warheads could be fused seamlessly into the existing Mark 16 weapons queues and attack profiles. Of course, with its weaker, original warhead it would remain less effective than the Mod G, since its destructiveness was "only" doubled . . . while the Mod G laser heads' throughput had increased by a factor of over five.

Jonathan_S wrote:I can see where someone could make a breakthrough that make it easier to locate and target recon drones. But DDs under stealth are still easier to spot and target than RDs under stealth. So there's a limit to how far in-system they can sneak to provide your "personal touch" control of the RDs.

Of course. And they shouldn´t be heading in-system at all unless they must, because once sensors improve, a DD will be far easier to spot than a RD.

What is needed is for the DD/whatever, to merely be present close enough that they can TRY to keep the RDs from ending up in trouble.

Positioning will be tricky to get right for just a single ship, to avoid loosing a non-interceptable communication with the RDs, because as far as possible, you still want the other side to know the least possible about what you´re doing.

To take one oversimplified example, you can pop a DD out of hyper on each side of a system, have both send out RDs, with a fair amount of separation from anything dangerous, and have them run through the system, to the DD on the other side, then picking them up and leaving. Getting the maximum data from minimum time by RDs spent in danger spots.


Anyway, i expect it´s only a matter of time before sensors of the "bad guys" gets improved, the MA/RF especially have focused on stealth, which means they WILL have focused on trying to burn through the stealth as well.

Jonathan_S wrote:But ultimately DDs just aren't big or tough enough to shoot their way through (or out of) even a semi-serious system defense

I never suggested such. They should obviously stay as far out on the sidelines as they can. Hopefully without getting ambushed in the meantime, which of course is another reason you do NOT want this kind of thing done with big ships.

What they need to do is provide a constant or regular comlink with the RDs, preferably not forced to use the gravcom or anything that can be noted outside of the one it´s meant for(ie directional).

Size creep is inevitable. Modern US Navy Frigates are larger than the largest WWII destroyers, current destroyer designs are about the size of WWII light cruisers etc ... .

Mostly this is because as we develop new capabilities we need more room to make full use of those capabilities. Just the increasing density of missile salvo's is going to demand ever more in the way of PD and CM capabilities in order for units to survive and space can be awfully useful for that.

However, I think it's a mistake to view the Roland as a harbinger of things to come. The Roland is designed to give "DD's" and internal MDM capabilities. Now MDM's are larger than SDM's but that doesn't explain the Roland's pretty weak missile salvo density nor it's comparative enormous size.

Typically there are three basic missile sizes for shipborne missile's. Large capital ship missiles with the heaviest, most powerful laserheads fired from BB's, DN's and SD's, Medium missiles designed to be used by BC's and CA's, and finally light missles designe to be used by light combatants like DD's and CL's.

The Roland exists because of one simple fact, the SEM does not yet know how to build a light MDM. Period. If they did, the Roland would be smaller, have a much better salvo density and be a far more cost effective vessel for it's mission than it actually is.

Essentially, the Roland is a DD designed to carry missiles designed to be launched from Battlecruiser.

Wet navy equivalent, take a WWII DD and mount a few 12 inch guns on it, that's the Roland, an eggshell with a sledgehammer. Why don't you see many ship designs like this? Because they are REALLY expensive and navies don't want to spend those kind of resources on an eggshell. If you're going to pay the funds to building something using BC or CA missiles, you're going to want to protect it like a BC or CA.

Eventually the SEM will develop a light MDM designed for true light combatants and the Roland will become, or at least should become, a design dead end.

That doesn't mean that vessels won't continue to increase in size. The MDM world is going to require larger vessels to use them properly at least until someone can figure out how to make the MDM's smaller. Greater salvo densities will require more and better PD systems and whether you're a podlayer or depend on internally launched missiles, as long as missile combat reigns supreme, magazine of pod capacity will increasingly important.

This isn't going to necessarily mean that any ship classification is going to disappear. That is only going to happen if the job a particular class was designed to do disappears and/or the economic, resource and capacity environment which prompted the class changes so radically as to make that class no longer a resource effective solution.

The problem is that the MDM does not really scale down, and for the matter the laser head does not scale gracefully. The Mk-16 is the smallest they can make DDMs (its implied that the minimum size of the fusion bottle is a major factor), and even then they had to loose the third drive ring, and note they were able to shoehorn capital missile's attack package after they pulled 4 rods (hexagonal packing is the most efficient, but still), and figured out how to build a slightly larger but doubly effective focusing array.

It is the same thing that doomed the smaller missiles used by Sileasan frigates (and also the larger but still very light ones used by Couragous-class CL), by the time you've fitted the warhead, penaids and focus array the laserheads are very short, numerous, probably lack individual seekers, and are not particularly useful.

Alizon wrote:Size creep is inevitable. Modern US Navy Frigates are larger than the largest WWII destroyers, current destroyer designs are about the size of WWII light cruisers etc ... .

Mostly this is because as we develop new capabilities we need more room to make full use of those capabilities. Just the increasing density of missile salvo's is going to demand ever more in the way of PD and CM capabilities in order for units to survive and space can be awfully useful for that.

However, I think it's a mistake to view the Roland as a harbinger of things to come. The Roland is designed to give "DD's" and internal MDM capabilities. Now MDM's are larger than SDM's but that doesn't explain the Roland's pretty weak missile salvo density nor it's comparative enormous size.

Typically there are three basic missile sizes for shipborne missile's. Large capital ship missiles with the heaviest, most powerful laserheads fired from BB's, DN's and SD's, Medium missiles designed to be used by BC's and CA's, and finally light missles designe to be used by light combatants like DD's and CL's.

The Roland exists because of one simple fact, the SEM does not yet know how to build a light MDM. Period. If they did, the Roland would be smaller, have a much better salvo density and be a far more cost effective vessel for it's mission than it actually is.

Essentially, the Roland is a DD designed to carry missiles designed to be launched from Battlecruiser.

Wet navy equivalent, take a WWII DD and mount a few 12 inch guns on it, that's the Roland, an eggshell with a sledgehammer. Why don't you see many ship designs like this? Because they are REALLY expensive and navies don't want to spend those kind of resources on an eggshell. If you're going to pay the funds to building something using BC or CA missiles, you're going to want to protect it like a BC or CA.

Eventually the SEM will develop a light MDM designed for true light combatants and the Roland will become, or at least should become, a design dead end.

That doesn't mean that vessels won't continue to increase in size. The MDM world is going to require larger vessels to use them properly at least until someone can figure out how to make the MDM's smaller. Greater salvo densities will require more and better PD systems and whether you're a podlayer or depend on internally launched missiles, as long as missile combat reigns supreme, magazine of pod capacity will increasingly important.

This isn't going to necessarily mean that any ship classification is going to disappear. That is only going to happen if the job a particular class was designed to do disappears and/or the economic, resource and capacity environment which prompted the class changes so radically as to make that class no longer a resource effective solution.

HungryKing wrote:The problem is that the MDM does not really scale down, and for the matter the laser head does not scale gracefully. The Mk-16 is the smallest they can make DDMs (its implied that the minimum size of the fusion bottle is a major factor), and even then they had to loose the third drive ring, and note they were able to shoehorn capital missile's attack package after they pulled 4 rods (hexagonal packing is the most efficient, but still), and figured out how to build a slightly larger but doubly effective focusing array.

It may be the most efficient for packing, but it sucks for deployment of the laserheads (not rods). These things not only need to be held in place during storage, launch, and boost phases, but they also have to be deployed several tens of meters away from and 150 meters or so forward of the missile body. The clamps that hold them in place aren't especially bulky, but they *would* get in the way of any laserheads packed inboard of the outer layer of laserheads, unless you set them up in a six-pointed (or ten points for a Mk23) star pattern (with two laserheads per point), which, if the missile diameter were large enough (it isn't - not when you include the core power and data bus that runs from the sensors, data processing packages, and warhead in the nose back through the center of the laserhead compartment to the reactor and aft sensors) would allow one to place twelve laserheads in a Mk16 (and 20 in a Mk23/Mk25).

Trust me... when building the Mk16 and Mk23 missiles, I *tried* to get more laserheads in each of them, yet still allow them to be deployed realistically, and it just couldn't be done. Not given the overall dimensions I had to work with, as well as requirements for other stuff (see above) that had to run from the forward end of the missile to the aft end. I could *almost* get another six laserheads in the Mk23/25, but in the end, it just wasn't working out.

Hey MaxxQ:

Since you responded to the subject regarding missile layout. I have a couple questions. I am referencing the drawings in the back of SFTS.

Why does the power bus go down the middle? Why not down the main frame member forward to the RCS thrusters. Note, I just assumed the main power bus going down the middle is mainly there for the MK-16 RCS thruster at the nose. Obviously a large amount of power is also required for the gravity lens unit. Power is also there for the lasing rods, but why not get power for the rods in from the end? Already have to have power at the end for the RCS thruster or the other end via its sensors.

Brings up my main question. Why not place the Gravity lens unit and nuclear explosive device just in front of the Fusion reactor and behind the laser rods? Dump the power for the RCS thrusters and sensors down the forward missile frame. This could possibly free up the center for one more lasing rod. This rod could be launched straight forward if the flying saucer could be moved off to the side. This is vacuum of space so, I suppose, objects do not have to be symmetrical for Aerodynamic purposes.

Completely different question; well not really. I suppose the unlabeled, flying saucer at the nose of the MK-16 is a sensor package or maybe particle shielding generator? Someone knows, just not me!

PS. If worried about clamping mech. Make the mech the power bus and have both get launched with the laser Head. It is not as if these systems get used more than once! The techs trying to "find" the pieces are going to be looking a really loooong time.

PPS. Whoever drew up those Mk-16 drawings in SFTS, thank you. They are great. EDIT: Helps to read the publishers page. Thanks 2 Thomas's and William!

Hoo boy! This is going to take a while...

Relax wrote:Hey MaxxQ:

Since you responded to the subject regarding missile layout. I have a couple questions. I am referencing the drawings in the back of SFTS.

Why does the power bus go down the middle? Why not down the main frame member forward to the RCS thrusters. Note, I just assumed the main power bus going down the middle is mainly there for the MK-16 RCS thruster at the nose.

The main frame members you mention are actually the sides of the missile that don't separate with the shrouds, and attached to them are the fuel tanks for the RCS thrusters. These tanks go radially almost all the way to the centerline, stopping just short of the power/data bus. The tanks aren't actually shown in the art in the book, so it looks like empty, wasted space, but trust me, it isn't either one.

The laserhead clamps are attached to those tanks, and again, are not shown in the artwork. The clamps are like half wagon wheel spokes, and there are six sets of them - three above and three below the tanks and bus. In the illustration of the laserhead, you can see the Payload Bay Docking Lugs - that's where the clamps attach. Although... there are twelve total per laserhead, but only six are used - opposing pairs at three locations.

The nose RCS (there are only two of these) is more or less directly attached to the fuel tanks

Relax wrote:Obviously a large amount of power is also required for the gravity lens unit. Power is also there for the lasing rods, but why not get power for the rods in from the end? Already have to have power at the end for the RCS thruster or the other end via its sensors.

Power transfer (and data initialization) to the laserhead is accomplished through the Missile Power Interface (MPI - four of those, but only two are used by the clamps). Can't go through the ends because the forward end is taken up with sensors for final targeting, and the aft end is taken up with receivers for other final updates from the missile, through the Laserhead Telemetry Array (there are six emitters, one for each laserhead, but I believe they also "cross-talk" to other laserheads as well, for redundancy).

The laserhead has its own onboard power system. Capacitors are charged up in flight - or prior to launch - through the MPI that send power to the forward sensors and aft receivers through surface-mounted umbilical tunnels, similar to what you see on real-life rockets and missiles. Roughly 90% of the volume of a laserhead is the bunkerage for the RCS, and is most likely something like hypergolic fuels, so the only power needed for the RCS would be for the valves.

Relax wrote:Brings up my main question. Why not place the Gravity lens unit and nuclear explosive device just in front of the Fusion reactor and behind the laser rods? Dump the power for the RCS thrusters and sensors down the forward missile frame. This could possibly free up the center for one more lasing rod. This rod could be launched straight forward if the flying saucer could be moved off to the side. This is vacuum of space so, I suppose, objects do not have to be symmetrical for Aerodynamic purposes.

I think my explanation about the forward RCS bunkerage above will answer most of what you asked here, as far as getting power to the stuff up front. As you say, these operate in a vacuum, so there's no need for aerodynamics, but asymmetry isn't really possible - at least not externally. These are launched from cylindrical tubes, where the grav drivers need to be precisely focused - asymmetry would make that a little bit more difficult. Not impossible, but why complicate things?

And yes, the "flying saucer" is a sensor package.

As for moving the warhead and grav lens array aft... well, let's just say they're up front for classified reasons

Edit: OTOH, the warhead and grav lens array *is* mounted aft of the laserhead on a Viper, and the warhead is mounted through the hollow centers of the capacitor rings.

Relax wrote:Completely different question; well not really. I suppose the unlabeled, flying saucer at the nose of the MK-16 is a sensor package or maybe particle shielding generator? Someone knows, just not me!

Now you do!

Relax wrote:PS. If worried about clamping mech. Make the mech the power bus and have both get launched with the laser Head. It is not as if these systems get used more than once! The techs trying to "find" the pieces are going to be looking a really loooong time.

Again, asymmetry plays a role here. It *could* be done this way, but the problem is stabilizing the laserhead to minimize vibration so that the laser can hit a target 30k km away. We had a *lot* of discussion on various methods to minimize vibration, or damp it out. Even just using the RCS to point the laserhead at the target is going to induce vibration that could affect the targeting. Having mass on one side can induce slight misalignments that would need to be compensated for, and the entire process for lining up on the target from the moment of ejection from the laserhead bay is *at best* a few seconds. We came up with a couple methods, but I don't think I can talk about that.

Feel free to speculate, but I will state right now that I can neither confirm nor deny what comes from such speculation.

Relax wrote:PPS. Whoever drew up those Mk-16 drawings in SFTS, thank you. They are great. EDIT: Helps to read the publishers page. Thanks 2 Thomas's and William!

Yep, they did the original artwork that I based my 3D models on. My 3D models were used to create the artwork seen in the book (except the laserhead cutaway - I only did the externals).

Warning: It gets a little technical here, regarding setting things up in my modeling program.

Basically, when the models were finished I made orthographic renders of the external and internal views of the missile. I set things up to give an almost line-art quality to it, rather than a shaded 3D render. This involved things like using a cel-shader, setting the lighting ULTRA bright, using lots of bounce and fill lighting to minimize shadows, and other stuff, until the final render looked much like what you see in the book.

I did the same thing for the grav lens unit and warhead, as well as the perspective shots used for the attack sequence.

After all those were finished, I sent them off to Thomas, who then went over the renders in what we call a paintover (or drawover, in this case), to make them look more like technical line drawings, which also made the art print-ready for the book.

Note: I wouldn't suggest using the art in the book to figure out dimensions. There are some distortions in the final print version that will throw things off, especially if you're counting pixels. It's most obvious in the attack sequence line art - the missile body shows a definite vertical (relative to the page) elongation, making it look oval, rather than cylindrical. That's the only obvious stretching I can see, but who knows what else might have been "adjusted"?

Anyway, I hope I answered your questions satisfactorily.

MaxxQ wrote:Hoo boy! This is going to take a while...

Relax wrote:Hey MaxxQ:

Thanks much. Figured the "empty" part of the drawing was full of something, but was thinking that maybe the RCS thrusters were being powered from the micro fusion bottle.

Alizon wrote:Size creep is inevitable. Modern US Navy Frigates are larger than the largest WWII destroyers, current destroyer designs are about the size of WWII light cruisers etc ... .

(this post is more FYI than anything else, hope you find something of it interesting)

That is not because sizecreep is inevitable.

That is because there was a paradigm change (or more correctly several), which combined with political idiocy pushed size upwards.

Most noticeable ones:
Missiles in general.
Modern Antiship missiles. Ships that are too small tend to be one-hit kills for modern ASMs/SSMs.
Modern radar. Needs relatively large and tall superstructure to be at its best, which can get troublesome on smaller ships.


Then however comes the issue with how post WWII US politics have messed up a lot of US military equipment purchases, essentially defaulting to "bigger/more is better" whenever in doubt.

In comparison, the Russians have both their current DD classes around 7000t, which seems to be close to what China has also ended up with as their new standard, but it´s still just 20 years since they built 3600t and 4800t DDs.

Italian modern DDs range from 5400t to 7000t.
Australia up until 2001 had the Perth-class DDs at a mere 3500t, despite being DDGs.

The Canadian Iroquois DDG are 5000t ships.

Japan still has the Hatakaze class at a mere 4600t despite being a full out missile destroyer class.
While their latest Atago class comes in at 7700t.

The point being that earlier DDs were not a fully developed class (Japan in WWII found that the optimal DD size was around 4000t), then tech changes added from nil up to a few thousand ton, and since then, DD size have effectively been unchanging at around 5000t-8000t depending on details in intended mission etc.

Sizecreep happens when there is a reason, or when politics get involved.

Alizon wrote:The Roland exists because of one simple fact, the SEM does not yet know how to build a light MDM. Period. If they did, the Roland would be smaller, have a much better salvo density and be a far more cost effective vessel for it's mission than it actually is.

Is it even possible to build a much smaller MDM or even DDM?

Alizon wrote:Essentially, the Roland is a DD designed to carry missiles designed to be launched from Battlecruiser.

Wet navy equivalent, take a WWII DD and mount a few 12 inch guns on it, that's the Roland, an eggshell with a sledgehammer. Why don't you see many ship designs like this?

Yes and no. It´s essentially a DD upsized enough to allow it to carry the smallest possible multidrive missiles.

And wet navy ships like that DID exist, sometimes called pocket battleships, coastal battleships, coastal defence ships...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverige-cl ... fence_ship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_co ... _Ilmarinen

There were also so called Monitors, like this class:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Clive_class_monitor
Single turret with twin 12 inch, later on a single 18 inch gun.


However, a more modern comparison can also be done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_class_destroyer
It was never equipped with Harpoon missiles, but it was fitted with the ability to load up with them. Despite being just the size of a large WWII DD.
And yes, very much the classic "eggshell with sledgehammers".

OTOH, the Russian navy puts bigassed SSMs on just about any ship that can carry them.

Compare the:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanuchka-class_corvette
It´s smaller than a WWII DE at just 560t, but it still carries 6 SSM.

Still not a perfectly valid comparison, as in space you rarely have the advantage of being able to sneak up by exploiting lack of sensor coverage or terrain.

But those kind of ships are at the same time EXTREMLY dangerous, and to some extent at least, the same is true for the space-similar.

Alizon wrote:Eventually the SEM will develop a light MDM designed for true light combatants and the Roland will become, or at least should become, a design dead end.

Question is if that is possible. OTOH, it might be possible to play around with "undersized" propulsion units, to allow 2 of them in a smaller missile.

Something sized like the engine for a countermissile or somewhat larger might just work.

Alizon wrote:That doesn't mean that vessels won't continue to increase in size. The MDM world is going to require larger vessels to use them properly at least until someone can figure out how to make the MDM's smaller. Greater salvo densities will require more and better PD systems and whether you're a podlayer or depend on internally launched missiles, as long as missile combat reigns supreme, magazine of pod capacity will increasingly important.

Pretty much. Going to become expensive to have no true light ships in the long run though.

Alizon wrote:This isn't going to necessarily mean that any ship classification is going to disappear. That is only going to happen if the job a particular class was designed to do disappears and/or the economic, resource and capacity environment which prompted the class changes so radically as to make that class no longer a resource effective solution.

Completely agree. I expect the DD will be forced to shift it´s mission somewhat, away from anything that even smells like "big ship battle" and focus completely on the stuff that needs ships, any size, with a lot of defensive focus, with a comparatively anemic offensive missileload.