light ships number and type

Jonathan_S wrote:Second, when I played with the drive run-time numbers for the Mk 16 each stage appeared to have the same accel and run time as a Mk 14 ERM/EDM -- so I think that improved node tech was built in from day one.

ToF has MK-14 with 220+ second long burn times. Mk-16 has 180s drive times. Consecutive 180s drive at 46,000g obtains 29Mkm from rest.

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Second, when I played with the drive run-time numbers for the Mk 16 each stage appeared to have the same accel and run time as a Mk 14 ERM/EDM -- so I think that improved node tech was built in from day one.

ToF has MK-14 with 220+ second long burn times. Mk-16 has 180s drive times. Consecutive 180s drive at 46,000g obtains 29Mkm from rest.

You're right, I'm an idiot. I remembered the Mk-16 had about twice the range of the Mk-14 and mentally somehow morphed that into "two Mk-14 stages"; which it totally wrong.

Sorry about that, and thanks for correcting me.

In reference to about 4 pages back.

Frigate Keyhole would be a 60,000 ton ship with lots of PD broadsides, telemetry for 50+ laser control links, and 3+ CM / viper chase mounts with a laser. The idea is to have a ship, any ship, fire its missiles from behind their wedge. Have the Frigate KH pick up and control the missiles. While the firing ships stay behind their wedge. The Frigate KH is the telemetry offensive and defensive fire control.

The AMC would be a lightly armoured vs wayfarers no armour, with fast Freighter military wedge and sidewall, vs Wayfarers civilian wedge and no sidewall? No pods. It is a freighter escort more similar to the CA based Silesian Pirate killer I don't recall the captains name. He tangled with the Andie's and their hull pods before the GA.

As a dedicated light military ship it offers Trojan levels of escort plus more. Fits in with freighters or transports or cruise ships. Has tubes more than a Roland and LAC. Basically an Armed Escort, CLAC. 12 LAC and a pair of Frigates or light cargo. Mk16G. The idea isn't to take it into combat unless you have to. But if it meets anything short of a BCL or SD(P) it will offer a fighting chance enough to get the escorted ships away safely. Without tying up a CLAC and its 100+ LAC.

1 ship that offers a convoy 6-12 katana 6-12 Shrike B 2 Nat Turners and a ship more capable than any DD/CL or most CA.

15 ships in one an effective escort without requiring a full military ship in a system, as far as anyone else is concerned. And any Bing deciding that Manty commerce is a good target, well another less Bing to worry about.

HungryKing wrote:As I recall, there was something about how the Mk-16's bottle was pushing hard against the limits of what is physically possible. Now this may or may not mean the theoretical limits, but it does mean that, barring a sudden massive breakthrough, the mk-16's plant is about as small as the RMN can design.

Yup, that´s the one i was thinking of. To get around those limits will likely require revolutionary improvements rather than gradual/evolutionary ones. Essentially meaning a brand new piece of tech is needed to do something really smaller than the mk-16, as apparently the mk-16 size is currently limited by the reactor size.

Crown Loyalist wrote:The DD isn't dying, the class is just getting bigger and bigger to keep it combat viable. Not all recon can be done with recon drones; navies still need small-ish hyper-capable units to scout systems.

Which means it’s hyper footprint is getting bigger & bigger making it less & less useful as a recon platform. Also the FF isn’t gone – I believe the MA used them (all be it with a different drive) rather well in Manticore and Grason. One thing the GA (or SL less effectively) could do, would be to insert FFs with a pod or two each, as well as drones, into a system. Have the FFs tow the pods to pre designated positions under minimum-power. Drop off the pods, move out and use the drones for FC to fire the pods at targets from a safe distance. System defense would race out to where the missiles came from & find only expended pods while the FFs sneak out the other way. with recon info as well.

Hi MAD-4A,

That wasn't apparently necessary for the old DD's that scouted for HA-H and 8th Fleet.

Evidently they launched dozens of RD's quite easily, and recovered them without being tied to a single set location, moving around kept the DD's alive in the well patrolled high sensor RoH systems.

We don't know if the respective DD's, often the same pair were specially modified to carry RD's because there's no textev, we do know RD's were or still are launched from the boat bays, though there may well be a specialized launcher that can launch several at a time to quickly make up the ghostrider 30-36 that extend around the ship if not on deeper missions.

Given the poor sensors to be expected in most of the SL, current RMN/GA DD RD doctrine ought to be fine for most systems; of course there's always the 'Copenhagen' maneuver.

Which might include a few Mistletoe's, now that I think of it.

L

MAD-4A wrote:

Crown Loyalist wrote:The DD isn't dying, the class is just getting bigger and bigger to keep it combat viable. Not all recon can be done with recon drones; navies still need small-ish hyper-capable units to scout systems.

Which means it’s hyper footprint is getting bigger & bigger making it less & less useful as a recon platform. Also the FF isn’t gone – I believe the MA used them (all be it with a different drive) rather well in Manticore and Grason. One thing the GA (or SL less effectively) could do, would be to insert FFs with a pod or two each, as well as drones, into a system. Have the FFs tow the pods to pre designated positions under minimum-power. Drop off the pods, move out and use the drones for FC to fire the pods at targets from a safe distance. System defense would race out to where the missiles came from & find only expended pods while the FFs sneak out the other way. with recon info as well.

MAD-4A wrote:

Crown Loyalist wrote:The DD isn't dying, the class is just getting bigger and bigger to keep it combat viable. Not all recon can be done with recon drones; navies still need small-ish hyper-capable units to scout systems.

Which means it’s hyper footprint is getting bigger & bigger making it less & less useful as a recon platform. Also the FF isn’t gone – I believe the MA used them (all be it with a different drive) rather well in Manticore and Grason. One thing the GA (or SL less effectively) could do, would be to insert FFs with a pod or two each, as well as drones, into a system. Have the FFs tow the pods to pre designated positions under minimum-power. Drop off the pods, move out and use the drones for FC to fire the pods at targets from a safe distance. System defense would race out to where the missiles came from & find only expended pods while the FFs sneak out the other way. with recon info as well.

Please keep in mind that the only reason that the MAlign is able to use Frigates for scouting is because of the unique technologies it has developed. Most conventional militaries do not, and will not, use frigates for a number of reasons, including their extreme vulnrabilities, light armament, and only marginal increase in acceleration in comparison to your average tin can.

You are right about the footprint, since the Roland-class is about two-thirds the tonnage of the Star Knight class Heavy Cruiser. With this, however, comes a massive increase in firepower and survivability compared to pre-war DDs.

However, the streath systems and acceleration is is better than anyone else's with the possible exception of the MAlign. Meaning that despite the larger footprint, it can easily become a hole in space and remain so. This is pretty much on par with how the Manticorans conducted scouting operations against the Havenites. They'd visibly jump in, make like a hole, and jump out more or less at will. Even if they are detected, they're simply faster than anyone else's, and with much better sensors than anyone else as well.

Tenshinai wrote:

HungryKing wrote:As I recall, there was something about how the Mk-16's bottle was pushing hard against the limits of what is physically possible. Now this may or may not mean the theoretical limits, but it does mean that, barring a sudden massive breakthrough, the mk-16's plant is about as small as the RMN can design.

Yup, that´s the one i was thinking of. To get around those limits will likely require revolutionary improvements rather than gradual/evolutionary ones. Essentially meaning a brand new piece of tech is needed to do something really smaller than the mk-16, as apparently the mk-16 size is currently limited by the reactor size.

Not necessarily "revolutionary" changes.

The main problem from what I've heard stems from the power core needed power the drives. Certainly the micro-fusion plant will undergo evolutionary changes which will allow future models to be made smaller with the same power output as current designs.

We're also ignoring the fact that MDM's do not need to be powered by all up fusion reactors. Prior to that, earlier MDM's were powered by capacitors and since such missiles do not use a fusion core, presumably that would not be a limiting factor in their design. Improvements in this field could lead to smaller MDM's suitable for light combatants but with an acceptable range and missile salvo density.

In fact, we really don't know to what degree capacitor technology has advanced over the last several years as the books have mostly dealt with the new fusion powered weapons. It's not unlikely that BuWeapons is currently attempting to either create a smaller fusion core or more powerful and efficient capacitors specifically to solve this problem.

This is just conjecture of course, but when you are faced by your other choices, building the large light cruiser sized Roland DD or building SDM equipped DD's and CL's, creating a right sized MDM for these vessels would seem to be something of a priority.

MAD-4A wrote:

Crown Loyalist wrote:The DD isn't dying, the class is just getting bigger and bigger to keep it combat viable. Not all recon can be done with recon drones; navies still need small-ish hyper-capable units to scout systems.

Which means it’s hyper footprint is getting bigger & bigger making it less & less useful as a recon platform. Also the FF isn’t gone – I believe the MA used them (all be it with a different drive) rather well in Manticore and Grason. One thing the GA (or SL less effectively) could do, would be to insert FFs with a pod or two each, as well as drones, into a system. Have the FFs tow the pods to pre designated positions under minimum-power. Drop off the pods, move out and use the drones for FC to fire the pods at targets from a safe distance. System defense would race out to where the missiles came from & find only expended pods while the FFs sneak out the other way. with recon info as well.

I think I'm with Lyonheart on this one to a degree. Essentially what you are proposing here could be done by any conventional DD and probably somewhat better given the larger percentage of it's volume it can dedicate to such items as drone storage and launching systems.

I also think a traditional DD could probably function as nearly as well as a Roland in other tasks as well. For example a traditional DD with pods towed within it's wedge could also gain the "massive firepower" of a Roland. In fact, if using pods armed with Mk23's, they could actually better it in some ways and at a fraction of the cost.

Sure the extra mass will slow down the traditional DD somewhat but when you consider to Roland's massive 188,000 ton hull, you've got a fairly large acceleration and maneuverability advantage so you can give some of that up and still be better off than a Roland in a number of roles.

What the Roland does better than a Pod equipped traditional DD is sustained firepower from internal launchers. A traditional DD carrying pods inside of it's wedges probably can't carry enough to equal the magazines of a Roland, mostly because the Roland is 100,000 tons larger than most of them. As such they'll exhaust their missile supply earlier than a Roland will (of course if there's enough FC links out there, they can fire all of theirs at once which means there might not be a chance for a Roland to have a sustained anything before it's dust bunnies).

But really, directly comparing a traditional DD to a vessel over twice it's size really isn't a fair comparison. A more interesting and valid comparison would be between a Roland and a large modern CL design like the RHM Valiant which is holding pods inside or it's wedge. Even then the Valiant will be giving up around 35,000 tons to the larger Roland but it's about the closest comparison there is.

Alizon wrote:Not necessarily "revolutionary" changes.

The main problem from what I've heard stems from the power core needed power the drives. Certainly the micro-fusion plant will undergo evolutionary changes which will allow future models to be made smaller with the same power output as current designs.

No. That´s the problem here, there is no "certainly". If you run into a physical limit, you MAY find a way to get around it, or you may not.

The Intel Pentium 4 was designed to hit 10Ghz before 2008. Well *booom*, they ran into a physical limit, or rather several, and those cpus never even reached 5Ghz even after dieshrinks. The design was then promptly completely dropped because the physical limits could not be worked around.

A realworld example of physical limits doing a onefinger salute to the engineers.

Alizon wrote:We're also ignoring the fact that MDM's do not need to be powered by all up fusion reactors.

I´m not. In fact i believe i mentioned the option of going with capacitors earlier in this thread. But that also means much reduced power envelope for the missile, and the question then becomes if the reduced abilities is worth the size savings.

Alizon wrote:Prior to that, earlier MDM's were powered by capacitors and since such missiles do not use a fusion core, presumably that would not be a limiting factor in their design. Improvements in this field could lead to smaller MDM's suitable for light combatants but with an acceptable range and missile salvo density.

It´s definitely possible yes. But since the difference in power provided from a reactor and from a capacitor is apparently quite large, it´s not something i will be holding my breath while waiting for.

But like i said earlier in the thread, it´s at least quite possible.

Alizon wrote:In fact, we really don't know to what degree capacitor technology has advanced over the last several years as the books have mostly dealt with the new fusion powered weapons. It's not unlikely that BuWeapons is currently attempting to either create a smaller fusion core or more powerful and efficient capacitors specifically to solve this problem.

Not unlikely no. But remember that Manticore despite everything has a limit on how much it can spend on researching.

With the massive focus on the newer tech, i expect R&D into capacitors has likely been minimal. Or it´s even possible that that technology is so mature that there´s not much more to gain from improving it further.

Alizon wrote:This is just conjecture of course, but when you are faced by your other choices, building the large light cruiser sized Roland DD or building SDM equipped DD's and CL's, creating a right sized MDM for these vessels would seem to be something of a priority.

Well, yes and no i would say. MDMs for minimally sized combatant ships are not going to win battles, hence it is likely something that will not be very high on the list of priorities.

Longterm a solution is needed because no nation can afford to send heavy cruisers at the smallest to do the job of a destroyer, but it´s more important to survive the battles involving larger ships up until you HAVE a longterm at all.

So, short term solution is probably scaled up ships, quite possibly with some sort of "second line" DD added, maybe also a CL, for backwater, low priority duties as well as fleet duties that only need ANY ship, no matter the size or ability.

But again, longterm, yes it´s needed.