New Freighter Design.

Kizarvexis wrote:...Now as to the logistics of it, lets say you have 10,000 freighters and 50 Q-ships. That means you could take a lot of ships and find the chance of picking a q-ship very low. Say you put out enough LACs to protect 500 freighters (2,000 LACs). You have greatly increased the chance of running into a protected freighter for 20 wings of LACs that are being ferried from system to system by the very freighters that they are protecting. ...

I'm puzzled why there is a continued insistence on LACs for this parasite convoy escort. Your 2,000 LACs will require 20,000 crew and at least 10,000 maintenance and support personnel -- all to direcctly escort a mere 20% of ships.

Renting each freighter a dozen missile pods with Extended Range SDM or early capacitor drive DDM or MDM (comparable to what Erewhon is selling Maya) and a Fire-control/sensor module with a tactical crew of 5-10, will be far cheaper for the freighters and navy both. Instead of 500 ships with LAC escorts and 50 Q-Ships, you could have 10,050 Q-ships flying Manticoran colors. Arming all 10,000 MMM freighters would take 50,000 tactical specialists, but the Navy would probably get away with not many more than the 30,000 it would have given up to man and maintain 2,000 LACs.

What pirate or lightweight commerce raider wants to take on a merchant chip that might be carrying 120 missiles? Multiply the risk if they're traveling in pairs or in convoy.

Lord Skimper wrote:The freighter compensators won't cover the ship tractored against or outside the hull. (For some weird reason). Thus whoever is on the LAC plus everything that can't absorb 150-200 g will be killed/damaged.

If true, another reason to abandon Limpet-LACs in favor of Limpet-Missiles.

I'm puzzled why there is a continued insistence on LACs for this parasite convoy escort. Your 2,000 LACs will require 20,000 crew and at least 10,000 maintenance and support personnel -- all to direcctly escort a mere 20% of ships.

Because David told us it was likely to be so?

Besides, handing out MDM tech to freighters willy nilly is far more risky than just carrying LACs. Plus you're underestimating the costs of refitting shipboard weapons suites onto a freighter.

Weird Harold wrote:I'm puzzled why there is a continued insistence on LACs for this parasite convoy escort. Your 2,000 LACs will require 20,000 crew and at least 10,000 maintenance and support personnel -- all to direcctly escort a mere 20% of ships.

Renting each freighter a dozen missile pods with Extended Range SDM or early capacitor drive DDM or MDM (comparable to what Erewhon is selling Maya) and a Fire-control/sensor module with a tactical crew of 5-10, will be far cheaper for the freighters and navy both. Instead of 500 ships with LAC escorts and 50 Q-Ships, you could have 10,050 Q-ships flying Manticoran colors. Arming all 10,000 MMM freighters would take 50,000 tactical specialists, but the Navy would probably get away with not many more than the 30,000 it would have given up to man and maintain 2,000 LACs.

What pirate or lightweight commerce raider wants to take on a merchant chip that might be carrying 120 missiles? Multiply the risk if they're traveling in pairs or in convoy.

[Even though Duckk slipping in the link to RFC's previous comment, while I was typing this up, I'll go ahead and post it]

There are some legal reasons (if you're trading beyond your territory, or those of agreeable allies) to prefer the LAC.

A LAC, even though it was towed into the system by the hypercapable freighter is a sovereign warship of your country and, as such, different rules about access to it (act of war to forcibly board; not expected to allow customs inspection access; for example) apply. Plus it doesn't have to dock with a station in order to deliver or pick up shipping.

With missiles, even under the control of a military crew, the freighter is still a civilian ship expected to submit to the customs, safety, and medical inspections normally applied to non-military traffic doing business in a given star system.

And what happens to the onboard missiles if the ship gets impounded due to some (legitimate) civilian judgement against it or it's shipping line?

And that's not even going into the systems which are willing to host a warship but not an armed civilian ship. (And for otherwise safe systems that are not willing to allow any foreign armed ship a parasite LAC could be dropped beyond the 12-hour line while the freighter went in to transact business and picked up again on the way out. It'd add transit time to drop out of hyper that far out, but it's doable.


From a economy of force perspective just arming freighters seems like an efficient idea, but the side effects and potential consequences seem rife with gotchas. (Oh, and a LAC has point defense; so it can stand up to, or potentially defend the freighter from, limited hostile fire. A simple strap on fire control + pod installation doesn't provide that same capability to the freighter.)


I don't know if a parasite LAC is the best, or even a good, solution. But there are tradeoffs to between it and your pod idea...

Oh yeah, that's true too.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2531&start=10

Duckk wrote:Because David told us it was likely to be so?

Is that thread about Frigates the one you intended to link? I didn't see anything relevant to a discussion of limpeting LACs to Freighters. I do understand that LACs and CLACs are probably more effective for convoy protection or for system defense, but that isn't what has been suggested here.

Duckk wrote:Besides, handing out MDM tech to freighters willy nilly is far more risky than just carrying LACs.

You may have missed the word "Rent" in my previous post. I'm not really advocating handing out MDM technology willy-nilly, I'm talking about a setup under the complete command and control of a detachment of RMN Tactical specialists.

Under those conditions, standard anti-tampering precautions should prove sufficient to protect the technology form theft or misuse.

Duckk wrote:Plus you're underestimating the costs of refitting shipboard weapons suites onto a freighter.

I'm not talking about refitting shipboard weapons suites, I'm talking about limpeting something like a section of Moriarity or Mycroft (non-ftl systems) to the hull;probably with a remote control station inside the ship for the tactical specialists. IIRC, Moriarty and Mycroft are built in manageable sections; if true, it should take only minor modifications to make them useable in sections.

As for legal troubles with having an armed ship in some sectors, since what I propose is completely external to the ship, except for the RMN tactical specialists inside the ship, it can be easily turned into "cargo" for legal purposes; either moved inside the ship or the remote control set moved out onto the hull as external cargo.

Anywhere that would have trouble with a missile-armed RMN detachment would have similar troubles with Foreign super-LACs running loose in their system; either LACs or pods can be left behind when going into such a touchy star nation.

Even if arming freighters was a good idea, which Duckk and Jonathan_S discussed, freighters can not take a punch like a warship. Remember what Lt Hearns pinnace lasers did to a merchant ship? To fire missiles with similar range at the other guy, then you are in range too. Giving merchant ships DDM would be WAY worse than having LACs along for the ride. And from Duckk's first link he posted, evidently DW doesn't think that putting a module with a few LACs inside the ship would be a problem and if so, then you don't need to put them on the outside. I just thought putting them on the outside would pretty well delineate the difference between escort and freighter.

Weird Harold wrote:Is that thread about Frigates the one you intended to link? I didn't see anything relevant to a discussion of limpeting LACs to Freighters. I do understand that LACs and CLACs are probably more effective for convoy protection or for system defense, but that isn't what has been suggested here.

Some of those same theorists are arguing that the best approach to convoy escort may actually be the construction of freighters with "spliced in" modules capable of transporting and servicing two or three LACs. Such armed merchantmen integrated into and scattered through convoys would provide reasonably adequate convoy defense anywhere except in the middle of a gravity wave, where the LACs would be unable to operate. It would not be a perfect solution, of course, but the analysts who support it argue that it would be the most cost-effective use of resources.

You may have missed the word "Rent" in my previous post. I'm not really advocating handing out MDM technology willy-nilly, I'm talking about a setup under the complete command and control of a detachment of RMN Tactical specialists.

Under those conditions, standard anti-tampering precautions should prove sufficient to protect the technology form theft or misuse.

These ships are going all over the explored galaxy and docking in unsecured ports. There is no way to guarantee the security of the pods in such a situation, especially when (not if) someone makes a concerted effort to try and obtain them.

I'm not talking about refitting shipboard weapons suites, I'm talking about limpeting something like a section of Moriarity or Mycroft (non-ftl systems) to the hull;probably with a remote control station inside the ship for the tactical specialists. IIRC, Moriarty and Mycroft are built in manageable sections; if true, it should take only minor modifications to make them useable in sections.

That misses the fact that Moriarty and Mycroft are networks, that the systems rely on relays strewn about the star system to assist in fire control.

As for legal troubles with having an armed ship in some sectors, since what I propose is completely external to the ship, except for the RMN tactical specialists inside the ship, it can be easily turned into "cargo" for legal purposes; either moved inside the ship or the remote control set moved out onto the hull as external cargo.

Which all means having a full tactical section to drive all that fire control, driving up costs and tonnage. It's not as if you can just stick a module just any old place and expect it to work. There needs to be sensors and antennas in the right places. Either the fire control is integral to the hull (which means refits and fixed in place), or it's a towed array like Keyhole (which still requires significant assets on the mothership). I don't see how this is in any way cheaper than a LAC system.

Anywhere that would have trouble with a missile-armed RMN detachment would have similar troubles with Foreign super-LACs running loose in their system; either LACs or pods can be left behind when going into such a touchy star nation.

Leaving pods in the middle of empty space in an unsecured system without anything to watch over them is a bad, bad idea.

Duckk wrote:Leaving pods in the middle of empty space in an unsecured system without anything to watch over them is a bad, bad idea.

"Left behind" at a previous port of call, not dumped in space.



Setups "left behind" can be rented to ships headed the other way or stored in a secure warehouse.

Providing fire-control would be the sticking point and obviously you are privy to Honorverse physics I'm not privy to. For example, why sensors have to be part of the hull or completely separated; Why a conformal pod that mimics part of the hull couldn't be fitted with sensors.

Weird Harold wrote:"Left behind" at a previous port of call, not dumped in space.



Setups "left behind" can be rented to ships headed the other way or stored in a secure warehouse.

That presupposes that you are heading directly from a secured system to the port of call. It is equally (if not more) likely that you are hitting a trade circuit, where multiple systems don't allow armed merchant ships.

Providing fire-control would be the sticking point and obviously you are privy to Honorverse physics I'm not privy to. For example, why sensors have to be part of the hull or completely separated; Why a conformal pod that mimics part of the hull couldn't be fitted with sensors.

It doesn't do anyone a whole lot of good if your all your sensors and fire control are pointed at the wedge. Sensors and fire control have to be pointed at what you're shooting at. LAC modules, on the other hand, can be placed just about anywhere without being too much of a hassle.