LAC not so useful after all?

Theemile wrote:

The E & Uroboros wrote:I think he is suggesting using other platforms to generate wedges as extra "armor" for the ship. The biggest problem with that is that the platform has to be quite far out from the ship in order to operate at a right angle. If it is too close, the ship begins missing large parts of hull and other useful bits. If it is too far, the entire plan is pointless.

The problem is that interposing another set of smaller wedges works fantastically well against a small salvo (we've seen this in Ashes of Victory), but its efficiency drops dramatically the larger the incoming salvo is. Throw enough missiles at the target, and some of them will be able to get to a firing position, even if it means trying to fire down the throat or kilt, or overshooting and firing at the opposite sidewall.

This has been popping up for discussion repeatedly over the last year - namely the "drone wedge as armor defense". I havn't really weighed my opinion on it, but I've been searching to see if one lynchpin - the tractor - will work. I have yet to find a single reference of tractors being used to hold a craft or device with an active wedge, and definitely not a mention of a ship or device under active acceleration being tractored. The closest I've found is damaged ships in a grav wave, but the tractoring ship is under the same gravitational tidal forces as the ship being towed.

So a missile couldn't be held "against it's will" by tractors and be used as a shield, and I'm uncertain if you could hold a drone with an active wedge at 0 acceleration levels. It is quite possible that the Drone's wedge's connection to the alpha wall could serve as an anchor - though there is nothing in text-ev.

Lord Skimper wrote:A tractor holds a practice missile with wedge in beginnings in one of the early battles of Manticore.

Spacekiwi wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:A tractor holds a practice missile with wedge in beginnings in one of the early battles of Manticore.

But, is it holding the missile by the side, where there is no wedge? because you can tractor the shp, but I dont think we have any evidence of tractoring to the wedge.

Beginnings
A CALL TO ARMS
by Timothy Zahn
wrote: Travis took one final look at his displays, automatically starting his own mental countdown. Ten kilometers to Casey's aft, held loosely in place twenty kilometers out from her starboard side by a tractor beam, was one of the practice missiles, waiting for the automated order that would light up its wedge and send it leaping through space. With the enemy battlecruiser a thousand kilometers away, Travis's mind automatically calculated, it would take the missile seven and a half seconds to reach it. Under the present circumstances, an unreachable eternity.

Fortunately, that wasn't where the missile needed to go.

Travis's looked back at the tactical, marveling at how he was even able to calculate timings with his adrenaline-pumped time sense racing like a missile on sprint mode. His mental countdown ran to zero—

On the tactical, the battlecruiser appeared around the edge of Casey's roof, free and open to fire. A quarter second, Travis had estimated before her spinal laser tore through the helpless cruiser.

And off Casey's starboard flank, the practice missile lit up its wedge and leaped forward.

Not heading away from the cruiser or toward the battlecruiser, but tracing out a path along Casey's hull.

Missiles had just two acceleration rates: a long-range mode of thirty-five hundred gravities, and a sprint mode of ten thousand. Those settings couldn't be changed, at least not by any equipment Casey had aboard, and even at the slower acceleration the missile wouldn't be pacing Casey for long.
But it didn't have to. With a wedge size of ten kilometers, and with Casey herself just under three hundred seventy meters long, the missile's wedge could block the enemy laser from the moment its leading edge passed Casey's bow to the moment when its trailing edge traveled beyond the cruiser's stern.

For a crucial three-quarters of a second.

Sometime in that heartbeat the battlecruiser undoubtedly took its single shot. Travis never knew for sure—the missile's wedge completely blocked Casey's view of what was happening on the other side. Then the missile was past, and momentum had carried the battlecruiser halfway through the open area between Casey's stress bands.

And with a final, massive barrage of energy torpedoes, Casey went for the kill.

Weird Harold wrote:Since the missile in question is help with its wedge blocking the open side aspect of the ship tractoring it, it probable has to be tractoring the wedge because it wouldn't be able to see the missile itself.

That is if there was a tractor involved in the first place; IIRC, the missile was programmed to overtake the ship slowly with its wedge at right angles to the ship's wedge. I don't believe there was a tractor involved at all, but I'll look it up -- eventually.

Theemile wrote:The missle was never under power when tractored. The defense in beginnings was entirely dependant on timing the missile's trajectory perfectly. If it could be tractored, they could have held it there indefinately - well, for 3 minutes.....

dreamrider wrote:Many are missing the point of the books recent discussions of CM development here.

The CM-role LACs are essential, because with the long ranges of engagement, multi-drives, and consequent extremely high closing velocities, it is an absolute necessity to extend the CM engagement zone by 2-4 times feasible CM range.

If you tried to use large screening platforms for that, them you would probably just end up with "the screen elimination battle before the battle".

dreamrider