Technical questions re military hardware.

kzt wrote:Try this link, and see if that (and the drawing at the bottom) doesn't help.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/100/0

one of the Youtube links in MaxQ's(sp) signature has a very good animation of a wedge in motion.

kzt wrote:Try this link, and see if that (and the drawing at the bottom) doesn't help.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/100/0

Kzt, thank you, that does in fact help. I think part of my problem was that I didn't understand quite how large the wedge is in relation to its ship.

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:Try this link, and see if that (and the drawing at the bottom) doesn't help.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/100/0

one of the Youtube links in MaxQ's(sp) signature has a very good animation of a wedge in motion.

With the caveat that the wedge is nowhere near the correct size. That one is roughly 20-30 meters/side, and a missile wedge is roughly 10 *kilometers*/side, and would be at least a kilometer above and below the missile.

I only made it that size because I wanted both the wedge and the missile in the shot.

Here's my question, since it's Real Bad for an impeller wedge to strike another wedge, is it feasible to have missiles that rather than having laser heads on them, have stronger impellers for increased wedge strength, then have the missiles ram the wedges of the enemy ships? A wedge is a much larger target than a ship and if the alpha or beta nodes get blown, that ship is stuck in the system its currently in and it's defenses are weakened. When you have several hundred missiles targeted for each ship, wouldn't that have an effect on the defending ships wedge strength? If you have 50 missiles with overcharged wedges slamming into the front or back wedge, I'd think that would put a lot of strain on the ships nodes, possibly blow one out? Yes/no?

Zakharra wrote:Here's my question, since it's Real Bad for an impeller wedge to strike another wedge, is it feasible to have missiles that rather than having laser heads on them, have stronger impellers for increased wedge strength, then have the missiles ram the wedges of the enemy ships? A wedge is a much larger target than a ship and if the alpha or beta nodes get blown, that ship is stuck in the system its currently in and it's defenses are weakened. When you have several hundred missiles targeted for each ship, wouldn't that have an effect on the defending ships wedge strength? If you have 50 missiles with overcharged wedges slamming into the front or back wedge, I'd think that would put a lot of strain on the ships nodes, possibly blow one out? Yes/no?

A missile wedge is around 10km on a side, whereas even a destroyer wedge is somewhere around 10-12 times that size. LACs probably/possibly have smaller wedges than a destroyer, but larger than a pinnace, which means even *those* couldn't be taken out by wedge-on-wedge contact. An SD wedge is 300km/side. In order for a missile to generate a wedge big enough to take out a ship's wedge, it would have to be the size of a destroyer or light cruiser, at a minimum.

OTOH, that is *exactly* how countermissiles work. Even though they are much smaller than regular missiles, their wedge is extremely overpowered in order to generate a wedge big enough to take out a missile. That's also why a CMs run-time is so short - the wedge is *so* overpowered, it burns out the nodes much quicker.

The Mk-9 Viper CM is a little different, since it actually contains a laserhead. So, while it can be used for wedge-on-wedge missile destroying, it can also be used on somewhat larger targets, such as a LAC. Enough Vipers will take out a LAC, but forget about trying to use it against anything bigger, since it uses the same laserhead as the Mk-13 (shorter and less powerful than the laserheads on Mk-16s and Mk-23s).

Although... now that I think about it, I suppose it could be used against freighters and such, and maybe even destroyers if used in sufficient numbers. Pirate ships might be good targets for the Viper's laserhead.

MaxxQ wrote:

Zakharra wrote:Here's my question, since it's Real Bad for an impeller wedge to strike another wedge, is it feasible to have missiles that rather than having laser heads on them, have stronger impellers for increased wedge strength, then have the missiles ram the wedges of the enemy ships? A wedge is a much larger target than a ship and if the alpha or beta nodes get blown, that ship is stuck in the system its currently in and it's defenses are weakened. When you have several hundred missiles targeted for each ship, wouldn't that have an effect on the defending ships wedge strength? If you have 50 missiles with overcharged wedges slamming into the front or back wedge, I'd think that would put a lot of strain on the ships nodes, possibly blow one out? Yes/no?

A missile wedge is around 10km on a side, whereas even a destroyer wedge is somewhere around 10-12 times that size. LACs probably/possibly have smaller wedges than a destroyer, but larger than a pinnace, which means even *those* couldn't be taken out by wedge-on-wedge contact. An SD wedge is 300km/side. In order for a missile to generate a wedge big enough to take out a ship's wedge, it would have to be the size of a destroyer or light cruiser, at a minimum.

OTOH, that is *exactly* how countermissiles work. Even though they are much smaller than regular missiles, their wedge is extremely overpowered in order to generate a wedge big enough to take out a missile. That's also why a CMs run-time is so short - the wedge is *so* overpowered, it burns out the nodes much quicker.

The Mk-9 Viper CM is a little different, since it actually contains a laserhead. So, while it can be used for wedge-on-wedge missile destroying, it can also be used on somewhat larger targets, such as a LAC. Enough Vipers will take out a LAC, but forget about trying to use it against anything bigger, since it uses the same laserhead as the Mk-13 (shorter and less powerful than the laserheads on Mk-16s and Mk-23s).

Although... now that I think about it, I suppose it could be used against freighters and such, and maybe even destroyers if used in sufficient numbers. Pirate ships might be good targets for the Viper's laserhead.

*nods* That's why I'm asking. A missile designed to attack a wedge could have its 'warhead' supercharge the wedge just before it hits so when it does hit, it is 5-10 stronger. Or to clarify it, there's a massive surge of gravitational strength just before impact and that vastly stronger wedge is what hits the ships wedge. By itself it is probably ignorable with a modest power drain, but if you have 50-200 of them hitting the same wedge aspect, I'm thinking that would do something.

Zakharra wrote:
*nods* That's why I'm asking. A missile designed to attack a wedge could have its 'warhead' supercharge the wedge just before it hits so when it does hit, it is 5-10 stronger. Or to clarify it, there's a massive surge of gravitational strength just before impact and that vastly stronger wedge is what hits the ships wedge. By itself it is probably ignorable with a modest power drain, but if you have 50-200 of them hitting the same wedge aspect, I'm thinking that would do something.

But CMs do it by having a craft that is 1/10th the size of the missile it is trying to take out and burn out in ~30 seconds iirc because of the oversized wedge being generated.

BC Missiles mass 1% of 1% of 1% of a BC. If you could possibly oversize the wedge on the missile to the size of the BC wedge, it would probably burn out in just a handful of seconds (probably more like 1 second)

Nope. It amounts to this:

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/164/0

Theemile wrote:

Zakharra wrote:
*nods* That's why I'm asking. A missile designed to attack a wedge could have its 'warhead' supercharge the wedge just before it hits so when it does hit, it is 5-10 stronger. Or to clarify it, there's a massive surge of gravitational strength just before impact and that vastly stronger wedge is what hits the ships wedge. By itself it is probably ignorable with a modest power drain, but if you have 50-200 of them hitting the same wedge aspect, I'm thinking that would do something.

But CMs do it by having a craft that is 1/10th the size of the missile it is trying to take out and burn out in ~30 seconds iirc because of the oversized wedge being generated.

BC Missiles mass 1% of 1% of 1% of a BC. If you could possibly oversize the wedge on the missile to the size of the BC wedge, it would probably burn out in just a handful of seconds (probably more like 1 second)

Not to mention, the power requirements to do something like that would be impossible to fit into a missile. Forget about capacitor missiles, but even the fusion reactors used by the Mk-16 and Mk-23 don't generate that kind of power.

Also, the impeller nodes on the missile would pop like old-fashioned flashbulbs the moment you did that. When we say that an impeller node burns out (such as those on missiles), that is pretty much literally what happens.

MaxxQ wrote:OTOH, that is *exactly* how countermissiles work. Even though they are much smaller than regular missiles, their wedge is extremely overpowered in order to generate a wedge big enough to take out a missile. That's also why a CMs run-time is so short - the wedge is *so* overpowered, it burns out the nodes much quicker.

You say that, but at least by the Mk31 (Manticore's fairly new extended range CM for those of you who don't have all the missile designations memorized ) it's got the same 75 second run time as an Extended Range Missile running at full power; more than the 60 seconds of full power that single drive missiles had during the first war with Haven.

For a full power shot, it doesn't burn out quickly at all


I'm assuming though that CM drives can't be stepped down to 50% power for 3x endurance. (Otherwise with Viper dogfighting missile would outrange Havenite LAC missiles; instead of the other way round. But we were told it doesn't when we saw it first used against them).


Heck based on some number crunching I did a while ago I'm fairly sure that even as far back as HMS Fearless at Basilisk the CMs had a 60 second runtime; attack missiles only last longer because they're normally fired at 50% power.