What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

Weird Harold wrote:Which is why couriers, scouts, and commerce raiders need Streak Drives. SDs sitting parked in defensive deployments don't need Streak Drives, it's just nice-to-have.

And why exactly would you assume that SDs are suddenly going to be sitting around in defensive employments?
They haven´t done so a whole lot until now, so why would they suddenly do so now?

Settling down in static defense is the worst thing GA can do right now. It´s an invitation to get trashed.

Tenshinai wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Which is why couriers, scouts, and commerce raiders need Streak Drives. SDs sitting parked in defensive deployments don't need Streak Drives, it's just nice-to-have.

And why exactly would you assume that SDs are suddenly going to be sitting around in defensive employments?
They haven´t done so a whole lot until now, so why would they suddenly do so now?

Settling down in static defense is the worst thing GA can do right now. It´s an invitation to get trashed.

And even if a CL can take out an SLN SD, they still need more missiles than they have on board, and SDp's are the best missile haulers to have on hand if something goes wrong.

After they complete a streak drive, the next 5 to 10 years in the GA will going to be like right after the MDM was developed in the RMN. New build SD's will all have the streak drive, and non-streak will quickly be relegated to static defense and, soon enough, mothballs, unless there is a way to get to the hyperdrives relatively easily from the pod bay, and a way to easily expand the hyperdrive room.

crewdude48 wrote:
After they complete a streak drive, the next 5 to 10 years in the GA will going to be like right after the MDM was developed in the RMN. New build SD's will all have the streak drive, and non-streak will quickly be relegated to static defense and, soon enough, mothballs, unless there is a way to get to the hyperdrives relatively easily from the pod bay, and a way to easily expand the hyperdrive room.

Finally someone making some sense. The issue will not be the cost of the new equipment, it will be the cost in time to retrofit any older ships.

Harold, sorry but your arguments are non-sense, the better comparison is not the Triple expansion steam engines vs. steam turbines, it is coal vs. oil fired boilers to generate that steam. Oil had more BTU per unit volume, and coal fired boilers require periodic shutdown to remove ash from the fire box.

Castenea wrote:Harold, sorry but your arguments are non-sense, the better comparison is not the Triple expansion steam engines vs. steam turbines, it is coal vs. oil fired boilers to generate that steam. Oil had more BTU per unit volume, and coal fired boilers require periodic shutdown to remove ash from the fire box.

And lets not even compare the fueling times. There's some strategic mobility enhancement right there.

Several hours of watching a hose or a full day, all-hands operation that leaves the crew exhausted and the ship covered in (flammable) coal dust.

And then you were able to double down on the advantage by developing under weigh refueling.


Plus the nice tactical advantage of allowing torpedo protection systems, something that coal's access requirements made practically impossible. (Didn't seem to matter how you designed them, coal scuttles would spring and fail to remain watertight if a torpedo blast hit them))

Castenea wrote:Harold, sorry but your arguments are non-sense, the better comparison is not the Triple expansion steam engines vs. steam turbines, ...

That isn't my example.

My preferred example is the B1-B Lancer losing the variable inlet geometry that made the B1-A a mach two or three heavy bomber, the B-2 Spirit, and the longevity of the B-52. All cases of Strategic Mobility being sacrificed to economics and/or combat capability.

Jonathan_S wrote:That's pretty big, but still a small faction of the volume/mass of an SD. Seems you should be able to fit in a 50% bigger one without too much problem. (Especially if that's 50% greater volume; which would be a much smaller growth in each linear dimension)

Hi, first time poster here, long time lurker, former math major in college (20 years ago).

Twice as large means 100% larger. But you are correct that if the size increase is spread out over all three dimensions that it's not that great. A streak hyper generator would only be about 1.26 (cube root of 2) times as big as a standard hyper generator in each dimension. Of course I don't know what the shape of a hyper generator might be.

Weird Harold wrote:

Castenea wrote:Harold, sorry but your arguments are non-sense, the better comparison is not the Triple expansion steam engines vs. steam turbines, ...

That isn't my example.

My preferred example is the B1-B Lancer losing the variable inlet geometry that made the B1-A a mach two or three heavy bomber, the B-2 Spirit, and the longevity of the B-52. All cases of Strategic Mobility being sacrificed to economics and/or combat capability.

Given the sharply reduced range of aircraft at supersonic speed I'm at a loss to see how the B-1A's supersonic abilities can be classified as strategic mobility. The plane was designed for a relatively brief supersonic sprint through through the Soviet air defenses, but it would be subsonic from take-off until that point, and again once through the defensive belt.

In other words it was a tactical ability. (And one that was overtaken by the look-down shoot-down capabilities of the Mach 2.8 Mig-31 - largely mitigating the expensive tactical advantage of supersonic sprint in a heavy bomber)

Weird Harold wrote:

Castenea wrote:Harold, sorry but your arguments are non-sense, the better comparison is not the Triple expansion steam engines vs. steam turbines, ...

That isn't my example.

My preferred example is the B1-B Lancer losing the variable inlet geometry that made the B1-A a mach two or three heavy bomber, the B-2 Spirit, and the longevity of the B-52. All cases of Strategic Mobility being sacrificed to economics and/or combat capability.

True but there is a huge difference between a planet bound bomber sacrificing strategic mobility for combat power and an interstellar warship doing the same. I'm not saying that it can't happen but the loss of combat power for a streak drive would have to be very high, higher then I personally believe likely given what we know of Hyperdrive mass and the Mantie talent for miniaturizing devices, for it to be a bad exchange.

Jonathan_S wrote:Given the sharply reduced range of aircraft at supersonic speed I'm at a loss to see how the B-1A's supersonic abilities can be classified as strategic mobility.

The B1-A was designed for super-cruise, similar to the Concorde's general operating speed -- 3,000 NM or so at Mach 2.2.

The B1-B is capable of short supersonic sprints but not capable of the higher supersonic speeds for long periods the B1-A was designed for.

I hear two subjects being discussed here. One has to do with retrofitting current SDPs with the streak drive. Harold is suggesting that it's probably not a cost effective idea for at least the near term future. I think he is making sense on this one. If you are going to retrofit, do it on BCs and down. Remember that your current opponent is stuck with pre-Buttercup tech. It reduces the pressure to retrofit when you know your opponent's SDs are easy meat for Nikes. In fact the trigger on Crandal's fleet was pulled by a single squadron of Sag-Cs.

The other subject has to do with new build. Harold's logic makes sense, but from textev in ART, it would appear that new SDPs are under construction at bolthole for the RMN with the Keyhole 2s built in Beowulf to be installed in Manticore when the they arrive from bolthole. I assume that substantial numbers are being planned for. If a streak drive design can be made available, it would certainly make sense to incorpoate it into new build construction if it is feasible to do so for all classes, SDPs and down because you know that your longer term opponent, the MAlign, already has the technology.

Don