LAC vs Aerospace Fighters

I wonder if STing Ships could be made, to specificly target and deal with LAC?
If they are going to use LAC so much more in combat, then fighter able to deal with them would be worth it.

hairbear541 wrote:thanks guys for not having a kaniption fit at the suggestion of fighter craft . the first post I made I thought the whole alliance had ganged up on me for suggesting smaller classes of LAC carriers . I felt like I was on the receiving end of the Mariannes Turkey shoot .

Hi HairBear, Sorry if we came down on you - you just stepped into a subject that has been discussed to death and back again. It's one of the subjects that newbs continually think up and mention on the forums, and us old salts have to argue the same arguments over again, as the newcomer argues the same valid points, which we counter with the same valid arguments. Time after time, month after month.

Sadly, this is another one of those topics...

Every assault craft we have seen has been armed with pulsers, chemical warhead missiles, and light lasers (2-6 cm diameter). The smallest warship laser is in the 20 cm range, and probably masses as much as several sting ships. The smallest "warship" endangering small ship is probably in the 3ish KTon range - this would be a ship with a DD sized laser, and a couple of small laser clusters for defense - no shipkiller missiles, no CMs, and would only be 5 m/s or so snappier than a Shrike, and it would require the same tech level as a Shrike even to pull this off.

Part of this problem is the power plant - the laser pulsed fusion plants used in shuttles and pinnances will not power anything larger (or weapons that have a larger power budget), and the old grav-pinched fusion plants used in starships had a minimum size (we believe it's ~5 ktons), which limited any LACS to about 8-9 ktons minimum. The new fission plants probably only mass 1-2 Ktons apiece, but have a much lower power output than the fusion plant and require supercapacitors to power every system. In my hypothetical 3kt LAC, the power supply and laser would be the 2 limiting factors in size.

Against the old LACs, a sting ship may be able to do some damage - the old style LACs didn't have alpha nodes to keep weight and cost down, so their max velocity was limited to ~450gs (where a DD could hit ~520), so a sting ship probably enjoyed a similiar max speed. They also had minimal defensive suits, and zero armor, so the chemical warheads on a stingship missile would do damage if the missile could do skin contact. However, sting ships don't have warship class sidewalls, and their wedges are so small, that if a CM hits them it would destroy the ship through the wedge interaction, so they are fragile.

Now remember, the mass of the current high tech Manticorian missile pod (which has many times the combat power of a 3 Kton LAC) masses about 3 Ktons itself. You will never be able to fit a shipkiller missile load or apprecaible defenses in a package much smaller than a traditional LAC just because of the weapon's sizes.

If you were to use sting ships against LACS, the battles would require ratios of about the same as LACS vs SDs - where a wing of LACS may be able to take down an SD or 2 - at the cost of the entire wing.

Now, if someone were armed with a fair amount of stingships as their last line of defense, I can see them being used - but that's what it would be - a last desperate effort of overwhelmed defenses. Anything else would ammount to needless suicide for the crews and a pointless waste of hardware.

That should be about 3000 tons, not 3 tons, for the missile pod per our various discussions.

kzt wrote:That should be about 3000 tons, not 3 tons, for the missile pod per our various discussions.

Thanks KZT, you are correct, I did mean 3 Ktons (3000 tons)

hairbear541 wrote:the reason I keep bringing the subject up is i'm ex-navy plus in rfc's starfire series they use aerospace fighters and vessels about the size of LACs . I know an ASF wouldn't be as long legged as a LAC , but wouldn't a fleet ASF be a viable supplement to the LAC forces . during the Vietnam war the F-4 Phantom wasn't called a baby B-52 for nothing(they carried about half there own wt. in ordinance... missles ,bombs or a combination of both). the original old salty sea dog

I don't think you're really fully aware of the difference in size between a sting ship and a LAC. A Strike runs to about 30,000 tons; a steamship runs to about 600 tons. That's a ratio of roughly 50-to-1. A B-52 H had an empty weight of approximately 185,000 pounds. An F-4 E had an empty weight of approximately 30,000 pounds. That's a ratio of roughly 6-to-1. And as KZT and Threemile have pointed out, the weapons which can be fitted into the steamship aren't even remotely on the same scale as shipkillers or even LACkillers. It wouldn't be a case of a Phantom being compared to a Stratofortress; it would be a case of World War II Fletcher-class destroyer without torpedoes (2,500 tons displacement) being compared to a present-day Nimitz-class carrier (roughly 100,000 tons displacement) . . . and that would be the comparison between the sting ship and the LAC. Against the smallest combat-effective ship out there (a nominal destroyer with a displacement of a mere 120,000 tons) the ratio between the warship and the sting ship would be 200-to-1. Put another way, the sting ship is 0.5% the size of the destroyer, is no faster once maximum velocity has been attained, it is not appreciably quicker to accelerate than a LAC, and is unprotected by sidewalls or wedge.

Not a winning proposition.

runsforcelery wrote:

hairbear541 wrote:the reason I keep bringing the subject up is i'm ex-navy plus in rfc's starfire series they use aerospace fighters and vessels about the size of LACs . I know an ASF wouldn't be as long legged as a LAC , but wouldn't a fleet ASF be a viable supplement to the LAC forces . during the Vietnam war the F-4 Phantom wasn't called a baby B-52 for nothing(they carried about half there own wt. in ordinance... missles ,bombs or a combination of both). the original old salty sea dog

I don't think you're really fully aware of the difference in size between a sting ship and a LAC. A Strike runs to about 30,000 tons; a steamship runs to about 600 tons. That's a ratio of roughly 50-to-1. A B-52 H had an empty weight of approximately 185,000 pounds. An F-4 E had an empty weight of approximately 30,000 pounds. That's a ratio of roughly 6-to-1. And as KZT and Threemile have pointed out, the weapons which can be fitted into the steamship aren't even remotely on the same scale as shipkillers or even LACkillers. It wouldn't be a case of a Phantom being compared to a Stratofortress; it would be a case of World War II Fletcher-class destroyer without torpedoes (2,500 tons displacement) being compared to a present-day Nimitz-class carrier (roughly 100,000 tons displacement) . . . and that would be the comparison between the sting ship and the LAC. Against the smallest combat-effective ship out there (a nominal destroyer with a displacement of a mere 120,000 tons) the ratio between the warship and the sting ship would be 200-to-1. Put another way, the sting ship is 0.5% the size of the destroyer, is no faster once maximum velocity has been attained, it is not appreciably quicker to accelerate than a LAC, and is unprotected by sidewalls or wedge.

Not a winning proposition.

[Tongue in cheek]
A steamship runs to about 600 tons?

I didn't know the Honorverse used steamships IN SPACE!
Is the Honorverse going steampunk?
[/Tongue-in-cheek]

On a more serious note, Shrikes mass about 20,000 tons, unless you are referring to a new model of Shrike that we haven't seen in the books yet.

Data from:

House of Steel, The Royal Manticoran Navy, Order of Battle, LIGHT ATTACK CRAFT(LAC) wrote:Shrike-class light attack craft
Mass: 20,250 tons

Dimensions: 71 × 20 × 20 m

Acceleration: 636 G (6.237 kps²)

80% Accel: 508.8 G (4.989 kps²)

Forward: 4M, 1G, 4CM, 6PD

Service Life: 1912–1917

Shrike-B-class light attack craft
Mass: 21,250 tons

Dimensions: 72 × 20 × 20 m

Acceleration: 635.5 G (6.232 kps²)

80% Accel: 508.4 G (4.986 kps²)

Forward: 4M, 1G, 4CM, 6PD

Aft: 4CM, 6PD

Service Life: 1914–present

Note for readers: House of Steel gives data for the ship design when initially built and does not give information for refits.

[Tongue-in-cheek]
Did you just let the 'cat out of the bag?
[/Tongue-in-cheek]

Vince wrote:[Tongue in cheek]
A steamship runs to about 600 tons?

I didn't know the Honorverse used steamships IN SPACE!
Is the Honorverse going steampunk?
[/Tongue-in-cheek]

I'm sure that can be chalked up to the voice recognition software RFC needs to use. (Which brings to various joys of a computer guessing what it just heard) Frankly I'm mildly surprised it got any of the "sting ship" references right.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Vince wrote:[Tongue in cheek]
A steamship runs to about 600 tons?

I didn't know the Honorverse used steamships IN SPACE!
Is the Honorverse going steampunk?
[/Tongue-in-cheek]
I'm sure that can be chalked up to the voice recognition software RFC needs to use. (Which brings to various joys of a computer guessing what it just heard) Frankly I'm mildly surprised it got any of the "sting ship" references right.

It didn't. I just didn't catch all the corrections. Sigh.

And, no, I'm not proposing a new LAC class. I got back from Dragon Con absolutely exhausted and my brain supplied faulty info I didn't check. Sigh. Nonetheless, I think my analysis works.

Vince wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:[="hairbear541"]the reason I keep bringing the subject up is i'm ex-navy plus in rfc's starfire series they use aerospace fighters and vessels about the size of LACs . I know an ASF wouldn't be as long legged as a LAC , but wouldn't a fleet ASF be a viable supplement to the LAC forces . during the Vietnam war the F-4 Phantom wasn't called a baby B-52 for nothing(they carried about half there own wt. in ordinance... missles ,bombs or a combination of both). the original old salty sea dog

I don't think you're really fully aware of the difference in size between a sting ship and a LAC. A Strike runs to about 30,000 tons; a steamship runs to about 600 tons. That's a ratio of roughly 50-to-1. A B-52 H had an empty weight of approximately 185,000 pounds. An F-4 E had an empty weight of approximately 30,000 pounds. That's a ratio of roughly 6-to-1. And as KZT and Threemile have pointed out, the weapons which can be fitted into the steamship aren't even remotely on the same scale as shipkillers or even LACkillers. It wouldn't be a case of a Phantom being compared to a Stratofortress; it would be a case of World War II Fletcher-class destroyer without torpedoes (2,500 tons displacement) being compared to a present-day Nimitz-class carrier (roughly 100,000 tons displacement) . . . and that would be the comparison between the sting ship and the LAC. Against the smallest combat-effective ship out there (a nominal destroyer with a displacement of a mere 120,000 tons) the ratio between the warship and the sting ship would be 200-to-1. Put another way, the sting ship is 0.5% the size of the destroyer, is no faster once maximum velocity has been attained, it is not appreciably quicker to accelerate than a LAC, and is unprotected by sidewalls or wedge.

Not a winning proposition.[/]

snip

On a more serious note, Shrikes mass about 20,000 tons, unless you are referring to a new model of Shrike that we haven't seen in the books yet.

Data from:[="House of Steel, The Royal Manticoran Navy, Order of Battle, LIGHT ATTACK CRAFT(LAC)"]Shrike-class light attack craft
Mass: 20,250 tons

Dimensions: 71 × 20 × 20 m

Acceleration: 636 G (6.237 kps²)

80% Accel: 508.8 G (4.989 kps²)

Forward: 4M, 1G, 4CM, 6PD

Service Life: 1912–1917

Shrike-B-class light attack craft
Mass: 21,250 tons

Dimensions: 72 × 20 × 20 m

Acceleration: 635.5 G (6.232 kps²)

80% Accel: 508.4 G (4.986 kps²)

Forward: 4M, 1G, 4CM, 6PD

Aft: 4CM, 6PD

Service Life: 1914–present
[/]Note for readers: House of Steel gives data for the ship design when initially built and does not give information for refits.

/]

Note that the weight of the LAC is not the Displacement of the LAC. 20,000 tons weight for an LAC may be considered when comparing it to a Sting ship. Comparing a LAC to a Destroyer the LAC has a displacement of less than 5000 tons compared to the 60,000-188,000 ton displacement of the destroyer. In Space or Micro gravity nothing weighs anything. Inertial mass for a Destroyer may be a huge number. It is a huge ship it carries armour but very little compared to the Super Dreadnought. That has a displacement size of 8 million or so tons but would likely weight on Earth in 1 gravity billions of tons. It has 10's of metres of nano weaved armour covering 1.3 million sq metres however many 10's of metres thick. it is going to weight a lot.

A cloud is made of water vapour floats in air and weights 10,000+ tons.

morning RFC and the whole gang ,just got finished reading the past 2 days posts . thanks for at least hearing my side out ,and no I hadn't really envisioned such a huge size difference . I guess that goes hand in glove with my wet navy thinking where I was basicly get my size comparisons . I keep forgetting even the smallest WS of the honorverse is still about the size and wt of a Nimitz or Reagan class CVN .
to RFC I've been reading honor from back in the anthology days , before she even had a series . and through her I found all the rest of your multiverse of charactors in there own pocket verses . may you enjoy as many more years as already lived .
the original old salty sea dog