Possible Weapon Technology at MALign Bolthole

Kind of addressing both your posts.

n7axw wrote:From what happened in the Yawata Strike, MAlign stealth is really, really good... better than even ghost rider. In fact, it seems to be the stealth that makes the MAlign really dangerous at the moment. Virtually everything else can be countered if you can find it.

Don

cthia wrote:It seems the MALign has a handle on stealth technology. It seems shortsighted not to think the MALign can't utilize stealth technology in conventional weapons systems - new type ECM. Similar to the RHN not foreseeing Apollo stealth progressing into an offensive system.

Their ability to stealth their hulls seems to surpass anything Manticore has; at least for ships. But I assume some version of the stealth used on the Sharks is (or can be) applied to the graser torps.

But there's no evidence that they're as skilled as Manticore at cloaking impeller wedges. That's were most of the stealth ability of the Ghost Rider drones comes from - the ability to maneuver close enough for detailed reconnaissance, at over 1000g while barely showing on FTL gravity sensors. The MAlign sidestepped that whole issue by inventing the spider drive -- but it (currently) has acceleration limitations (both for missiles and ships; though for different reasons) that an impeller drive doesn't.


In the hypothetical system I'd mentioned, putting the graser torp weapon on an impeller drive drone (to give it better than a couple hundred g accel) they'd be primarily worried about how stealthy its impeller wedge would be. And we don't know how their stealth is in that category - nothing in the Yawata Strike attempted to use stealthed impeller drives (it was either spider drives, or very non-stealth Cataphract missile impeller drives)

cthia wrote:It seems the MALign has a handle on stealth technology. It seems shortsighted not to think the MALign can't utilize stealth technology in conventional weapons systems - new type ECM. Similar to the RHN not foreseeing Apollo stealth progressing into an offensive system.

One thing I don't understand is why the MAN doesn't employ conventional propulsion systems in its weapons systems, in conjunction with stealthy ships, getting them abnormally close to targets, that effective, opportune counter-missile fire would be diminished.

Spider drives are the core stealth technology there - they're stealthy by default, just because the primary sensor picking up anything in space combat is gravitics picking up an impeller signature they don't have. What the MAN does after that is just icing the cake.

But spider drives require building a unit completely differently, with drive components all over the place and a hull with projections 120 degrees apart. (Someone check me if that's off, please - and has anyone an image of a spider drive unit?) Impeller drive starships are built with the familiar cigar shape with hammerheads at either end. Building something to work under both drives at all would be tricky if it's doable at all, and it'd likely have all sorts of additional expenses, limitations, and/or problems trying to conform to both drives' requirements.

It's entirely possible you'd end up with better results just building an impeller drive warship with extremely powerful drive plates, acceleration couches for everyone, and a huge amount of reaction mass, and get the no-drive-to-see-here stealth effect making runs on thrusters, like the Elysian Space Navy did at Cerberus - and no navy has seriously considered that.

Jonathan_S wrote:The main limitation right now is it's low accel. Mission of Honor tells us it can only pull "a few hundred gravities", which seems to make it slower than even most freighters.

That 100G limit is for manned ships and is the result of not having a wedge to use as a gravity-sink.

I don't think we've been given a "theoretically instantaneous" qualifier as we have for Impeller Wedges, but I'm certain that unmanned spider drive devices can accelerate at more than 100Gs.

cthia wrote:One thing I don't understand is why the MAN doesn't employ conventional propulsion systems in its weapons systems, in conjunction with stealthy ships, getting them abnormally close to targets, that effective, opportune counter-missile fire would be diminished.

The Grazer Torpedos weren't the only weapons used in Oyster Bay; Capital Ship grade Cataphract-C missiles from highly stealthed pods were also used. Those missiles use standard impeller drives.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The main limitation right now is it's low accel. Mission of Honor tells us it can only pull "a few hundred gravities", which seems to make it slower than even most freighters.

That 100G limit is for manned ships and is the result of not having a wedge to use as a gravity-sink.

I don't think we've been given a "theoretically instantaneous" qualifier as we have for Impeller Wedges, but I'm certain that unmanned spider drive devices can accelerate at more than 100Gs.

Actually that line was from the description of the graser torps; not ships.

Elsewhere it goes into more detail about the grav plates for the spider drive ships, and how at 4g experienced they could only pull 210g.


For the torps the limit is almost certainly not the experienced acceleration, so there must be some other limit. Maybe due to the size, or number, of spider drive nodes you can cram onto something the size of a grazer torp; or maybe it's a stored power limitation (since they lack micro-fusion plants). But it seems both ships and torps can only do around a couple hundred gs.

Jonathan_S wrote:For the torps the limit is almost certainly not the experienced acceleration, so there must be some other limit. Maybe due to the size, or number, of spider drive nodes you can cram onto something the size of a grazer torp; or maybe it's a stored power limitation (since they lack micro-fusion plants). But it seems both ships and torps can only do around a couple hundred gs.

David seems to say that the issue for the graser torps is size - you can't fit enough tractors on a torpedo sized hull.

cthia wrote:{snip}
One thing I don't understand is why the MAN doesn't employ conventional propulsion systems in its weapons systems, in conjunction with stealthy ships, getting them abnormally close to targets, that effective, opportune counter-missile fire would be diminished.

We have NO IDEA what MAN operational practices are, for any weapon.

We have only ever seen the MAN active in ONE (1), HIGHLY specialized, indeed, unique, operation.

Its kind of like trying to evaluate (UK) Royal Navy standard practices based on the mini-sub raid on the Norwegian fiords.

dreamrider

cthia wrote:Graser Torpedoes? Hot damn, I was on to something. Just a day late and a credit short. Thanks for bringing me up to speed dreamrider.

Can anyone conceive of any other MALign tech that may be on the drawing board?

****** *

Are there any limitations to the graser torp? Wiki doesn't give much info, except that it's cumbersome (to be expected), and more devastating, three seconds of on target fire as opposed to milliseconds. Sounds like a devastating weapon if it can be married with worthy ECM and acceleration speeds.

The other thing about the Graser Torpedoes used in Oyster Bay was that they were not just a big nasty weapons platform. They were also at least partially the command and control nodes for the other stealthed MDM pods that added to the destruction after the Grasers fired first. So they were not just a power supply, three bands of Spider nodes, stealth systems, targeting matrix and graser array, they also packed a massive and sophisticated AI fire control system that coordinated quite a few other missile pods in their "shoal".

In effect they were not just a Stealth missile, and Hyper-powerful energy weapon platforms (remember standard Honorverse missiles are effectively energy weapons anyway and graser/laser platforms already exist as we saw around Cerberus in Echos of Honor), but also were a form of Apollo control nodes, except without FTL and acting more like autonomous Raptor drones.

Given Apollo wont stay secret forever I envisage MA scientists deriving their own version of Apollo, effectively a remote missile control platform multiplying salvo sizes, but without the FTL node component that makes Apollo such a game changer.

For anyone looking ahead for other MA ship-based technology revolving around the Spider and Stealth-ed Warships I would advise looking into the history of submarine warfare and the U-boat campaign during WW2. From what I can understand a Spider drive is like a space going version of a submarine, very quiet and hard to find, but capable of only modest acceleration performance, and a radical game changer when first introduced.

Valen123456 wrote:The other thing about the Graser Torpedoes used in Oyster Bay was that they were not just a big nasty weapons platform. They were also at least partially the command and control nodes for the other stealthed MDM pods that added to the destruction after the Grasers fired first.

What gives you that idea? The "command and control nodes" were separate units that transmitted final targeting info to all of the attack weapons. A portion of that burst transmission was intercepted which might lead to capture of one of them.