What if: unmanned droneships against "Apollo"-carrying navy?

Let's look at a purely theoretical situation: what if SLN, or other power opposed to the Grand Alliance just think "what the heck? The "Apollo"-type MDM is pretty much automatic, or at least semi-automatic weapon by itself! Let's just threw away this centuries-old prejudices against autonomous military AI, and hit the bastards really hard with the cold-blooded machine army!"

So, they would threw away the prejudices and start to build robotic, completely-unmanned warships with enormous, missile-style acceleration capabilites and other advantages of pure unmanned ships. In general, point is "your missiles could outrange our ships? Well, and our ships could outrun your missiles!"

So, who would won in theoretical battle of two comparable fleets:

- The first is SLN-tech (with "Cataphraht"'s, without podnoughts and with, maybe, very ealry type of FLT communication), but composed almost entirely of robotic droneships, capable of tenth of thousand "g" acceleration.

- The second is the last generation RMN-tech, with "Apollo"-class systems, but composed of usuall manned podnoughts, with no more acceleration, that the manned warships capable of.

Dilandu wrote:- The first is SLN-tech (with "Cataphraht"'s, without podnoughts and with, maybe, very ealry type of FLT communication), but composed almost entirely of robotic droneships, capable of tenth of thousand "g" acceleration.

Several small problems there:
1. RFC has categorically stated that drone ships are something that will not happen in the Honorverse. There has never been an in-universe explanation for this, but presumably this has something to do with the Honorverse not actually having true working AI (as in, their AI tech is mostly like our AI tech today, except backed by faster hardware and better databases).

2. Building a warship to specifications that would allow it to accelerate at several thousand g poses significant challenges; it is unclear whether or not you can build ships that large that can handle the stress (The fastest big ship we've seen so far was a freighter in one of Tim Zahn's short stories, which had its compensator hacked and safeties removed to run it at 2000 g for a couple seconds, IIRC)

3. Being able to outmaneuver an enemy that can kill you long before you can kill him is immaterial. Being able to shoot farther trumps being able to move faster, given the constraints of the honorverse.

The E wrote:
Several small problems there:
1. RFC has categorically stated that drone ships are something that will not happen in the Honorverse. There has never been an in-universe explanation for this, but presumably this has something to do with the Honorverse not actually having true working AI (as in, their AI tech is mostly like our AI tech today, except backed by faster hardware and better databases).

I knew this perfectly: that's why this theme is under "What if?" After all, they are possible: ther is always the possibility of someone desperate enough to try that.

2. Building a warship to specifications that would allow it to accelerate at several thousand g poses significant challenges; it is unclear whether or not you can build ships that large that can handle the stress (The fastest big ship we've seen so far was a freighter in one of Tim Zahn's short stories, which had its compensator hacked and safeties removed to run it at 2000 g for a couple seconds, IIRC)

Well, the missiles are capable to go at thousands of "g". So, it's theoretically possible.

3. Being able to outmaneuver an enemy that can kill you long before you can kill him is immaterial. Being able to shoot farther trumps being able to move faster, given the constraints of the honorverse.

Being able to advance on the enemy as fast asd the missiles could, is pretty material. Especially if it's impossible for enemy to just run avay. The missile-accelerated ship would be a very hard target even for MDM - it would simply able to evade a large number of them.

Dilandu wrote:

2. Building a warship to specifications that would allow it to accelerate at several thousand g poses significant challenges; it is unclear whether or not you can build ships that large that can handle the stress (The fastest big ship we've seen so far was a freighter in one of Tim Zahn's short stories, which had its compensator hacked and safeties removed to run it at 2000 g for a couple seconds, IIRC)

Well, the missiles are capable to go at thousands of "g". So, it's theoretically possible.

It's possible for missiles. Which have nowhere near as many moving parts as a starship has, which weigh only a few hundred tons each, and which generally do not have to maneuver all that much. I am quite sure that scaling issues prevent large ships with enormous accelerations.

Being able to advance on the enemy as fast asd the missiles could, is pretty material. Especially if it's impossible for enemy to just run avay. The missile-accelerated ship would be a very hard target even for MDM - it would simply able to evade a large number of them.

No, it wouldn't. The faster you go, the easier it is to intercept you (because changing course is hard); missiles have to pack in a lot of penetration aids and EW gear in order to have a chance to reach their target (and even with said gear, saturation attacks are still a necessity). A ship closing in on an enemy at missile speeds would need enough firepower to obliterate the target in the few seconds it has before its outside the engagement envelope again; this may work against single targets, but becomes utterly impractical in fleet engagements.

In the end, all you'd be doing is shortening the time during which an MDM/Apollo-equipped foe has the range on you; while this is by no means insignificant, I feel that the drawbacks of this drone approach far outweigh the benefits.

Dilandu wrote:

The E wrote:2. Building a warship to specifications that would allow it to accelerate at several thousand g poses significant challenges; it is unclear whether or not you can build ships that large that can handle the stress (The fastest big ship we've seen so far was a freighter in one of Tim Zahn's short stories, which had its compensator hacked and safeties removed to run it at 2000 g for a couple seconds, IIRC)

Well, the missiles are capable to go at thousands of "g". So, it's theoretically possible.

But missiles use very different drives that include (partial?) compensation while under power.

Plus acceleration should still scale with mass/volume. So even if you could scale missile drives up to propel something even the size of a LAC they should be down to way way under the 92,000g a missile can pull at full power - you'd probably be lucky to get a tenth of that. Oh, and they'd still burn out after no more than 60 seconds.


If you don't have a compensator (and somehow the ships structure and systems can survive that acceleration, you can definitely crank up a normal starship drive to a higher accel. But not anywhere near missile levels - and they'd be taking more acceleration effects than a missile does despite the far lower acceleration.


Don't really see this working with the way RFC laid out the gravitonic physics in the Honorverse. (Not without a major R&D breakthrough to change the current constraints)

The E wrote:No, it wouldn't. The faster you go, the easier it is to intercept you (because changing course is hard);

While I agree with much of your post, I have to disagree about this. Suppose you have a ship that can accelerate at, say, 10,000 gees. At a time T0 the ship is at position X0. Given it's velocity vector at T0 and assuming zero acceleration, you can predict it's location X1 1 second later, at T1. If you then allow for acceleration, the ship could end up anywhere within a 50 kilometer sphere of that position X1. It doesn't matter what velocity the ship has at T0--the sphere that the ship can be in at T1 is about 50 kilometers radius of X1. The angle that the motion can be deflected is affected by the velocity at T0, but the potential displacement is not. And it is the potential displacement that is the critical factor in determining how hard the target is to predict.

First you'd need AI. And I think RFC has stated that AI won't appear in the Honorverse.
Cheers
John

Dilandu wrote:Let's look at a purely theoretical situation: what if SLN, or other power opposed to the Grand Alliance just think "what the heck? The "Apollo"-type MDM is pretty much automatic, or at least semi-automatic weapon by itself! Let's just threw away this centuries-old prejudices against autonomous military AI, and hit the bastards really hard with the cold-blooded machine army!"

So, they would threw away the prejudices and start to build robotic, completely-unmanned warships with enormous, missile-style acceleration capabilites and other advantages of pure unmanned ships. In general, point is "your missiles could outrange our ships? Well, and our ships could outrun your missiles!"

So, who would won in theoretical battle of two comparable fleets:

- The first is SLN-tech (with "Cataphraht"'s, without podnoughts and with, maybe, very ealry type of FLT communication), but composed almost entirely of robotic droneships, capable of tenth of thousand "g" acceleration.

- The second is the last generation RMN-tech, with "Apollo"-class systems, but composed of usuall manned podnoughts, with no more acceleration, that the manned warships capable of.

SWM wrote:While I agree with much of your post, I have to disagree about this. Suppose you have a ship that can accelerate at, say, 10,000 gees. At a time T0 the ship is at position X0. Given it's velocity vector at T0 and assuming zero acceleration, you can predict it's location X1 1 second later, at T1. If you then allow for acceleration, the ship could end up anywhere within a 50 kilometer sphere of that position X1. It doesn't matter what velocity the ship has at T0--the sphere that the ship can be in at T1 is about 50 kilometers radius of X1. The angle that the motion can be deflected is affected by the velocity at T0, but the potential displacement is not. And it is the potential displacement that is the critical factor in determining how hard the target is to predict.

Yeah, but 50 klicks of displacement is worthless given the accuracy and range of Honorverse weaponry. Honorverse laser heads have a standoff range of several tens of thousands of kilometers; at that range, the displacement needed to adjust for a 50 klick shift of the target can be measured in tenths or hundredths of degrees.

Also, the original proposal called for these drones to travel at missile speeds, meaning appreciable fractions of c, which in turn means that the possible displacement you can get is limited to a rather narrow cone.

The E wrote:

SWM wrote:While I agree with much of your post, I have to disagree about this. Suppose you have a ship that can accelerate at, say, 10,000 gees. At a time T0 the ship is at position X0. Given it's velocity vector at T0 and assuming zero acceleration, you can predict it's location X1 1 second later, at T1. If you then allow for acceleration, the ship could end up anywhere within a 50 kilometer sphere of that position X1. It doesn't matter what velocity the ship has at T0--the sphere that the ship can be in at T1 is about 50 kilometers radius of X1. The angle that the motion can be deflected is affected by the velocity at T0, but the potential displacement is not. And it is the potential displacement that is the critical factor in determining how hard the target is to predict.

Yeah, but 50 klicks of displacement is worthless given the accuracy and range of Honorverse weaponry. Honorverse laser heads have a standoff range of several tens of thousands of kilometers; at that range, the displacement needed to adjust for a 50 klick shift of the target can be measured in tenths or hundredths of degrees.

Also, the original proposal called for these drones to travel at missile speeds, meaning appreciable fractions of c, which in turn means that the possible displacement you can get is limited to a rather narrow cone.

You forget first that this is only in one second, and second that this is sixteen times as much as a superdreadnought could move. The potential displacement is proportional to the square of the time. And the difference in volume is proportional to the cube of the ratio in radii. So, a ship that can accelerate at 10,000 gees can move into a potential volume 4600 times larger than a ship moving 600 gees, in the same amount of time. Roughly that means the ship with greater acceleration is 4600 times harder to hit than the slower ship. And that is regardless of how fast the ships were moving.

It's not a cone, it is a sphere. And the size of the sphere is determined by the potential acceleration, not by the base velocity.

You stated that the faster a ship moves, the easier it is to hit. But that simply is not true, as I have shown.

SWM wrote:

The E wrote:Yeah, but 50 klicks of displacement is worthless given the accuracy and range of Honorverse weaponry. Honorverse laser heads have a standoff range of several tens of thousands of kilometers; at that range, the displacement needed to adjust for a 50 klick shift of the target can be measured in tenths or hundredths of degrees.

Also, the original proposal called for these drones to travel at missile speeds, meaning appreciable fractions of c, which in turn means that the possible displacement you can get is limited to a rather narrow cone.

You forget first that this is only in one second, and second that this is sixteen times as much as a superdreadnought could move. The potential displacement is proportional to the square of the time. And the difference in volume is proportional to the cube of the ratio in radii. So, a ship that can accelerate at 10,000 gees can move into a potential volume 4600 times larger than a ship moving 600 gees, in the same amount of time. Roughly that means the ship with greater acceleration is 4600 times harder to hit than the slower ship. And that is regardless of how fast the ships were moving.

It's not a cone, it is a sphere. And the size of the sphere is determined by the potential acceleration, not by the base velocity.

You stated that the faster a ship moves, the easier it is to hit. But that simply is not true, as I have shown.

Tactically I can see that. Once you're inside missile range, what matters (to the extent anything does) is displacement, not how far you can drag your base vector around.

But in terms of whether you ever entered missile range in the first place ability to alter your base vector matters more. A ship accelerating at 10,000 gs builds up a a very long vector arrow very quickly - quite possibly outrunning it's ability to scout along that vector for hidden enemies.

Also if it's base velocity is much higher than the SD has managed to achieve it will have less time to evade follow-up waves of missiles because it'll be closing the range so quickly.
But that's not an inherent problem with a high acceleration ship, it's just easier for them to get to stupidly high base velocities. You could do the same thing if you dropped your SD out of hyper far enough out to get long run-up to blow through the system at a significant fraction of c. (Except it would be worse because the extra time it would take to achieve that base velocity would give the enemy even more time to sneak forces within engagement range of your projected flight track)