Small Pods.

JeffEngel wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:Of course after you have tractored it to the LAC, since you won't be ablecto get it inside the wedge, you have seriously reduced one of the LAC's major advantages, that of its acceleration, makeing this one of the more brain dead ides I have heard of yet.

You definitely could not tractor even a single pod inside a LAC's wedge? I ask because I have neither data nor even an impression of the scales involved. I'm not about to advocate for doing it, mind you - I just don't have reason yet to be confident that the plan would fail at that stage.

From Baen's FAQ page http://www.baen.com/FAQS.asp

On the electronics front, the new LACs have EW (and especially ECM) capabilities superior to most light cruisers. Coupled with their much smaller impeller signatures, which are already much less readily detectable than a DD's, that makes them far more stealthy than any other warship yet built. A SHRIKE mounts 3 tractors, which means it can tow up to 3 missile pods, but only with severe degradation of its acceleration curve. A SHRIKE with a single pod suffers a 20% reduction in accel; one with 2 pods suffers a 50% reduction; and one with 3 pods suffers an 80% reduction (max military power accel of only 127.2 gees). In addition, even a single pod on tow requires drive power levels which make stealth very difficult even with all the EW built into the new class.

This quote was discussing the original Shrike, but the mass is about the same, even if they got significantly more accel.

We don't know the dimensions of a current pod, but simple math dictates that it masses somewhere between 2000 and 5000 tons (the mass has probably been trending down as technology improves.) Meanwhile a RMS LAC masses in the 20 KTons range - making a single Pod mass between 10 and 25 % of a LAC mass - A Roland can tow 15 Pods with it's 188 Kton mass, or between 16% and 40% of it's mass. Using that same ratio, a LAC shouldn't tow more than 1.5 pods.

And if something manage to miss the LAC but it will hit pod, LAC would be dead, eight warheads, fusion reactors and a lot of debris.

SWM wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:You definitely could not tractor even a single pod inside a LAC's wedge? I ask because I have neither data nor even an impression of the scales involved. I'm not about to advocate for doing it, mind you - I just don't have reason yet to be confident that the plan would fail at that stage.

A pod is comparable to the size of a LAC.

Yes. Next question - How close does the wedge come to the unit, and how fixed is that figure?

JeffEngel wrote:Yes. Next question - How close does the wedge come to the unit, and how fixed is that figure?

Just to give you an idea, a missile wedge, as well as that of a CM, are about 10 km on a side, and are a couple km from the body of the missile. A pinnace wedge is around 30 km on a side and probably somewhere between 5 and 10 km from the craft.

A pinnace (the Mk-28 Condor, anyway) is around 300 tons. A LAC goes to around 18-20 kilotons. Other references are that a Star Knight wedge is around 150 km on a side and about 30-40 km from the ship, and an SD wedge is 300 km on a side and approximately 60-80 km from the ship.

Using those figures, you should be able to get a ballpark figure on the size of a LAC wedge.

As for how fixed those figures are, I assume you mean can the wedge size and distance from the ship be changed? My answer is - probably not. A ship *can* move around somewhat within the wedge, making targeting a bit more problematical, and the wedge angle narrows slightly at higher accel rates, but other than that, all dimensions and distances for any wedge are fixed.

MaxxQ wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Yes. Next question - How close does the wedge come to the unit, and how fixed is that figure?

Just to give you an idea, a missile wedge, as well as that of a CM, are about 10 km on a side, and are a couple km from the body of the missile. A pinnace wedge is around 30 km on a side and probably somewhere between 5 and 10 km from the craft.

A pinnace (the Mk-28 Condor, anyway) is around 300 tons. A LAC goes to around 18-20 kilotons. Other references are that a Star Knight wedge is around 150 km on a side and about 30-40 km from the ship, and an SD wedge is 300 km on a side and approximately 60-80 km from the ship.

Using those figures, you should be able to get a ballpark figure on the size of a LAC wedge.

Sooo - you've got maybe 15-20km out to the wedge. That would be enough space to pack in quite a lot of stuff.

Presumably, if you try to pack enough stuff in too lose to the wedge, the wedge will eat it and perhaps get disrupted itself, or not form in the first place.

So what's keeping you from packing more inside the wedge, and when does that keep you from it? Is there some minimum effective/safe tractoring distance? For the tractor mechanics, travel safety, getting it away from sensors, getting it away from nodes...?

JeffEngel wrote:Sooo - you've got maybe 15-20km out to the wedge. That would be enough space to pack in quite a lot of stuff.

Presumably, if you try to pack enough stuff in too lose to the wedge, the wedge will eat it and perhaps get disrupted itself, or not form in the first place.

So what's keeping you from packing more inside the wedge, and when does that keep you from it? Is there some minimum effective/safe tractoring distance? For the tractor mechanics, travel safety, getting it away from sensors, getting it away from nodes...?

We don't know, but it's quite clear that the volume inside the wedge is not the limiting factor. There is some other factor which reduces the number of things you can tractor inside the wedge to far far less than would fit in that volume.

Just within the wedge volume of a superdreadnought, you have enough room to hold thousands of destroyers, or hundreds of thousands of pods.

SWM wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Sooo - you've got maybe 15-20km out to the wedge. That would be enough space to pack in quite a lot of stuff.

Presumably, if you try to pack enough stuff in too lose to the wedge, the wedge will eat it and perhaps get disrupted itself, or not form in the first place.

So what's keeping you from packing more inside the wedge, and when does that keep you from it? Is there some minimum effective/safe tractoring distance? For the tractor mechanics, travel safety, getting it away from sensors, getting it away from nodes...?

We don't know, but it's quite clear that the volume inside the wedge is not the limiting factor. There is some other factor which reduces the number of things you can tractor inside the wedge to far far less than would fit in that volume.

Just within the wedge volume of a superdreadnought, you have enough room to hold thousands of destroyers, or hundreds of thousands of pods.

There is a pearl over at thefifthimperium.com that states, compensator field is the limiting factor. Distance from the ship. Minimal is skin depth. You would think designers on newer ships have extended the compensator field at least one pod depth around the entire ship.

You will note in recent books, RFC gives total pod carried as a function of NOT obstructing the sensors. Says nothing about how many TOTAL if one were willing to rely on RD's only.

Hence I said small pod. If one 14 Missile Mk16 Pod slows a Shrike 20% and two 50% a small less than half size should have very negligible effect on the LAC's power levels and thrust capabilities.

Ignoring the CLAC having pods option, just the LAC each LAC had a short range set of missiles, very short for the Katana, and the Shrike have a Graser only good up close.

They are fast but non hyper capable and if patrolling a system in the 100's have a huge area to cover. Huge being Huge. Even with a 10 Million Klick range The area is still huge.

With a 50 million klick Hyper limit it would take 576 LAC to get one ship in range of anything in the area at any one time. With a 40 million klick range it would take 90 ships to do the same. If they were all sitting at the hyper limit. Spread out over the system.

Now they would be grouped and cluster in key areas but having 6 MK16's in the area that they can manage, possibly dock with and recharge the small pod reactor etc... or have a CLAC dock with and recharge the reactors then send them out again for another month. 10-20% on board the CLAC at any time etc...

Where would you put the pod, just one at the end of the LAC in the LAC bay or on the roof or floor or side wall of the LAC bay. A small pod 40% the size of a standard pod wouldn't take up too much room. Especially if designed to be there. A Recharge connection for the reactor and scale the pod as small as possible using the LAC and CLAC tractors to control it.

The Idea of the CLAC launching the pods would be after the LAC which could pick them up floating around in space after the CLAC leaves.

Your LAC then fire and control them, if when need be.

The best thing is the LAC would be very hard to see after the missiles fire. And can close and engage whatever survives the 600 MK16's. Assuming 100 LAC.

This is the same initial wave as 13 Roland quadruple stacked. With much more defensive and energy capabilities.

You know that sometimes freak hit happened? If something will hit pod with armed missiles and it would be inside wedge, LAC will be destroyed. Wise commander try to prevent freak hits and now we could place Ghost Rider drones on limit and sit waiting for info.

wastedfly wrote:There is a pearl over at thefifthimperium.com that states, compensator field is the limiting factor. Distance from the ship. Minimal is skin depth. You would think designers on newer ships have extended the compensator field at least one pod depth around the entire ship.

My understanding is that compensators are much more sensitive to volume than to actual mass. So I believe that if you were had a compensator covering an area one pod width farther than your hull that you'd get almost the same lowered acceleration of a ship that had a hull of that same greater radius.

That's going to be a significant hit (percentage wise) to a ship, especially a smaller one like a DD or CL, which are only a few pods wide to begin with.


But I don't know if you can design for that size, but normally run it "undersized" to just cover the hull; and if you can whether that's as efficient as just having a normal sized one.