Armor thin spots - Keyhole, pod cores, boat bays, drones

So - the lately re-activated BC(P)'s at Sidemore thread mentions the Keyhole platform docking areas as weaker points in a ship's armor. It got me to thinking - On a pod core unit, is there a compelling reason not to put the Keyhole drones, when not deployed, inside the pod cores, giving the unit fewer weakened spots?

Scale of the platforms would be one likely reason, but I don't have the data on hand (or any guesses from memory) that would settle that question. Even if the Keyhole platforms blocked missile pod passage out the "Deadly Orifice", you could presumably kick them out and tractor them in place when you needed to clear for pod dropping.

The line of questioning made me think of another couple. First, don't boat bays provide another such weak spot? If so, isn't there a powerful incentive to include fewer boat bays? (Granted, redundancy argues against that even it does cause a problem for armor integrity.) But either way that goes, isn't there reason to move Keyhole platforms to the same bay, if at all practical? It'd seem to make for easier maintenance too.

And along the same lines - recon drones. Where are they kept and launched from? Do they pose the same armor integrity issues? If not, why not? If there's a workaround for them, are Keyhole platforms just too big to enjoy it? And old-school decoys, Keyhole's ancestors - is it that they were smaller so even kept on some small recess on the outside of the hull, was the fact that it was a smaller recess the saving grace to keep it from representing another vulnerability?

JeffEngel wrote:So - the lately re-activated BC(P)'s at Sidemore thread mentions the Keyhole platform docking areas as weaker points in a ship's armor. It got me to thinking - On a pod core unit, is there a compelling reason not to put the Keyhole drones, when not deployed, inside the pod cores, giving the unit fewer weakened spots?

Scale of the platforms would be one likely reason, but I don't have the data on hand (or any guesses from memory) that would settle that question. Even if the Keyhole platforms blocked missile pod passage out the "Deadly Orifice", you could presumably kick them out and tractor them in place when you needed to clear for pod dropping.

The line of questioning made me think of another couple. First, don't boat bays provide another such weak spot? If so, isn't there a powerful incentive to include fewer boat bays? (Granted, redundancy argues against that even it does cause a problem for armor integrity.) But either way that goes, isn't there reason to move Keyhole platforms to the same bay, if at all practical? It'd seem to make for easier maintenance too.

And along the same lines - recon drones. Where are they kept and launched from? Do they pose the same armor integrity issues? If not, why not? If there's a workaround for them, are Keyhole platforms just too big to enjoy it? And old-school decoys, Keyhole's ancestors - is it that they were smaller so even kept on some small recess on the outside of the hull, was the fact that it was a smaller recess the saving grace to keep it from representing another vulnerability?

Check out the BC(P) render that the BuNine member MaxxQ made

http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/A ... -487154356

Basically keyhole (even the keyhole I varient used by BCs) is way too big to fit inside the pod bay. It won't fit through the rear hatches (and if it could one of them would displace something like 1/4th of the pods)

(I did wonder if it might have been possible to make a one-keyhole design where the keyhole docked horizontally across the rear hammerhead, so you had to drop it before rolling pods. You'd still pay an acceleration penalty for the extra length but it wouldn't cut so deeply into the armor. Though you'd still need the beamed power and high bandwidth datalinks in the broadsides to power and control it)


As for boat bays, yes they're a weakness, but they're recessed into the underside of the hull, where they're largely shielded from enemy fire by the ship's wedge. (But a down the throat, or up the kilt, hit from sufficiently above or below the plane of the ship could potentially land an extremely damaging grazing blow there).
And recon drones are also stored in/by, and deployed from, the boat bay.

Jonathan_S wrote:
<snip>

Check out the BC(P) render that the BuNine member MaxxQ made

http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/A ... -487154356

Basically keyhole (even the keyhole I varient used by BCs) is way too big to fit inside the pod bay. It won't fit through the rear hatches (and if it could one of them would displace something like 1/4th of the pods)

(I did wonder if it might have been possible to make a one-keyhole design where the keyhole docked horizontally across the rear hammerhead, so you had to drop it before rolling pods. You'd still pay an acceleration penalty for the extra length but it wouldn't cut so deeply into the armor. Though you'd still need the beamed power and high bandwidth datalinks in the broadsides to power and control it)


As for boat bays, yes they're a weakness, but they're recessed into the underside of the hull, where they're largely shielded from enemy fire by the ship's wedge. (But a down the throat, or up the kilt, hit from sufficiently above or below the plane of the ship could potentially land an extremely damaging grazing blow there).
And recon drones are also stored in/by, and deployed from, the boat bay.

Thanks for the link, and I agree with most of this; but since when did the length of the hull have anything to do with the acceleration? The size of the wedge dwarfs any LAC sized extension of the hull.

Regards,

Rob

edited to fix the quote

Jonathan_S wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:So - the lately re-activated BC(P)'s at Sidemore thread mentions the Keyhole platform docking areas as weaker points in a ship's armor. It got me to thinking - On a pod core unit, is there a compelling reason not to put the Keyhole drones, when not deployed, inside the pod cores, giving the unit fewer weakened spots?

Scale of the platforms would be one likely reason, but I don't have the data on hand (or any guesses from memory) that would settle that question. Even if the Keyhole platforms blocked missile pod passage out the "Deadly Orifice", you could presumably kick them out and tractor them in place when you needed to clear for pod dropping.

The line of questioning made me think of another couple. First, don't boat bays provide another such weak spot? If so, isn't there a powerful incentive to include fewer boat bays? (Granted, redundancy argues against that even it does cause a problem for armor integrity.) But either way that goes, isn't there reason to move Keyhole platforms to the same bay, if at all practical? It'd seem to make for easier maintenance too.

And along the same lines - recon drones. Where are they kept and launched from? Do they pose the same armor integrity issues? If not, why not? If there's a workaround for them, are Keyhole platforms just too big to enjoy it? And old-school decoys, Keyhole's ancestors - is it that they were smaller so even kept on some small recess on the outside of the hull, was the fact that it was a smaller recess the saving grace to keep it from representing another vulnerability?

Check out the BC(P) render that the BuNine member MaxxQ made

http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/A ... -487154356

Basically keyhole (even the keyhole I varient used by BCs) is way too big to fit inside the pod bay. It won't fit through the rear hatches (and if it could one of them would displace something like 1/4th of the pods)

(I did wonder if it might have been possible to make a one-keyhole design where the keyhole docked horizontally across the rear hammerhead, so you had to drop it before rolling pods. You'd still pay an acceleration penalty for the extra length but it wouldn't cut so deeply into the armor. Though you'd still need the beamed power and high bandwidth datalinks in the broadsides to power and control it)

You would, but they needn't represent that weak spot. Leave them there on the broadsides, outside as much armor as the rest of the broadside, and move the Keyhole platforms somewhere else if you can.

Why not out an expanded boat bay for the Keyhole platforms too? Or - slight variation on your idea - keep the Keyhole platforms stacked bottom to hammerhead in back? They wouldn't extend so far backward that way. Or in a kind of duplicate top-side boat bay?

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:
[snip]
(I did wonder if it might have been possible to make a one-keyhole design where the keyhole docked horizontally across the rear hammerhead, so you had to drop it before rolling pods. You'd still pay an acceleration penalty for the extra length but it wouldn't cut so deeply into the armor. Though you'd still need the beamed power and high bandwidth datalinks in the broadsides to power and control it)
[snip]

Thanks for the link, and I agree with most of this; but since when did the length of the hull have anything to do with the acceleration? The size of the wedge dwarfs any LAC sized extension of the hull.

Regards,

Rob

edited to fix the quote

Accel is limited by the mass of the ship and the compensated volume. There's a reason that ships (by and large) have about the same aspect ratio. Effectively lengthening the hull by 10 meters or so doesn't add a lot of volume that needs to be covered, but it's probably enough to cut the accel by a 1-2g. (Haven't tried to run the numbers - but it's probably not a significant acceleration penalty, even if it is a noticeable one)