Small Pods.

Because they haven't learnt to put him on their 'ignore this member' list?

Cheers

John

Potato wrote:Why do people keep responding to Skimper?

Lord Skimper wrote:One could also point out that the 1920 design Sag C is 2.56 times larger than the 1920 design Roland and only 7% slower.

And the Sag-C appears to have been introduced using a generation older compensator than the other two 1920 designs you'd mentioned. If it had the same level of improvement as the Roland and Wolfhound it would have a 100% accel of 758.7g rather than the 726.2g listed in HoS.


I never meant to say that the acceleration hit for tacking a keyhole on the back would be large, just that extra volume (especially when it distorts the hull ratio) has some measurable acceleration impact. (Further, Manticore is so far ahead of the rest of the galaxy in term of compensator efficiency that it doesn't matter very much at the moment if they have a less than optimum hull size / shape because their better compensators more than offset it)

I kind of hate responding, especially since the snipped part of his post went off on a crazy tangent, but I'd gone to the trouble of checking the numbers... So I couldn't help myself

Haven't responded directly to Skimper but I can think of one tactical situation where a LAC towing pods makes sense, but not how that few LACs got "there" in the first place, which would be "mini-squadron impersonation", and where the LAC towing pods loss of acceleration doesn't matter.

My setup is similar what Honor planned for in March, System X, you maybe have one older generation ships playing rear-guard, and a small number of LACs. Let's assume that instead of Warnicke it's the PNE or a small-ish FF raiding squadron that comes a-calling over the hyper limit. You don't have enough to destroy them, but you sure as HECK don't want them closing on the inner system.

So you use your bigger ship with limpeted pods "faking like an even bigger ship", and let the LACs play peek-a-boo like more SMALL ships. When you get to your "don't cross this line point" and decel back to "LAC towing 3 levels", you distribute pods to the LACs and they spread out.

Assume that the FF, etc. play stupid and keep coming. Now you can put a really big pod salvo into space, (example 6 lacs times 3 pods times 14 missiles and it looks like you've got WAY more firepower than you do, and then your ship and LACS go to full stealth. I'm guessing that first salvo mission kills probably half of the incoming ships...

So you're the command officeer in that FF detachment and stealthy ship X that you think has six medium size cousins sends you a message and says "leave or surrender"...

SharkHunter wrote:Haven't responded directly to Skimper but I can think of one tactical situation where a LAC towing pods makes sense, but not how that few LACs got "there" in the first place, which would be "mini-squadron impersonation", and where the LAC towing pods loss of acceleration doesn't matter.

My setup is similar what Honor planned for in March, System X, you maybe have one older generation ships playing rear-guard, and a small number of LACs. Let's assume that instead of Warnicke it's the PNE or a small-ish FF raiding squadron that comes a-calling over the hyper limit. You don't have enough to destroy them, but you sure as HECK don't want them closing on the inner system.

So you use your bigger ship with limpeted pods "faking like an even bigger ship", and let the LACs play peek-a-boo like more SMALL ships. When you get to your "don't cross this line point" and decel back to "LAC towing 3 levels", you distribute pods to the LACs and they spread out.

Assume that the FF, etc. play stupid and keep coming. Now you can put a really big pod salvo into space, (example 6 lacs times 3 pods times 14 missiles and it looks like you've got WAY more firepower than you do, and then your ship and LACS go to full stealth. I'm guessing that first salvo mission kills probably half of the incoming ships...

So you're the command officeer in that FF detachment and stealthy ship X that you think has six medium size cousins sends you a message and says "leave or surrender"...

LACs simply don't have the power to pretend to be a larger warship. Their wedges aren't strong enough, and they they barely have enough power for what they need anyway. Their weak wedges are part of what makes them stealthy.

SWM wrote:LACs simply don't have the power to pretend to be a larger warship. Their wedges aren't strong enough, and they they barely have enough power for what they need anyway. Their weak wedges are part of what makes them stealthy.

Both entirely within my "design point" as the point of this tiny little force is to throw their one punch and make a bigger force go away because of the one-punch bluff. FF has no tape measure on them, so they might as well be hung pretending to be small DDs trying to hide UNTIL they launch. Then they do the impossible and toss 40 missiles apiece, impossible for a LAC, and they ghost back into full stealth and can go nearly full accel wherever you want them, back into a defensive shell or ?

I think that a huge salvo from ships I can't see afterwards would pretty much freak any squadron commander out enough to dissuade further attacking, yes?

SharkHunter wrote:

SWM wrote:LACs simply don't have the power to pretend to be a larger warship. Their wedges aren't strong enough, and they they barely have enough power for what they need anyway. Their weak wedges are part of what makes them stealthy.

Both entirely within my "design point" as the point of this tiny little force is to throw their one punch and make a bigger force go away because of the one-punch bluff. FF has no tape measure on them, so they might as well be hung pretending to be small DDs trying to hide UNTIL they launch. Then they do the impossible and toss 40 missiles apiece, impossible for a LAC, and they ghost back into full stealth and can go nearly full accel wherever you want them, back into a defensive shell or ?

I think that a huge salvo from ships I can't see afterwards would pretty much freak any squadron commander out enough to dissuade further attacking, yes?

No, LACs can't even pretend to be DD's trying to hide. If they can see them, it will be obvious they are LACs, not destroyers.

SWM wrote:No, LACs can't even pretend to be DD's trying to hide. If they can see them, it will be obvious they are LACs, not destroyers.

Though, I guess if you had them handy, you could pair LACs with ghost rider (or Lorelei) decoys. The decoys can pretend to be ships, and the LACS might be able to tow a pod or two to simulate that "ship" firing.


Going back SharkHunter's original scenario though, I'm kind of at a loss as to what kind of "small-ish FF raiding squadron" (or even the whole "PNE") where you might need to try to bluff away if you have a warship towing pods backed by LACs
That sounds more like a shooting gallery or a slaughter.

This is weird.


If a 250-ton (at most) decoy that has the power of a single missile-sized fusion reactor can pretend to be a ship, why can't a LAC with a fission reactor a couple orders of magnitude* more powerful be unable to?





*: a fusion reactor to power a LAC would need to be over 10 kilotons, compared to a missile's 50 tons at most. Assuming similar energy density, that means the LAC has 200 times the energy requirements of a missile or drone, at least.

Belial666 wrote:This is weird.


If a 250-ton (at most) decoy that has the power of a single missile-sized fusion reactor can pretend to be a ship, why can't a LAC with a fission reactor a couple orders of magnitude* more powerful be unable to?

No idea why a LAC couldn't play the same ECM tricks. Heck, for all I know they can and we've just never had to reason to see it "on screen" (since they tend to go for stealth over bluff).

But we definitely know the free flying decoys can; at least for a little while (though the bigger the ship they're impersonating the less time they can do it)

Even if the LACs originally can't, just limpet a drone on them and now they can. Run a power feed from the drone to the LAC and now the drone will have a lot more power to play with, too.