Saganami Island lessons: the Battle of Manticore

kzt wrote:

SWM wrote:The solution is a combination of divergent paths and slightly different launch velocities. By the time the missiles reach wedge ignition range, they can quite easily be scattered across a 3-dimensional region with no wedge too close to another. Kzt, do you really expect us to show the math on this trivial question?

Hey, don't blame me for this!

Belial666 wrote:snip

5) Fire at enemy future position so that by the time your laser beam has taken 1/2 second to reach enemy, the enemy, after moving tens of thousands of kilometers and after a hundred minor acceleration changes, arrives at the point you decided to fire.

Dafmeister wrote:

Relax wrote:
Since DW said so. Also, look at Keyhole drawing. Can see em on the left end. (EDIT(both drawings on BCL/Invictus)

When did RFC say that? Not doubting it happened, but I don't remember seeing it. I can see what you mean about the drawing, the Keyhole platforms in the drawings of both the Nike and the Invictus in House of Steel have what looks very much like an impeller ring at the stern. However, I can't see why they would have one. Every description I can remember seeing of the Keyholes described them as tethered platforms, held in place by a tractor beam and pulled inside the mother ship's wedge if needed for protection. You can't run a tractor beam through a wedge, or a power supply beam or data link for that matter, so if the Keyhole had a wedge it would have to be oriented in the same plane as the mother ship's. That would make using it to provide fire control while the mother ship rolls wedge against enemy fire impossible - the Keyhole's wedge would cut off it's view of the target.

SWM wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:When did RFC say that? Not doubting it happened, but I don't remember seeing it. I can see what you mean about the drawing, the Keyhole platforms in the drawings of both the Nike and the Invictus in House of Steel have what looks very much like an impeller ring at the stern. However, I can't see why they would have one. Every description I can remember seeing of the Keyholes described them as tethered platforms, held in place by a tractor beam and pulled inside the mother ship's wedge if needed for protection. You can't run a tractor beam through a wedge, or a power supply beam or data link for that matter, so if the Keyhole had a wedge it would have to be oriented in the same plane as the mother ship's. That would make using it to provide fire control while the mother ship rolls wedge against enemy fire impossible - the Keyhole's wedge would cut off it's view of the target.

He says it in this Pearl: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/166/1

runsforcelery wrote:Keyhole -- and Keyhole-2 -- are both towed systems, and they are not towed on any physical tether. They are towed on tractors, and they are primarily powered by transmission from the mothership. They do have some onboard propulsive capability, using the same impeller hardware which was developed for the Ghost Rider recon drones, but that capability is purely secondary. In theory, they could maintain the station on their onboard drives while remaining in the basket to be hit by power transmissions from the mothership and to continue to perform their relay functions. In fact, it's simpler and less complicated to operate them in what amounts to full-time towed mode.

SharkHunter wrote:Sounds like that infodump, the smaller "keyhole-lite" platform he refers to briefly is the Lorelei, and that those are small enough to use with the -cruiser size ships. Not available at the Battle of Manticore, unfortunately, so the applicability to this particular "advanced tactics at the time" thread is tertiary at best.

Jonathan_S wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Sounds like that infodump, the smaller "keyhole-lite" platform he refers to briefly is the Lorelei, and that those are small enough to use with the -cruiser size ships. Not available at the Battle of Manticore, unfortunately, so the applicability to this particular "advanced tactics at the time" thread is tertiary at best.

The Lorelei seems to be something completely different. It's a new generation of free flying decoy, even better (in some unspecified way) than the ghost rider microfusion powered, free flying, missile tube launchable, decoys used to keep the Peeps in the dark about the real capabilities of the SD(P) GNS Isaiah MacKenzie, and her sisters, Edward Esterhaus, and Belisarius, in one of the Peep's final pre-Buttercup attacks (on Elric)

That's very different from the fire control relay, and PDLC platform, of a Keyhole.

SharkHunter wrote:Probably a minor nit but also a question, I think that I read somewhere that GR decoys and drones are quite a bit bigger than missiles launched through tubes, so they're sent on their way out boat bays, (?) Anyone care to clarify?

SharkHunter wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The Lorelei seems to be something completely different. It's a new generation of free flying decoy, even better (in some unspecified way) than the ghost rider microfusion powered, free flying, missile tube launchable, decoys used to keep the Peeps in the dark about the real capabilities of the SD(P) GNS Isaiah MacKenzie, and her sisters, Edward Esterhaus, and Belisarius, in one of the Peep's final pre-Buttercup attacks (on Elric)

That's very different from the fire control relay, and PDLC platform, of a Keyhole.

I think we're trending towards the same point, a middle point betweeen an upgraded GR decoy/drone and a downgraded Keyhole, as RFC mentioned it in the infodump about the keyhole platforms.

Probably a minor nit but also a question, I think that I read somewhere that GR decoys and drones are quite a bit bigger than missiles launched through tubes, so they're sent on their way out boat bays, (?) Anyone care to clarify?

Ashes of Victory: Chapter 26 wrote:BatDiv 62's internal launchers were busy firing something besides shipkillers. They were firing more electronic warfare drones that took station on the formation and began to thresh the Peeps' targeting systems with jamming, and others that took on the appearance of more superdreadnoughts, more battlecruisers, more heavy cruisers, all beckoning to the Peep's sensors.
Such decoys had always been available, but only in limited numbers. The power required to sustain a convincing false sensor image of a warship in engagement range was so high that a drone required direct power transmission from the ship it was protecting. That meant standard practice had always been to deploy decoys only on tractors and in low numbers. But the same technology which had provided the power plants for the RMN's FTL recon drones had been brought to bear on the decoy problem by the R&D types responsible for Project Ghost Rider, and the result—one of the results—was a completely independent unit with an endurance of up to twenty minutes from internal power alone, depending on the strength of the sensor image it had to duplicate. And one that could be fired from one of the new capital missile tubes, at that. Now BatDiv 62's internal launchers went to rapid fire, spewing them out, multiplying the Peeps' targets catastrophically with each broadside.