Forcing a Roland to withdraw...

Cataphracts go 467 KPS^2 for 180 seconds, then 961 for 75.

SharkHunter wrote:

SWM wrote:Perhaps the missile drives were also a Technodyne innovation, as well as the multi-stage system. That could mean that standard Solarian missiles are not as good as that--but they might be soon! A frightening thought.

And Erewhon didn't share the details of the PNE missiles with Manticore, so they may not realize that little bit of news.

Erewhon might not have, but you can bet that Princess Ruth did. One of the things Torch is not going to do is withhold any useful information from key players in Erewhon, Haven, OR Manticore just because someone else said so. Erewhon wants a strong Torch to guard that dang wormhole, and Torch wants the assistance of the RMN and RHN to upgrade their system defenses. I don't see Berry, W.E.B. du Havel, or anyone else in the powers that be telling Ruth she can't phone home with the data regarding the battle.

The text says that Manticore has not received details on the missiles used at Torch. White Haven (I think?) was muttering about not being able to compare the missiles used in Oyster Bay with the ones used at Torch because they didn't have the data.

How to design a sollie cruiser with teeth:


1) Nevada class. Its modular design is very good for replacing components. I'm going to propose a few changes based on existing Sollie tech.

2) Rip out 28 out of the 32 grazer mounts (leaving only the spinal mounts)

3) Replace the space freed by the grazer mounts with lightspeed missile control links and PDLCs. Dunno how many control links and PDLCs will equal an energy mount mass and volume wise but presumably it's several since battlecruizer-sized energy mounts are rather large. Foraker fit fire control for thousands of missiles in just a heavy cruiser hull half the Nevada's mass. Assuming the Sollies are an order of magnitude less competent than Foraker (they probably are), let's call it a single PDLC and 5 control links per replaced energy mount.

4) Our hypothetical Nevada has 48+28 = 76 PDLCs total and 140 additional lightspeed control links than it had to (no idea how many it had originally)

5) Our hypothetical Nevada has 68 missile tubes. This is very good since we're going to load them with the Cataphract-D long-range missile. The cataphract-D proposed missile is a cataphract whose first stage drive is that of a sollie drone; its acceleration is dismal at a mere 5.000 gravities at most but its endurance and delva-v are awesome and when keeping at low gs, it is fairly stealthy for a missile.
It still lacks the sophisticated sensors and computing capacity of a full drone and has maybe a third of its capacitors (and thus endurance) but a full drone would never fit in a Nevada's tubes. Still, with a drive endurance measured in hours, it should be pretty long-ranged.





How to use said cruiser to bite a Manty in the a$$:


a) Squadron of Rolands (6 of them) enters the system and sees our Nevada defending it. They advance.

b) The Nevada starts launching cataphract-Ds from all tubes. It also rolls out 4 normal recon drones per launch. After 20 launches, it's ready.

c) The manties start accelerating in-system.

d) The Nevada's missiles and recon drones start accelerating towards the manties at multiple separate angles. Having such a huge acceleration advantage over ships, they can afford to approach obliquely.

d) The manties set up multiple drone shells to prevent surprises. Say, at 1 million, 3 million and 10 million kilometers. They also send several drones to observe in system. The Nevada sends a few drones to observe the manties - those will stay out of CM or PDLC range (3-4 million kilometers)

e) The Nevada's cataphract-Ds approach at maximum stealth at low acceleration of only 2000 gravities with all emissions at full control and no sensors active. The recon drones that go with them have far better sensors than any missile and they could easily play guide for them, every drone leading 17 slow missiles, so why go active and warn the Manties of the threat?

f) An hour has passed. The manties are about to cross the limit and are up to 25.000 kps, their drones have scouted the inner system. The Nevada is also up to 20.000 kps towards them. The two have moved 81 million klicks towards each other, with some 80 million left. Approaching at oblique angles the cataphract-Ds are up to 72.000 kps and some 60 million kilometers from the manties, after having moved 124 million kilometers going around probable manty drone paths. The manties probably can't detect sollie drones at 60 million klicks and there's not enough drones in a whole fleet to make a tight 60-million-klick drone shell.

g) If the manties don't cross the limit, the battle is off. If they do, the Nevada sends the go-ahead. 40 seconds later, the cataphract-Ds go to full acceleration. They're immediately detected but they're already at 97.000 kps combined velocity towards the manties and have a 4200 gravity acceleration advantage. There's also fourteen hundred of them. 570 seconds to impact.

h) The sollies use long-range lightspeed control at 60 million klicks. That kind of control is myopic and arthritic but it still works, as Foraker proved with Moriarty.

i) At 4 million kilometers, coming in at 120.000 kps, the sollie cataphract-Ds engage their 100.000 g sprint drive and go berzerk against manty defenses. 50% are lost to manty ECCM or control loss - a huge percentage. With an equally impressive kill probability, the manty CM launches kill another 360. Finally, the manty PDLCs kill another 120.

j) Unfortunately, this still leaves 200 unengaged. That's 33-34 cruiser-range shipkillers per Roland. Half of them waste themselves against the wedge and sidewalls but the other half don't... and the Rolands are unarmored. They're going to look at least as bad as the manty task force after the battle of Monica.






Assuming any survivors, the Nevada goes on to engage in a less one-sided battle. After all, it still has the other half of its missiles left in the tubes, it's still intact and it's beyond the Rolands' powered envelope. The Rolands are heavily damaged and they don't know how many such missile swarms the Nevada has remaining. They either surrender or die.

--big levels of snipping--

Belial666 wrote:How to design a sollie cruiser with teeth:
....
g) If the manties don't cross the limit, the battle is off. If they do, the Nevada sends the go-ahead. 40 seconds later, the cataphract-Ds go to full acceleration. They're immediately detected but they're already at 97.000 kps combined velocity towards the manties and have a 4200 gravity acceleration advantage. There's also fourteen hundred of them. 570 seconds to impact.
...

The "upgraded Nevada" is still essentially a "battleship Yamato" requiring an ambush to work, but if it does, you get to whack them uppity manty butts bigtime.

So, starting at just far enough before point G, when the RMN Ghost Rider Drones -- which aren't myopic in the least -- detect the stacked salvo... We'll pick up at your point G, where...

Just short of the hyper limit, the Rolands hyper out briefly. According to your logic, the battle is off... except that you've got all those missiles speeding towards NO targets and you have no way to retrieve them or re-aim them outside of a certain wedge in space. Your cruiser has pretty much shot itself dry; all those missiles shot off and nary a target in space. Then those dang uppity and tactically innovative Manties micro-jump back in from a divergent point in space, re-contact the GR drones now closing on your Nevada, and ain't it a sad day in SLN space for your upgraded cruiser.

Consider what Eighth Fleet did to the planned ambush at Lovat against many more "stacked" and presumably stealthy system defense missiles pods, multiple Moriarties, etc. against nearly matching Havenite tech, about which time Yanakov's formations dropped out of hyper and started punching out RHN superdreadnoughts.

What I'm driving at is that the GA space-navy advantage has several legs to stand on: the FTL links, MDM missile ranges, and the ghost rider arsenal of drones, GR ECM and pen-aids, plus the advanced tactical training required to use all four.

Duckk wrote:Cataphracts go 467 KPS^2 for 180 seconds, then 961 for 75.

Thanks Duckk.


Just goes to show trying to guess fit numbers is a way to go wrong with mild confidence - I make two poor "assumptions"
1) that the CMs couldn't have a significantly extended powered time, since the anti-ship missile didn't. Oops.
2) that the "at least three million kilometers outside the powered envelope of even a Javelin or Trebuchet shipkiller" was pretty accurate - but give your 1st stage numbers it was actually 3.5 million km out.

Trying to squeeze the extra half million km out of a 180 second run time lead me to overestimate the accel for the first stage; then trying to keep the 2nd stage run time down led me to do the same for the second.


Ok, so the CM stage of the Cataphract is actually slower to accel than the Mk30 the RMN was using as recently as Sidemore during WoH - but it's got 50% more endurance; which translates to an extra 400,000 km powered range (lower terminal velocity though) over the Mk30.

That SLN CM accel (98,000 g) is sitting between the accel that Fearless's CMs had at Basilisk ("over 90,000 g") and what the Mk30/31 have (130,000g).

Jonathan_S wrote:...snip...

Ok, so the CM stage of the Cataphract is actually slower to accel than the Mk30 the RMN was using as recently as Sidemore during WoH - but it's got 50% more endurance; which translates to an extra 400,000 km powered range (lower terminal velocity though) over the Mk30.

...snip...

Only if it is big enough to carry a laserhead. They are at least the size of a SLN version of a DD SKM.

We actually have no numbers on the CMs. The difference is a ship killer is about 5 to ten times the size of the CM. Lot more room for more robust components/batteries without impacting other things significantly.

Maybe ...

Enjoy,
T2M

thinkstoomuch wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:...snip...

Ok, so the CM stage of the Cataphract is actually slower to accel than the Mk30 the RMN was using as recently as Sidemore during WoH - but it's got 50% more endurance; which translates to an extra 400,000 km powered range (lower terminal velocity though) over the Mk30.

...snip...

Only if it is big enough to carry a laserhead. They are at least the size of a SLN version of a DD SKM.

We actually have no numbers on the CMs. The difference is a ship killer is about 5 to ten times the size of the CM. Lot more room for more robust components/batteries without impacting other things significantly.

Maybe ...

Enjoy,
T2M

True. It was described as a CM drive, but even the 2nd stage of the Cataphract is definitely a bigger missile than a CM. For that matter its description implies that it has a bigger warhead, with several more lasing rods, that what's crammed into a Katana's Viper.

And just because Grayson managed to squeeze a small laserhead into the Viper without compromising the accel or range of the original Mk31 CM platfrom doesn't mean that the Cataphract designers were able to duplicate that feat with their larger missile...

What I'm driving at is that the GA space-navy advantage has several legs to stand on: the FTL links, MDM missile ranges, and the ghost rider arsenal of drones, GR ECM and pen-aids, plus the advanced tactical training required to use all four.

The tactical training is the issue IMHO. That will allow them to win every time.

Do note however that the proposed cataphract-D has about a day's powered endurance at 5.000 gs so it can return to the mothership if it survives a fight. If it isn't expended, it can be collected and reused even after long fights after its capacitors are recharged because its first stage doesn't burn out its nodes like normal missiles do. It is meant to counter or match MDM's extended range (so the SLN can fire back), pod-based attacks' salvo density (so they aren't hopelessly outgunned), and reach manty ships despite their acceleration advantage (so within the hyper limit the SLN is not outmaneuvered).

It can't counter the other advantages the manties have, though. It's only a first step in closing the gap.




PS: regarding its stealth, a single-stage missile with a drone drive built by Sollies was used to assassinate much of the manty government by Saint-Just. Unless it went active, the manties could barely detect it even in point-blank ranges, not enough to kill it with CMs or PDLCs. I doubt they could detect attacks by it further than middle MDM range at best - and by that time, they would have crossed the hyper limit by a lot. (even the stars with shortest limits of 20 light-minutes would have their habitable planets 10 or so light-minutes inside the limit)

Belial666 wrote:

What I'm driving at is that the GA space-navy advantage has several legs to stand on: the FTL links, MDM missile ranges, and the ghost rider arsenal of drones, GR ECM and pen-aids, plus the advanced tactical training required to use all four.

The tactical training is the issue IMHO. That will allow them to win every time.

Do note however that the proposed cataphract-D has about a day's powered endurance at 5.000 gs so it can return to the mothership if it survives a fight. If it isn't expended, it can be collected and reused even after long fights after its capacitors are recharged because its first stage doesn't burn out its nodes like normal missiles do. It is meant to counter or match MDM's extended range (so the SLN can fire back), pod-based attacks' salvo density (so they aren't hopelessly outgunned), and reach manty ships despite their acceleration advantage (so within the hyper limit the SLN is not outmaneuvered).

It can't counter the other advantages the manties have, though. It's only a first step in closing the gap.

You are going to have an armed missile return to the mother ship? Sounds like a way to have a serious accident. Either you are going to have to have a way to disable the missile before you tell it to return, which means that if the manties learn how that is done, they get to turn off your entire attack, or you have to have way to tell the missiles to return to momma without being disarmed, which also allows the manties to foil your attack, and if you aren't expecting it, possibly lead to the destruction of the mothership, and given the stealthy nature of your missiles, makes it difficult to find them afterward, or you have a way of telling the missiles to make themselves known, which can be used to make them visible for destruction during the attack. Anything which allows you to send a signal to modify the behavior of the missiles becomes a way for the manties to use that same signal to foil the attack.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Belial666 wrote:The tactical training is the issue IMHO. That will allow them to win every time.

Do note however that the proposed cataphract-D has about a day's powered endurance at 5.000 gs so it can return to the mothership if it survives a fight. If it isn't expended, it can be collected and reused even after long fights after its capacitors are recharged because its first stage doesn't burn out its nodes like normal missiles do. It is meant to counter or match MDM's extended range (so the SLN can fire back), pod-based attacks' salvo density (so they aren't hopelessly outgunned), and reach manty ships despite their acceleration advantage (so within the hyper limit the SLN is not outmaneuvered).

It can't counter the other advantages the manties have, though. It's only a first step in closing the gap.

You are going to have an armed missile return to the mother ship? Sounds like a way to have a serious accident. Either you are going to have to have a way to disable the missile before you tell it to return, which means that if the manties learn how that is done, they get to turn off your entire attack, or you have to have way to tell the missiles to return to momma without being disarmed, which also allows the manties to foil your attack, and if you aren't expecting it, possibly lead to the destruction of the mothership, and given the stealthy nature of your missiles, makes it difficult to find them afterward, or you have a way of telling the missiles to make themselves known, which can be used to make them visible for destruction during the attack. Anything which allows you to send a signal to modify the behavior of the missiles becomes a way for the manties to use that same signal to foil the attack.

And IIRC the SLN's (full size) drone endurance (only a few hours under drive) and acceleration is not equal to a RMN Ghost Rider drone.