How do spider drive SD(P)'s fight?

Quoting SWM re RFC re Leonard Detweiler SD(P)'s), from the (wandering) "Return of the Frigate" thread:

David has also A) the Detweilers are capital ships, B) it would be foolish for the Alignment to build capital ships that could not stand up to other capital ships, and C) the Alignment is not foolish.

I've been perplexed for days on this.

On the one hand, the natural reading for "stand[ing] up to other capital ships" is to be able to fight them effectively, without going up like popcorn, when the other side has you in range and in sight. In that case, the spider drive wallers are going to be suffering from fighting without a wedge, without sidewalls (apart maybe from weak bubble ones?), (presumably?) without bucklers or equivalents, and with about 1/3rd the acceleration. (If they're firing off spider drive missiles and counter-missiles, they do at least have going for them no wedge "smoke" blinding the view downrange.) To my mind, that's an awful set of disadvantages, so I'm wondering if the reading is off or what they may have to make up for those profound disadvantages.

On the other - there's the possibility that the reading IS off and that the Leonard Detweilers are intended to "stand up" to other capital ships by being practically impossible to target. In effect, Oyster Bay would be an instance of how they would normally operate, only they're better prepared than the Sharks were, or demonstrated being at least, to hit mobile, maneuvering enemy ships. It seems a forced reading, but hey, it's also less forced as a reading of what we've got evidence for what the Detweilers can do.

I'm happy to suppose the MAN planners can be confident the Detweilers can operate without being caught, and not be fools for supposing so. (I do think they are probably insufferably optimistic and arrogant that way - but not fools.) The problem then becomes how do you expect to get hits with a graser torpedo - or ballistic missiles - on a maneuvering impeller drive ship.

That's assuming that they would be using the same sorts of weapons in that case, granted. Maybe the idea is that the LD's count on stealth to avoid being effectively targeted much, while firing off missiles that are either impeller drive or mixed impeller-spider drive MDM's, so that the missiles have the speed to nail maneuvering targets, and the Sharks simply didn't use in Oyster Bay the same sorts of weapons that an LD wall (although "wall" isn't a term applicable on their side) would use against an impeller drive wall of battle.

So, forum speculators:
1 - What's a Leonard Detweiler likely to be doing to defend itself against enemy capital ships?
and 2 - What's a Leonard Detweiler likely to be doing to hurt those enemy capital ships?

JeffEngel wrote:Quoting SWM re RFC re Leonard Detweiler SD(P)'s), from the (wandering) "Return of the Frigate" thread:

David has also A) the Detweilers are capital ships, B) it would be foolish for the Alignment to build capital ships that could not stand up to other capital ships, and C) the Alignment is not foolish.

I've been perplexed for days on this.

On the one hand, the natural reading for "stand[ing] up to other capital ships" is to be able to fight them effectively, without going up like popcorn, when the other side has you in range and in sight. In that case, the spider drive wallers are going to be suffering from fighting without a wedge, without sidewalls (apart maybe from weak bubble ones?), (presumably?) without bucklers or equivalents, and with about 1/3rd the acceleration. (If they're firing off spider drive missiles and counter-missiles, they do at least have going for them no wedge "smoke" blinding the view downrange.) To my mind, that's an awful set of disadvantages, so I'm wondering if the reading is off or what they may have to make up for those profound disadvantages.

On the other - there's the possibility that the reading IS off and that the Leonard Detweilers are intended to "stand up" to other capital ships by being practically impossible to target. In effect, Oyster Bay would be an instance of how they would normally operate, only they're better prepared than the Sharks were, or demonstrated being at least, to hit mobile, maneuvering enemy ships. It seems a forced reading, but hey, it's also less forced as a reading of what we've got evidence for what the Detweilers can do.

I'm happy to suppose the MAN planners can be confident the Detweilers can operate without being caught, and not be fools for supposing so. (I do think they are probably insufferably optimistic and arrogant that way - but not fools.) The problem then becomes how do you expect to get hits with a graser torpedo - or ballistic missiles - on a maneuvering impeller drive ship.

That's assuming that they would be using the same sorts of weapons in that case, granted. Maybe the idea is that the LD's count on stealth to avoid being effectively targeted much, while firing off missiles that are either impeller drive or mixed impeller-spider drive MDM's, so that the missiles have the speed to nail maneuvering targets, and the Sharks simply didn't use in Oyster Bay the same sorts of weapons that an LD wall (although "wall" isn't a term applicable on their side) would use against an impeller drive wall of battle.

So, forum speculators:
1 - What's a Leonard Detweiler likely to be doing to defend itself against enemy capital ships?
and 2 - What's a Leonard Detweiler likely to be doing to hurt those enemy capital ships?

Bubble sidewalls are not weak - they are routinely used by forts - the equipment to make them is large and it is extremely inefficient to carry conventional sidewall generators AND Bubble generators - even in an SD. The advantage is a bubble equipped ship can fire weapons in ALL directions - and since Forts are designed to be mousetrapped, they are designed without a back to worry about defending. (but they still have a wedge for when they need it.)


My take is a possible use for the LDs is as Mobile forts IN CONJUNCTION with conventional forces. Think about Nightengale, when Haven had a 2nd force hidden in stealth to ambush White Haven? Picture the same thing, but right in your path a bunch of forts come on line and start belching fire. The conventional, mobile units are behind you and the forts are in front - the perfect trap.

The spider drive will allow them to maneuver into position in enemy territory, setting up the ambush prior to the arrival of the conventional force.

Yes, it's a bit contrived, but a senario where the Malign calls the shots.

Theemile wrote:snip

Bubble sidewalls are not weak - they are routinely used by forts - the equipment to make them is large and it is extremely inefficient to carry conventional sidewall generators AND Bubble generators - even in an SD. The advantage is a bubble equipped ship can fire weapons in ALL directions - and since Forts are designed to be mousetrapped, they are designed without a back to worry about defending. (but they still have a wedge for when they need it.)


My take is a possible use for the LDs is as Mobile forts IN CONJUNCTION with conventional forces. Think about Nightengale, when Haven had a 2nd force hidden in stealth to ambush White Haven? Picture the same thing, but right in your path a bunch of forts come on line and start belching fire. The conventional, mobile units are behind you and the forts are in front - the perfect trap.

The spider drive will allow them to maneuver into position in enemy territory, setting up the ambush prior to the arrival of the conventional force.

Yes, it's a bit contrived, but a senario where the Malign calls the shots.

This is making the very large assumption that your opponents will never be able to detect your spider drive ships moving into place - not an assumption I would want to make - it leaves the very real possibility that your forts could get destroyed before your mobile forces enter the system, and SURPRISE, don't have to worry about someone shooting them from the back when they come out after you, just as you planned.

Without doing a lot of detailed search and working from memory...

The Lenny Dets (and all spider drive warships) devote far more mass to armor than impeller drive warships -- all three sides have to be armored as opposed to an impeller warship's two sides. Invisibility to gravitic sensors and "See Through" stealth systems make the very hard for current systems to target -- even their own weapons systems.

The Lenny Dets are apparently pod layers and currently use pods of Cataphract-C missiles. One advantage of pod-layers is the ability to upgrade missiles without extensive modifications.

The Lenny Dets are also supposedly able to launch spider drive grazer torpedoes from internal tubes (or possibly as a single-torp pod equivalent?) That implies a huge ship as the spider drive graser torpedo is described as huge -- nearly LAC size?

I would guess that Lenny Dets rely on active defenses beyond their heavy armor -- lots of PDLC and CM capacity, possibly equal to their offensive load-out. A bubble sidewall might be fine for a parking orbit, but would be virtually useless in a running battle.

Weird Harold wrote:Without doing a lot of detailed search and working from memory...

The Lenny Dets (and all spider drive warships) devote far more mass to armor than impeller drive warships -- all three sides have to be armored as opposed to an impeller warship's two sides. Invisibility to gravitic sensors and "See Through" stealth systems make the very hard for current systems to target -- even their own weapons systems.

The Lenny Dets are apparently pod layers and currently use pods of Cataphract-C missiles. One advantage of pod-layers is the ability to upgrade missiles without extensive modifications.

The Lenny Dets are also supposedly able to launch spider drive grazer torpedoes from internal tubes (or possibly as a single-torp pod equivalent?) That implies a huge ship as the spider drive graser torpedo is described as huge -- nearly LAC size?

I would guess that Lenny Dets rely on active defenses beyond their heavy armor -- lots of PDLC and CM capacity, possibly equal to their offensive load-out. A bubble sidewall might be fine for a parking orbit, but would be virtually useless in a running battle.

Again, this appears to be a case of "we can't see them, so nobody can see them", which is not an assumption I'd like to be making about my theoretically invisible ships, or I'm going to get surprised some day, whe Oops, turns out the Manties have this new detector that makes the Lenny Det stand out ike a sore thumb, and the first you know about it is when they blow away your entire fleet of Lenny Dets as well as your pet Sharks.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Without doing a lot of detailed search and working from memory...

The Lenny Dets (and all spider drive warships) devote far more mass to armor than impeller drive warships -- all three sides have to be armored as opposed to an impeller warship's two sides. Invisibility to gravitic sensors and "See Through" stealth systems make the very hard for current systems to target -- even their own weapons systems.[snipping the other points]

Again, this appears to be a case of "we can't see them, so nobody can see them", which is not an assumption I'd like to be making about my theoretically invisible ships, or I'm going to get surprised some day, whe Oops, turns out the Manties have this new detector that makes the Lenny Det stand out ike a sore thumb, and the first you know about it is when they blow away your entire fleet of Lenny Dets as well as your pet Sharks.

That's laying the finger on it - how much reliance are they putting on that in the design of the LD's, and their expected use? If they figure they can rely on that generously, then the MAN doesn't have much else in the way of defensive needs. If they aren't expecting to keep that advantage, then either the LD's don't strictly need it and we're having to figure out why not, or it's an entire class with a very limited useful lifespan, or they are in fact fools.

I don't want to assume that the MAN assumes the spider drive will remain a cloak of invisibility, but if we don't assume that, figuring out how a spider drive force will survive under fire is a real stinker.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Without doing a lot of detailed search and working from memory...

The Lenny Dets (and all spider drive warships) devote far more mass to armor than impeller drive warships -- all three sides have to be armored as opposed to an impeller warship's two sides. Invisibility to gravitic sensors and "See Through" stealth systems make the very hard for current systems to target -- even their own weapons systems.

The Lenny Dets are apparently pod layers and currently use pods of Cataphract-C missiles. One advantage of pod-layers is the ability to upgrade missiles without extensive modifications.

The Lenny Dets are also supposedly able to launch spider drive grazer torpedoes from internal tubes (or possibly as a single-torp pod equivalent?) That implies a huge ship as the spider drive graser torpedo is described as huge -- nearly LAC size?

I would guess that Lenny Dets rely on active defenses beyond their heavy armor -- lots of PDLC and CM capacity, possibly equal to their offensive load-out. A bubble sidewall might be fine for a parking orbit, but would be virtually useless in a running battle.

Again, this appears to be a case of "we can't see them, so nobody can see them", which is not an assumption I'd like to be making about my theoretically invisible ships, or I'm going to get surprised some day, whe Oops, turns out the Manties have this new detector that makes the Lenny Det stand out ike a sore thumb, and the first you know about it is when they blow away your entire fleet of Lenny Dets as well as your pet Sharks.

My problem with the supposed invisibility of the spider drive, is that the experiments to test that invisibility were made by scientist emotional invested in the success of the spider drive.
Also the massive penalties in terms of surviveability and maneuverability you have to accept, when using the spider drive are massive red flags for me, when it comes to RFCs common themes. It looks to much like a silver bullet and I think RFC like to bite them in the ass with Murphys law.
My prediction is, that they we will probably see some spider drive detector soon. It will be imprecise and have all kinds of problems but probably good enough to vector in remote platforms with active sensors to saturate the area around the spider drive ship. At that point the ship becomes a slow lightly armored target.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Again, this appears to be a case of "we can't see them, so nobody can see them", which is not an assumption I'd like to be making about my theoretically invisible ships, or I'm going to get surprised some day, whe Oops, turns out the Manties have this new detector that makes the Lenny Det stand out ike a sore thumb, and the first you know about it is when they blow away your entire fleet of Lenny Dets as well as your pet Sharks.

It still plays on their stealth, but I wonder if the guidance platforms used for Oyster Bay to remotely control the missiles and torps were a one-off, or whether they were designed to be a normal part of Spider attacks.

Because if you could use a Ghost, or otherwise slip a (large) guidance package close enough to your target you could drop pods, and maneuver well clear before launching them.

In that case it's just another way to evade and counter-fire or scouts trying to backtrack the pod launch to find you - it doesn't help if a really good anti-spider detector gets built. And it doesn't help you in a stand-up fight against Apollo equipped RMN forces.



Though a forward deployed Ghost, or guidance platform might give you a solid edge against conventionally guided MDMs at extreme range. By pushing your guidance decisions far forward you've got less laggy control despite trying to keep your launch platform far enough back to make the enemy's missiles wildly inaccurate. (On the other hand, designing a ship that pretty much requires you to control combat range, while having less than half the accel of your targets, seems sub-optimal shall we say)

And now, about the points other than the cloak of invisibility -

Weird Harold wrote:Without doing a lot of detailed search and working from memory...

The Lenny Dets (and all spider drive warships) devote far more mass to armor than impeller drive warships -- all three sides have to be armored as opposed to an impeller warship's two sides. Invisibility to gravitic sensors and "See Through" stealth systems make the very hard for current systems to target -- even their own weapons systems.

The Lenny Dets are apparently pod layers and currently use pods of Cataphract-C missiles. One advantage of pod-layers is the ability to upgrade missiles without extensive modifications.

One problem using a straight Cataphract-C, or pods of them, from a spider drive ship: when they light up, they're perfectly visible and offer a very good indication of where you've recently been. It's a lot better in the case of pods, since you will have moved and perhaps accelerated since dropping them, so your location is somewhat concealed still. But either way, it represents some compromising of your location that will make for an easier time locking it down.

That's one reason I've been wondering about spider-drive missiles, or a multi-drive or multi-stage arrangement with a combination of spider and impeller drives. A big question there is if there even is or can be a missile variant of a spider drive, like there is for impeller drive missiles. If there is, than a nearly-invisible but slower missile would be something very handy in concealing your location at the firing end, and at complicating interception at the receiving end.

The Lenny Dets are also supposedly able to launch spider drive grazer torpedoes from internal tubes (or possibly as a single-torp pod equivalent?) That implies a huge ship as the spider drive graser torpedo is described as huge -- nearly LAC size?

Yeah. I don't think a graser torpedo is likely to be all that effective on a moving target with a wedge and sidewalls - you won't have a shot at it long enough to absorb much of its "slice". So I'm thinking the graser torpedo is probably a special purpose weapon (like the contact nuke in the laserhead era), and either the launchers for them represent a small portion of the hull as a special purpose device, or that the launchers in fleet combat would normally be firing something else (exactly like missile launchers usually chugging out laserhead missiles can chuck out one of the contact nukes as the occasion arises).

What that other thing may be, I do not know. One idea may be a spider drive laserhead supermissile: something that's built huge, built stealthy, that goes in and doesn't lose much if anything to point defense and ECM and takes a stupendous laserhead shot at the target. In effect, a munition that reliably puts a cruiser energy-mount broadside into a capital ship at laserhead detonation ranges.

Though again, that's relying utterly on the cloak of invisibility at the munition end.

I would guess that Lenny Dets rely on active defenses beyond their heavy armor -- lots of PDLC and CM capacity, possibly equal to their offensive load-out. A bubble sidewall might be fine for a parking orbit, but would be virtually useless in a running battle.

Yeah. I don't think they can make it up with passive defenses: no wedge, no sidewalls, and if they are armored up well, there's only so much anyone expects out of armor and they're suffering from so much more surface to volume with their design that they need so much more armor for even comparable coverage - even before considering that conventional ships needn't armor their wedge-facing aspects at all.

Loads and loads of active defenses would be a way to go, and they can at least enjoy being able to point those defenses at the threat without regard for aspects blocked by their own wedges - not having wedges, after all. Maybe - though it feels like an awful stretch - maybe they're counting on the stealth of the spider drive holding out pretty well as a kind of ECM counterpart, and those loads of active defenses to do the rest of the job.

One has to wonder, if without a wedge, the Lenny Dets are vulnerable to something with a wedge sweeping across it, as what happened to Tepes when a pinnace brought up its wedge inside the boat bay.