Control Missile for shipboard launched missiles

Rakhmamort wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:Just out of curiosity, do you have Word of Weber that they are working on a control missile. We have from him that they are working on a smaller keyhole platform for sub BC ships, but the closest we have to Apollo for even BCs is what has been budded "Apollo lite," basically parking an RD near the target to cut control loops in half. I don't remember anybody in universe, or Himself on the boards talk about a control missile.

Somebody posted something about apollo lite early in this thread and said it is something similar to what I was proposing except it was FTL. My bad if it is not about a control missile.

Anyway, if recon drones have that much bandwidth to control a hell of a lot of missiles, I don't see why they need to use Apollo missiles at all. Just park enough drones to control the salvo sizes they are throwing. Not only can they recover the drones and reuse them, they can go back to 10 missiles per pod.

The recon drones used for Apollo Lite don't control the missiles. They provide FTL data on the targets' condition, EW, position, etc. to the firing ships, which use that data and send speed-of-light updates to the missiles. It's Lite and not straight-up Apollo because there's no FTL transmission from ship to missiles in this case, only target area to ship.

Why there can't be is perhaps the forum controversy of our time. Even if the recon drones could not re-transmit all the data, one would think that the missile software could handle and use some data from it that is more up-to-date than what it gets from the firing ship and integrate that with the more generous but more dated information directly and slowly from the ship.

Rakhmamort wrote:Thank you for supporting my calculations. 120 missiles / 4 BCs = 30 missiles per BC ===> over saturation of the solly defenses.

That was 120 missiles per BC at Saltash. Each BC got a dedicated salvo from all five Rolands.

Rakhmamort: if 1 Roland found itself faced with an entire squadron of Solarian BCs, it would take advantage of its enormous acceleration to get away. 1 Roland cannot take out 8 Solarian BCs. It doesn't have enough missiles.

If a ship is faced with overwhelming opposition and cannot take them out with double or triple-stacked salvos, it does not belong in that fight. It takes far too long to stack more than 3 salvos. The proper response is to run.

SWM wrote:Rakhmamort: if 1 Roland found itself faced with an entire squadron of Solarian BCs, it would take advantage of its enormous acceleration to get away. 1 Roland cannot take out 8 Solarian BCs. It doesn't have enough missiles.

Depending on the circumstances, I would expect the Roland to fire all or most of its missiles in hopes of a mission kill or "Golden BB" before it ran, though. If the Roland is loaded with Mk-16Gs, I'd expect at least a couple of mission kills from 240 missiles spread over eight targets. The SLN hasn't demonstrated any sort of ability to cope with RMN missile speeds or RMN ECM, so the probability of hits with DN sized warheads is fairly high for the forseeable future.

JeffEngel wrote:The recon drones used for Apollo Lite don't control the missiles. They provide FTL data on the targets' condition, EW, position, etc. to the firing ships, which use that data and send speed-of-light updates to the missiles. It's Lite and not straight-up Apollo because there's no FTL transmission from ship to missiles in this case, only target area to ship.

Why there can't be is perhaps the forum controversy of our time. Even if the recon drones could not re-transmit all the data, one would think that the missile software could handle and use some data from it that is more up-to-date than what it gets from the firing ship and integrate that with the more generous but more dated information directly and slowly from the ship.

That seems really weird. Why even call it Apollo-lite. That is being done by every ship which has placed FTL recon drones near the enemy.

If that is all they are going to do with Apollo-lite, then a control missile would become more useful. The update from the ship is still a couple of minutes late and placing a powerful AI that can adjust the attack profiles based on first hand data would increase accuracy.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:Thank you for supporting my calculations. 120 missiles / 4 BCs = 30 missiles per BC ===> over saturation of the solly defenses.

That was 120 missiles per BC at Saltash. Each BC got a dedicated salvo from all five Rolands.

The first salvo had to beat the combined defenses of 4 BCs. Each BC had to take out 30 missiles to keep the target from getting damaged.

The next salvo was against 3 so that's 40 missiles each has to take on to keep the target from getting damaged (fat chance since they couldn't even stop 30)

etc...

Rakhmamort wrote:As for the number of escorts, we've seen a convoy being escorted by just 2 ships (HH2). If SLN will throw 3 squadrons at those two ships (to make sure of the outcome), what then?

Then I guess it sucks to be in that convoy. Meanwhile, a lot of other convoys, whose escorts were ready to deal with two or four BCs, arrive unscathed.

SWM wrote:Rakhmamort: if 1 Roland found itself faced with an entire squadron of Solarian BCs, it would take advantage of its enormous acceleration to get away. 1 Roland cannot take out 8 Solarian BCs. It doesn't have enough missiles.

The parameters of the scenario says it cannot run.

As for not having enough missiles to destroy 8 BCs outright, I agree. Spreading 240 missiles without control missiles is fairly stupid. The accuracy would be shitty since the salvo would be fired without enough control links.
Using control missiles and spreading those 240 birds across a maximum of 6 BCs (say 35 attack birds each = 210 missiles, remaining 30 are penaids and control missiles), those BCs are going to be heavily damaged. I know there is no instance yet of Mod Gs being used against solly BCs but it took less than that to destroy the first BC in Monica and the damage that BC took was staggered. I'm fairly sure the 35 Mod G birds are going to deal heavy if not critical damage to solly BCs leaving only 2 capable of chasing down the merchies if at that, they may choose to save the crew of their squadronmates if the damage they've taken is critical enough.

If a ship is faced with overwhelming opposition and cannot take them out with double or triple-stacked salvos, it does not belong in that fight. It takes far too long to stack more than 3 salvos. The proper response is to run.

3 salvos ~ 1 minute. The whole magazine will take 6 minutes or so. That is not too long.

Bill Woods wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:As for the number of escorts, we've seen a convoy being escorted by just 2 ships (HH2). If SLN will throw 3 squadrons at those two ships (to make sure of the outcome), what then?

Then I guess it sucks to be in that convoy. Meanwhile, a lot of other convoys, whose escorts were ready to deal with two or four BCs, arrive unscathed.

And that is the point of the commerce harrassment. Tie up manty hulls. They use more hulls escorting merchies means those hulls are not wrecking havoc elsewhere.

I know there is no instance yet of Mod Gs being used against solly BCs but it took less than that to destroy the first BC in Monica and the damage that BC took was staggered.

That was clearly a Golden BB. Plus the crews weren't all that competent. Subsequent books have mentioned how lucky that was.