Control Missile for shipboard launched missiles

Rakhmamort wrote:How about 240 missiles in one salvo, 40 penaids to get 180 attack missiles controlled by 20 control missiles targeted at 3 BCs (60 attack missiles each)? Sounds even better?

Weird Harold wrote:To date, the ACMs we have seen have been larger than the attack missiles they control by at least a factor of two.

In order for a Roland to carry twenty control missiles, it would have to give up forty attack missiles (or more). Since ACMs are larger than attack missiles, a Roland would need at least one, and probably several ACM-only launch tubes -- which would further cut into precious internal volume, which already limits magazine size to marginal quantities of Mk-16s. That is going to reduce salvo sizes for routine encounters where an ACM would be a waste of resources.

I can't see any way for a Roland to be fitted with control missiles without reducing its already marginal capabilities. Saganami-Cs or Nikes might have enough redundant capabilities to give up the attack missile tubes and magazine space for improved long-range accuracy, but I would expect that control missiles for Mk-16s would be a pod-based system like Apollo, primarily deployed in Podlayers.

Jonathan_S wrote:And don't forget that a Roland's 6 chase tubes are a tightly clustered collection - with (IIRC) shared components to squeeze them all in. And that a Roland lacks sufficient beam to mount even a Mk16 DDM tube in its broadside.

So if someone wanted to add a control missile tube it would almost certainly have to displace at least 2 of the 6 chase tubes - and I wouldn't be shocked it it displaced 4 of them.

The Mark 16’s original fifteen-megaton warhead had been more destructive than any destroyer or light cruiser missile ever previously deployed, although dealing with battlecruiser armor—as Abigail Hearns had learned aboard HMS Hexapuma in the Monica System—had pushed it to its limits. But Tristram and her sisters were equipped with the Mod G version, with a forty-megaton warhead and improved gravity generators. That increased its effectiveness by a factor of over five…which made it more powerful than the brand-new Trebuchet capital ship missile the Solarian League Navy had just begun to deploy.

Inexorable’s armor had never been designed to face that sort of holocaust, and each of the ninety-nine Mark 16s which reached attack range carried six lasing rods. Five hundred and ninety-four x-ray lasers, each more destructive than anything a Solarian ship-of-the-wall could have thrown, stabbed out at McGillicuddy’s ship. Perhaps a third of them wasted their fury on the impenetrable roof and floor of Inexorable’s impeller wedge, but the others didn’t. They punched through the battlecruiser’s sidewalls with contemptuous ease, and armor shattered as the transfer energy blew into the ship’s hull. The sidewalls and the radiation shielding inside them attenuated the lasers…slightly. Nothing could have stopped them, though, and eight hundred and fifty thousand tons of battlecruiser disintegrated in an incandescent flash like the heart of a star.

Weird Harold wrote:I seem to recall that a Roland's missile tubes are trios. One ACM tube could displace three Mk-16 tubes.

MaxxQ wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:I seem to recall that a Roland's missile tubes are trios. One ACM tube could displace three Mk-16 tubes.

Just curious. Can you cite the textev for that?

Right now, we at BuNine have the tubes blocked-in spaced equidistantly around the face of each hammerhead. The magazines are rails placed between (when looking end-on, and behind) each tube - 6 rails with 10 missiles each for a total of sixty missiles. Each rail can feed two tubes. That rail set has a second rail set immediately behind it that feeds the forward rail set, resulting in 120 missiles per hammerhead. This also accounts for the extra long hammerheads seen in my renders.

This image shows the tube layout (outer ports are the tubes, inner ports are energy weapons): http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275665

If a single rail is taken out, the tubes on either end can be fed through their own adjacent rails. If a tube is taken out, the rails adjacent to it can feed two other tubes. If a pair of adjacent tubes are taken out, the missiles on the rail between them can be transferred to the aft rail and moved around to feed other tubes.

As I stated above, though, this is just a rough blocking of the magazine/tube layout, and is subject to change.

Storm From the Shadows, 41 wrote:There were really two reasons for the Rolands' huge size compared to other destroyers. One was the fact that they were the only destroyers in the galaxy equipped to fire the Mark 16 dual-drive missile. Squeezing in that capability—and giving them twelve tubes—had required a substantial modification to the Mod 9-c launcher mounted in the Saganami-C class. The Rolands' Mod 9-e was essentially the tube from the 9-c, but stripped of the support equipment normally associated with a standalone missile tube. Instead, a sextet of the new launchers were shoehorned together, combining the necessary supports for all six tubes in the cluster. Roland mounted one cluster each in her fore and aft hammerheads, the traditional locations for a ship's chase energy weapons. Given the Manticoran ability to fire off-bore, all twelve tubes could be brought to bear on any target, but it did make the class's weapons more vulnerable. A single hit could take out half of her total missile armament, which was scarcely something Chatterjee liked to think about. But destroyers had never been intended to take the kind of hammering wallers could take, anyway, and he was willing to accept Roland's vulnerabilities in return for her overwhelming advantage in missile combat.

Vince wrote:The Roland's 12 missile tubes are arranged in two sets of six missile tubes per set, with all six tubes in a set being serviced by one set of support equipement:

Storm From the Shadows, 41 wrote:There were really two reasons for the Rolands' huge size compared to other destroyers. ...

Vince wrote:An Indefatigable's point defense broadside:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 12 wrote:Dubroskaya was more willing than Kelvin Diadoro to admit that the Manties tube-launched missiles might have more range than hers, but nothing the size a light cruiser could stow internally was going to have a lot more, she thought as she watched her ships’ icons moving across the display. For that matter, assuming constant accelerations on both sides, it would require only an additional fifteen and a half minutes for her to reach her own powered range of the Manties. Two of her ships—Success and Paladin—were Flight V Indefatigables, with the old SL-11-b launcher, with a forty-five-second launch cycle, but Vanquisher and Inexorable had the newer SL-13 launcher with a cycle time of only thirty-five seconds, and the Manties could probably do a bit better than that. Solarian destroyers and light cruisers certainly could have, given the smaller and lighter missiles with which they were armed, but any internally launched missile with enough range to threaten her squadron at this kind of range was going to have to be at least as large as her own Javelins. That was bound to slow their rate of fire, so call it thirty seconds for the other side’s launch cycle. That meant they’d have time for roughly thirty-one broadsides before she could range on them, but with no more than eight to ten tubes per broadside, that would be only three hundred and ten missiles, maximum, per platform, delivered in combined salvos of no more than fifty each. And as Diadoro had pointed out, at least some of those missiles were going to have to be configured as penetration aids and electronic warfare platforms. Her four battlecruisers mounted eight counter-missile tubes and sixteen point defense stations in each broadside, which gave the squadron thirty-two CMs and sixty-four laser clusters against a probable threat of no more than forty shipkillers per launch.
She smiled coldly, contemplating the plot. No cruiser-sized missile ever built was going to get through that strong a defense in sufficient numbers to stop her before she was able to bring her own tubes into action, and her ships mounted twenty-eight of them in each broadside. Once she got into range, she’d be firing salvos of a hundred and sixteen missiles each . . . at which point her heavier Javelins would reduce the Manties to drifting wreckage in quick order.

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

If you can get through those defenses (a reasonable supposition with Manticoran offensive capabilities) and do serious damage mission kill, or even destroy ships with the hits you land (Mark 16 DDM with Mod G = SD capital missile warhead), then it tends to throw the opposition off balance (and they make less than optimal decisions). Sometimes reason breaks through to the opposition (Saltash). Sometimes reason doesn't break through (Monica).

Just the raw numbers of an Indefatigable's (unmodified) point defense means that the SLN would need a very large numerical ship advantage against Manticoran forces to avoid saturation of SLN point defense, completely ignoring Manticoran advantages in ECM missiles (Dazzlers and Dragon's Teeth). And the SLN BCs would have to be in SDM range to start in order to have any chance of surviving* or inflicting damage* on RMN ships with DDMs.

* The laws of probability play no favorites.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:How about 240 missiles in one salvo, 40 penaids to get 180 attack missiles controlled by 20 control missiles targeted at 3 BCs (60 attack missiles each)? Sounds even better?

Sounds like a win or die, last resort kind of scenario. Exactly how often do you see a Roland needing that kind of suicidal tactic? Bear in mind that because of their limited magazine space, we really haven't seen Rolands deployed in less than division strength -- Four-ships together.

To date, the ACMs we have seen have been larger than the attack missiles they control by at least a factor of two.

In order for a Roland to carry twenty control missiles, it would have to give up forty attack missiles (or more). Since ACMs are larger than attack missiles, a Roland would need at least one, and probably several ACM-only launch tubes -- which would further cut into precious internal volume, which already limits magazine size to marginal quantities of Mk-16s. That is going to reduce salvo sizes for routine encounters where an ACM would be a waste of resources.

I can't see any way for a Roland to be fitted with control missiles without reducing its already marginal capabilities. Saganami-Cs or Nikes might have enough redundant capabilities to give up the attack missile tubes and magazine space for improved long-range accuracy, but I would expect that control missiles for Mk-16s would be a pod-based system like Apollo, primarily deployed in Podlayers.

Jonathan_S wrote:And don't forget that a Roland's 6 chase tubes are a tightly clustered collection - with (IIRC) shared components to squeeze them all in. And that a Roland lacks sufficient beam to mount even a Mk16 DDM tube in its broadside.

So if someone wanted to add a control missile tube it would almost certainly have to displace at least 2 of the 6 chase tubes - and I wouldn't be shocked it it displaced 4 of them.

That's giving up a hell of a lot of the Roland's normal throw weight (in addition to the magazine issues you pointed out) for a missile that's really only needed in hopeless, 'back against the wall' situations.



If there was a magic, virtually no cost, way of allowing Rolands to occasionally fire huge salvos then sure; add it in. You don't need it often, but if there's no real downside then it's nice to have on the very rare occasions you might need it. But in this case the cost to benefit ratio doesn't seem worth it (to me).