Control Missile for shipboard launched missiles

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

However many it displaces, it still makes a significant dent in offensive capability.

Another point to consider is that the big advantage to Apollo is increased long range accuracy, not multiplication of control links. Fitting FTL transceivers to individual missiles would actually be preferable so that an entire pod of missiles doesn't need to be fired to gain long range accuracy. A disadvantage of Pod-based weapons is that the EW/Attack ratio is fixed long before the tactical situation is encountered -- One ACM, One Dazzler, One Dragon's Teeth, and six attack missiles for an Apollo pod.

Given the destructive power of a Mod-G warhead, I can see where a mix of one Dazzler, three Dragon's Teeth, and eight Attack Missiles might be a better tactical choice than emptying the entire magazine in one salvo. That probably wouldn't obliterate even a Solarian BC, but it should at least give a BC second thoughts and mission-kill anything smaller.

ETA:

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.

thinkstoomuch wrote:Just a general post including some ideas that have voiced by others. After 3 days of composing a post then deleting it I decided to just go ahead and let others tell me how stupid my ideas are.

I would suggest the value of smaller missile salvos value should also incorporate everything back to OBS ship to ship battles.

The RMN and to a lesser extent PRN Navy's were capable of inflicting damage without saturating salvo size.

While it has limited usefulness particularly the battle of Solon with just 3 salvos of just 248 Mk 23's inflicting considerable damage against an RHN SD(P) in a battle formation of 6 with escorts and LACs.

In my mind against a widely disparate force of BCs (especially without escorting smaller ships) that Roland will actually be better off protecting a convoy with large interval salvos. The BCs can't scatter to chase the merchants if the only way to defend and attack the Roland as a group. The longer it can last the better chance the merchants have to escape.

Though with Hawkwing's example in HAE it might be better to fire double stacked at 5 minute intervals to observe reactions and compensate for them. Instead of minimal damage that is more aggravating than material impact. Roland is going to firing the equivalent of what to the SLN BCs is a capital missiles which as SVW has shown they are not designed to protect against.

Mission success in this case like Honor's Adler example is not to destroy the enemy. It is to get the merchants away at minimal possible cost. Which an all or nothing attack of everything including the kitchen sink seems ... sub-optimal, IMO. Though the specific tactical situation is going to determine the tactics and responses.

Have fun,
T2M

Rakhmamort wrote:Please read the proposed control missile first. Nobody is proposing to launch Apollo control missiles from shipboard. Go argue against something that is not part of the proposal somewhere else.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:Please read the proposed control missile first. Nobody is proposing to launch Apollo control missiles from shipboard. Go argue against something that is not part of the proposal somewhere else.

Just how do you propose to fit the same FTL and AI capability into a smaller missile than an Apollo-style ACM. The Apollo Control Missiles are the size they are because the needed capability could not be crammed into a Mk-23 carcass, yet you propose putting the same capability into a smaller Mk-16 carcass. That's not going to happen given the textev on why the ACM is as big as it is.

Rakhmamort wrote:1 Dazzler + 3 Dragon's teeth + 8 attack missiles ===> 80 Penaids + 160 ModGs with no surety of taking out an enemy BC.

20 control missile + 40 Penaids + 180 Attack birds = sure kill to 3 BCs.

It is clear which combination is going to produce a better result.

munroburton wrote:By tossing the FTL part of it. He just wants the tactical computer and LS control repeaters, so each ship can control eight or ten times more missiles with its current set of links.

Weird Harold wrote:Then it is really more of a solution in search of a problem than I thought it is. The need for a control missile in the Apollo system is to improve accuracy at long range by adding FTL to the control loop. The multiplication of control links by Apollo is just an unfortunate side effect of not being able to fit the necessary FTL transceivers in individual missiles.

Rakhmamort wrote:The combat environment before pod launched missiles didn't require ships to have a lot of anti-missile capability because missiles weren't the main weapons in fleet battles. That is why hits were being achieved even when the salvo sizes were smaller.

Rakhmamort wrote:Please read the proposed control missile first. Nobody is proposing to launch Apollo control missiles from shipboard. Go argue against something that is not part of the proposal somewhere else.

Rakhmamort wrote:What I am thinking about is this, is it possible to modify Dazzlers/Dragon's Teeth to act as a control missile for shipboard launched missiles to free up control links so Destroyers/Cruisers can control far more missiles than normal.

Weird Harold wrote:The need for a control missile in the Apollo system is to improve accuracy at long range by adding FTL to the control loop. The multiplication of control links by Apollo is just an unfortunate side effect of not being able to fit the necessary FTL transceivers in individual missiles.

munroburton wrote:By tossing the FTL part of it. He just wants the tactical computer and LS control repeaters, so each ship can control eight or ten times more missiles with its current set of links.

I'm not sure what you think Penaids are. It's a shortened term for sidewall penetrator, which is a "bewildering array of different methods and technologies of getting an attack through a sidewall. [...] used a precisely timed reshaping of the missile's own impeller wedge in the fraction of a second before contact to temporarily "flicker" the target's sidewall and allow the weapon through unimpeded." From In Fire Forged, An Introduction to Modern Starship Design, talking about the first contact nukes.

They are certainly not separate missiles. They are also not critical, as enough damage done to a sidewall has a chance of getting through anyway, particularly if we're talking about SD-rated weapons attacking subwallers.

EW missiles, ie Dragons and Dazzlers, are entirely different things - they're meant to get the attack into range of the sidewall first.