Control Missile for shipboard launched missiles

SWM wrote:

Kytheros wrote:D'you have a quote for that? All I remember is that downwards translation is specifically called out as bleeding away velocity, but nothing about upwards translations, at least from the books, upwards translations might get specified in one of Weber's infodumps.

From The Universe of Honor Harrington, published in More Than Honor (emphasis added):

The major problem limiting hyper speeds was that simply getting into hyper did not create a propulsive effect. Indeed, the initial translation into hyper was a complex energy transfer which reduced a starship's velocity by "bleeding off" momentum. In effect, a translating hypership lost approximately 92% of its normal-space velocity when entering hyper. This had unfortunate consequences in terms of reaction mass requirements, particularly since the fact that hydrogen catcher fields were inoperable in hyper meant one could not replenish one's reaction mass underway. On the other hand, the velocity bleed effect applied equally regardless of the direction of the translation (that is, one lost 92% of one's velocity whether one was entering hyper-space from normal-space or normal-space from hyper-space), which meant that leaving hyper automatically decelerated one's vessel to a normal-space velocity only 08% of whatever its velocity had been in hyper-space. This tremendously reduced the amount of deceleration required at the far end of a hyper voyage and so made reaction drives at least workable.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:As to that, do you really think they will be wasting commerce protectors when they know if it gets jumped by an RMN force those ships are toast without even touching the enemy ships? I'd use my useless but numerous SDs to do merchant protection. Maybe if the manty force is light enough those SDs can soak up all the damage they can deal until they run out of missiles and go away.

An example of SLN Commerce protection: (their "convoy" was a single freighter, FWIW)

A Rising Thunder
Chapter Three wrote: ...
“No, Sir. I can’t speak to what they might have lying doggo with its impellers down, but judging from the signatures we can see, it’s still just the three cruisers and four of those big-assed destroyers of theirs.”

“Seven-to-six odds, their favor,” Gilmore observed. “In hulls, anyway. Of course, the tonnage ratio’s in our favor.”
Pyun nodded. His six battlecruisers were all Indefatigable-class ships, rather than Battle Fleet’s newer Nevadas, but their combined mass was still over five million tons, whereas the Manty picket couldn’t mass much over two million, despite the fact that the Manticoran “destroyers” were larger than most SLN light cruisers. By any traditional measure, his force advantage ought to be overwhelming.

ibid wrote:. So Volley Alpha used only the cruisers’ internal tubes, and even the Roland-class destroyers attached to his force were mere spectators at the moment. They had barely a quarter of the cruisers’ magazine capacity, and Ivanov had no more intention of wasting their limited ammunition than he did of wasting MDMs.
Which was why “only” two hundred and forty missiles, launch times and drive activations carefully staggered to bring all of them in as a single salvo, went howling towards Rear Admiral Liam Pyun’s battlecruisers.

(That makes it three RMN Saganami-C Heavy Cruisers vs six Indefatigible SLN Battle Cruisers.)

ibid wrote: The Manticoran missiles came flashing in, still at that incredible—impossible—acceleration rate, and just before they entered the counter-missile zone, the electronic warfare platforms seeded among the attack birds spun up. Of the two hundred and forty missiles launched by Hiram Ivanov’s three cruisers, fifty carried nothing but penetration aids, and they’d been carefully saved for this moment. Now “Dazzler” platforms blinded Solarian sensors even as their accompanying “Dragon’s Teeth” suddenly proliferated, producing scores of false targets to confuse and saturate their targets’ defenses. The Solarian battlecruiser crews had never seen, never imagined, anything like it. Ignorant of the energy budgets the RMN’s mini-fusion plants allowed, they simply couldn’t conceive of how such powerful jammers could be crammed into such tiny platforms. The threat totally surpassed the parameters their doctrine and their systems had been designed to cope with.
Pyun’s battlecruisers managed to stop exactly seventeen of the incoming shipkillers in the outer zone. The other hundred and seventy-three streaked past every counter-missile the Solarians could throw with almost contemptuous ease.

190/6=~31 attack missiles per BC.
173/6=~28 survivors attacking
173/190=91% survival rate.

Just how many missile sponges can the SLN spare?

Rakhmamort wrote:They are reactivating ships. Send an old SD per planet to replace the BCs they have running around. Old as those SDs are, they are no use vs the RMN and the best they can do is to deter pirates.

No they aren't:

A Rising Thunder
Chapter Thirty-three wrote: “It’s probably worse than that, frankly, especially with Haven added to the equation,” the acting CNO said unflinchingly. “For all intents and purposes, the Reserve has just become several billion tons of scrap material. The superdreadnoughts we have mothballed are the wrong ships for this war, and I don’t see any way the existing hulls could be refitted to turn them into effective combatants.”

Well, that’s a kick in the head, Kolokoltsov thought dourly. On the other hand, if Omosupe and Agatá are right, we won’t have the cash to reactivate the Reserve, anyway. Of course, that leaves the little problem of where we’re going to find the cash to build new wallers if we can’t even de-mothball the ones we’ve already got!

Bill Woods wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:The sollies need only to use multi-squadron sized commerce raiding force a couple of times to force the RMN to increase the size/number of the escorts. This tactic is going to stretch the RMN's capabilities since they need to defend everywhere while the solly raiders will only attack where they find weakness.

If the only deterrent to that is to use more/bigger ships, then the sollies' tactics has already succeeded.

Bill Woods wrote:If the Sollies are clumping their commerce raiders in multi-squadron task forces, the obvious response is to dispense with convoys. Use SDF craft to escort freighters past the hyper limit and send them off. If the Sollies want to waste a dozen BCs chasing down one freighter, well....

Rakhmamort wrote: And sending individual merchies with no defenses will mean no merchies killed? Oh wait, no navy ships killed but dead merchie ships all around. Looks like a win for sollies again.

Suppose the Sollies have about 1000 BCs available for commerce raiding. That gives them only about 40 of your huge task forces, less the ones refitting, or in transit to or from their bases. With so few raider TFs, almost all merchies will arrive at their destinations without ever seeing one. But some ships will be captured, and I suppose a few people will be killed. There's a war on; risks are unavoidable.

Meanwhile, the Manties would be using navy ships to set ambushes at locations those raider TFs might be expected, and taking out their bases.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yes, but most of the places those ships are going are Andermandi territory, Manticoran Silesia, Haven systems, Grayson, etc.

Anybody trying to commerce raid there is likely to get ambushed by super-LACs or eat a facefull of system defense missiles.

(Remember that unlike wet-navy convoys, and despite a couple counter-examples in the books, it's very improbable to detect a convoy in transit. In general you have to hunt for them in n-space at one or another of their ports of call. So you primarily convoy freighters to provide a protected bubble of n-space in systems that lack sufficient system defenses -- or in a war situation where the system might be lost before the convoy gets word. So any system that can chase off SL BC squadrons using it's SDF doesn't really need ships convoyed to it)


I don't expect Manticore to be running hordes of merchantmen into League or ex-League systems anytime soon - so for the traffic they do send they should be able afford to allocate reasonable commerce protection.

Bill Woods wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:A Roland can only send 6 salvos of 36 missiles and one of 24 before running out of ammo. Against 3 BCs with their hammerheads pointed at the DD, they might get your 5-6 hits. But since the baseline for that used old solarian BCs crewed by undertrained Monicans, I highly doubt you'll get as many hits. Against a full squadron of BCs, the Roland would probably get 1 or 2 missiles through. Now if you are going to claim that would be enough to mission kill a BC because those missiles have the ultimate Mod G warhead, fine 2 attack missiles can destroy a BC. BUT, consider a salvo of 120 missiles, 12 control missiles, 20 ECM missiles and 88 attack missiles, if you distribute those 88 missiles over the 8 BC ships in the squadron, you destroy the whole squadron EASY PEASY!

The simple solution for a DD skipper forced to fight several BCs is 'do not allow yourself to get into this situation.' On the very rare occasions when it's unavoidable, the skipper may get a medal for being a hero. Otherwise, he probably gets cashiered for being an idiot.

Theemile wrote:

SWM wrote:I don't intend to join the lively discussion here, but I want to correct an error here. The Solarian League is not reactivating ships. The text includes a Solarian discussion which shows they have already realized that those ships are useless, and that they will not be reactivating ships from the Reserve. The only ships the League has available are the ones currently active and not already destroyed.

To add to SWM's point, as other have snippeted above, the financial situation caused by Manticore means that the SLN is financially unable to reactivate ships enmass from the Reserve and unable to pay for the sailors necessary to man them. It is not merely political will to increase the fleet size, but also financial constraits.

Theemile wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:Against a full squadron of BCs, the Roland would probably get 1 or 2 missiles through. Now if you are going to claim that would be enough to mission kill a BC because those missiles have the ultimate Mod G warhead, fine 2 attack missiles can destroy a BC. BUT, consider a salvo of 120 missiles, 12 control missiles, 20 ECM missiles and 88 attack missiles, if you distribute those 88 missiles over the 8 BC ships in the squadron, you destroy the whole squadron EASY PEASY!

Now if it will take anywhere from 10-12 Mark 16 Mod G warheads to kill a BC, your smaller salvo option will mission kill just 1 BC. Looks like the one big salvo helps save missiles after all.

Just where are you getting these stats that 10-12 Laserheads will kill an SLN BC? A little text ev to back up please?

Rakhmamort wrote:"Seven to six odds their favor"
"3 Saganami Cs"

How is the throw weight of those forces incapable of swamping a BC squadron's defenses?

ibid wrote:. So Volley Alpha used only the cruisers’ internal tubes, and even the Roland-class destroyers attached to his force were mere spectators at the moment. They had barely a quarter of the cruisers’ magazine capacity, and Ivanov had no more intention of wasting their limited ammunition than he did of wasting MDMs.
Which was why “only” two hundred and forty missiles, launch times and drive activations carefully staggered to bring all of them in as a single salvo, went howling towards Rear Admiral Liam Pyun’s battlecruisers.

Weird Harold wrote:

Rakhmamort wrote:"Seven to six odds their favor"
"3 Saganami Cs"

How is the throw weight of those forces incapable of swamping a BC squadron's defenses?

Read the quote again:

ibid wrote:. So Volley Alpha used only the cruisers’ internal tubes, and even the Roland-class destroyers attached to his force were mere spectators at the moment. They had barely a quarter of the cruisers’ magazine capacity, and Ivanov had no more intention of wasting their limited ammunition than he did of wasting MDMs.
Which was why “only” two hundred and forty missiles, launch times and drive activations carefully staggered to bring all of them in as a single salvo, went howling towards Rear Admiral Liam Pyun’s battlecruisers.

There were other ships present, but ONLY the Sag-Cs and ONLY the internal tubes and Mk16s were used in the engagement. Those three Sag-Cs engaged six SLN Indefatigable BCs -- every other ship in the system was merely a spectator.