new light cruiser needed

Mil-tech bard wrote:I see the break point in RMN ship classes being Keyhole 1 & 2 capability as opposed to pure size.

Essentially the difference between a Capital ship and a BC is pod MDM versus tube DDM with both having a full duplex Keyhole-2 FTL control link.

The real difference between a CA and a BC is the CA has a "half duplex" KH-1 platform compared to a both ways FTL control link.

The break point between a CA and the CL/DD is the lack of a KH-1 capability to fight behind a wedge with full offensive missile and defensive anti-missile capability.

The problem with this classification is that David was talking a possible future 300,000 kt destroyer or light cruiser (he hinted that one of the classes would probably be eliminated) which has a version of Keyhole I.


Basically, he said that Manticoran planners were anticipating a day (some time in the future, probably after the war) when every warship will need at least DDMs and Keyhole I.

Tonnage creep.... I think I'm going to respectfully disagree on the SD(p)'s and BC(L) getting bigger. Faster, yes. More capable defenses and tactical abilities, yes.

SD(p) wise, I think what I'd probably do is create a more multi-modal ship so that the SD(p) could pod launch Mark-16G's controlled by a "16 ACM" just as easy as the MDM's. Higher salvo density plus it could likely carry what, a third more missiles? and until someone figures out how to stop the combination of an ACM'd missile with the ghost rider Dazzler/Dragon's teeth combo, there's no one outside Haven that will be able to play for decades.

Same think on the Nike's. Once there's a "KH-Lite" in play, making them small DN size buys you nothing that two Nike's plus 4 sag-C's (if I got my weights right) probably wouldn't do as well or better, faster set of ships and squadron capable, aka independent, more flexible ops. Which would you rather fight, one ship or say 2 converging "Nike + 2 Sag C's" pinching your ship(s) right in the middle.

Thoughts?

Thoughts?

Start with, I agree, BC tonnage will not increase. $$$ policy will dictate this is true. In fact, in the past, I have argued $$$ policy will dicatate the BC class will disappear altogether.

Yes, tonnage for SDP must vastly increase.

**Note regarding your post: MK-16 SDP will never happen. Range. May even go to 4 stage MDM instead of 3 in the near future.**

Back to mine: MK-23G demands increased tonnage. If an MK-16 can increase by a factor of 5, then the MK-23G can roughly do the same. Thus sidewalls must become vastly stronger along with the armor on the ship.

If you are not going to increase the number of hits to the ship, then one must make sure the missiles do not penetrate your defenses. With alpha strike... this becomes highly unlikely. Therefore:

CM's must get an FTL component to make each CM increase its hit probability on an MDM, therefore able to swat more MDM/CM ratio and survive an alpha strike. This requires some tonnage. New hyperdrive is vastly larger as well.

As Relax has said, the Manticoran designers are currently happy with the Nike size and design, so I do not see the BC getting too much bigger in the foreseeable future. BCs have after all already gone from under 900ktons to 2500ktons. Maybe up to 2.75 Mtons for the next class of BC(L) but not any larger than that.

As for the SD, IIRC, they currently run to a maximum of about 8.75Mtons in the Invictus. In the future, the ship of the wall will definitely be getting bigger, due to defenses being upgraded and increased in number as it was in the BC. However if I was a designer, I would be a bit squeamish giving the title SD to anything over about 9.5 or 10Mtons. If they do go up to the 12 to 13 Mtons that the new compensator tech allows, the difference in ability, even assuming identical tech levels, will be much much larger than the difference between a DN and an SD. Also, the Admiral would be able to com the enemy, sneer and say, "You really should surrender; you only have super dreadnoughts."

As for what to name the new type of ship, if the Andies become the first to build the new max size craft, they would probably call it a Bismarck type, if it was a Japanese decended world, it would probably be a Musashi. It probably won't be a Monitor because that is what RFC used in Starfire, and if he uses it again people will accuse him of "lazy writing." What Manticore will call it, I can't think of anything great from American or British history. Anybody got a thought?

Juggernaut class?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut

SharkHunter wrote:SD(p) wise, I think what I'd probably do is create a more multi-modal ship so that the SD(p) could pod launch Mark-16G's controlled by a "16 ACM" just as easy as the MDM's. Higher salvo density plus it could likely carry what, a third more missiles? and until someone figures out how to stop the combination of an ACM'd missile with the ghost rider Dazzler/Dragon's teeth combo, there's no one outside Haven that will be able to play for decades.

There's no technical barrier stopping the current ACM from controlling MK16s. The only issue is, there aren't any pods designed with 1 ACM and however many MK16s would fit, nor are there any shipboard ACM launchers. Plus, of course, the ACM's third drive would be wasted.

IMO, one of the future tech developments might be shrinking the FTL transceiver until it fits into every missile. I don't know whether this will happen before, around the same time or long after the 300kton is laid down as a navy's lightest hyper-capable warship.

Or the RMN might retain the current missile sizing arrangements and simply keep working on improved capabilities they can squeeze into the basic MK16, MK23, etc. bodies. It depends how much backwards compatibility they want with legacy vessels(which by then would include Rolands, Sag-Cs and Nike!).

crewdude48 wrote:As for what to name the new type of ship, if the Andies become the first to build the new max size craft, they would probably call it a Bismarck type, if it was a Japanese decended world, it would probably be a Musashi. It probably won't be a Monitor because that is what RFC used in Starfire, and if he uses it again people will accuse him of "lazy writing." What Manticore will call it, I can't think of anything great from American or British history. Anybody got a thought?

I think in the eventuality of a practicable hyper-capable +12MT warship, navies would redefine the classes. All current SDs demoted to DNs - possibly DNs to BBs, now that BCs have seized the BB's old tonnage bracket - thus freeing up the SD label for those new mega-warships.

They might call it a SD(L) for a while.

munroburton wrote:[
I think in the eventuality of a practicable hyper-capable +12MT warship, navies would redefine the classes. All current SDs demoted to DNs - possibly DNs to BBs, now that BCs have seized the BB's old tonnage bracket - thus freeing up the SD label for those new mega-warships.

They might call it a SD(L) for a while.

Unless of course your navy, defines its vessels class by Role and not Tonnage

The type of missions the navy undertake will always drive selection, off set by budget whilst trying to maximise the number of hulls.

Garth 2 wrote:

munroburton wrote:[
I think in the eventuality of a practicable hyper-capable +12MT warship, navies would redefine the classes. All current SDs demoted to DNs - possibly DNs to BBs, now that BCs have seized the BB's old tonnage bracket - thus freeing up the SD label for those new mega-warships.

They might call it a SD(L) for a while.

Unless of course your navy, defines its vessels class by Role and not Tonnage

The type of missions the navy undertake will always drive selection, off set by budget whilst trying to maximise the number of hulls.

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned the tonnage bracket there. Essentially, it is defining types by role - calling the 12MT warship a SD is correct if it's the largest ship designed to lie in a wall of battle with sister vessels.

Matters will be simpler when all old non-podlaying DNs and SDs are finally decommissioned. The smallest waller becomes a 8.5MT podlayer - designate those as DN(P)s besides a new ~12MT SD(P).

It's either that or claw around for inadequate labels like Monitors(which actually came before the BB) or picking one of the very last wet-navy super-BBs envisoned or built. Or worse yet, flipping through a thesaurus for adjectives to use as nouns.

Relax wrote:Yes, tonnage for SDP must vastly increase.

**Note regarding your post: MK-16 SDP will never happen. Range. May even go to 4 stage MDM instead of 3 in the near future.**

I think that'd depend on the effective range of Keyhole II Apollo FTL control.
The (4-stage) system defense missiles have the advantage of fighting on prepared ground, where the system will have been seeded with Mycroft FTL fire-control relay nodes -- making the inherent range limits of any single Apollo link fairly irrelevant.

Ships can't count on that same advantage. We don't have a solid number on the max useable range of Apollo - just two [edit: 3; thanks Kytheros] widely different data points.
* 2.97 lm (53,400,000 km) is within range [AAC:Ch57]
* 4.56 km (82,000,000 km) is within range [StfS:Ch13]
* 8.34 lm (150,000,000 km) is beyond effective range [AAC:CH68]
(65,726,640 km is max continuously powered range of a Mk23)
So adding range may, or may not, be useful to them; and in my opinion they'd only add the drive if it added useful (controllable) extra range. [Ok, Kytheros's info shows that there is usable Apollo range beyond max powered Mk23 range]


I'm just not sure what RFC/Bunine have the the max continuously powered range of a 4-drive MDM calculated as.
----------------------------------------------------
Relativity tangent:

You can't calculated it the same way that the existing missiles seem to be done (ignoring the effects relativity) -- if you did the calculations would show terminal velocities greater than c. (oops)

Without relativity a Mk23, accelerating at 42000g for 540 seconds reaches:
65.7 million km range, at 0.81c terminal velocity (agrees with the books)
But, if I did it correctly, throwing in relativity those numbers drop to:
57.4 million km range, at 0.63c terminal velocity

But how to reconcile a 3-drive missile, calculated w/o relativity, to a 4-drive missile that can't completely ignore it isn't exactly obvious.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:Yes, tonnage for SDP must vastly increase.

**Note regarding your post: MK-16 SDP will never happen. Range. May even go to 4 stage MDM instead of 3 in the near future.**

I think that'd depend on the effective range of Keyhole II Apollo FTL control.
The (4-stage) system defense missiles have the advantage of fighting on prepared ground, where the system will have been seeded with Mycroft FTL fire-control relay nodes -- making the inherent range limits of any single Apollo link fairly irrelevant.

Ships can't count on that same advantage. We don't have a solid number on the max useable range of Apollo - just two widely different data points.
* 3 lm (53,962,642 km) is within range
* 8 lm (143,900,380) is beyond effective range
(65,726,640 km is max continuously powered range of a Mk23)
So adding range may, or may not, be useful to them; and in my opinion they'd only add the drive if it added useful (controllable) extra range.


I'm just not sure what RFC/Bunine have the the max continuously powered range of a 4-drive MDM calculated as.
----------------------------------------------------
Relativity tangent:

You can't calculated it the same way that the existing missiles seem to be done (ignoring the effects relativity) -- if you did the calculations would show terminal velocities greater than c. (oops)

Without relativity a Mk23, accelerating at 42000g for 540 seconds reaches:
65.7 million km range, at 0.81c terminal velocity (agrees with the books)
But, if I did it correctly, throwing in relativity those numbers drop to:
57.4 million km range, at 0.63c terminal velocity

But how to reconcile a 3-drive missile, calculated w/o relativity, to a 4-drive missile that can't completely ignore it isn't exactly obvious.

Particle shielding probably wouldn't support missile velocities much above .9c for very long.
Also, is it confirmed that the 4th drive is a full-up drive, and not a sprint-type drive?
I'd assume that the final stage is usually set to a higher acceleration, lower run duration configuration for terminal maneuvering.


I'd agree that 4-drive MDMs aren't going to be deployed as shipboard weapons. 3 is plenty for pretty much any conceivable battlespace. If you're shooting at somebody who you need a 4th drive run for, you should have a ballistic segment in the middle, and if you still need a 4th drive after the ballistic segment and the first 3, you should wait to close the range.
Regarding Apollo control range ... I want to say it's 4 light minutes, but I can't remember where that number is coming from. Something connected to Apollo was 4 light minutes.
Whatever range Apollo has, it's a long way to go, and anybody without Apollo - which is going to take a long time to duplicate - even assuming they have MDMs, is going to have bad accuracy, and probably won't want to start shooting until they can close the range.

AHA! I remember where I got 4 light minutes from - Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 13 - Mike Henke's battlecruiser squadron is running an exercise where they're SD(P)s and using Apollo. 4.4 light minutes is within Apollo control range. The targets were 82-ish million kilometers away.

Call Apollo range limits around 5-6 light minutes. Unless the other side has Apollo too, even with MDMs, they're going to have an appallingly bad day at that kind of range; they're looking at a 10 minute communications cycle, unless they have Ghost Rider/FTL recon drone capability, then it's "only" five minutes. I suspect that nobody is going to have the capability to build their own version of Ghost Rider, much less Apollo, for quite a while.
And even with Apollo, you're looking at long flight times. Long enough that most warships will have a decent shot of activating their hyperdrives to get out of the way, if they're outside the hyperlimit.