new light cruiser needed

Kytheros wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote: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.

Jonathan_S wrote: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.

Kytheros wrote: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.

Jonathan_S wrote:First, thanks for that SftS reference; I'd missed it.
(I had the numbers from the two operational uses of Apollo w/FTL control; but had forgotten or overlooked that simulated use)

Second, you're correct, the system defense 4-drive Apollo birds are 3 normal drives plus a CM-derived 'sprint' drive. But that doesn't actually fix the relativistic problem.

Using non-relativistic math a Mk25's first 3 drives (at half power mode) push it up to 0.81c.
Then the sprint drive calculation shoves it to:
1.07c (130,000g for 60s - Mk30 CM spec),
1.13c (130,000g for 75s - Mk31 CM spec),
1.00c (95,000g for 60s - older CM spec), or
0.99c (90.500g for 60s - OBS CM spec).
None of those really make sense. So I assume RFC/BuNine will, to avoid ret-conning the performance of the Mk23s, just throw in a fudge factor (or maybe a speed limit) on any 4-drive missiles to keep them well below 1c.

But without knowing what that will be I couldn't really make reasonable guesses about it's powered range.

Relax wrote:4 stage missile reasoning has little, nah, nothing to do with increasing velocity. Has everything to do with tactics at range.

Mycroft is stated as being nothing but Keyhole II platforms + added endurance seeded around a planet to act as a system defense net. So, why one would think there is any range advantage shipboard to system defense regarding range for control is a head scratcher when they are using the exact same FTL tech. The limit currently is is 3 stage verses 4 stage missiles being too large for shipboard use. Missile size is still decreasing. So, in the future...

Relax wrote:Scratches head: Wonders when the last time you read AAC and the later explanation in MoH for how Honor shot at 2nd Fleet from 200Mkm away using FTL...

Relax wrote:FTL fire control ranges will be going uP, not DOwn. FTL RD's already have vastly more range than FTL Apollo. This shows WHERE in the future, combat is going via fire control limitations.

Moriarity was fire control around a planet. Now sensor platforms FEEDING its fire control would be placed further out, just as would happen for Mycroft. Mycroft is not a relay for using 4 stage MDM's. It is the fire control station. The 4th stage is for tactical considerations for maneuvering at extreme range where it is possible to need 2 stages on ships who maneuver at extreme range. I believe we all think the 4th stage is a sprint drive. We honestly do not know. IF it is a sprint drive, then one MUST have a full 3rd stage or at minimum the third stage ALSO being a sprint drive to attack ships at extreme range as a ship can maneuver out of the attack range from a single sprint with prior 2 stages + ballistic. Do the math in Excel to properly play with the number.

At All Costs: Ch 37 wrote:Moriarty was Shannon Foraker's system defense answer to the individual inferiority of the Republic's missile pods. The control station was a flat, light-drinking black, constructed of radar absorbent materials. It was almost impossible to detect, as long as it practiced strict emission-control discipline, and the Manticoran recon arrays had missed it entirely.
Now it reached out through the other innocent-looking orbital platforms which had been seeded about the system at the same time. Each of those platforms was, in effect, a less capable, simpler minded version of the RMN's own Keyholes. They formed a network, an expanding spray of tentacles, which gave Moriarty literally thousands of fire control telemetry links. And what those links lacked in Manticoran-style sophistication they made up in numbers, because they could control the missiles assigned to them without break all the way to their targets.

runsforcelery wrote:You install Mycroft in the inner system, with dispersed FTL com nodes to control Apollo system defense muissiles the same way Shannon Foraker's Moriarity did with Havenite MDMs against 8th Fleet."

runsforcelery wrote:a four-stage drive to give the birds more endurance, a longer powered envelope, and much higher acceleration in the last stage of attack (the fourth stage turns out a higher acceleration for a briefer period than any of the other three stages)