Compensators, Wallers, and tonnage

@Relax: So somehow copy paste and typing out 15 characters is stupidly hard is it? The quote function is a piece of piss to use don;t talk trash.

Also i asked what he was trying to say because i have no clue how what he said related to anything i said. he seemed to be replying to a completely non-existant point by an equally non-existent poster and accidentally inserted a quote from me.

@Wasted: no it's not more concise it takes space pages and is annoying. Don't do it again if you want replies.

Theemile wrote:I wouldn't have phrased it quite like that, but basically I agree.

Offbore missile capability is said to be a factor of the missile design (more accel resistant molicirc) - so any ship with new CMs would have off-bore capable CMs.

IIRC David said that Aggies starting with ship #2 were refit on the ways with Keyhole. So only HMS Agamemnon herself is lacking it. At least for RMN BC(P)s that addresses any issues with insufficient control links.

So their BC(P)s should have the same offbore CM capability as the BC(L)s.


In fact, in Ch 27 of AAC, we see one of the 6 original Agamemnon-class BC(P)s, HMS Hector, (in company with the BC(L) HMS Nike) use her Keyholes to fire CMs fully 90 degrees off-bore while rolled behind her wedge.

Actually, I believe that the Agamemnon itself has the keyhole upgrade - while you could split hairs, technically, it was the #2 ship in the class.

The first finished Agamemnon was the Lord Cromarty, completed with a smaller Podbay and fitted as the Royal Yacht, It was finished while the other 5 or 6 ships waited in a 1/2 completed state due to Janacheck's ineptitude. It's Royal conversion is probably the reason it did not (or could not) receive the Keyhole upgrade.

So most likely, all the 85+ combat BC(p)s have Keyhole I.[/quote]
Could be. I half remembers something about the conversion starting with ship #2; but it was just my assumption that ship #1 was the name ship for the class. (But except for the AAC referece that post was off the top of my head; I didn't try to go back and find RFC's statement about Aggies and Keyhole)

According to HoS, just over four squadrons of Agamemnons were refitted with Keyhole before the Battle of Solon, starting with the second unit (HMS Ajax, not Agamemnon), after which the decision to make the upgrade was reevaluated, as was building it into Flight III from scratch. Putting in the Keyhole bays cut very deep into the hull, resulting in significantly thinner armour over one of the fusion plants, and post-battle assessments of Solon indicated that two of the three Agamemnons lost blew up due to reactor hits.

As to the relative merits of the BC(P) and BC(L)'s defences, a Courvoisier II does have 4 more CM tubes than a Nike, but it has 12 fewer PDLCs, so which has the stronger active defences is likely open to question. What isn't debatable is that the Nike will have stronger passive defences - it's 750kt larger (aka an entire pre-war battlecruiser larger), so its sidewalls and radiation shields will be stronger, its armour will be thicker and it'll have stronger internal reinforcement and protection in depth, and that's before you take into account the inherently weaker hull structure of a pod design. I'll take a BC(L) over a BC(P) any day of the week, thanks.

Theemile wrote:The first finished Agamemnon was the Lord Cromarty, completed with a smaller Podbay and fitted as the Royal Yacht, It was finished while the other 5 or 6 ships waited in a 1/2 completed state due to Janacheck's ineptitude. It's Royal conversion is probably the reason it did not (or could not) receive the Keyhole upgrade.

So most likely, all the 85+ combat BC(p)s have Keyhole I.

No, it explicitly did receive KH1.

wastedfly wrote: And, Yes, I do consider the GSN Courvosair BCP better than the Aggy as it has a couple broadside tubes. It would be pretty stupid to shoot an entire pod of missiles at a pirate... But with viper missiles, maybe this does not matter anymore. If only said vipers had a 1/2 power function their range would be 16Mkm instead of 3.75Mkm.

So, IF, vipers had a 1/2 power function, you could argue that a BCL can produce roughly (50/18)*60 + 60*60/8 or a tidy 167MK16s/min + 450Vipers/min or north of 600 offensive missiles/min. Now obviously ppl will start to catch on and they will kill the MK-16's first and ignore the vipers till later. One trick pony? Maybe. Depends on upgrade ability of viper and if it is worth it or not to MK-16G standards. In either case it will not have the power available for ECM dragons teeth etc and the defender will still swat the MK-16s first.

FYI vipers can't be stepped down to 50% power. Here's the relivant excerpt from a post from last july, in the thread 'Technical questions re military hardware'

runsforcelery wrote:The nodes of current generation Manty CMs have profited from the same general RMN R&D as brought us the Mk 14 shipkiller, the MDM and the improved beta nodes of the Shrike. That is, all of the nodes in question are tougher and have more endurance than their predecessors had, extending node life and/or power levels (but not both; endurance and power [i.e., accel] have always been a tradeoff), which explains the greater endurance of the Mk 31 and the Viper. CM missile nodes always have --- and still do --- burn out much more quickly than attack missile nodes built by the same technology, however, and the overpowered nature of their wedges mean that they can't be "stepped down" for extra endurance

(bold emphasis added)
But prior to seeing that post I'd also been wondering if you could step a Viper or Mk31 down to a 'mere' 65,000g for a nice 16 million km powered range.


Oh, and BCs are rarely tasked with anti piracy duties; and they probably have less need to fire warning shots that smaller ships more likely to be tasked to stop & search duties. (And while they do on occasion pull convoy escort jobs it's be a pretty crazy pirate to try to take on a convoy protected by a few BCs). So wanting to fire less than a whole pod probably doesn't come up all that often.
On the other hand having broadside tubes lets you selectively add a few more ECM birds of your choice to a given pod salvo - so there is still some definite benefit to the flexibility they provide.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:The first finished Agamemnon was the Lord Cromarty, completed with a smaller Podbay and fitted as the Royal Yacht, It was finished while the other 5 or 6 ships waited in a 1/2 completed state due to Janacheck's ineptitude. It's Royal conversion is probably the reason it did not (or could not) receive the Keyhole upgrade.

So most likely, all the 85+ combat BC(p)s have Keyhole I.

No, it explicitly did receive KH1.

And is the Duke of Cromarty, not the Lord Cromarty.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Relax wrote:Uh, firing off bore has everything to do with the missile being shot out the tubes. Remember, RFC made up that hoey, that missiles originally could not "turn the corner" due to velocity sheer Even when they are pulling a hundred thousand gees and have reaction thrusters able to spin longitudinally just fine...

Has zilch to do with the ship class or type other than having enough of RFC's make-believe control links.

Every ship, even pre 1905 ones, now have off bore firing.

I wouldn't have phrased it quite like that, but basically I agree.

Offbore missile capability is said to be a factor of the missile design (more accel resistant molicirc) - so any ship with new CMs would have off-bore capable CMs.

IIRC David said that Aggies starting with ship #2 were refit on the ways with Keyhole. So only HMS Agamemnon herself is lacking it. At least for RMN BC(P)s that addresses any issues with insufficient control links.

So their BC(P)s should have the same offbore CM capability as the BC(L)s.


In fact, in Ch 27 of AAC, we see one of the 6 original Agamemnon-class BC(P)s, HMS Hector, (in company with the BC(L) HMS Nike) use her Keyholes to fire CMs fully 90 degrees off-bore while rolled behind her wedge.

Actually, there is a simple logical test for off-bore firing. Does the design NOT have launchers (shipkiller or CM) in any of the 4 firing arcs? If so, the design definitely has to have offbore launchers to defend those arcs, or else they would have designed in launchers specifically for that arc.

In both cases, neither ship design has CM launchers in the fore or aft aspects, so they definitely have offbore launchers.

Before anyone grabs their pitchforks without referencing their logic manuals, The above test never revels whether or not a ship with all 4 arcs covered does or does not have offfbore firing. Just having launchers in all arcs is NOT a sign of having OR not having off-bore launchers -you can still have offbore firing - or not, depending on your tech. So if all 4 arcs are covered, go look at the text if you want to know more.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:The first finished Agamemnon was the Lord Cromarty, completed with a smaller Podbay and fitted as the Royal Yacht, It was finished while the other 5 or 6 ships waited in a 1/2 completed state due to Janacheck's ineptitude. It's Royal conversion is probably the reason it did not (or could not) receive the Keyhole upgrade.

So most likely, all the 85+ combat BC(p)s have Keyhole I.

No, it explicitly did receive KH1.

Where did it say the Cromarty received the KH upgrade -it's just odd it would get it and not the original Aggy, since essentially all 6 were the prototypes (unless the Aggy was destroyed prior to the refit)

-nevermind, found it in DAvid's original writeup.

Very odd - if the Duke of Cromarty was completed before the rest of it's mates, why could the 1st one not get the upgrade?

Theemile wrote:Where did it say the Cromarty received the KH upgrade -it's just odd it would get it and not the original Aggy, since essentially all 6 were the prototypes (unless the Aggy was destroyed prior to the refit)

I'm not sure where the reference to Duke of Cromarty is, but from the text in HoS the addition of Keyhole wasn't a refit in the traditional sense of equipment being added to a finished ship. The text is:

"Starting with the second unit of the class, HMS Ajax, BuShips began sending units already fitting out and in various stages of construction through a refit program to add the Mk20 Keyhole platform." From that, it seems to me that Agamemnone may not have received Keyhole because she was completed before the refit program was started. She'd probably be slated to get it at her first major refit, unless the Admiralty decided to abandon the BC(P) concept altogether and not spend the yard time on upgrades to an obselete design.

Just curious - why does everyone seem to think Duke of Cromarty was the first Agamemnon completed?