Compensators, Wallers, and tonnage

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

Not sure. The infodump isn't specific, it just says "Said solution was to take one of the Agamemnons which had already been laid down and simply convert a portion of the missile core into additional personnel space." -- but it doesn't say the first one laid down.

(Also, as mentioned upthread that infodump specifically mentions that the Duke of Cromarty has keyholes.

Jonathan_S wrote:

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.

I saw that when runsforcelery originally posted it.* But it brings up a question: Did David change his mind, have a Shannon Foraker "Oops" moment , or introduce a potential retcon**? Since I posted Re: Future Point Defense Options back on 11 February 2015 that we see Fearless firing stepped-down counter-missiles at attack missiles fired by Sirius, and targeted against Fearless, all the way back in On Basilisk Station, Chapter 30.

* When David first posted that bit on counter-missiles, it didn't bring up the apparent contradiction with the text in On Basilisk Station. But when you bolded the section on the inability to step-down counter-missile drives, it leapt out at me.

** Potential only, since information in the Pearls and David's posts here are not canon until confirmed in the books.

Edited for clarity and to correct the target(s) Fearless' CMs were directed against.

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

Everyone doesn't think so. It was one of the first, but I doubt the first. Anytime you start modifying the design of a ship already under construction it doesn't make it get finished faster then those you didn't modify.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/248/0

Jonathan_S wrote:Not sure. The infodump isn't specific, it just says "Said solution was to take one of the Agamemnons which had already been laid down and simply convert a portion of the missile core into additional personnel space." -- but it doesn't say the first one laid down.

(Also, as mentioned upthread that infodump specifically mentions that the Duke of Cromarty has keyholes.

Thanks Jonathan.

So, combining that with what's in HoS, Duke of Cromarty can't have been earlier than third in the class - Ajax was second in the class and was the first to go for the Keyhole refit. It makes sense - the earlier the ship was in its construction process, the easier it would be to make the adaptations to turn it into the royal yacht. Plus it would allow the government to say 'Look, we ordered a shiny new yacht for the Queen' while still keeping Elizabeth waiting as long as possible, which would doubtless have warmed High Ridge's spiteful little heart.

kzt wrote:

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

Everyone doesn't think so. It was one of the first, but I doubt the first. Anytime you start modifying the design of a ship already under construction it doesn't make it get finished faster then those you didn't modify.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/248/0

But Janacheck froze construction on the original ~6 combat Agamemnons laid down by the Cromarty Adm. between the wars, and construction wasn't restarted on them until High Ridge was concerned about Haven's new fleet in the run up to Thunderbolt. So if Janacheck ordered the conversion at roughly the same time he ordered the construction on the other slowed, chances are the Duke of Cromarty wasn't the first laid down, but it could have been the first completed Agamemnon.

Theemile wrote:So if Janacheck ordered the conversion at roughly the same time he ordered the construction on the other slowed, chances are the Duke of Cromarty wasn't the first laid down, but it could have been the first completed Agamemnon.

With David's bizarre economics who the heck knows? Try shutting down shipyard for 5 years and then see how long it takes to hire and train shipyard workers to build ships that will pass acceptance trials.

kzt wrote:

Theemile wrote:So if Janacheck ordered the conversion at roughly the same time he ordered the construction on the other slowed, chances are the Duke of Cromarty wasn't the first laid down, but it could have been the first completed Agamemnon.

With David's bizarre economics who the heck knows? Try shutting down shipyard for 5 years and then see how long it takes to hire and train shipyard workers to build ships that will pass acceptance trials.

No thanks - I might as well try to build it myself in my backyard.

Vince wrote:Snipped surrounding post by Jonathan_S

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

I saw that when runsforcelery originally posted it.* But it brings up a question: Did David change his mind, have a Shannon Foraker "Oops" moment , or introduce a potential retcon**? Since I posted Re: Future Point Defense Options back on 11 February 2015 that we see Fearless firing stepped-down counter-missiles at attack missiles fired by Sirius, and targeted against Fearless, all the way back in On Basilisk Station, Chapter 30.

* When David first posted that bit on counter-missiles, it didn't bring up the apparent contradiction with the text in On Basilisk Station. But when you bolded the section on the inability to step-down counter-missile drives, it leapt out at me.

** Potential only, since information in the Pearls and David's posts here are not canon until confirmed in the books.

Edited for clarity and to correct the target(s) Fearless' CMs were directed against.

Hmm, I did snip the next sentence of his post which said "Even at the most minimal level possible for the desired wedge strength, they are operating at too high a level to extend endurance significantly and, just as the shipkiller, the wedge can't be "throttled" after launch." because it wasn't directly relevant to the question of whether you could slow them 50% to get 3x the endurance (like with a shipkiller)
(It's possible that this apparent contradiction didn't pop out at you when you first read it because that data wasn't omitted )


So you can dial down their accel slightly, but you don't get significantly extended endurance. I suppose that's not a flat out contradiction with the text from OBS

On Basilisk Station wrote: The Q-ship's missiles were still burning out before they came in, but the engagement time between salvos was too short for Cardones to wait them out. He had to launch sooner, with poorer solutions and lower counter-missile accelerations to give him more time—and range—on their impeller wedges.

. Seems, to me, that it all boils down to what RFC thinks of as "minimal" and "significantly"

Gets back to, how much tonnage and $$$ is required for a 1/2 power setting and a 2nd stage impeller drive. How much Cm tonnage is Capacitors in comparison to the impellers. SDM's we know have a lower power setting, but they are a larger missile. How much of that missile's tonnage is due to that ability to create a 1/2 power setting. In fact, does this lower power setting set the ceiling for the HIGH acceleration attainable threshold? Would make sense to me if this was true.

All big ol' QQ??QQ??s. Yes, MaxxQ has shown us the guts of a CM, but how much tonnage is each part... What are the trade offs? All unknowns.

If Capacitors are the majority of tonnage in a CM, then creating a 2stage CM where the first stage is 1/2 power setting is easily doable and could actually be a smaller CM with greater range than the MK-31. If on the other hand Capacitors are not the majority of the tonnage, then kersplat, much larger CM's.

Still need that pseudo FTL component otherwise no reason to bother.

Vince wrote:I saw that when runsforcelery originally posted it.* But it brings up a question: Did David change his mind, have a Shannon Foraker "Oops" moment , or introduce a potential retcon**? Since I posted Re: Future Point Defense Options back on 11 February 2015 that we see Fearless firing stepped-down counter-missiles at attack missiles fired by Sirius, and targeted against Fearless, all the way back in On Basilisk Station, Chapter 30.

* When David first posted that bit on counter-missiles, it didn't bring up the apparent contradiction with the text in On Basilisk Station. But when you bolded the section on the inability to step-down counter-missile drives, it leapt out at me.

** Potential only, since information in the Pearls and David's posts here are not canon until confirmed in the books.

Edited for clarity and to correct the target(s) Fearless' CMs were directed against.

It is neither a retcon nor an OOPS. David was saying that the new counter-missiles, with their higher accelerations and range, cannot be stepped down. The counter-missiles on the old CL Fearless could. No contradiction at all.