Delayed CM activation

Theemile wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Probably not. Most combat happens in n-space, within the hyper limit, and there just isn't enough room in there for ships to get up to high relativistic speeds.

The Mk 23s need shielding because they may be coasting for a while at 0.5c. Ship's can get that fast, but most combat probably happens below 0.2c. Lower speed means less sensor wear; and less need for shielding. (Plus the CMs aren't likely to be coasting for all that long)

I could argue that different stars may be more energetic and have a higher particle density in their systems, but most human occupied system will be near stars with similar conditions to our own. So yes, you wouldn't need them in combat 95% of the time. In the odd 5%, it wouldn't be useless, just much less effective.

CM volumes and masses are tight. They may not be able to afford much particle shielding. Then again, if you lose 10, 15, 20% of your coasting CM's to particle impacts, it's probably still worth it.

Carl wrote:Not really. I mean given the size of the wedges there's probably a lower limit on how many you can pack together in one salvo before mutual interference of wedges makes it impossible to drive control links through because of mutual blocking, but that's about it.

Space is big. No. Space is really, really, really, BIG. How many millions of these buggers do you want to launch??? See the very basic calc up thread. Besides, you initiate those furthest out first.

SWM wrote:

Relax wrote:So, no one really has any problems with Delayed CM activation especially in the case of providing additional CM's for forward deployed LAC's.

Otherwise the only major "problem" is the # of "control links".

Well, the other problem is that it only works if the launching ships are accelerating away from the enemy, instead of toward the enemy. If the two sides are accelerating toward each other, or they are both accelerating toward the same point from different angles, this trick would not work. It only works in a stern chase scenario, which is not very common with fleets.

True, does not work under all scenarios if you think of the battle in terms of one dimensional. IT certainly does work if you agree with my drift speeds I posted.

Who cares if the CM's are 500,000km behind you? Does not matter. What is a current CM's range again? 3.75Mkm. What are old CM's ranges again? 2Mkm.

Which is larger?

Theemile wrote:

Relax wrote:So, no one really has any problems with Delayed CM activation especially in the case of providing additional CM's for forward deployed LAC's.

Otherwise the only major "problem" is the # of "control links".

For me no - the only issue I *could* see is the duration the capacitor can hold the charge for initiating the wedge.

Yup, this is the only limitation as far as I see as well. I originally posted this question in my original post. I do not believe there is any text or pearls one could use to argue either for or against. Leaves us leaning on "reality", but here we have a major problem as the energy densities we are talking about are impossible under our reality, so...

As for wedge fratricide on start-up, what, those people with brains in a task force cannot pre-plan where to send these missiles first? They have to just launch them stupidly? That is the barrier you set up? So, if BuShips is really stupid, along with everyone else in the navy, sure we can have wedge fratricide as they are being blind fired by a bunch of moronic monkey's' instead of rational human beings.

Relax wrote:
Yup, this is the only limitation as far as I see as well. I originally posted this question in my original post. I do not believe there is any text or pearls one could use to argue either for or against. Leaves us leaning on "reality", but here we have a major problem as the energy densities we are talking about are impossible under our reality, so...

As for wedge fratricide on start-up, what, those people with brains in a task force cannot pre-plan where to send these missiles first? They have to just launch them stupidly? That is the barrier you set up? So, if BuShips is really stupid, along with everyone else in the navy, sure we can have wedge fratricide as they are being blind fired by a bunch of moronic monkey's' instead of rational human beings.

Wedge fratricide happens all the time in the Honorverse, even from piddlingly small launches from single DDs and cruisers, So when we're talking about throwing thousands of CMs along a single threat vector from dozens or hundreds of ships which are maneuvering freely and then doing a remote startup minutes later - YES, wedge fratricide will be a factor. And, if you throw a mesh network up, you can potentially get more consistent coverage as well.

Genius or village idiot status doesn't seem to apply in the Honorverse - because wedge fratricide seems to happen in every battle.

In one of RFC's many notes [which I'm not finding quickly durn it], he points out how at extended (DDM and MDM ranges), the missile courses are somewhat like howitzer fire until the last maybe 10 seconds, but more accurately the last five which is where the precise targeting has to take place. Otherwise the x-ray laser warheads don't stand a chance in the planet around Cerebus of acquiring a ship to target.

My problem is with the whole "wedge collision" being the only way a CM can take out an attack missile, if the CM's wedge is only 10km wide. Timed properly a set of CM's should also be able to be used as extended shields and or an incoming attack missile blinder even if it's not going to be able to generate a wedge on wedge hit. Wish I could draw the picture in my head, but it's like "send out a CM with a tiny bow wall that jumps up to CM strength when it acquires a target"

In other words, if the CM's programming can be set to knows a bit about more where it's mother ship plans to be at X+n seconds within the mother-ship's great big wedge space, it can automatically interpose itself and keep that course all the way until the missile warhead reaches firing range. Since the sensors of the missile can't see past to find the ship and the bomb-pumped lasers can't penetrate the CM wedge, that insures a miss, doesn't it?

Thoughts?

Relax. Space is big sure. But CM wedges aren't tiny and they have to keep their after aspect clear to point at the friendly controlling ship. That restricts them to purely 2 dimensional shapes for any given wave of CM's. When each missile just for wedge on wedge fractacide issues needs a cross section many km a side that starts to add up to a really large chunk of space. Worse still in the finial maneuvering phase the CM's need maneuvering space around them so they can maneuver to intercept an evading missile without risking hitting each other. Given the lag the controlling ship isn't going to be able to coordinate the maneuvers so the spacing needs, (especially now with apollo), to assume that the missiles will begin hard evasive maneuvers deliberately designed to force CM's to kill each other right around the moment the CM command loop becomes too long for the ship to respond. That at maximum range equates to a time of 6.25 seconds. Call it 6 for easy sums. Depending on missile movement that's a separation at the start of that point of between, (depending on what drive settings are available to the attacking missiles), 8250-16,500 km. That starts to make even a small number of coutermissles take up huge great bloody gobs of space.


@SharkHunter: Struggling to comprehend what your suggesting there...

Carl wrote:Relax. Space is big sure. But CM wedges aren't tiny and they have to keep their after aspect clear to point at the friendly controlling ship. That restricts them to purely 2 dimensional shapes for any given wave of CM's.

Size. Currently an Invictus launches roughly 300CM's and 60MDM/s every 12s. They clear the wedge, turn 90 degrees and head for the enemy in front of the ship. That is a VERY tiny volume of space. Those missiles are not fratriciding themselves. Now, take same number of CM's/time launched and let them drift. What happens to the area of of a circle with an increase in radius? Its AREA(limiting to 2d here) increases by the SQUARE of its radius. Therefore all those predeployed CM's, have MORE room to maneuver/time than those that Immediately start their wedge! When one considers the 3d characteristics, the volume separation goes up by the third power of their drifted time! CM volume density decreases by drifted time making wedge fratricide rates decrease. Not increase.

Communication: How is that a problem? They are ballistic, they have no wedge. There is zero need to interact with said CM's until they are in front of your ships and headed towards the incoming missiles with their arses pointed at your ship. Of course who says the CM's cannot cannot be communicated with from the side? LAC's can do so, why can a ship not do so?

Carl wrote: When each missile just for wedge on wedge fractacide issues needs a cross section many km a side that starts to add up to a really large chunk of space. Worse still in the finial maneuvering phase the CM's need maneuvering space around them so they can maneuver to intercept an evading missile without risking hitting each other. Given the lag the controlling ship isn't going to be able to coordinate the maneuvers so the spacing needs, (especially now with apollo), to assume that the missiles will begin hard evasive maneuvers deliberately designed to force CM's to kill each other right around the moment the CM command loop becomes too long for the ship to respond. That at maximum range equates to a time of 6.25 seconds. Call it 6 for easy sums. Depending on missile movement that's a separation at the start of that point of between, (depending on what drive settings are available to the attacking missiles), 8250-16,500 km. That starts to make even a small number of coutermissles take up huge great bloody gobs of space.

What has time lag from ship got to do with wedge CM fratricide from predeployed CM's??? You are at an initial logic fail as at no point has this discussion veered anywhere near terminal CM/MDM interaction. Those threads are already on this board in numerous forms. All agree a form of FTL must be used. Mine uses RD's in a sector format, or use a 2 short stage CM with a low/high setup in the stages with FTL RD's. Or some variation between those two or three themes. This thread is not about those issues. Those are separate and I wholly agree, they must be dealt with.

NOW, back to what this thread was discussing:
A single ship can launch ~10,000 MDM's but only launch 1500 CM's in retaliation. Currently they are trying to use LAC's to help bolster the imbalance, but said LAC's have miniscule magazines are effectively only good for roughly 2-3 minutes of continuous CM fire, making them a stop gap measure at best. The problem currently is rather obvious. Even a 2nd grade kid can figure out that 10,000 >>> 1500! Total number of CM's must increase. Drastically. Therefore one can increase total number of CM tubes, or one can increase the length of time the CM tubes you already have, can fire missiles.

elax: Delayed CM activation is ONLY useful if it lets you get more intercepts. If you can't pack all those countermissiles into a sufficient volume of space that gives them clear control links back to the controlling ship then a whole lot of those CM' are usefulness.

If you can overcome that you've still got to have the space to deploy them all sufficiently separated that they can respond to incoming missile maneuvers strictly on their limited initiative without running into each other. If they need more space for that than is available again a bunch of the missiles go to waste.

And yes FTL control links will help with that massively. But the discussion as far as i or anyone else i've seen discussing it was talking about isn't about some theoretical future system that we don't know the details of that might mess up how delayed CM would work. It's about taking existing non-FTL CM's and using delayed launches.


With current generation MDM 's at 920K gravities a meager 400 CM's need to be arranged into a square over a light second on each side to give adequate separation. it only grows from there.

So, according to your deductive reasoning, CM's do not have sensors and therefore run into each other, radio communications all of a sudden do not work in your HV universe and on top of that you can't fire off and guide 500,000 CM's, but you can do so with MDM's... Yea. Makes perfect sense now.

To "bolster" your argument: How about doing very very very basic math for the CM flow rate in space required. Oh yes, do post your assumptions. Do remember if MDM's can be that tight, so can CM's. Oh yes, CM's can maneuver better than MDM's, so remember that when you are doing your "maneuvers" for MDM's that supposedly make the CM's run into each other even though space is a 3d environment. So, at minimum, CM's have to able to be launched just as densely as MDM's on a per salvo density. The only question after that is the iteration in wave time.

You see I already did basic math upthread. If more than 100km from each other on a 2d plane is too little, by all means show what the MDM's are on. Now remember this is a 3d problem and how many of these "planes/salvos" of missiles can be nose to tail. To make it easy, one can calculate everything as a cube. In reality CM's stack spherically, so stack density would be twice that of a cube as a sphere inside a cube is roughly ~50%,(16*PI*d^3).

Lets be overly generous can call a missile wave front even at 3Mkm out the laser head attack range. 60,000km. So, diameter of circle of missiles is 120,000km. Reality would be greater than this. That is a tidy area of 11E9 km. Lets call a wave front 10,000km deep. Lets be very generous and state missile, be it CM or MDM is 1000km from another. 7.8E5. That is a total of 14,000. Now as it is 10,000km deep we have a multiplier of 10 and since this is not a cube function but a spherical function another multiplier of 2. Total multiplier of 20. Or each wave front/salvo would be 240,000CM's/MDM's even on 1000km spacing. Next wave front would be say, 240,000km behind. Notice I used 240,000km as that just happens to be 0.8c.

So, even if you only used a SINGLE wave on 1000km spacing, either for laser head attack range MDM incoming, or interception of MDM's(CM's). That singular wave would have at minimum 14,000. Well, we have already seen battles where hundreds of thousands are being launched in a single wave, so ya might want to consider modifying your statements rather drastically.

I'll stick to my 240,000 CM's to millions at even laser head attack range at extreme range for interception for a singular wave.