Dual Sidewalls

JeffEngel wrote:A Keyhole platform of whatever sort, outside the wedge and with its own power systems (or tremendous beamed power, or both) could use a spherical sidewall like fortresses.

But a spherical bubble wouldn't help protect the ship, which is what this possibility was aiming to do. I just speculated on to how to achieve a workable second sidewall, without breaking the pearls.

It'd only be able to absorb a certain amount of damage, before the sidewall generators either burn out, or get banged around enough to dislodge, with no crew aboard to repair. But it'd still give a decisive edge to a ship that had this notional, buckler generating Keyhole-III against even a ship that had Keyhole-II.

A spherical bubble protected Keyhole, would be the system-defence variant, that works with the Moriarty upgrade (cant recall the name right this second). That would guard them against Mistletoe style attacks, and they'd still have the standard KH platform active defenses, which could double as offensive weapons against LACs and shuttles that snuck in on a ballistic course.

Why on earth would someone want 2 sidewalls? Just increase the strength of the sidewall generators you already have. HV ships already tote around redundant sidewall generators as well for battle damage. It has not been true for lighter combatants to traditionally carry redundant generators. SAG-C does not. BCL does.

On lighter ships, the designers choose, to limit the sidewall strength to save $$$/tonnage/power requirements.

MuonNeutrino wrote:I assume you're thinking of using that drone/missile like object to shield the ship by generating a 'sideways' wedge to cover the gap normally covered by a sidewall? It's an interesting idea, but there's a problem, I think. Ports can be opened in sidewalls, but unless it's been superseded, Weber mentioned in the appendix to The Short Victorious War that you can't open ports in wedges. And if that drone is using one band of its wedge (say the belly, for the sake of discussion) as a pseudo-sidewall for the ship, then the roof band will be in between the drone and the ship, preventing the ship from towing the drone since you can't open a hole in the band for the tractor to pass through.

I will admit it does seem odd that military ships manage to generate a two-layer wedge. I'm not sure why that's possible when a two-layer sidewall isn't.

As usual, due to work, I'm late to the party.

A sidewall is created from a sidewall generator. A wedge is created from alpha and/or beta nodes. These are two completely different creatures, and sidewall generators cannot create a double sidewall.

Also, a single sidewall is necessary because the ship needs to open the "gunports", as already noted. For energy weapons, it's not really such a big deal, but for missiles, there is a "gravitic launch tube" that runs between the physical, in-ship launch tube, and the sidewall. This gravitic launch tube continues to accelerate the missile after it has left the physical launch tube, and needs to be "anchored" to the sidewall. I'm not completely sure, but I *think* the gravitic launch tube is what actually "opens" the port, and it ends at the sidewall.

You should be able to see why a double sidewall would be a bad idea at this point.

And no, there is no way to open a gunport - or *any* kind of port - in a wedge.

Somtaaw wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:A Keyhole platform of whatever sort, outside the wedge and with its own power systems (or tremendous beamed power, or both) could use a spherical sidewall like fortresses.

But a spherical bubble wouldn't help protect the ship, which is what this possibility was aiming to do. I just speculated on to how to achieve a workable second sidewall, without breaking the pearls.

Honestly, neither will a buckler. The biggest buckler wall seems to be less than 1/2 km is diameter ("It was a much smaller, circular shield, its diameter less than twice the ship's extreme beam" [SoS]). Even out at the normal sidewall standoff range of 10 km that only provides protection from shots within a few degrees of the ship's heading.

And a Keyhole style drone is much further out, well past 150 km, where the wedge end. So even if a keyhole type drone can generate a buckler that large, the whole area the buckler covered would be a miniscule dot compared to the size of the broadside wedge opening.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:But a spherical bubble wouldn't help protect the ship, which is what this possibility was aiming to do. I just speculated on to how to achieve a workable second sidewall, without breaking the pearls.

Honestly, neither will a buckler. The biggest buckler wall seems to be less than 1/2 km is diameter ("It was a much smaller, circular shield, its diameter less than twice the ship's extreme beam" [SoS]). Even out at the normal sidewall standoff range of 10 km that only provides protection from shots within a few degrees of the ship's heading.

And a Keyhole style drone is much further out, well past 150 km, where the wedge end. So even if a keyhole type drone can generate a buckler that large, the whole area the buckler covered would be a miniscule dot compared to the size of the broadside wedge opening.

Hmm, that's a good point I failed to consider just how large the buckler was, and how far away the drones were.

I guess the only real way to get better sidewalls, is installing the bigger, better generators. I'm sure at some point, Manticore will get around to miniaturizing them too.

Can you picture Grand Alliance light craft, DDs and CLs, running around with sidewalls tougher than old-style Battlecruisers? And Heavy Cruiser or Battlecruisers roaming around with sidewalls as tough as second/third-gen CLACs?

Note: I selected the CLACs, because without any need for gunports in their sidewalls, CLAC sidewalls are arguably even tougher than that of podnoughts, who still have their broadside tubes.

Or even more horrifying.... fourth generation podnoughts with sidewalls that rival those on the Junction Forts?

Edit elaboration: This seems like a logical progression of the arms progression, mostly being pioneered by Grayson, who started off the "cramming over-sized things into smaller hulls", with arming their Courvosier I's with SD grasers instead of more, smaller ones.

So the logical progression from giving smaller and smaller ships, the same guns as their fatter cousins, would be giving said smaller ships similar sidewalls too. After all, to hammer the armor, you first have to get past the sidewalls. It's not a magic "I win" for smaller combatants, but it does give a tremendous edge.

Textev shows that the DN Bellerophon, even from total surprise (Rear Adm. Pierres two BC divisions in tSVW) achieved only 1-2 hits despite firing with total surprise. Sultan's have 12 lasers, and 12 grasers, giving a total broadside attack of over 96 light-speed weapons firing. That works out to just over 0.03% of shots fired getting past DN sidewalls from BC-sized lasers & grasers.

end of edit.

What I would be curious about is to whether or not drone missiles could be re-purposed to generate a sidewall. Even if each drone's sidewall was only a few square kilometers in diameter, stacking a lot of them together in an integrated network might allow a ship to create a second sidewall tens of thousands of kilometers from the ship itself.

My thought here, and I could be way off base, would be that if you use a network of drones to generate a perimeter sidewall 50,000 kilometers (or whatever is just outside a laser warheads detonation range) from the ship along the path most likely to be taken by missiles, then the ships Laser Clusters could ignore that approach vector and concentrate on the surrounding space.

If I am correct and a sidewall penetrating missile refers to its armament, and not the missile itself, than any missile that flies into the drone sidewall would be disintegrated. And if the missiles instead mistake the drone sidewall for the real thing and fire at it then their laserheads would be too far out of reach to penetrate the ships actual sidewall.

In effect, the drone sidewall would be another layer in the defense network of a capital ship, one that may only survive intact for the first couple rounds of fire but could greatly increase the ships ability to survive the first couple of rounds. And, in an age of massed missile combat the ability to survive even 2 extra barrages could be extremely important both in terms of winning the battle as well as survive-ability for the ship and its crew.

Then again, I could be completely wrong and thus I await a more senior 'officers' reasons as to why this could never work.

Erls wrote:What I would be curious about is to whether or not drone missiles could be re-purposed to generate a sidewall. Even if each drone's sidewall was only a few square kilometers in diameter, stacking a lot of them together in an integrated network might allow a ship to create a second sidewall tens of thousands of kilometers from the ship itself.

My thought here, and I could be way off base, would be that if you use a network of drones to generate a perimeter sidewall 50,000 kilometers (or whatever is just outside a laser warheads detonation range) from the ship along the path most likely to be taken by missiles, then the ships Laser Clusters could ignore that approach vector and concentrate on the surrounding space.

If I am correct and a sidewall penetrating missile refers to its armament, and not the missile itself, than any missile that flies into the drone sidewall would be disintegrated. And if the missiles instead mistake the drone sidewall for the real thing and fire at it then their laserheads would be too far out of reach to penetrate the ships actual sidewall.

In effect, the drone sidewall would be another layer in the defense network of a capital ship, one that may only survive intact for the first couple rounds of fire but could greatly increase the ships ability to survive the first couple of rounds. And, in an age of massed missile combat the ability to survive even 2 extra barrages could be extremely important both in terms of winning the battle as well as survive-ability for the ship and its crew.

Then again, I could be completely wrong and thus I await a more senior 'officers' reasons as to why this could never work.

It's been suggested here before. The most elaborate was an idea of englobing a ship with drones wedge out. That was shot down when people realized the drones in front would not be able to accelerate with the ship. Other suggestions were a cylinder or just two walls of drones along the broadsides, which could roll over to open gaps for the ship to shoot out through. The biggest argument against it was that it would be difficult or impossible to control the drones through their wedge, to keep them flying in formation and to rotate on command.

Simply having drones generate sidewalls does not really provide more protection than the existing ship sidewalls. Drone sidewalls would not be very strong--Manticoran LAC sidewalls are strong because they use beta-squared nodes and a more powerful generator than could fit in a drone. To really provide useful protection from a drone, it would have to be the wedge.

I have generally been a skeptic of the idea. But it gained some credibility when the Anderman Empire used LAC wedges to protect a ship from a mine field. In that case, the ship and LACs stopped accelerating, and the LACs in front of the ship turned sideways to block the throat of the ship with their wedges. So it worked around the problems outlined above.

SWM wrote:I have generally been a skeptic of the idea. But it gained some credibility when the Anderman Empire used LAC wedges to protect a ship from a mine field. In that case, the ship and LACs stopped accelerating, and the LACs in front of the ship turned sideways to block the throat of the ship with their wedges. So it worked around the problems outlined above.

I personally think that tactic was partially how Manticore invented the bow-wall concept. I believe it was Herzog von Rabenstrange who had developed the LAC defence against minefields, and he'd published it in an Andermani naval manual?

And iirc, the Andermani having done their little minefield trick actually happened (in the book) shortly after Honor's return from Hades? That timing works out to about the time the Shrike-B's and Ferrets were in development.

If he did publish it, then Manticoran informants would have found it, and passed it along. Due to it being tactical information, it would be passed to the WMD, which would have led to it being handed to Sonja Hemphill, and ta-da.... new bow-wall technology.


.... or at least that's more or less how I figure it happened

SWM wrote:

Erls wrote:What I would be curious about is to whether or not drone missiles could be re-purposed to generate a sidewall. Even if each drone's sidewall was only a few square kilometers in diameter, stacking a lot of them together in an integrated network might allow a ship to create a second sidewall tens of thousands of kilometers from the ship itself.

My thought here, and I could be way off base, would be that if you use a network of drones to generate a perimeter sidewall 50,000 kilometers (or whatever is just outside a laser warheads detonation range) from the ship along the path most likely to be taken by missiles, then the ships Laser Clusters could ignore that approach vector and concentrate on the surrounding space.

If I am correct and a sidewall penetrating missile refers to its armament, and not the missile itself, than any missile that flies into the drone sidewall would be disintegrated. And if the missiles instead mistake the drone sidewall for the real thing and fire at it then their laserheads would be too far out of reach to penetrate the ships actual sidewall.

In effect, the drone sidewall would be another layer in the defense network of a capital ship, one that may only survive intact for the first couple rounds of fire but could greatly increase the ships ability to survive the first couple of rounds. And, in an age of massed missile combat the ability to survive even 2 extra barrages could be extremely important both in terms of winning the battle as well as survive-ability for the ship and its crew.

Then again, I could be completely wrong and thus I await a more senior 'officers' reasons as to why this could never work.

It's been suggested here before. The most elaborate was an idea of englobing a ship with drones wedge out. That was shot down when people realized the drones in front would not be able to accelerate with the ship. Other suggestions were a cylinder or just two walls of drones along the broadsides, which could roll over to open gaps for the ship to shoot out through. The biggest argument against it was that it would be difficult or impossible to control the drones through their wedge, to keep them flying in formation and to rotate on command.

Simply having drones generate sidewalls does not really provide more protection than the existing ship sidewalls. Drone sidewalls would not be very strong--Manticoran LAC sidewalls are strong because they use beta-squared nodes and a more powerful generator than could fit in a drone. To really provide useful protection from a drone, it would have to be the wedge.

I have generally been a skeptic of the idea. But it gained some credibility when the Anderman Empire used LAC wedges to protect a ship from a mine field. In that case, the ship and LACs stopped accelerating, and the LACs in front of the ship turned sideways to block the throat of the ship with their wedges. So it worked around the problems outlined above.

Thank you for this information. But, I don't believe any of this would refute what I suggested.

In recap, I'm not suggesting a drone sidewall (or wedge) that makes its parent ship impervious to fire. Nor am I suggesting a drone sidewall that can offer gun ports or anything of that kind. What I am suggesting is that eventually the RMN will find broadside missile tubes almost a waste of space due to the capacity of its SD(P) design, and that the space that used to be missile tubes could be better used for CM launch tubes and Laser Clusters.

With that in mind, if a grouping of drones were able to create a minimal sidewall outside of a laserheads detonation point around the most likely avenue of approach, that could allow a ships dedicated anti-Missile weapons to become more effective alone the other avenues.

Basically, a small throw-a-way line of drone sidewalls in the 'best' line of attack for missiles that will disrupt them would allow the anti-Missile weapons to focus more heavily on everything else, leading to more kills on those missiles while those on the 'best' line of attack are wasted on the drone sidewalls for even the first couple barrages.

The point isn't to make the ship impervious to missile fire. The object would simply be to allow it to survive longer by allowing it to better target and defeat the first couple barrages it faces.

If each SD(P) could face even 2 more massed missiles attacks before being overwhelmed that would drastically increase both the offensive firepower and the likelihood of ships surviving a long range missile combat scenario. Just remember the first battle of Manticore- If Kuzak had been able to get each SD Squad to survive even 1 more blow that would have allowed McKeon to take out at least 2 or 3 more Haven SDs with Apollo missiles, maybe even more!

Erls wrote:What I would be curious about is to whether or not drone missiles could be re-purposed to generate a sidewall. Even if each drone's sidewall was only a few square kilometers in diameter, stacking a lot of them together in an integrated network might allow a ship to create a second sidewall tens of thousands of kilometers from the ship itself.

My thought here, and I could be way off base, would be that if you use a network of drones to generate a perimeter sidewall 50,000 kilometers (or whatever is just outside a laser warheads detonation range) from the ship along the path most likely to be taken by missiles, then the ships Laser Clusters could ignore that approach vector and concentrate on the surrounding space.

The main problem is that there isn't a single likely approach vector. Missiles spread out above and below the plane of the engagement.

Some quick trig shows that the average (midpoint) height of the wedge opening at 150km (wedge edge) is 75km. Extend those angles out to 50,000km and it's now a 25,000km high wedge with an angle to target the ship. With drone wedges being (IIRC) 10x10km that's 2,500 drones just to make a single column. If you want this phalanx to stretch just the length of the ship's wedge (ignoring the ability of missiles to curl around the front or rear and still engage the broadside, that's 150km wide; or rows 15 drones long. Now we're up to 37,500 drones; just to put a wall of wedges between you and the enemy. (And missiles could still overfly and and swerve back into it's shadow where they'd be able to target the ship again (admittedly, having to close slightly closer would give PDLC a marginally better shot a the missile)

Oh, and all those wedges cut off your line of sight and your fire control links to both CMs and MDMs. Keyhole can let you look around a wedge, but I doubt those drones fly far enough out to look around a 25,000km high roadblock.


So it seems to fall apart because space is big.