Sting Ships

Jonathan_S wrote:

saber964 wrote:Try reading the end of MoH when HH escorts QEIII to Imperator to meet a certain President and the bulk of her cabinet.

Was just yhinking that when I read down to your post. A couple trans-atmospheric sting ships are parked in Imperator's boat bay after escorting the queen's pinnace up.

And this is more participating in an attack run with pinnacles, and less escorting them. But in the short stories to attack oh the Octagon involved a mixed flight of pinnacles and sting ships. And there's one more mention somewhere of them esccorti get something down from orbit to the Roula Palace on Manticore.

But no solid description of their size, general appearance, or weapons fit.

I'd assumed since it was StateSec attacking the Octagon, they sting ships and assault shuttles were just from the local starport and/or Intervention Battalions. But if they are full up impeller driven, with weapons, that's pretty remarkable. Sting ships carry pop guns compared to the popguns on pinnaces, when compared to even old-style pre-Shrike LACs.

Because StateSec assault shuttles (which are larger than pinnaces) only have 3cm to 5cm lasers, and heavy tri barrels. And they have undersized impeller missiles that have piddly range and were lucky to kill the Cerberus courier boat when it was already started to accelerate away from Hell. And said assault assault shuttles are better armed than the RMN pinnaces that serve as customs craft at wormhole termini. And both pinnaces and assault shuttles are capping out at 1000 tons, so there just plain isn't' much room on sting ships.

Impeller drive, light armor, counter grav, tri barrels and laser, ammunition for the tri barrels (gatlings so that means a LOT of ammo), possibly a few missiles mounted under the 'wings', grav plates to counter some of the g forces during high-g, so on and so forth. And do with it with less tonnage than a pinnace. And Haven had trouble believing the Shrikes existed, and could pack their firepower into a hull that was 30 to 50 ktons.

Sting Ship: unknown tonnage
Assault Shuttle: maximum 1000 tons.
Courier Boat / LAC: 30 to 50 k tons
Destroyer: starting at 70 ktons in 1819 PD, 200 ktons with the Roland


Once they've left breathable, reaction thrusters could keep them on course, and/or perform most light maneuvers, and they'd have the mixed hydrogen+oxide fuel anyways since it appears all pinnaces and assault shuttles have that. Go out, mix it up, come back and if necessary land purely with counter-grav which are powered by the micro shuttle reactors.

Okay, some things that I have direct/indirect knowledge of from discussions in BuNine and from building my pinnace model:

1) Pinnaces are (at least, the Condor and Condor II, as well as the Hawk that I haven't finished yet) about 30-31 meters long, with an extended wingspan about the same. Definitely *not* the size of a 757.

2) A pinnace, again, only referring to those currently in use by the RMN, masses about 300 tons.

3) A pinnace is armed with twim 30mm tribarrels and a 5cm laser as standard armament, and there have been discussions of various "packages" that would fit in the upper and lower cargo hatch openings to convert one into a gunship equivalent. There has also been talk of having wing-mounted weapons pylons, but we haven't done anything with that yet, if we ever do.

4) Countergrav only negates the effect of gravity. It doesn't move the vehicle anywhere, which is why small craft or other vehicles (including personal versions, despite what some textev may indicate) still need some sort of propulsion.

5) As far as I know, stingships *do not* have impeller drives, however, I am willing to admit I may be wrong about that.

6) Stingships, at best, are only meant for atmospheric and low-orbit work. However, if they know they are getting refueled elsewhere, there is no reason they can't go into a higher orbit. They can use planetary O2 for the oxidizer, but need to use onboard supplies for extra-atmospheric flight ops, which is most likely what limits their powered range.

7) My impression from the little we've talked about stingships, is that they are roughly 1/4 - 1/3 the size of a pinnace, and I think they have 1, maybe 2, crew.

8) I have not been involved in any discussions about Havenite stingships, and very little on their pinnaces.

9) No idea about the armament on a stingship. IIRC, the ammo drums I made for the Condor pinnace can hold about 30k rounds total, or 15k each. Remember that the rounds are "fired" by way of grav coils in the gatling barrels, so have no need for the huge shell casings that the Avenger gatling cannon on the A-10 Warthog uses. My estimate is that an Avenger using the same ammo as a pinnace would be able to carry about 4-5 times the number of rounds it currently carries in its single drum.

If I had to guess about stingship armament, I'd say 20mm tribarrels, probably a pair, and a single, or maybe a pair, of 2-4cm lasers. Possibly a few impeller-drive air-to-air/air-to-ground missiles. Maybe even a couple/few smart bombs. Not much more than that, though.

Okay, that's all I've got at the moment. If I missed anything, let me know, and I will answer to the best of my ability.

HoS "The Royal Manticoran Army"

"The Viper is the standard single-seat stingship operated by the Army, a high performance impeller-drive hypersonic attack fighter capable of operations from “treetops to low orbit” as well as limited space capability."


Though I don't think it says it has treads....

kzt wrote:HoS "The Royal Manticoran Army"

"The Viper is the standard single-seat stingship operated by the Army, a high performance impeller-drive hypersonic attack fighter capable of operations from “treetops to low orbit” as well as limited space capability."


Though I don't think it says it has treads....

Of course. One spot that used "stingship" where most places use "sting ship" and so I missed it in my ebb ok searches.

I really need to find a much smarter search tool for this stuff. Able to automatically handle spaces or hyphens or compound words. Able to support NEAR keyword. Able to build Boolean searches. Having an understanding of at least plurals or possessives; so gravity would also match gravities, but not gravitas.

kzt wrote:HoS "The Royal Manticoran Army"

"The Viper is the standard single-seat stingship operated by the Army, a high performance impeller-drive hypersonic attack fighter capable of operations from “treetops to low orbit” as well as limited space capability."


Though I don't think it says it has treads....

Okey-doke, then. I wasn't involved much in the army section, and actually didn't read that when it came out, or if I did, I forgot. I vaguely recall discussions as to which service they belonged to, and I think it was decide to give them to the army as something similar to the army nowadays using helicopters, but not fixed-wing aircraft, something about space being the purview of the RMN and anything groundside, or near-groundside is under RMA jurisdiction.

MaxxQ wrote:...I think it was decide to give them to the army as something similar to the army nowadays using helicopters, ...

I don't know if that's why I think of Stingships as attack helicopters without rotors, or Those who made the decision think about Stingships the way I do. That would be American Cobra and Apache types, without the troop carrier capabilities the Soviet era Hind helicopters had or the Vietnam era Huey gunships.

MaxxQ wrote:

kzt wrote:HoS "The Royal Manticoran Army"

"The Viper is the standard single-seat stingship operated by the Army, a high performance impeller-drive hypersonic attack fighter capable of operations from “treetops to low orbit” as well as limited space capability."


Though I don't think it says it has treads....

Okey-doke, then. I wasn't involved much in the army section, and actually didn't read that when it came out, or if I did, I forgot. I vaguely recall discussions as to which service they belonged to, and I think it was decide to give them to the army as something similar to the army nowadays using helicopters, but not fixed-wing aircraft, something about space being the purview of the RMN and anything groundside, or near-groundside is under RMA jurisdiction.

That one sting ship has an impeller drive does not indicate that every sting ship does. It just means that more than none do.

How high do you have to be in order to start using an impeller drive, anyway? I hadn't thought a wedge was something to use near atmosphere, which would suggest that the places a sting ship would use an impeller drive would represent a small minority of the places they spend time.

JeffEngel wrote:That one sting ship has an impeller drive does not indicate that every sting ship does. It just means that more than none do.

How high do you have to be in order to start using an impeller drive, anyway? I hadn't thought a wedge was something to use near atmosphere, which would suggest that the places a sting ship would use an impeller drive would represent a small minority of the places they spend time.

I thought you wanted to be pretty high, basically clear of the atmosphere, before you kicked in even a small craft's impeller drive. (The drives on small=ship missiles or SAMs are vastly smaller, and vastly shorter lived, so they aren't quite as disruptive)

Given the role I thought sting ships had an impeller doesn't make much sense. If you're going that far out from a planet use a real pinnace or assault shuttle...

Jonathan_S wrote:Given the role I thought sting ships had an impeller doesn't make much sense. If you're going that far out from a planet use a real pinnace or assault shuttle...

Do you suppose it's for nipping around to the other side of a planet very quickly? Head up to minimum wedge usage height, blip to target area, descend?

I honestly think you are thinking too big. To me it seems that Sting ships are taking the role of today's motorcycle in the escort role. If a air limo is say 10 meters long and weighs in at say 15 tons a sting ship would be smaller than that, considering that they also operate in civilian air traffic spaces. I see them armed with a pair of heavy tri-barrels and maybe a couple air to air missiles.