Grav Lance on LACs?

New here, first post on this forum, but I was just thinking, the Grav Lance and Energy Torpedo have been ignored (as far as I know) since Basilisk Station, but wouldn't they make a fairly effective armament for an Anti Capital Specialized LAC? It could get up close and personal to remedy the Grav Lance's short range, and the energy torps would give it superior firepower to even a battlecruiser range graser on a Shrike-B. The only issue would be power supply, but it might be worth it to sacrifice the range of a fission reactor power plant for the enhanced power of a fusion plant... Also, grav lance might be a good weapon for the spider drive ships of the Mesan Alignment...

MobiusCipher wrote:New here, first post on this forum, but I was just thinking, the Grav Lance and Energy Torpedo have been ignored (as far as I know) since Basilisk Station, but wouldn't they make a fairly effective armament for an Anti Capital Specialized LAC? It could get up close and personal to remedy the Grav Lance's short range, and the energy torps would give it superior firepower to even a battlecruiser range graser on a Shrike-B. The only issue would be power supply, but it might be worth it to sacrifice the range of a fission reactor power plant for the enhanced power of a fusion plant... Also, grav lance might be a good weapon for the spider drive ships of the Mesan Alignment...

What Duckk linked!

But aside from that, welcome. The grav lance suffers from a whole lot of effort to make it work. It's grown notorious on the forums that way, so don't be surprised if it draws a firestorm of reaction.

Grav lances drop sidewalls. It's all they do. Spider drive ships don't have sidewalls. We may not be able to rule out them having bubble wall generators, but beyond that, the primary defense of one is invisibility. You need to be very, very close to use a grav lance or energy torpedo, and getting close to something you can barely see at all is astronomically unlikely, making energy torpedoes the least likely weapons for use against them.

With the advances in missile combat, it's unlikely that the grav lance or energy torpedo will ever have a standard combat use again. Even heavy grasers and lasers are beginning to look like dubious uses of tonnage, money, and crew commitment.

To put it simply, the grav-lance needs the gravitics of an 80-kiloton warship to function, and takes up the majority of said warship's offensive tonnage - call it 20 kilotons. It's the size of a superdreadnought's heavy grazer; you'd never put it on a LAC

Now, it has a range of 100.000 kilometers and can drop a sidewall. At that range the aforementioned heavy grazer will cut through any sidewall ever put on a ship with contemptuous ease, and go through one side of a dreadnought and come out of the other. So in terms of damage the grazer wins. It also wins in firing rate and would still be usable up to nearly a million kilometers against lighter targets.






Hmm... I wonder why nobody ever suggested 100 light destroyers each with a massive grazer and as much point defense as four LACs as a counter for one capital ship. Even if half of them die on approach (which they might not, what with 1600 CM tubes and 2400 PDLCs in total), the other half will still fire 50 grazers point-blank on their victim and nothing could survive that.

And a couple thousand of those could be good for attacks on wormhole junctions. Any defenders at energy range get a fleet's worth of capital grazer fire in their face before they could localize and take out 2000 different targets and any defenders further out that are less than a fleet get hunted down and burned to ash with extreme prejudice.

Belial666 wrote:Hmm... I wonder why nobody ever suggested 100 light destroyers each with a massive grazer and as much point defense as four LACs as a counter for one capital ship. Even if half of them die on approach (which they might not, what with 1600 CM tubes and 2400 PDLCs in total), the other half will still fire 50 grazers point-blank on their victim and nothing could survive that.

And a couple thousand of those could be good for attacks on wormhole junctions. Any defenders at energy range get a fleet's worth of capital grazer fire in their face before they could localize and take out 2000 different targets and any defenders further out that are less than a fleet get hunted down and burned to ash with extreme prejudice.

The RMN's Jeune Ecole proposed tactics like that. The main issues I see are:

The RMN in the last 100 years has only built ~600 destroyers total.

That doctrine would require that the destroyers hang together(lest they hang separately). They're busy doing light-hyper-unit work.

Such an unit would become obsolete as soon as the Shrike was introduced. Shrikes don't have to drag a 20,000 ton hyper generator into combat with them.

Finally, the wormhole assault thing is a no-go. Those units would be at low base velocity and still stuck in sail mode for several minutes. Wormholes are covered by units parked at missile range and possibly minefields closer in. This assault role would be better performed by an expendable, single-use CLAC, which immediately launches its brood as soon as it's through - and those LACs can bring up their wedges immediately.

That type of CLAC would only need to be a pair of impeller rings slapped on the ends of a large structural beam with a hyper generator, reactor, small life-pod equipped command modules, however many external LAC clamps can fit and maybe EW noisemakers. Launch LACs, suck in the incoming fire and abandon ship.

Hmm... I wonder why nobody ever suggested 100 light destroyers each with a massive grazer and as much point defense as four LACs as a counter for one capital ship.

Gee, why did the US Navy not just build a few hundred destroyers mounting a single 18" cannon and swarm the IJN during WWII? Because it would have been a stupid, stupid thing to do. Telling your navy to routinely go immolate themselves in batch lots is a monstrous waste of life and ships which no navy would accept for long. LACs and destroyers should never engage capital ships unless the shit has hit the fan. They are built and armed to engage their peers, i.e. other light combatants.

munroburton wrote:Finally, the wormhole assault thing is a no-go. Those units would be at low base velocity and still stuck in sail mode for several minutes. Wormholes are covered by units parked at missile range and possibly minefields closer in. This assault role would be better performed by an expendable, single-use CLAC, which immediately launches its brood as soon as it's through - and those LACs can bring up their wedges immediately.

That type of CLAC would only need to be a pair of impeller rings slapped on the ends of a large structural beam with a hyper generator, reactor, small life-pod equipped command modules, however many external LAC clamps can fit and maybe EW noisemakers. Launch LACs, suck in the incoming fire and abandon ship.

Actually, the LACs can't be launched while the CLAC is in the junction lane. At that point, you are inside the field of effect of the wormhole; you must have a Warshawski sail up or you get destroyed. A ship cannot raise a wedge or fire missiles (or counter-missiles) until it exits the lane. And as you said, it takes one to three minutes to exit the lane. And in the meantime, missiles and mines can be fired at you from outside the lane. The standoff distance of laserheads mean that they detonate outside of the lane, hitting you while you are still only protected by a Warshawski sail instead of a wedge.

MobiusCipher wrote:New here, first post on this forum, but I was just thinking, the Grav Lance and Energy Torpedo have been ignored (as far as I know) since Basilisk Station, but wouldn't they make a fairly effective armament for an Anti Capital Specialized LAC? It could get up close and personal to remedy the Grav Lance's short range, and the energy torps would give it superior firepower to even a battlecruiser range graser on a Shrike-B. The only issue would be power supply, but it might be worth it to sacrifice the range of a fission reactor power plant for the enhanced power of a fusion plant... Also, grav lance might be a good weapon for the spider drive ships of the Mesan Alignment...

Basically, it wont ever happen because a grav lance isn´t too far from the weight, all by itself, of the whole LAC.

It´s mentioned that it requires a light cruiser to be mounted on as a MINIMUM.

JeffEngel wrote:

MobiusCipher wrote:New here, first post on this forum, but I was just thinking, the Grav Lance and Energy Torpedo have been ignored (as far as I know) since Basilisk Station, but wouldn't they make a fairly effective armament for an Anti Capital Specialized LAC? It could get up close and personal to remedy the Grav Lance's short range, and the energy torps would give it superior firepower to even a battlecruiser range graser on a Shrike-B. The only issue would be power supply, but it might be worth it to sacrifice the range of a fission reactor power plant for the enhanced power of a fusion plant... Also, grav lance might be a good weapon for the spider drive ships of the Mesan Alignment...

What Duckk linked!

But aside from that, welcome. The grav lance suffers from a whole lot of effort to make it work. It's grown notorious on the forums that way, so don't be surprised if it draws a firestorm of reaction.

Grav lances drop sidewalls. It's all they do. Spider drive ships don't have sidewalls. We may not be able to rule out them having bubble wall generators, but beyond that, the primary defense of one is invisibility. You need to be very, very close to use a grav lance or energy torpedo, and getting close to something you can barely see at all is astronomically unlikely, making energy torpedoes the least likely weapons for use against them.

With the advances in missile combat, it's unlikely that the grav lance or energy torpedo will ever have a standard combat use again. Even heavy grasers and lasers are beginning to look like dubious uses of tonnage, money, and crew commitment.

What I meant was the Mesans' new stealth ships would be a good platform to get close with a grav lance (to use against the good guys). However I now know that a grav lance requires an impeller wedge to function, so it wouldn't work. Also, beyond that, thanks to everyone for explaining how I was wrong.

MobiusCipher wrote:What I meant was the Mesans' new stealth ships would be a good platform to get close with a grav lance (to use against the good guys). However I now know that a grav lance requires an impeller wedge to function, so it wouldn't work. Also, beyond that, thanks to everyone for explaining how I was wrong.

That you for the gracious follow-up; I look forward to your future input here on the forum.


Now, unlike a LAC, you could fit energy torpedo launchers onto a spider ship (they appear to use excess plasma generated by the ship's fusion plants as their payload). Without the ability to fit a 'lance they'd only be useful if you caught someone by surprise with no sidewall interposed.

However if you did get that close to an unprotected target the energy torps could shred even a waller before it could raise sidewall, roll wedge, or really react at all. (Mind, you you better have picked on a solo waller or its consorts will tear you apart - you're way too close to avoid detection and retaliation after drawing lines of big glowing energy balls between you and your target)

But I wouldn't be horribly shocked if the Lenny Dets mounted a few energy torp projectors; just in case they got the perfect shot for them. They're devastating enough, and low enough mass/volume inpact that it might be worth it to mount a few; just in case you get lucky.