Pulled the quotes apart to respond to each.
Somtaaw wrote:Its not just Apollo that would be terrifying to the MAlign, but the Ghost Rider drones.
Part of how their stealth works, is by "dissipating" waste heat on the exact opposite side of the ship from known threats. Ghost Rider drones flitting about, with their stupidly efficient stealth means a Lenny Det (or a Shark) has no bloody clue which way to dissipate it's heat. Which translates into eventually cooking its crew, because it's either cook the crew, or get spotted. Either way means death (or dishonor by capture).
The only time they've come near Manticoran tech was Oyster Bay, both Manticore and Grayson branches, and we had that small thing of Sharks passing nearby the Grayson units.
Actually, IIRC, everyone's stealth works that way, it's just that the MAlign took it to an extreme. And it was the Ghost class scout frigates that came near the Graysons. The Sharks only got with a light week the Manty and Grayson systems on the attacks. They dropped out of hyper a light month from Manticore and it took 12 hours for the wavefront to reach the Manty sensors. Another hour to roust out a DD division and 3 hours for the RMN DD's to get to the data point. So 16 hours after the MAlign dropped out of hyper the DD's arrived on scene. The Sharks launched at one light week from the Manties and it took the missiles and torps another 5 weeks to reach Manticore.
Chyort wrote:
Oh agree for sure, Ghost Rider drones will be key to finding and then fighting them.
But pre-Apollo the missiles would have minutes worth of latency built into any targeting data they are sent, from the SD's that actually can see the ship. Since the missiles cant draw the targeting info from the RD's directly.
And the missiles will all be coming in from a fairly tight vector, meaning they will be completely blind, and unable to do any last minute(or last couple of minutes) corrections on their own. Meaning they are effectively ballistic for those minutes.
Which, brings me back to the original point about why they are Highly unlikely to have bubble sidewalls...
If they were to add a bubble sidewall. They lose all acceleration, meaning they are effectively sitting still. And they give the missiles something they can see on their own without having an RD on the other side spotting for them. Meaning they will get swarmed.
Post Apollo a bubble sidewall might make sense. Since you are suddenly dealing with seconds of targeting lag as opposed to minutes. But that isn't something they can just retrofit into ships already months/years into the construction pipeline. And i still suspect they will value stealth and movement over the minor defense of a sidewall. For example, dump a ton of pods/torpedoes then drive a long distance away from the launch point before anyone knows you are attacking them. Just like they did in oyster bay.
The Ghost Rider drones have active sensors, even though they are very rarely used as the active sensors betray the location of the platform. I would expect the Lenny Dets to have bubble sidewalls, even though they would be rarely used, as there are times you might want to use it. Like a massive missile attack that you can't shoot down, so you put up the sidewall at the last minute and then take it down to try and disappear again.
Don't forget, the Sharks were between BBs and DNs, so the Lenny Dets are expected to be larger than SD sized. How much larger we don't know. But what if you put in lots of decoys, say on a spider drone for example, then while your escape velocity from the approaching enemy task force could be low, but with enough decoy spider drones (cry baby cry), there would be lots of vectors to check out. And what's to stop a Lenny Det to carry LACs for insystem work and to meet up with the Lenny Det later, ala a CLAC. Especially, if the LACs were to draw a defender into the path of Grazer Torps and the like. Depending on how stealthly the MAN could make the LACs, you could launch the LACs on a dogleg, so backtracking would take you to the wrong place for the Lenny Det. The same goes for launching Grazer Torps too. While the Lenny Dets are slow and don't have a wedge, I believe there are things you can do to minimize those weaknesses and depending on the other weapons on spider drives, the sneakiness of a Lenny Det attack may be greater than we think.
As I was reviewing my post, I had another thought. I can't think of anything to stop a spider drive LAC from being built to provide defense in depth for a Lenny Det. You only put the defensive LACs a few million km out to deepen the CM/PD bracket. Make your Lenny Det big enough and you can carry LACs, of which ever drive type you need, to provide further protection or long range attack.
