tech gap

Weird Harold wrote:

Torch of Freedom
Chapter Forty-one wrote:The reason for the apparent peculiarity was that the ships had been designed with eight broadside missile tubes, not six. As built, however, two tubes in each broadside had been replaced by lots and lots of additional fire control. The compartments which had been intended to mount the missile tubes had then been sealed with solid plugs of armor—armor which, in fact, was substantially heavier than that which protected her actual weaponry. The peculiar plethora of arrays dotting her flanks provided the telemetry links for all that fire control, which gave them—despite the fact that they mounted only six tubes each—enough capability to simultaneously control sixty missiles in each broadside firing arc.

Ultimately, all of that massively redundant fire control would be removed and replaced with the missile tubes of the original "official" design. At the moment, however, they were half the key to Rozsak's entire strategy for covering the gap until the Maya Sector began to take delivery of a substantial force of Erewhon-built ships-of-the-wall of its very own.

It can be argued either way:

Two missile tubes were replaced,

OR

Redundant Fire Control will be replaced.

The Marksman never actually had those two additional missile tubes although it is designed to receive them when the fire-control becomes redundant.

thanks for posting the quotation. I think it's the same both ways.

We know Maya's Marksmans didn't install the missile launchers. We don't know if Erewhon commissioned any of the "standard" ships. After all, they sent a dozen DN to WH for Buttercup, so they kept something at home, and later bought a squadron of King Williams, and some Andurils--they might actually have 3 dozen capital ships!

You know, in the text the ship is compared (by Roszak, iirc), to a reduced scale Star Knight. I figure that was used, because DW hadn't introduced the Valiant to the reader at that point. To me, it looks like a Valiant with a flag deck, and w/o the lasers RMN still was using with cruisers until the Saganami class, which Erewhon might not have been allowed (by Janacek) to buy.

Thanks, Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Jeff, and Munroburton, regards.

I thought I made the point earlier, but I tend to write too much, so just one point here.

The Sollies may want to build LACs to do the job, but without the prior necessity of concentrating effort on downsizing components (like Hemphill did for S-282) they will never get a satisfactory LAC into commission. Haven's LACs are re-designed pinnaces which weren't initially designed for missile defense, but to try to stop Manti LACs. And, they have yet to see LACs in any other roles except missile defense. . . . "Hello, I am a Shrike, and you are LUNCH!"

YMMV

Rob

Oh, all granted. We're just on a variety of tangents here: Nuncio LAC's, hypothetical SLN defense moves, exotic LAC carriage possibilities. We're not (necessarily) missing a point or disputing it - we're just running off without regard to it.

Though, now that you mention it, if Haven got the Cimeterre produced without Manticoran miniaturization but instead with their own pinnace-on-steroids revolutionary approach - maybe the SLN could build something similar if they were able to take such a revolutionary step in unit design and if they could recognize its utility for missile defense.

And of course, if they had time. Foraker had about four years between Buttercup and Thunderbolt to get Cimeterres built, understood, trained up, and deployed. (Assuming she wasn't thinking about it long before, from whatever she may have picked up from Wayfarer in Silesia.) The SLN doesn't have time, doesn't have Haven's wartime experience and ability to take urgency through to results, and it certainly doesn't have Shannon Foraker.

And yes, any which way, a LAC with a graser like the Shrike's - or even missiles like the Ferret's - is going to be an entirely new, fresh horror for them.

Thanks for the comment Jeff, you are right--we are going off on all sorts of tangents.

The baseline though, is how the SLN addresses some of the gap in capabilities, and that is getting a pretty thorough going over.


Rob