BC(P)

Weird Harold wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:..., I don't think that is as obsolete as some of the comments about the class in HoS seem to indicate.

The Agamemnons problem isn't really offensive endurance, or even defensive firepower density. The problem is that they can't take much battle damage and remain functional, let alone combat capable.

I believe the description, "A sledgehammer wrapped in an eggshell" was used to describe them.

And the threat risk they run, doing normal Mantie battlecruiser tasks, isn't primarily head to head fights with other people's BC. It's stumbling into range of a hidden system defense pod ambush.

One of the BCs main roles is to raid secondary, or at least tertiary systems, to disrupt the enemies economy and pressure them to disperse units to ward off future raids. But MDM pods make it too cheap and easy to drop in a usable system defense in even the least valuable system. So you want a BC with a good chance of being able to execute (at minimum) a fighting retreat after eating a surprise pod salvo.

BC(L)s are better at that than BC(P)s (even if you made pod laying BCs of the same tonnage).



That said, the current BC(P)s will still do good service against Manticore's short term enemies. They're just less valuable (offensively) once everybody had MDM system defense pods in wide deployment.

kzt wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Even with the G-mod warheads? They're certainly able to hurt wallers with those, and badly.

When did they become available?

And when you extend the same improvements to a Mk23 what happens?

Point, and match to kzt.

rob

kzt wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Even with the G-mod warheads? They're certainly able to hurt wallers with those, and badly.

When did they become available?

And when you extend the same improvements to a Mk23 what happens?

It was a question, not a challenge. But anyway, no, for Solon, I don't believe the G-mods were available, and I would assume they'd scale up to the Mark 23's. There's still an open question there about the tradeoff between stopping power and penetration aids from a Mark 23 versus the larger numbers from a Mark 16, assuming both of them have the power reliably to put a hurt on the target's through sidewalls and armor. That assumption does fail for capital ship defenses and the original Mark 16; it doesn't in the case of G-mods on either missile body or the original Mark 23.

Jonathan_S wrote:


That said, the current BC(P)s will still do good service against Manticore's short term enemies. They're just less valuable (offensively) once everybody had MDM system defense pods in wide deployment.

Where they will excel in the future is in defensive patrolling. Since shipborne pods have a "tactical" endurance when using their internal tractors, patrols of CAs and BCs will be limited in the # of pods they can carry on routine patrols to just a handful per ship. Making the core of a patrol a BC(p) with mixed Mk 16 and Mk 23 pods allows the ability to add heavy pod support when needed - like having a missile pod collier with you, but wrapped in a BC armor and a DN's defenses.

We'll see them leading squadrons of Star Knights, Sag-A&Bs
, Homers, and Reliants protecting the back areas against the SLN raiders, While the Nikes and Sag-Cs go a-raiding.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Aside from anything else, I hate the parenthesis used in these acronyms; we didn't need them when we got the DDG!

So don't correct it if I leave it out.

I don´t disagree with you, however there are some problems.

Mostly because of how RFC has rejected the closest thing to a standard there is.

So, BCL to me would mean a light battlecruiser, but in regards to Honorverse, it´s a BC, Large instead.

And BCP would be a battlecruiser (personnel) transport or something.

Against the older Warlords, and Mars', and against Sollies, I don't think that is as obsolete as some of the comments about the class in HoS seem to indicate. Seems to me, it still could be quite a rough go for most of the competition it will encounter, at least until the Sollies go belly up. . . .

They´re not obsolete, they´re special use ships.
Not good for "average or normal" missions.

There´s a whole bundle of missions they could be quite good or even excellent at, but every time there are no such missions, they are going to be rather expensive ships of limited use.

Though it might be more worth the effort to build Nike-sized BCPs, to allow using fullsized missiles in pods.

If the crew can be kept minimal in size it might just be worth it as that would remove some of the downsides of the original ones.

Still not something good for battles or common missions.

--snipping--

Theemile wrote:Where they will excel in the future is in defensive patrolling. Since shipborne pods have a "tactical" endurance when using their internal tractors, patrols of CAs and BCs will be limited in the # of pods they can carry on routine patrols to just a handful per ship. Making the core of a patrol a BC(p) with mixed Mk 16 and Mk 23 pods allows the ability to add heavy pod support when needed - like having a missile pod collier with you, but wrapped in a BC armor and a DN's defenses.

We'll see them leading squadrons of Star Knights, Sag-A&Bs
, Homers, and Reliants protecting the back areas against the SLN raiders, While the Nikes and Sag-Cs go a-raiding.

I think this is fairly accurate, though an Aggie could also back up raiding squadrons of Roland's and Sag-C's pretty awesomely as well "at distance". Seems like you could use the BC(p) to pretty much hammer and tenderize the opposition while the smaller ships hold their fire, sort of the same way the USN uses longer distance missiles before the fighters get in close to the battlefield. I don't imagine there's any FF fleet bases or defensive squadrons that would last long against that mix.

I was just thinking -- in relation to the defense of Beowulf:

Sell two to the BSDF. Let's say 300 SLN waller's come over the wall. Each Aggie fires stacked salvos (2) DDM pods at every incoming waller (112 missiles less ecm, etc.) with the mod-G warheads. Use slight ballistic phases so you can fire at longer ranges, and make the salvo tracking harder...

Does anyone seriously think there'd be a whole lot of undamaged SLN hardware that would be able to range on the two ships before the BC(P)'s ran dry, especially if the aggies can pull a First Hancock and be positioned to accelerate away from the attacking SLN formations?

Jonathan_S wrote:BC(L)s are better at that than BC(P)s (even if you made pod laying BCs of the same tonnage).

Tonnage issues are ~~irrelevant. Especially once you start talking the difference between a 2.5Mton BCL ship and say a 3M ton BC'P of equal durability.

Mission parameters for the ship type determines tonnage.

Either pod bay is required or it is not. In this scenario a 300+ pod bay + loading pods externally for over 400+ pods per ship.

When a BCL can tote 80 Pods around externally without burying critical sensors, is this not effectively a pod Bay? If one was raiding a semi major system with a BCL, could a BCL not tote more than 80 pods knowing full well they will require a large opening salvo or two? Now it is not like this BCL is going to be operating by itself.

8 ships with over 100 pods each with upwards of 14 missiles in each pod is a tidy 10,000+++ missiles. Upwards of 20,000 per squadron depending on how deep one buries the BCL in tractored pods.

Of course if you are raiding a major system and you need your BC's loaded with 100~200 pods, you need the anti missile defenses to go along with that loadout requiring a bunch of CLAC's. Presumably each LAC should be toting a single Pod as well

At some point you should have sent an SD'P squadron instead of a BCL. When 100k missiles are required? What is the $$$ break point where it is cheaper to send an Apollo SD'P and firing say, 1000 missiles instead of sending a whole BCL squadron and blowing away 20,000 missiles. Missiles aren't cheap.

If we knew the economic model breakdown between these scenarios we could scale out what the BCL/BC'P should be. Without this very basic information it is impossible to tell.

Sounds an awful lot like the guided munition battle going on today. Everything is guided, but what is ultimately cheapest and "best". Currently everyone is retrofitting old weapon stockpiles from 70mm rockets to dummy bombs to be used as guided weapons. Sure it is currently CHEAP to do so, but when these stockpiles run out, the rubber hits the road and the much more expensive models like JSOW-ER/JASSM will be required. Is the upgraded tonnage BC'P the better solution over BCL in the long run? Is the BC'P today's equivalent of the JSOW-ER/JASSM. Won't be beating up on 2nd rate equivalent SLN tech ships forever. Eventually will need stealthed missiles like the JASSM.

Tenshinai wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Aside from anything else, I hate the parenthesis used in these acronyms; we didn't need them when we got the DDG!

So don't correct it if I leave it out.

I don´t disagree with you, however there are some problems.

Mostly because of how RFC has rejected the closest thing to a standard there is.

So, BCL to me would mean a light battlecruiser, but in regards to Honorverse, it´s a BC, Large instead.

And BCP would be a battlecruiser (personnel) transport or something.

David has the RMN in text referring to the new Nike-class battlecruisers as either battlecruisers or BCs. The term BC(L) or BCL originated on the forums as a way to distinguish the major break between the older battlecruisers and the new Nike-class battlecruisers and has never been used by David in the books.

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:BC(L)s are better at that than BC(P)s (even if you made pod laying BCs of the same tonnage).

Tonnage issues are ~~irrelevant. Especially once you start talking the difference between a 2.5Mton BCL ship and say a 3M ton BC'P of equal durability.

Mission parameters for the ship type determines tonnage.

Either pod bay is required or it is not. In this scenario a 300+ pod bay + loading pods externally for over 400+ pods per ship.

/quote]
Since I was referring to survivability tonnage does play into that somewhat. Mission drives survivability requirements; true. But if you have a BC mission to raid survivable in the face of pod based ambushes then you need to look at the survivability of your BCs. The pod core does make a BC(P) more vulnerable than a same sized BC(tube). But when comparing the Agamemnon to the Nike the vulnerability difference is enhanced by the extra 0.8 mtons (and 11 m of beam) the larger BC(L) has. Make a BC(P) on that same scale and some of the specific vulnerabilities of the Aggies design can be mitigated (like insufficient armor between the keyhole bay and the reactor)

That's all I was trying to say. That the survivability between the BC(P)s we've seen and the Nike is partly due to design and partly due to a ship that's got 40% more displacement. But that if you eliminated the later that it would still have less survivability due to the former. But ultimately it comes down to whether there are enough missions that justify the offensive to defensive trade-offs of a BC(P) over a BC(L) to warrant building the former instead of, or in addition to, the later.