How would you handle rolled pods?

Relax wrote:If yes, then FIRE EARLY so they cannot stack pods and therefore overwhelm your enemic absurd CM defenses. Its not like pod swamping hasn't been around for say... oh, 15+ years or anything..... BuShips, response to Pod alpha strike for the past 15 years is..... Lets barely increase number of CM tubes compared to pods..... Yea. That works.

Without knowing CM launcher size, ammunition arrangements, CM control link requirements, etc., we're not in a great position to know how many more CM's could be fit in or at what cost in other capabilities. If they could massively increase the count of effective CM's, and do so without a worse cost in other capabilities, then yes, they're bone-headed.

They're not sitting on their hands about missile defense, certainly. Keyhole makes for more CM control and, more importantly, lets them keep the wedge between the ship and incoming missiles more effectively. So does off-bore firing, for non-podlayers. They do have more CM's for the wall, after a fashion, with LAC's deployed as a defensive screen. And decoys are at least keeping up with counter-measures.

Decoys and the better use of the wedge have going for them, over CM's or PDLC's, that they're less subject to getting swamped: they'll tend to remove as threats about the same percentage of a huge incoming volley as of a smaller one.

Why they aren't using CM pods, with smart CM's like Vipers, with little or no need for control help from the ship, is beyond me. That may just run into the problem of Honorverse missiles being really dumb and needing lots of hand-holding.

You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to roll 'em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run.

What I would have done is launch a full broadside of Apollo missiles and squashed that schnit.

Cause that long-legged Harrington would NOT have left the Home System with all of the Apollo birds if I'd been CO of Home Fleet! And Harrington wouldn't have argued, she'd have known better.

You could have probably hurt them more, but in the end you still would have needed the cavalry.

JeffEngel wrote:Without knowing CM launcher size, ammunition arrangements, CM control link requirements, etc., we're not in a great position to know how many more CM's could be fit in or at what cost in other capabilities. If they could massively increase the count of effective CM's, and do so without a worse cost in other capabilities, then yes, they're bone-headed.

They're not sitting on their hands about missile defense, certainly. Keyhole makes for more CM control and, more importantly, lets them keep the wedge between the ship and incoming missiles more effectively. So does off-bore firing, for non-podlayers. They do have more CM's for the wall, after a fashion, with LAC's deployed as a defensive screen. And decoys are at least keeping up with counter-measures.

And don't forget that Keyhole significantly upped the number of in-flight CM salvos they could control (additional links, plus the relays being far enough out from the ship that they suffer less from getting their telemetry blocked by follow-on CM launches. Being able to control 8 CM salvos from both broadside's launchers (no mater what your bearing is relative to the incoming fire) is a significant improvement over 4-5 from at most one broadside's CMs.

With rough parity or not, I'd have every ship fire a maximum size salvo immediately, with ballistic phases if necessary.

Then about ten percent of my wall goes to maximum continious, staggered fire, probably one or two pod each at a time. Most of that ammo might end up wasted against my opponent's defenses but it would create problems for them in stacking their salvos.

The rest of my wall builds salvo stacks of their own and fires them off as required when the enemy's missiles come in.

JeffEngel wrote:

Relax wrote:If yes, then FIRE EARLY so they cannot stack pods and therefore overwhelm your enemic absurd CM defenses. Its not like pod swamping hasn't been around for say... oh, 15+ years or anything..... BuShips, response to Pod alpha strike for the past 15 years is..... Lets barely increase number of CM tubes compared to pods..... Yea. That works.

Without knowing CM launcher size, ammunition arrangements, CM control link requirements, etc., we're not in a great position to know how many more CM's could be fit in or at what cost in other capabilities. If they could massively increase the count of effective CM's, and do so without a worse cost in other capabilities, then yes, they're bone-headed.

They're not sitting on their hands about missile defense, certainly. Keyhole makes for more CM control and, more importantly, lets them keep the wedge between the ship and incoming missiles more effectively. So does off-bore firing, for non-podlayers. They do have more CM's for the wall, after a fashion, with LAC's deployed as a defensive screen. And decoys are at least keeping up with counter-measures.

Decoys and the better use of the wedge have going for them, over CM's or PDLC's, that they're less subject to getting swamped: they'll tend to remove as threats about the same percentage of a huge incoming volley as of a smaller one.

Why they aren't using CM pods, with smart CM's like Vipers, with little or no need for control help from the ship, is beyond me. That may just run into the problem of Honorverse missiles being really dumb and needing lots of hand-holding.

Probably a high percentage of Home Fleet's podnaughts were the first-generation ones. Whilst a substantial improvement over the old SDs, they were still behind the latest KH-equipped units Eighth Fleet had. Probably equivalent to the RHN's best - and they were looking at six-to-one odds.

Annachie wrote:Assuming a range disadvantage, you have to fire early and often.

With a severe range- or technical disadvantage on my side (SDM vs. MDM) but the opportunity to dictate time and location (which I have as defender within limits) I would engage outside the hyper limit coming from hyperspace and as close as possible: deep inside my own missile range while staying at first out of energy weapon range. With a bit of luck, I catch the LACs in the hangars and the other ships with crews and systems not quite ready yet. With lots of externally tractored pods this might be even a good idea with equal ranges.

Alternatively stay out of the hyper limit at a long distance, hope for both an overwhelmingly large salvo from your opponent and anough time to cycle your hyper generators.

Over longer ranges mass my own pods for a big wave but simultaneously fire enough missiles to mess with large pod clouds on the other side.

munroburton wrote:
Probably a high percentage of Home Fleet's podnaughts were the first-generation ones. Whilst a substantial improvement over the old SDs, they were still behind the latest KH-equipped units Eighth Fleet had. Probably equivalent to the RHN's best - and they were looking at six-to-one odds.

Actually, If memory serves, a fair percentage of them were the first flight Adlers, with no Keyhole, capacitor MDMs and CMs roughly equal to mk 29s. The rest were Medusas, Harringtons and Invicti (but no mention of Harrington IIs). It is a good possibility that few of them other than the Invicti had Keyhole, as Homefleet seemed to be the Rotation space for ships waiting to enter the upgrade cycle or be mothballed when newer ships came available to take their space.

But even with the Adlers, we know the average number of control links in Home Fleet was more than 400 control links per SD(p), which does make you wonder how many control links an Invictus (KH1) has.

JeffEngel wrote:

Relax wrote:If yes, then FIRE EARLY so they cannot stack pods and therefore overwhelm your enemic absurd CM defenses. Its not like pod swamping hasn't been around for say... oh, 15+ years or anything..... BuShips, response to Pod alpha strike for the past 15 years is..... Lets barely increase number of CM tubes compared to pods..... Yea. That works.

Without knowing CM launcher size, ammunition arrangements, CM control link requirements, etc., we're not in a great position to know how many more CM's could be fit in or at what cost in other capabilities. If they could massively increase the count of effective CM's, and do so without a worse cost in other capabilities, then yes, they're bone-headed.

They're not sitting on their hands about missile defense, certainly. Keyhole makes for more CM control and, more importantly, lets them keep the wedge between the ship and incoming missiles more effectively. So does off-bore firing, for non-podlayers. They do have more CM's for the wall, after a fashion, with LAC's deployed as a defensive screen. And decoys are at least keeping up with counter-measures.

Decoys and the better use of the wedge have going for them, over CM's or PDLC's, that they're less subject to getting swamped: they'll tend to remove as threats about the same percentage of a huge incoming volley as of a smaller one.

Why they aren't using CM pods, with smart CM's like Vipers, with little or no need for control help from the ship, is beyond me. That may just run into the problem of Honorverse missiles being really dumb and needing lots of hand-holding.

Control links is easy. Even without dipping into reality. You are dead without them as your ship just turned into a pile of drifting debris if you do not add them. If you add the offensive control links for alpha strike one must also have the defensive ones to counter. Otherwise you do not have a ship. You have a lopsided piece of junk.

Add we already know that Keyhole already needs upgrading so one can fire more CM's. So, currently we know that BuShips designers are so dumb, that they cannot even do simply multiplication for maximum rate fire regarding their own CM tubes. If that doesn't take the cake in basic engineering stupidity, I do not know what does.

Lets look at LAC's ability as CM platforms. Katana. 5 CM tubes. We think approx 200CM's behind the tubes. Launch rate of same as their ships. 1 salvo every 8s. 75s burn time. 75s/8 = 9salvos need to be controlled. That would necessitate a minimum of 9*5 = 45 control links. We know this cannot be true as the magician behind the curtain was "chortling" in his beard about how the ROLAND class Destroyer can only handle a mere 40 CM's simultaneously, yet fire 36MDM's. He thinks this is actually "astonishing"

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/85/1

This ship has sufficient control links to control up to 36 Mk 16s and 40 CMs simultaneously. (And, no, I'm not going to tell you how they got that much fire control into her.)

Yes, that is right, a ROLAND can control all of 40 CM's even though it has 20 CM tubes. So, according to this brain drain logic, of which this is somehow "amazing", a Katana LAC should only be able to control 10 CM's with 75s burn times.

So, lets look at a CLAC. 7Mtons of ship, dumps out ~120 LAC's who against an alpha strike can only control 10 missiles each. So, they can "handle" a whopping 1200 CM's with a larger crew size required than an SDP. Take that same 7M ton ship, and turn it into an Invictus SDP, and it has 200+ CM tubes able to fire continuously. So, 200*9 salvos or 1800 CM's. No, CLAC's do not have Keyhole, so their additional ~100 CM's can only fire twice or maybe thrice for an additional 200-300 CM's. A grand total of said CLAC+LAC's of 1500CM at best against an SDP of 1800CM's.

We are supposed to believe that CLAC's are useful? Really?

In short, BuShips "missile control" in the HV is a complete dumpster fire of stupidity without even touching reality of how utterly stupid it really is.

And yes, the ONLY reason CM pods do not exist is because... uh... because... uh... Oh yea he made a pearl way back when for some odd reason about such an obvious concept. Well, but of course he did, because he had to have justification for his CLAC/LAC's.

PS. DW in AAC said that Keyhole could only control 8 salvos, even though they had the ability to fire 11 salvos... Lets see, 11*8s/salvo is 88s. Flight time is 75s. At 3.75M km lag time is 12s, so the REAL number of salvos one can control is (75s-12s)/8 = ~8 salvos.

Lets see, at least one or both parts of the statements about CM flight time, salvo time, or Keyhole number of salvos controlled is in error. Personally, I think he meant to type 6 salvos that Keyhole can control. Not 8. This would then allow for an additional 2 to 3 salvos that KEYHOLE NEEDED to be upgraded to coincide with the CM tube salvo cycle time of 8s. This would make an Invictus SDP, slightly less efficient per tonnage basis than a CLAC at missile defense.

Anyways... Rant off...

Pods on the hull are on the top and bottom and thus shielded by the wedge--the ship is easier to kill than they are.

I just don't see the deployed pods being out there long enough to be proximity-killed. They'll be fired by then.

kzt wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Manticore's missiles have somewhat better long range performance, but even if the RHN ones aren't scoring direct hits once they start getting into laserhead detonation range Home Fleet is going to start losing it's unused pods in mass quantities to proximity kills.

Nope, the pods are tractored to the ships hull. Inside the wedge, the sidewalls and the radiation screens. If you lose those pods to proximity kills you'll be losing ships to those same proximity kills.

Pods are supposed to only be vulnerable if deployed outside the wedge because reasons, but pods actually attached to the hull of the ship are very nearly as protected as pods in the pod bay.

So Manticore is effectively invulnerable to the mystical "proximity soft kills" and Haven is terribly vulnerable. Given the acceleration change it was obvious what Haven was doing, hence some of the most experienced officers in the RMN decided to ignore it because plot.

Have I mentioned recently I hate that damn book?

cthia wrote:You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to roll 'em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run.

What I would have done is launch a full broadside of Apollo missiles and squashed that schnit.

Cause that long-legged Harrington would NOT have left the Home System with all of the Apollo birds if I'd been CO of Home Fleet! And Harrington wouldn't have argued, she'd have known better.

You could have probably hurt them more, but in the end you still would have needed the cavalry.

There were some Apollo ships in Home Fleet, just not all that many.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to roll 'em
Know when to walk away
Know when to run.

What I would have done is launch a full broadside of Apollo missiles and squashed that schnit.

Cause that long-legged Harrington would NOT have left the Home System with all of the Apollo birds if I'd been CO of Home Fleet! And Harrington wouldn't have argued, she'd have known better.

You could have probably hurt them more, but in the end you still would have needed the cavalry.

There were some Apollo ships in Home Fleet, just not all that many.

Don't think so...Mckeon's squadron came through from Trevor's Star with 3rd Fleet, but D'Orville didn't have anything Apollo capable with Home Fleet.

Don