How would you handle rolled pods?

n7axw wrote: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.

They were then terribly miss-used, resulting in their not really impacting the battle.

The only comment I would want to add, regarding Relax's rant, is that LACs/CLACs are advantages. Not necessarily because of their CM/Missile salvo size, but because it broadens the CM envelope, giving it more depth and opportunity to pick off the incoming fire.

LACs are also detrimental to smaller craft, such as BC and below. Their small size, multiple fire angles and powerful defenses make them dangerous to things much larger then they are.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote: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.

They were then terribly miss-used, resulting in their not really impacting the battle.

Agreed...although in Kuzak's defense, she may well not have been fully briefed on Apollo and Mckeon's presence was happenstance rather than the result of planning.

Don

Fireflair wrote:The only comment I would want to add, regarding Relax's rant, is that LACs/CLACs are advantages. Not necessarily because of their CM/Missile salvo size, but because it broadens the CM envelope, giving it more depth and opportunity to pick off the incoming fire.

LACs are also detrimental to smaller craft, such as BC and below. Their small size, multiple fire angles and powerful defenses make them dangerous to things much larger then they are.

I would counter with: If you can fire Vipers from their broadside tubes, no reason one cannot replace all of the laser head additional mass with capacitors for extended power drive time and therefore much greater range. That is far better than trying to get LAC's out in front which may or may not be on the correct vector leaving a significant portion of your missile defense useless. On top of this is the time required to get LAC's that far out in front. It takes 15 minutes to get LAC's out past 3Mkm in front of your ships on a 0-0 intercept of that position.

Lets assume the laser head is what? 25% the size of the 75s existing power pack? Personally, I think that is on the small side. I would not be surprised by at least 50% extra drive time judging from the drawings MaxxQ has drawn. This would boost flight time to over 90s. Or a distance of 5.5Mkm @~~90s. IF over 100++ s, then flight distance increases to over 7Mkm or equal to that of the LAC's forward deployed distance!

3.75Mkm+3.75Mkm is 7.5Mkm.
@0.8c, total time to pass through this "extended" range is 31 seconds..... Salvo against missed LAC birds 23s.... follow on salvo against Forward LAC missed birds.

5.5Mkm (25%) extra drive time
@0.8c, total time to pass through is 23s, allowing one to fire immediately follow on salvos at 15s till impact and 5s till impact.
@15s till impact this is a range of 150,000km.
@5s till impact this is a piddling range and not useful.

So, if Laser head removal in a viper equals the ability to stuff another 25% capacitors in the bird for extending out to 90s burn time @130,000g, one can only achieve a single follow on CM salvo. Assuming of course, one has extra CM tubes available compared to the alpha strike. So far we have never seen this happen...

OF course one has to ask? What is best upgrade path? Katanas able to control more missiles than a mere 10, or CM cycle time decreased to say 6s, allowing much more efficient packing of "CONTROL LINK" into Keyholes allowing ships holding FARRRRRRRRRRRRRR more CM's able to fire at 6s salvo time increasing their throw by 25%

********************

Only one type of LAC has serious advantages against BC and below. That is not the KATANA. Requires the SHRIKE. Of course against RMN units able to fire Vipers out of their CM tubes, this makes SHRIKES fancy expensive suicidal devices best left in the dustbin of history against equivalent foes with flat pack pods, towed pods, FTL RD's, DDM's, and Vipers.

May I point out that Vipers are supposed to be fire and forget missiles? Control capability is pretty unimportant if you don't have to control them after launch.

kzt wrote:May I point out that Vipers are supposed to be fire and forget missiles? Control capability is pretty unimportant if you don't have to control them after launch.

That quote is directly aimed at the Viper in the anti LAC role.

Is nice, except RFC only uses that line when he wishes too.... if one blankets this usage into viper anti missile role. Otherwise babysitting is required even though rationally it makes little sense. At minimum, one must state hit ratios less etc, but crickets is all one hears on such a subject.

Why "control links" in the HV is a dumpster fire of epic proportions. Nothing more than a plot device.

Relax wrote:I would counter with: If you can fire Vipers from their broadside tubes, no reason one cannot replace all of the laser head additional mass with capacitors for extended power drive time and therefore much greater range. That is far better than trying to get LAC's out in front which may or may not be on the correct vector leaving a significant portion of your missile defense useless. On top of this is the time required to get LAC's that far out in front. It takes 15 minutes to get LAC's out past 3Mkm in front of your ships on a 0-0 intercept of that position.

Lets assume the laser head is what? 25% the size of the 75s existing power pack? Personally, I think that is on the small side. I would not be surprised by at least 50% extra drive time judging from the drawings MaxxQ has drawn. This would boost flight time to over 90s. Or a distance of 5.5Mkm @~~90s. IF over 100++ s, then flight distance increases to over 7Mkm or equal to that of the LAC's forward deployed distance!

3.75Mkm+3.75Mkm is 7.5Mkm.
@0.8c, total time to pass through this "extended" range is 31 seconds..... Salvo against missed LAC birds 23s.... follow on salvo against Forward LAC missed birds.

5.5Mkm (25%) extra drive time
@0.8c, total time to pass through is 23s, allowing one to fire immediately follow on salvos at 15s till impact and 5s till impact.
@15s till impact this is a range of 150,000km.
@5s till impact this is a piddling range and not useful.

So, if Laser head removal in a viper equals the ability to stuff another 25% capacitors in the bird for extending out to 90s burn time @130,000g, one can only achieve a single follow on CM salvo. Assuming of course, one has extra CM tubes available compared to the alpha strike. So far we have never seen this happen...

OF course one has to ask? What is best upgrade path? Katanas able to control more missiles than a mere 10, or CM cycle time decreased to say 6s, allowing much more efficient packing of "CONTROL LINK" into Keyholes allowing ships holding FARRRRRRRRRRRRRR more CM's able to fire at 6s salvo time increasing their throw by 25%

********************

Only one type of LAC has serious advantages against BC and below. That is not the KATANA. Requires the SHRIKE. Of course against RMN units able to fire Vipers out of their CM tubes, this makes SHRIKES fancy expensive suicidal devices best left in the dustbin of history against equivalent foes with flat pack pods, towed pods, FTL RD's, DDM's, and Vipers.

This assumes that the limiting factor is the amount of stored power available to power the impeller nodes. If the limiting factor on range at a fixed acceleration with a specific missile body size is the maximum endurance of the drive nodes, then increasing the range is much more difficult than providing additional capacitors to power the missile. Note that the latest marks of RMN/GSN counter-missiles and Vipers have much higher acceleration and endurance (75 seconds at 130,000 gravities) than the counter-missiles that the RMN had at the time of On Basilisk Station (60 seconds at 90,000 gravities).

Vince wrote:This assumes that the limiting factor is the amount of stored power available to power the impeller nodes. If the limiting factor on range at a fixed acceleration with a specific missile body size is the maximum endurance of the drive nodes, then increasing the range is much more difficult than providing additional capacitors to power the missile. Note that the latest marks of RMN/GSN counter-missiles and Vipers have much higher acceleration and endurance (75 seconds at 130,000 gravities) than the counter-missiles that the RMN had at the time of On Basilisk Station (60 seconds at 90,000 gravities).

For CMs the limit does appears to be node burnout time. And (while I don't have access to my RFC post doc at the moment) I recall he included the tidbit that, unlike missile nodes, CMs can't be stepped down to lower acceleration to get improved runtime. Their extra acceleration over a normal missile comes at the cost of that flexibility.

To get the extra range Relax wanted you need further breakthroughs in CM node endurance. Otherwise any additional power is wasted.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Vince wrote:This assumes that the limiting factor is the amount of stored power available to power the impeller nodes. If the limiting factor on range at a fixed acceleration with a specific missile body size is the maximum endurance of the drive nodes, then increasing the range is much more difficult than providing additional capacitors to power the missile. Note that the latest marks of RMN/GSN counter-missiles and Vipers have much higher acceleration and endurance (75 seconds at 130,000 gravities) than the counter-missiles that the RMN had at the time of On Basilisk Station (60 seconds at 90,000 gravities).

For CMs the limit does appears to be node burnout time. And (while I don't have access to my RFC post doc at the moment) I recall he included the tidbit that, unlike missile nodes, CMs can't be stepped down to lower acceleration to get improved runtime. Their extra acceleration over a normal missile comes at the cost of that flexibility.

To get the extra range Relax wanted you need further breakthroughs in CM node endurance. Otherwise any additional power is wasted.

The post where RFC said that counter-missile nodes can't be stepped down (and contradicted the text in On Basilisk Station) is: Re: Technical questions re military hardware.

While:

On Basilisk Station, Chapter 30 wrote:Honor certainly hoped he would. The Q-ship's missiles were still burning out before they came in, but the engagement time between salvos was too short for Cardones to wait them out. He had to launch sooner, with poorer solutions and lower counter-missile accelerations to give him more time—and range—on their impeller wedges. The laser clusters began to fire as a handful of Sirius's shots got past his counter-missiles, and she looked up at the main visual display as incandescent bursts of brilliance pitted the starfield ahead of her. Unless she missed her guess about the warheads those missiles carried, she had to stop them at least twenty thousand kilometers short of her ship, and they looked frighteningly close.

Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.

Well, in 20 some years he's done pretty good at maintaining consistency. But not perfect. Particularly when he's writing a response without searching his notes.