Attack missles

Or you could just use the standard and very well understood and debugged warhead and seeker to control the whole affair instead of doing something completely crazy.

Jonathan_S wrote:I've also wondered if molycircs placed within the virtual cylinder formed by an impeller ring are less affected by interference than those of the same (or larger) diameter. (After all a podlayer'd drive doesn't screw with the inactive missile drive nodes of the pods getting sent through.

If that's the case then a smaller diameter second stage would get a double benefit - reduction in interference and damage to the non-powered nodes due to both distance and to being smaller diameter (within the linear projection of) the first stage node ring.

There's something to that, as well as another example with the Sirius in Basilisk. It had much larger drive nodes that were retracted partially inside the hull to conceal how fast she was.

And when Honor's officers noticed, and threw it around, they said those nodes had to be ran back out to work, otherwise they'd damage the ship in addition to not functioning properly.

And with missile pods, they come within a few meters of the active drive nods of a podnought's aft node ring, before travelling through the hammerhead and finally spilling into space.

Weird Harold wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:I think the actual implication is it's as powerful as Alliance capital missiles.

Re-read SFtS Chapter Thirty again. The entire discussion of how the Mod G warhead would have affected the tactics at Monica. It flatly states that the Mk-16E (as used by Hexapuma at Monica) was a "cruiser-weight" missile that could only penetrate Battle Cruiser armor with difficulty and a great deal of luck.

The part I bolded earlier flatly says, nearly as powerful as older (Older Alliance >= Current SLN) Capital Missiles four five years prior to Monica. But that is explicitly about the Mod G warhead and how the improvement changed the tactical consideration; eg the Mk-16E was not powerful enough to go for long distance kills and the Mk-16G would have been.

Harold,

added the red.

A minor nit. They did not have the Mk-16E at Monica; they didn't introduce it until they introduced the Mk-16G. What they did was mod all the pre-existing Mk-16's with the grav lenses from the new mod-G and call it mod-E. But neither were available yet until after Monica.

If the Mark-16 used a 15mton warhead, the mod-E would have (almost but not quite) doubled the yield, and Terekhov could have wasted those Indefatigables by himself. With mod-G he could have wasted an SD.

Happy Holidays!!

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Re-read SFtS Chapter Thirty again. The entire discussion of how the Mod G warhead would have affected the tactics at Monica. It flatly states that the Mk-16E (as used by Hexapuma at Monica) was a "cruiser-weight" missile that could only penetrate Battle Cruiser armor with difficulty and a great deal of luck.

The part I bolded earlier flatly says, nearly as powerful as older (Older Alliance >= Current SLN) Capital Missiles four five years prior to Monica. But that is explicitly about the Mod G warhead and how the improvement changed the tactical consideration; eg the Mk-16E was not powerful enough to go for long distance kills and the Mk-16G would have been.

Harold,

added the red.

A minor nit. They did not have the Mk-16E at Monica; they didn't introduce it until they introduced the Mk-16G. What they did was mod all the pre-existing Mk-16's with the grav lenses from the new mod-G and call it mod-E. But neither were available yet until after Monica.

If the Mark-16 used a 15mton warhead, the mod-E would have (almost but not quite) doubled the yield, and Terekhov could have wasted those Indefatigables by himself. With mod-G he could have wasted an SD.

Happy Holidays!!

Rob

Hexapuma had the Mark 16 Mod E at the Battle of Monica. The Mod G and Mod E-1 came later.

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 30 wrote:But now, thanks primarily to fallout from the Star Kingdom's ongoing emphasis on improving its grav-pulse FTL communications capability, BuWeaps had completed field testing and begun production of a new generation of substantially more powerful gravity generators for the cruiser-weight Mark 16. In fact, they'd almost doubled the grav lens amplification factor, and while they were at it, they'd increased the yield of the missile warhead, as well, which had actually required at least as much ingenuity as the new amplification generators, given the way warheads scaled. They'd had to shift quite a few of the original Mark 16's components around to find a way to shoehorn all of that in, which had included shifting several weapons bus components aft, but Helen didn't expect anyone to complain about the final result. With its fifteen megaton warhead, the Mark 16 had been capable of dealing with heavy cruiser or battlecruiser armor, although punching through to the interior of a battlecruiser had pushed it almost to the limit. Now, with the new Mod G's forty megaton warhead and improved grav lensing, the Mark 16 had very nearly as much punch as an all-up capital missile from as recently as five or six T-years ago.
Producing the Mod G had required what amounted to a complete redesign of the older Mark 16 weapons buses, however, and BuWeaps had decided that it neither wanted to discard all of the existing weapons nor forgo the improvements, so Admiral Hemphill's minions had come up with a kit to convert the previous Mod E to the Mod E-1. (Exactly what had become of the Mod F designation was more than Helen was prepared to guess. It was well known to every tactical officer that BuWeaps nomenclature worked in mysterious ways.) The Mod E-1 was basically the existing Mod E with its original gravity generators replaced by the new, improved model. That was the only change, which had required no adjustments to buses or shifting of internal components, and the new warheads could be fused seamlessly into the existing Mark 16 weapons queues and attack profiles. Of course, with its weaker, original warhead it would remain less effective than the Mod G, since its destructiveness was "only" doubled . . . while the Mod G laser heads' throughput had increased by a factor of over five.

Boldface, underlined and colored text is my emphasis.

Vince wrote:Hexapuma had the Mark 16 Mod E at the Battle of Monica. The Mod G and Mod E-1 came later.

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 30 wrote:...

Thanx. you saved me the trouble of looking it up again.

Vince wrote:Hexapuma had the Mark 16 Mod E at the Battle of Monica. The Mod G and Mod E-1 came later.

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 30 wrote:...

Weird Harold wrote:Thanx. you saved me the trouble of looking it up again.

Thanx, both from me too--I totally forgot it was the E-1. But with the E-1 lenses, he could have taken them down.

Also, given that Hexapuma deployed in early 1920, it almost has to be one of the first 3 Saganami-C ships deployed (I am thinking of the 1920 fleet chart, here). So while there is no data on what was changed between the Mk-13, the Mk-14, and the Mk-16, there doesn't seem to be much different in the size of the warhead, just the propulsion and range available. Unless I missed a thread or a post about missiles. I come and go at infrequent intervals.

Oh, something else I'd like to know, if you can remember--where and what is the Mark-15 some posters are talking about? I have seen that mentioned in posts for years, and it seems like someone's typo just got picked up and carried forever. Mark 13--1883 (Prince Consort) to 1914(?)Mark-13ER, Mark-14, 1916(?)Mark-23 & Mark-16, 1920 (late) Mk-16-E1 and G.

I guessed the Prince C's were dropped because they couldn't use the -ER version; that the Reliant III was the original platform for the Mk-14; that the battle of Tiberian (or Refuge) was the impetus for the massive fire control upgrade for the smaller classes.

Oversteegen should have had a pretty scathing AAR regarding the ability to fire off-bore being limited to 18 missiles instead of a possible total 40.

Gauntlet had the Mk-14 but there were uncorrected errors in the published text (but commented on by MWW in the Pearls). But there has never been any direct comment on background like that, that I recall. Otoh, you've already noticed my memory is not eidetic.

So if someone asked about it at a con or a book signing, I'd like to know.

Best wishes for all for the Holidays!

Regards, Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
Thanx, both from me too--I totally forgot it was the E-1. But with the E-1 lenses, he could have taken them down.

Also, given that Hexapuma deployed in early 1920, it almost has to be one of the first 3 Saganami-C ships deployed (I am thinking of the 1920 fleet chart, here). So while there is no data on what was changed between the Mk-13, the Mk-14, and the Mk-16, there doesn't seem to be much different in the size of the warhead, just the propulsion and range available. Unless I missed a thread or a post about missiles. I come and go at infrequent intervals.

Oh, something else I'd like to know, if you can remember--where and what is the Mark-15 some posters are talking about? I have seen that mentioned in posts for years, and it seems like someone's typo just got picked up and carried forever. Mark 13--1883 (Prince Consort) to 1914(?)Mark-13ER, Mark-14, 1916(?)Mark-23 & Mark-16, 1920 (late) Mk-16-E1 and G.

I guessed the Prince C's were dropped because they couldn't use the -ER version; that the Reliant III was the original platform for the Mk-14; that the battle of Tiberian (or Refuge) was the impetus for the massive fire control upgrade for the smaller classes.

Oversteegen should have had a pretty scathing AAR regarding the ability to fire off-bore being limited to 18 missiles instead of a possible total 40.

Gauntlet had the Mk-14 but there were uncorrected errors in the published text (but commented on by MWW in the Pearls). But there has never been any direct comment on background like that, that I recall. Otoh, you've already noticed my memory is not eidetic.

So if someone asked about it at a con or a book signing, I'd like to know.

Best wishes for all for the Holidays!

Regards, Rob

Actually, Rob, we do have some pretty good info on the mk-13 from IFF, and it has pretty much the same warhead as the early mk-16s, suggesting any intirm weapons were armed similiarly.

Theemile wrote:Actually, Rob, we do have some pretty good info on the mk-13 from IFF, and it has pretty much the same warhead as the early mk-16s, suggesting any intirm weapons were armed similiarly.

Thanks! cruiser-weight laserheads were about 15Mtons for the Mk-13, then the biggest difference between the -13ER and the -14 should be just the degree of range. That also fits the text for Monica, where older missiles' penaids etc. were almost as good as the newer ship's missiles.

Be well.
Rob

Vince wrote:Hexapuma had the Mark 16 Mod E at the Battle of Monica. The Mod G and Mod E-1 came later.

By the way, I also just finished re-reading Shadow of Freedom (SoF), and it flat out states that the 16-G warhead is more lethal than the SLN's latest capital ship missile, called the Trebuchet. IIRC when 10th Fleet gets Zavala's after action reports they start to re-evaluate required salvo densities to take out ships like the Indefatigables, etc. Those numbers are indirectly reflected in Terekhov telling Yucel that TWO G.A. SD's have enough missile control via the 23E, etc. to have taken out all of Crandall's fleet at Spindle, and then to "do the math".