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Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)

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Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by darrell   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 1:58 pm

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DW has said that beauships is rethinking the Harrington B on grounds of survivability, with off bore firing, delayed activation, and the technology found in the Roland missile tubes, you can get the same rate of fire and salvo density as you would get from a podnought without the pods.

The 6 missile tubes on the Roland take up no more space than two missile tubes that are the chase armament of the warrior heavy cruiser that is 20% larger.

By using the same technology, beauships should be able to pack three times the number of missile tubes into a SD. Here is how I would design it.
Chase 24 Mk-23 tubes, same energy weapons as a gryphon, no CM, oodles of PDLC’s
Broadside 48 Mk-23 & 18 Mk-23E tubes, same energy weapons as a gryphon, oodles of CM tubes and PDLC’s
It has twice the Mk-23E tubes it needs to pair with the Mk-23, this is to allow for combat damage.

Such a ship can fire a double broadside that has the same number of missiles as is in 18 pods. 30 second cycle time and with delayed activation, two double broadsides can fire as many missiles as an invictus, without the podlayers weaknesses. If the cycle time can be brought down to 20 seconds, it could fire 50% more missiles per minute.

"shadow of freedom" Michelle showed her teeth briefly. “I’ve got oodles—that’s a technical term, Mr. Prime Minister; it means lots and lots—of naval combat power, but I’m severely strapped for ground combat power.”

Roland-class destroyer: Mass: 188,750 tons Chase: 6M, 2G, 6PD

Warrior-class heavy cruiser Mass: 227,250 tons (20% larger) Chase: 2M, 1G, 2CM, 2PD

Gryphon-class superdreadnought Mass: 8,339,000 tons Broadside: 37M, 19L, 22G, 8ET, 28CM, 30PD Chase: 9M, 4L, 5G, 10CM, 10PD
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:09 pm

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darrell wrote:DW has said that beauships is rethinking the Harrington B on grounds of survivability, with off bore firing, delayed activation, and the technology found in the Roland missile tubes, you can get the same rate of fire and salvo density as you would get from a podnought without the pods.


Until they engineer FTL comms down to fit in a single MK-23 or MK-16, they're going to need pods for Apollo. Apollo just doesn't translate to tube launchers because the ACM is too big for the same launchers as its brood.

Buships is looking at increasing survivability rather than doing away with the pod-nought concept entirely. Replacing the BC(P) with the BC(L) on survivability grounds makes sense, because they aren't fully Apollo capable, but the Apollo capable SD(P)s offer more advantages than disadvantages.
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by noblehunter   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 6:52 pm

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What about magazine size? While the current balance of power for wall-to-wall combat doesn't tend towards long engagements, it wouldn't do for an SD to run dry too quickly.

One of the main disadvantages of the BC(P) is that they don't have the magazine capacity to sustain their rate of fire.
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by kzt   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 7:11 pm

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noblehunter wrote:One of the main disadvantages of the BC(P) is that they don't have the magazine capacity to sustain their rate of fire.

You will notice that this is supposed to be a problem, but it's never actually happened in a fight David has shown. The bigger the magazine, the more missiles they have on-board when they blow up.
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by Relax   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 7:49 pm

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With one or two jots of RFC Space Lords' pen, BC'P, Invicuts, Medusa's all increased their pod load by nearly 50%...

Until there is a vast increase in defensive capability, alpha strike still rules, so a non pod based warrior is not going to happen. Introduction of FTL Apollo birds only makes alpha strike even MORE overwhelming. Keyhole helps a lot, but... Countering this is every missile has far more "throughput" power of its laser heads. So, total number of "hits" a ship can take has also dropped significantly. So, a huge amount of tonnage is going to go towards more CM tubes and "control links" along with FTL component based on their FTL RD's or some other platform. More PDLC's, and most of it towards stronger sidewall generators.

Now a return of ship board launchers does make sense. Why? Currently roughly 1 in 4 missiles in a pod is an EW bird. It makes far more sense to provide said EW birds from the ship instead of forcing you to always launch 25% EW birds when they may not be required, or when MORE EW birds makes sense.

As for pod density, it probably also makes sense to have the Apollo birds fired from the Ship as well. One: FTL bandwidth will increase thus allowing more than 8 birds per Apollo bird. Also, this removal of the Apollo bird would allow a more uniform Pod shape so they would not be required to waste space accommodating a much larger missile in the pod. "L" shaped objects do not pack well together. Cubes on the other hand do.

It also might make sense to pack all of the EW functions into the Apollo missile as well. FTL transceivers should also be getting smaller. Thus saving space for EW head or make slightly larger.
Last edited by Relax on Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:01 pm

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noblehunter wrote:What about magazine size? ...

One of the main disadvantages of the BC(P) is that they don't have the magazine capacity to sustain their rate of fire.


Magazine capacity is a concern for any ship with a high rate of fire. Hexapuma essentially shot her magazines dry in Monica at long range to get information for the ships with shorter ranges. Every commander has to figure magazine capacity into the tactics for any given battle. That includes CM magazines, FWIW.

BC(p)s don't load Apollo or MK-23 pods, although they can use both, because MK-16Gs have nearly the same punch in a smaller package.
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by Relax   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:06 pm

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A BCL has 5000? or is it 6000 MK-16s.
BC'P had 330 Pods. Pods shrunk, so ~50% more pods now
BC'P now has roughly 500 pods.
500x14 = 7000 MK-16's....

So, which platform has the endurance and alpha strike capability now?
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by pnakasone   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:21 pm

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We will probably see tech upgrades that allows the pod-layers to keep competitive. If they can add just one more combat missile to an Apollo pod that is an increase of 12.5 percent in fire power. Since pods are considered airly expendable they can be replaced far faster then you can build a ship.

Consider this an Invictus-class currently has 1074 Apollo pods. If they can upgrade its fire power just by increasing the number of missiles per pod or increasing the number of pods would that be worth considering when making building choices.

Survivability is impotent. The question can you really build a ship that can survive the current battle field with out sacrificing other concerns.
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:30 pm

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I just had a thought here: I think I see a way to greatly increase the fire rate.

The limits on how closely you can place the tubes comes down to fratricide. Since we are now doing off-bore launches, lets do it a bit differently:

Build a ship with say 5x the tubes of the best designs we have now. What's this, I hear someone saying "fratricide"? No--because we are going to do a staggered launch. Look at it as groups of 5 tubes where there was one. Each tube fires 6 seconds after the last one in the group fired. Horrible for normal shooting but since we are talking off-bore it doesn't matter--all the missiles are heading normal to the target anyway. After as many missiles as you want are in space they turn towards the target and light off--they will arrive as a single salvo.
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Re: Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)
Post by darrell   » Sun Mar 20, 2016 8:44 pm

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The detweilers will have a missile tube that will fire a graser torpedo, which is far larger than the apollo missile. Granted that you can't launch an apollo missile from a Mk-23 tube, there is no reason that you can't build a tube that CAN fire an apollo missile.

for every 8 tubes that fires a Mk-23 missile, have 2 tubes that can fire an apollo missile. The extra Apollo tubes are so that combat damage dosen't hurt the firing rate.

Weird Harold wrote:
darrell wrote:DW has said that beauships is rethinking the Harrington B on grounds of survivability, with off bore firing, delayed activation, and the technology found in the Roland missile tubes, you can get the same rate of fire and salvo density as you would get from a podnought without the pods.


Until they engineer FTL comms down to fit in a single MK-23 or MK-16, they're going to need pods for Apollo. Apollo just doesn't translate to tube launchers because the ACM is too big for the same launchers as its brood.

Buships is looking at increasing survivability rather than doing away with the pod-nought concept entirely. Replacing the BC(P) with the BC(L) on survivability grounds makes sense, because they aren't fully Apollo capable, but the Apollo capable SD(P)s offer more advantages than disadvantages.


Onboard missile storage dosen't have hundreds of tractors, fusion plants, or thousands of box launchers. Even with the space saving flat packs, you will be able to fit more missiles in onboard missile storage, which means that you will have more missiles and a longer sustained firing rate than any pod storage.

noblehunter wrote:What about magazine size? While the current balance of power for wall-to-wall combat doesn't tend towards long engagements, it wouldn't do for an SD to run dry too quickly.

One of the main disadvantages of the BC(P) is that they don't have the magazine capacity to sustain their rate of fire.
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