Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)

I can see roles for both. Pod ships for fleet to fleet actions where the massive alpha strike capabilities are needed. Regular ships for patrol or independent operations where endurance and survivability would be beneficial.

pnakasone wrote:I can see roles for both. Pod ships for fleet to fleet actions where the massive alpha strike capabilities are needed. Regular ships for patrol or independent operations where endurance and survivability would be beneficial.

Pod ships for fleet to fleet actions where the massive alpha strike capabilities are needed. = All SDs--actually SDPs.

Regular ships for patrol or independent operations where endurance and survivability would be beneficial. = Ships below the wall--BC & below.

Hence sharing the support infrastructure like the roland. The roland squeezes 6 missile tubes in the place of 2 missile tubes found in small CA's 20% larger. that is an increase of 3 times the tubes.

24 Mk-23 tubes (4 clusters) with shared support infrastructure would take up the same space in a bow hammerhead of 8 standard tubes, which is less space than the gryphons 9 tubes.

60 Mk-23 tubes (10 clusters) with shared support infrastructure would take up the same space in a broadside of 20 standard tubes,

Add 18 missile tubes sized for the apollo missile, and even if the tubes are twice the size would take up the same space as 12 standard tubes. That is the same amount of broadside space as 32 tubes, which is less space than the gryphons 37 tubes.

Your point about podlayers is well put, Broadside and bow tubes would give the same firepower on 2 lauches as an invectus and be the primary weapons. In the stern will be a short pod rail, smaller than in the harrington, probably 300 pods for tactical flexibility without cutting too deeply into main missile storage.

as far as planer arrays and fire support, in the era of keyhole 2, fire support most of that is taken over by keyhole.

Theemile wrote:

ericth wrote:Did RFC actually say you can get the same throughput from a non pod design the way the OP suggests?

I recall mention of survivability and total ammo capacity being rethought and the Medusa-B being a transitional type for use against range limited opponents, but nothing about a non pod design being to match a pod one.

Not really but a little logic tells us a lot. A tube design will have better ammo storage, but a Pod design will have more plannar arrays for control, due to fewer weapons in the broadsides.

Assuming a Mk 23 spins up in the same time as a Mk 16, the minimum launch time is 18 seconds per salvo. Assuming an SD patterned after the Nike with a 40 missile broadside, a mk 23 tube SD can fire 320 missiles in 72 seconds.

A pod SD rolls 6 pods every 12 seconds, so with 10 missile mk 23 pods, will roll 360 missiles in 72 seconds.

Where the Pod SD truly has the advantage, is all of these pods can be flushed at once. We've never seen a tube ship roll more than 3 salvos at a time, where the pod design can roll missiles for 4 or 5 minutes (if it's allowed to) and toss massive salvos - over and over again. And with the way modern defenses are (an Invictus can launch 11*206 counter missiles against each salvo), yon need mass of numbers to overwhelm defenses.

Podnoughts were designed to face missile numbers that would overwhelm any pre-pod design, while sacrificing a little in the way of energy mounts.


So long as one navy (or Grand Alliance of navies) has a speed advantage, podnoughts will remain the ultimate in force projection. When the tech balances out and those Manticoran compensator's are more or less universal, you may see a return of truly conventional superdreadnoughts who can try to force a podnought to engage at "less than optimal" (ie: graser range).

But like in history, the missile is superior to the melee weapon. Rock beats club, arrow beats sword, and in this case MDM beats graser.

I can only really see a few nations who might continue to build some form of conventional superdreadnought. They all happen to own some form of wormhole, because a podnought that tries to assault through a wormhole won't be able to control the range. Except those are known as fortresses rather than true superdreadnoughts

darrell wrote:Hence sharing the support infrastructure like the roland. The roland squeezes 6 missile tubes in the place of 2 missile tubes found in small CA's 20% larger. that is an increase of 3 times the tubes.

24 Mk-23 tubes (4 clusters) with shared support infrastructure would take up the same space in a bow hammerhead of 8 standard tubes, which is less space than the gryphons 9 tubes.

60 Mk-23 tubes (10 clusters) with shared support infrastructure would take up the same space in a broadside of 20 standard tubes,

Add 18 missile tubes sized for the apollo missile, and even if the tubes are twice the size would take up the same space as 12 standard tubes. That is the same amount of broadside space as 32 tubes, which is less space than the gryphons 37 tubes.

Your point about podlayers is well put, Broadside and bow tubes would give the same firepower on 2 lauches as an invectus and be the primary weapons. In the stern will be a short pod rail, smaller than in the harrington, probably 300 pods for tactical flexibility without cutting too deeply into main missile storage.

as far as planer arrays and fire support, in the era of keyhole 2, fire support most of that is taken over by keyhole.

I think you've missed the comment DW made about the Roland's armament - namely the RMN isn't very comfortable with the compromises made to shoehorn that much firepower into such a small package. Unfortunately, for the Roland to be successful, such compromises were necessary, but it doesn't make the RMN like what had to be done. In short, the individual Shielding on each tube was removed as well as redundant systems on each tube. In addition, equipment which normally would service 1 tube was replaced with units which serviced multiple tubes.

The outcome, was a weapon system VERY susceptible to complete loss by a single shot or single part failure.

The RMN didn't want to use such a system in the Roland, but they had no choice to make a small Mk 16 combatant. In an SD they have that choice and won't take it. They have seen 3rd rate navies overgun ships for years, cutting corners to fit in as many weapons as possible, without proper armoring and redundancies, and thus creating designs which have glass jaws, and the RMN is reluctant to do the same. That's one of the reasons they don't like the BC(p) design, despite it's superiority to ships 3x it's size built just 10 years earlier.

I also think you are under-estimating how much room such systems will take up and how many defenses would need to be sacrificed to fit them in.

I think the big threat to the podnaught concept will be if anti-missile defenses gain a big edge over the ability of missiles to overcome them.

When or even if that will happen in the series I don't know but I'm sure every non-GA allied nation that has any idea what i happening in Haven sector is working on it and probably the GA nations as well

Somtaaw wrote:
snip

But like in history, the missile is superior to the melee weapon. Rock beats club, arrow beats sword, and in this case MDM beats graser.

snip

David refused the armor and standard weapons and never had to come into range of Goliath's weapons.

At long range, missiles are superior. At energy range, it is too late! This is why missile heavy forces will seek to keep the range open when fighting

Theemile wrote:I think you've missed the comment DW made about the Roland's armament - namely the RMN isn't very comfortable with the compromises made to shoehorn that much firepower into such a small package. Unfortunately, for the Roland to be successful, such compromises were necessary, but it doesn't make the RMN like what had to be done. In short, the individual Shielding on each tube was removed as well as redundant systems on each tube. In addition, equipment which normally would service 1 tube was replaced with units which serviced multiple tubes.

The outcome, was a weapon system VERY susceptible to complete loss by a single shot or single part failure.

The RMN didn't want to use such a system in the Roland, but they had no choice to make a small Mk 16 combatant. In an SD they have that choice and won't take it. They have seen 3rd rate navies overgun ships for years, cutting corners to fit in as many weapons as possible, without proper armoring and redundancies, and thus creating designs which have glass jaws, and the RMN is reluctant to do the same. That's one of the reasons they don't like the BC(p) design, despite it's superiority to ships 3x it's size built just 10 years earlier.

I also think you are under-estimating how much room such systems will take up and how many defenses would need to be sacrificed to fit them in.

IIRC the handling equipment; even shared over the 6 tubes; still takes up a fair bit of the hammerhead volume (and other bits may be displaced to inboard of the chokepoint of the impeller rooms -- deeper into the hull. So the "footprint" of the Roland's 6-tube DDM pack is wider that just the face of the hammerhead. If you tried sticking them next to each other on a broadside you'd need more clearance around each "pack" that you might assume; even before you factor in the need to cofferdam between each "pack" lest a single hit cascade through every tube on a given broadside.

What is completely lacking in this discussion of moving away from Pods, is the simple fact that there are only so many missiles one can fire out the broadside/end of a ship.

This is a finite number.
This finite number needs to have a larger percentage given to COUNTERMISSILES. Not offensive missiles.

When a ship can fire off thousands upon thousands of offensive missiles but only ~a thousand or two of counter missiles, then their is no way in this universe that Podnaughts are going to DECREASE their counter missile battery. None.

If anything, a ship might go the way of a fortress to defend against Alpha swarms of missiles. Using a spherical sidewall allowing more broadside area for counter missile PDLC fire. This would effectively ~ quadruple the number of counter missiles a ship is able to fire as right now the "arc" a CM missile can use is all of ~90 degrees out of 360. That 90 degrees is mighty generous. Number of CMs' say a Fort can fire is probably more than 8 times that of an SD'P currently.

And no, do not bring up Lorelie, why? Because other nations will soon have FTL RD's with decent enough stealth that Lorelie becomes utterly useless. In the short term it is useful against barbarians with myopic clubs. Otherwise, useless unless we are going to pretend that Lorelie can deceive RD's at less than a Million kilometers...

Jonathan_S wrote:

Theemile wrote:I think you've missed the comment DW made about the Roland's armament - namely the RMN isn't very comfortable with the compromises made to shoehorn that much firepower into such a small package. Unfortunately, for the Roland to be successful, such compromises were necessary, but it doesn't make the RMN like what had to be done. In short, the individual Shielding on each tube was removed as well as redundant systems on each tube. In addition, equipment which normally would service 1 tube was replaced with units which serviced multiple tubes.

The outcome, was a weapon system VERY susceptible to complete loss by a single shot or single part failure.

The RMN didn't want to use such a system in the Roland, but they had no choice to make a small Mk 16 combatant. In an SD they have that choice and won't take it. They have seen 3rd rate navies overgun ships for years, cutting corners to fit in as many weapons as possible, without proper armoring and redundancies, and thus creating designs which have glass jaws, and the RMN is reluctant to do the same. That's one of the reasons they don't like the BC(p) design, despite it's superiority to ships 3x it's size built just 10 years earlier.

I also think you are under-estimating how much room such systems will take up and how many defenses would need to be sacrificed to fit them in.

IIRC the handling equipment; even shared over the 6 tubes; still takes up a fair bit of the hammerhead volume (and other bits may be displaced to inboard of the chokepoint of the impeller rooms -- deeper into the hull. So the "footprint" of the Roland's 6-tube DDM pack is wider that just the face of the hammerhead. If you tried sticking them next to each other on a broadside you'd need more clearance around each "pack" that you might assume; even before you factor in the need to cofferdam between each "pack" lest a single hit cascade through every tube on a given broadside.

Not to mention, the armor just on the face of the hammerhead is 7 meters thick. Considering the hammerheads of any warship are the most heavily armored (due to no sidewall or wedge protection, bucklers notwithstanding), the rest of the hammerhead is equivalently armored*. Reduces the available internal volume quite a bit for tubes and such.

*Just checked - yep, 7 meters or more all around the entire hammerhead.