No. Haven didn't need to try to get fancy - they had massively overwhelming force, getting fancy would just dilute it, Manticore didn't have an opportunity where they could get fancy.
It's been fairly clear that even if something is technically detectable by the hardware, the software has to be looking for it, and, more importantly the human techs need to have the systems looking in the right direction for the right thing, and they also need to be paying attention to the right places at the right times.
I'm assuming that you're talking about my comment that RDs aren't an automatic detect everything device, because you say you didn't read the rest of my post.
If I'm mistaken, and this is in reference to missile onboard tracking limitations ... that's something that's been quite explicit in the text as well.
As for general sensors vs stealth, in the lead up to Oyster Bay, we saw a stealthed MAlign ship lurking in Yeltsin that was very close to a GSN ship with RDs out. Admittedly, that's a non-standard situation, but it does help demonstrate that stealth even with hostile RDs out is possible.
Earlier in the series ... in In Enemy Hands, the
Prince Adrian got caught because they didn't see the Peep ship that was lying doggo in front of them - because they were focused on the ship(s) they already knew about and were pursuing them, not looking elsewhere.
You also somehow believe a LAC has thousands of G's of acceleration. As somehow a LAC can magically maneuver in the time an MDM has flight time (9min) to maneuver laterally millions of kilometers to intercept..... Have you even bothered to do basic math for how long is required for a LAC to move even 1Million kilometers? Of course you haven't. If you had, you wouldn't be making such absurd statements.
Hardly ... the LACs would have to be sent out well in advance of heading towards effective range, and probably wouldn't bother going that far, ignoring the time contraint, and aim for closer, but still noticeably forwards ... and they'd have to be spread out, probably wider separations than normal, but they'd be spread out anyways. I'm not saying it'd necessarily work very well or for very long, just that it's technically doable, given the apparent missile combat paradigm. They also wouldn't be out there to try to stop the missile storm, just trim it down some and disrupt it if they could - if Apollo or some sort of analogue is in use, they'd be looking for the control missiles to prioritize.
And, in the podnought missile storm era, thus far, you generally want to give the other side the opportunity to concentrate their forces, because the difference between two or three smaller groups and one bigger group is a whole lot smaller - in fact, with the current missile storm combats, you
want the enemy all in one place so that you don't run the risk of overkilling the first group and running out of ammo for a later group.
Think back to ... Second Yeltsin? If all the Peep battleships had come in together, it wouldn't have made much difference in the outcome. But since they separated into two groups, Theisman's smaller group could have taken on Honor's SDs that had gotten battered by Thurston's group. That's the same sort of problem, only exacerbated, with podnoughts.
And NO, I did not bother reading anything you wrote after paragraphs 1 and 2.
The second half was an entirely different, although arguably related, subject - concerning your statements about missile courses.
Jonathan_S wrote:Kytheros wrote:As far as forward deploying LACs ... I think that missiles normally straight-line(ish, probably more of a slight curve, really) it until shortly before they approach countermissile range. Any lateral acceleration in the "boost phase" just makes the missile take longer to get to the target, and leaves it at a lower approach velocity, leaving the enemy more time to maneuver and take countermeasures.
Assuming you have enough endurance to boost the entire time I don't think the longer path from spreading out in the mid-flight phase would result in lower terminal velocities.
Yes, some of the velocity is "wasted" by building and then counteracting your detour vectors. But you also have more time to build your forward velocity.
I tried a quick back of the envelope calc for MDMs on straight line 40 million km run vs angling out and back 20 degree.
Straight Line:
417 seconds; 191,820 km/s terminal velocity
Angled Run:
430 seconds; 197,800 km/s terminal velocity; total run length 42.4 million km.
Oh, at even a 20 degree deviation you're almost 7.3 million km off the baseline course at the midpoint; twice as far as even a new extended range CM can reach.
You do get more tracking time; an extra 13 seconds. But you also have to deal with a 3% higher terminal velocity.
I'm pretty sure that only once you exceed a 45 degree diversion from course that your terminal velocity starts dropping below the baseline value.
Like I said, a very far forward deployment would really only work on the initial salvos of an enemy that wasn't prepared for it. That'd get you a few battles at most.
Then you'd have to reduce how far out you deploy in order to still catch missiles.
An extra 13 seconds of runtime on an MDM doesn't matter to the MDM itself, sure. But that's 2/3rds of a tube-launched DDM/MDM cycle time, or slightly more than a pod-deployment cycle.
If the other guy is sending his missiles in as straight as possible, then his are going to hit you first, and his followup salvos will hit you faster as well.
In terms of missile hardware, straightlining may well be a legacy artifact from older, less capable single drive missiles, but there's still reason to do it, and currently not much reason not to.
