"downrange countermissiles"

Relax, I think you're radically underestimating the intervals between ships.
Personally, I think that intervals are likely to be several multiples of wedge dimensions under traditional circumstances, and Manticore has relatively recently gone to even looser formations to allow for an even greater degree of independent maneuvering.

Hypothetically, if the interval was 5x wedge size for traditional style formations, Manticore might have gone to 10x or 15x.
Note, I made those numbers up, but I firmly believe that intervals are reasonably large, relative to wedge size, traditionally, and Manticore's looser formations will have increased them rather substantially.

It has been pointed out in the text that one of the many weaknesses of the SLN BF was an inability to maintain the kind of tight formation needed for effective anti-missile defense. IIRC, that had was close enough that you had only a few hundred km of space between the wedges at closest approach.

Kytheros wrote:Personally, I think that intervals are likely to be several multiples of wedge dimensions under traditional circumstances, and Manticore has relatively recently gone to even looser formations to allow for an even greater degree of independent maneuvering.

This is not supported by textev. There's dialogue from one of the earlier books where White Haven explicitly remarks that Havenite formations are getting tighter, "almost like Manticoran ones". Independent maneuvering, while useful under some circumstances, is less effective than the sort of tight interlocking active missile defense a tight formation allows; in general, you want your wall to be as tight as possible to maximize overlap between each ships' defensive fire. With the advent of pod-based combat, and the increased need to intercept missiles as early as possible, I strongly doubt that the RMN has radically changed their doctrine so that individual ships are on their own.

kzt wrote:It has been pointed out in the text that one of the many weaknesses of the SLN BF was an inability to maintain the kind of tight formation needed for effective anti-missile defense. IIRC, that had was close enough that you had only a few hundred km of space between the wedges at closest approach.

A podlayer has to be accelerating to deploy pods. If it is accelerating at 500G's, in one minute pods will be strung out 9,000 KM behind it. And if they stack pods for 3 minutes that is 81,000 KM. They would have to offset the wall to keep one ship's wedge from destroying anohter ship's pods, so for a fleet of 100 SDP's, minimum spacing would be about 1,000 KM.

A PDLC has a range of about 100,000KM. In order for one ship to be able to aim a PDLC at a missile targeted on another ship, the maximum spacing would be about 50,000KM.

Based on text, I am GUESSING that the Manticore wall of battle would have a separation on the order of 10K-20K KM, solarian leage between 50K-100K KM.

The E wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Personally, I think that intervals are likely to be several multiples of wedge dimensions under traditional circumstances, and Manticore has relatively recently gone to even looser formations to allow for an even greater degree of independent maneuvering.

This is not supported by textev. There's dialogue from one of the earlier books where White Haven explicitly remarks that Havenite formations are getting tighter, "almost like Manticoran ones". Independent maneuvering, while useful under some circumstances, is less effective than the sort of tight interlocking active missile defense a tight formation allows; in general, you want your wall to be as tight as possible to maximize overlap between each ships' defensive fire. With the advent of pod-based combat, and the increased need to intercept missiles as early as possible, I strongly doubt that the RMN has radically changed their doctrine so that individual ships are on their own.

white haven did make that comment but it was faily early, book 6 or 7


in the last proper honour book (not shadow of freedom with mike hence and co) there is a scene, i'm fairly sure it is at the crusher where they are gaming out a plan for when Filertra comes and honor does muse about the fact that they were LOOSENING formations.

putting LACS and the new decoys in-between squadrons of SDs along with the extra reach of CMs now meant there is more room in the formations. the overlap and backup stats are reduced but it increases overall coverage

darrell wrote:

kzt wrote:It has been pointed out in the text that one of the many weaknesses of the SLN BF was an inability to maintain the kind of tight formation needed for effective anti-missile defense. IIRC, that had was close enough that you had only a few hundred km of space between the wedges at closest approach.

A podlayer has to be accelerating to deploy pods. If it is accelerating at 500G's, in one minute pods will be strung out 9,000 KM behind it. And if they stack pods for 3 minutes that is 81,000 KM. They would have to offset the wall to keep one ship's wedge from destroying anohter ship's pods, so for a fleet of 100 SDP's, minimum spacing would be about 1,000 KM.

A PDLC has a range of about 100,000KM. In order for one ship to be able to aim a PDLC at a missile targeted on another ship, the maximum spacing would be about 50,000KM.

Based on text, I am GUESSING that the Manticore wall of battle would have a separation on the order of 10K-20K KM, solarian leage between 50K-100K KM.

Yes, you are correct for pod spacing due to simple acceleration. You are also correct in that it would be patently stupid to have a ship behind "eating" the pods of the previous ship.

What you are forgetting is that a formation is NOT a sheet of paper. It is a CUBE or sphere or... pick any other 3d object. Or more likely a "wall" is a staggered line. Each ship could theoretically have an infinitely long tail of pods.

Do remember I said 10x10... 100 ships. In reality it would be 10 separate lines of 10 ships staggered by as little as a wedge width so each ship can "see" in front of it and behind it and to both sides with clear vision.

SO, in reality the formation probably looks more like: If looking "down" on the formation.

......... are just spacing for this stupid form that does not allow multiple spaces and it is justified so a "." is not the same width spacing as a /

/|\..........
.../|\.........
....../|\........
........./|\.......
............/|\......
.............../|\.....
................../|\....
...................../|\...
......................../|\..
.........................../|\.
............................../|\

Back in, EoH?, Shannon Foraker made a wall out of Battleships with pods. Others have made "walls" out of SD's. It can hardly be called a "wall", if each wedge, while 300km square is separated by 10,000km to the next. You would have over 100,000km between edges of a ship formation. A PDLC back in the early days had a range all of ~100,000km. Not exactly possible to have "overlapping" fields of defensive fire when one side of a formation cannot protect the other.

In either case, missiles are not running into each other under any scenario here when in the CM role when the VOLUME of space they are expanding into is far greater than that from which they were FIRED FROM in the first place! The volume differential is Millions of times different.

What concentration of CM's against one quadrant of a formation does, is limit the number of PDLC's a formation can bear on those missiles. If you "englobe" a formation, all PDLC's get to fire.

EDIT: Lorelie platforms were placed far away, separate from the formation to make it look like the real formation. If you did not do this, then when a missile figured out the Lorelie was a lie, it would still be able to attack the formation if the Lorelie was close to the mother ship.

Relax wrote:

darrell wrote:
A podlayer has to be accelerating to deploy pods. If it is accelerating at 500G's, in one minute pods will be strung out 9,000 KM behind it. And if they stack pods for 3 minutes that is 81,000 KM. They would have to offset the wall to keep one ship's wedge from destroying anohter ship's pods, so for a fleet of 100 SDP's, minimum spacing would be about 1,000 KM.

A PDLC has a range of about 100,000KM. In order for one ship to be able to aim a PDLC at a missile targeted on another ship, the maximum spacing would be about 50,000KM.

Based on text, I am GUESSING that the Manticore wall of battle would have a separation on the order of 10K-20K KM, solarian leage between 50K-100K KM.

Yes, you are correct for pod spacing due to simple acceleration. You are also correct in that it would be patently stupid to have a ship behind "eating" the pods of the previous ship.

What you are forgetting is that a formation is NOT a sheet of paper. It is a CUBE or sphere or... pick any other 3d object. Or more likely a "wall" is a staggered line. Each ship could theoretically have an infinitely long tail of pods.

Do remember I said 10x10... 100 ships. In reality it would be 10 separate lines of 10 ships staggered by as little as a wedge width so each ship can "see" in front of it and behind it and to both sides with clear vision.

SO, in reality the formation probably looks more like: If looking "down" on the formation.

......... are just spacing for this stupid form that does not allow multiple spaces and it is justified so a "." is not the same width spacing as a /

/|\..........
.../|\.........
....../|\........
........./|\.......
............/|\......
.............../|\.....
................../|\....
...................../|\...
......................../|\..
.........................../|\.
............................../|\

I agree that the above is one way to set things up, but IMO not the best way. Instead of shifting things vertically tward the enemy, shift them horizontally. A 2 squadron wall looked at from the enemy's perspective:

/|\........./|\........./|\........./|\.........
.../|\........./|\........./|\........./|\......
....../|\........./|\........./|\........./|\...
........./|\........./|\........./|\........./|\

and looked at from the side:

............SDP ..........LAC..........LAC
CLAC...SDP ..........LAC..........LAC
CLAC...SDP ..........LAC..........LAC
............SDP ..........LAC..........LAC

darrell wrote: A 2 squadron wall looked at from the enemy's perspective:

/|\........./|\........./|\........./|\.........
.../|\........./|\........./|\........./|\......
....../|\........./|\........./|\........./|\...
........./|\........./|\........./|\........./|\

and looked at from the side:

............SDP ..........LAC..........LAC
CLAC...SDP ..........LAC..........LAC
CLAC...SDP ..........LAC..........LAC
............SDP ..........LAC..........LAC

Essentially what I wrote above, but showed a different angle. Shocking, a 2d incomplete "forum" drawing does not show 3d... Oh say it isn't so...


I just did not add the 2nd, 3rd, .. nth "row" staggerd "backwards" into the page. You did.

The E wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Personally, I think that intervals are likely to be several multiples of wedge dimensions under traditional circumstances, and Manticore has relatively recently gone to even looser formations to allow for an even greater degree of independent maneuvering.

This is not supported by textev. There's dialogue from one of the earlier books where White Haven explicitly remarks that Havenite formations are getting tighter, "almost like Manticoran ones". Independent maneuvering, while useful under some circumstances, is less effective than the sort of tight interlocking active missile defense a tight formation allows; in general, you want your wall to be as tight as possible to maximize overlap between each ships' defensive fire. With the advent of pod-based combat, and the increased need to intercept missiles as early as possible, I strongly doubt that the RMN has radically changed their doctrine so that individual ships are on their own.

In the early books, that's true, Manticoran formations were tight.

However, in At All Costs, I think it was, it was mentioned that Manticoran/Alliance formations were getting looser to allow ships to more freely maneuver in order to more freely take missiles on the wedge, taking advantage of Keyhole platforms.
Ships are not "on their own" - they simply have a bigger area of space they can maneuver in without needing to worry about a wedge collision with their neighbors. The amount of maneuvering against inbound missile fire has gone up by necessity, and Keyhole has allowed even more maneuvering without sacrificing active interception capability.

While the need to intercept further out has increased ... so too has the interception range of both countermissiles and point defense laser clusters.
This allows formations to loosen to allow for improved maneuvering without giving up supporting fire.

When it was possible for active defenses to have good odds of stopping the majority, if not all, inbound missiles, then, tighter formations for increased defensive overlap were important. However ... no degree of active defenses, however good, can can outright stop the kind of missile storms that are being thrown around nowadays. While killing all the inbound missiles you can is still important ... there are a whole lot more missiles you can't kill, which makes it imperative to deny the inbound missiles good angles against the open aspects of the wedge or against the sidewalls, which means more maneuvering, which requires more space between ships for safety.



I expect SLN spacing would be more like that of the pre/early War Peeps. That is, spacing doctrine is based on tight formations, hampered by the SLN's shortcomings, and so the formations aren't as tight as they could/should be for the paradigm they're intended for.

For that matter, the Havenites in the Second War probably kept to tighter formations, in part thanks to their countermissile doctrine, based on mass of fire, rather than Manticoran precision.

And what "maneuvering" can you do every 70 seconds when hundreds of missiles are bearing down WHEN the turn flip time of and SD is given in MINUTES(12)... Ok, they can "spin" a bit. Otherwise, no, there is no "maneuvering". It is the difference between BLACK and DEEP BLACK on the color chart.