Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

Somtaaw wrote:

Bill Woods wrote:Then why were pods ever worth having? If you could just kick out yeah-many missiles one by one — but all programmed to start their drives at the same time?

Well, time,control links and efficiency.

Your average CA/BC has a reload on broadside tubes of what, 6 to 8 seconds per tube? So even a Nike-class (off-bore firing excluded) is only going to be throwing 50 missiles every, say 20 seconds, from each broadside. In that same 20 seconds, you've deployed a triple pattern of 6 pods per pattern, 144 missiles (assuming Apollo) or 252 missiles (assuming BCP). Even with off-bore, a Nike class firing delayed activation double broadsides is now only pushing 100 missiles, which is still only 2/3 of what Apollo pods are putting into space.


But excluding the raw numbers, efficiency is a big issue. Your ship's travelling at 400-600 gravities, and unless you're tractoring every single missile as you float them out, they're strung out like a breadcrumb line behind you. That's going to require one helluva lot of control link time just to guide them for simultaneous Time-on-Target. Which means you're getting less time to concentrate on boosting your penaid efficiency, which means your over-sized broadside salvo's are now less efficient because you're focusing more on salvo size and less on actually hitting what you're shooting at.

If the Nike's missile/sec deployment rate is 2/3 that of the Apollo ship, it'll take 1.5 times as long to pump out 100 missiles, so they'll be spread over 1.5^2 (~2) times as much distance. Doesn't seem that big a deal.

Weird Harold wrote:

Bill Woods wrote: Well, sure but if you can afford to put a port in the hull big enough to pass eight missiles and the surrounding paraphernalia of the pod, then you could afford to put enough launchers to dispense missiles in sets of eight.

The space used for eight additional launchers is space taken from your magazines. Why not use that space for pods and the additional missiles they contain?

Every missile in a pod has its own launcher, which takes up space, plus whatever general systems the pod has, which take up more space. Bare missiles can be racked up without all that, so the capacity of the magazine is larger, not smaller.

Weird Harold wrote: The only drawback to pods is that you can't change the ratio of pen-aids to attack missiles because pods have to be pre-configured with a set ratio (i.e. one Dazzler, one Dragon's Teeth, One ACM, and six MK-23 attack missiles in an Apollo pod.)

That too.

darrell wrote:No reason to do either:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/175/1
Capital missiles, multi-stage missiles, and missile pods
Note that an MSM launcher can fire a smaller missile, although the smaller launchers cannot fire MSMs.

So you won't need either a sabat or a sleeve for a SD to fire a BC missile out of it's capital missile tube. Another example would be the ability to fire a Mk-23 missile out of a tube built for an Apollo control missile.

There's not enough information in the note from that infodump to know whether or not a sabot (or other supplementary mechanism) was needed to let an MSM launcher fire a smaller missile. That was an aside to the post, not the main point so it would be entirely normal for RFC not to have elaborated on exactly what was require to take advantage of the capability. But lack of mention does not mean no special device or mechanism (like a canister or sabot) might be required; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

After all it's a basically true statement that any artillery piece can fire sub-caliber shells. But it's incomplete because the first part is only true when you use a sabot to adjust the sub-caliber shell to the larger caliber barrel.

Somtaaw wrote:And you should care about missiles being strong along. You're accelerating at 500 gravities, and if you release one missile per tube every 12 seconds, how far are your missiles strung along? I don't have a handy spreadsheet for this, so if my math is wrong please forgive, but it looks to be around every 416m you'd be leaving a missile? Can someone confirm that number?

And that's still assuming that floating your missiles out doesn't get them vaporized by your own wedge as you keep accelerating. Unless you're accelerating 180 degrees AWAY from your intended target, and you're only dropping missiles for a short time, you can no longer guarantee getting 100% of your SDMs to even reach attack range with time left for terminal maneuvers or deceptive attack runs.

Well you're accelerating so the intervals aren't even; but fortunately I do have a spreadsheet of missile performance I can easily reporpose to this. Lets assume you are accelerating at 500g, that the salvo interval is the 12 seconds you mentioned, and you have the fire control to handle a crazy 10 salvo delayed launch.

Note 1: For simplicity I'm going to track the missiles from a single tube because the interval between each missile in a given salvo do not change
Note 2: I believe RFC said at least once he uses 1g-Honorverse = 10m/s^2 but my spreadsheet is still using 9.8)
t=0s; d=0km
t=12s; d=353 km; interval=353 km
t=24s; d=1,411 km; interval=1,058 km
t=36s; d=3,175 km; interval=3,175 km
t=48s; d=5,645 km; interval=2,470 km
t=60s; d=8,820 km; interval=3,175 km
t=72s; d=12,701 km; interval=3,881 km
t=84s; d=17,287 km; interval=4,586 km
t=96s; d=22,579 km; interval=5,292 km
t=108s; d=28,577 km; interval=5,998 km

The missiles are strung out, at increasing intervals, over about 30,000 km. On the one hand that sounds like a long way. On the other that's less than one half of one percent (0.41%) of an SDM's max powered range of over seven million km!
Also assuming the target is accelerating just as hard on a parallel course the aftmost missile will also need to make up an additional 529km/s of velocity due to the target building up that vector perpendicular to the missiles normal flight path over the last 108 seconds. Which also sounds like a lot, yet it's the equivalent of ~1.2 seconds of the missile's drive (at it's normal 50% power setting).

If you had the fire control links to talk to all those missiles the distance and velocity they'd have to make up seem easily surmountable issues...

Tractor adjustment length:

From books we know pods are deployed outside the wedge. On an SD that would be roughly 1/2(300km) + delta = ~200km minimum behind ship that a tractor can move/control a pod. In a RISING THUNDER we saw tugs grabbing ships, pieces. One would think their ability would be to move ships etc with lots of room in between would be roughly 1000km or so.

SO: If tractors have the ability to deploy pods several hundred kilometers behind a ship, WHY could they not then real the pod back to the ship and put new missiles in it?... eventually. Especially if they have onboard tractors and they attach to the hull. Worse that happens is a laser head blows a pod away. Guess what? Better the EMPTY pod gets blown away than your hull.

IE have a pod bay/hatch for automatically refurbishing a pod from the already existing missile core for broadside tubes.

In short a future SD'P should have a very shallow POD bay compared to even a Medusa, but lots of broadside missile tubes. The opposite of the Medusa-C. Yea, yea, I know, also assumes DW's control link limitation is still in place and has not caught up to 1970/1980's reality. Also assumes all that broadside space has not been reserved for even more counter missile tubes.

This way can still accomplish maximum alpha strike. Can fire even more missiles per minute than before.

Anywhoooo

Commerce Raiding by the SLN

Manticore orderd home all the Manticorian fagged civilian ships from SL space. I would presume they are including the OFS Protectorates since those would regularly patroled or at least visited by FF. They have NOT ordered home anybody from Erwhon though going much closer via the wormhole bridges to the League would be a problem.

Nobody has said anyting about all the other stuff outside the league. About the only other place (not in the direction of Haven, Silesia, Matapan, or Asgard) we know about is Talbott, then over by Maya- relativly close to Torch- and Visigoth which isn't mentioned as being in "cluster" or "quadrant"- is the Judean League. That the JL is NOT mentioned as being a part of the SL nor under the "protection" of OFS. There must be more areas not yet- because it has not been nessiary to the plot line- been discussed.

So, it is possible that there is a LOT of Manticor Merchant Marine still outside of Manticore controlled space in places not presently having SLN ships present. It is reasonable that when Manticore sent the message for the Recall (Lacoon I) that was going to take a fair amount of time to pass "across" and around the League space and catch up with MMM ships working in other areas either independently or under contract to other shipping lines.

I would suspect that SLN commerce raiders would find a few problems and attacking MMM ships entering or exiting systems with actual SDFs of more than LACs.

As for what the raiders are going to do when they find a MMM ship is another question. It is possible that they would demand they heave too and be taken into custody with a prize crew plut aboard and sent somewhere to be either held/interned or disposed of as a prize. Serious legle questions here since if you are doing this way outside a war zone and in sovereign (or controlled) space of independent neutral Systems, things could get messy. Messy up to and including the SLN (probably a FF ship) being treated as a pirate.

On the other hand, the SLN could just get within range of a missile and simply blow the MMM ship. Perhaps, ordering them to abandon with the ship within range by it's boats or escape pods of an inhabited system and then- after a time limit expires- kill the ship. They could use the time limit to close to energy range and save the missle. The problem is----particulary just killing the ship and crew---- that it is a very cold thing to do and sends a very bad message. These are CIVILIANS in neutral territory and they are being treated as enemy combatants on a warship. They ships are probably not armed.

SLN raiding into the GA space is going to extreemly bad for the SLN ships health. They could do the Prize routine but would need to carry a lot of spair crew and have the problem of each prize with a truly long journey to someplace in SL control. Telling crews to abandon and then blowing the ships does the damage but leaves people (and probably sensor records carried by the evacuees) to identify the raiders.

A lot of people are not going to be pleased with the raiding tactics outside of SL controlled space.

Brigade XO wrote:Nobody has said anyting about all the other stuff outside the league. About the only other place (not in the direction of Haven, Silesia, Matapan, or Asgard) we know about is Talbott, then over by Maya- relativly close to Torch- and Visigoth which isn't mentioned as being in "cluster" or "quadrant"- is the Judean League. That the JL is NOT mentioned as being a part of the SL nor under the "protection" of OFS. There must be more areas not yet- because it has not been nessiary to the plot line- been discussed.

Actually RFC did clarify that the Judean League is composed of members of the Solarian League. See the following infodump from 2011 which contains the note "Oh, by the way, in regard to your question about the Judean League. I'm afraid it is part of the Solarian League, but its sympathies are definitely not with the "Mandarins," as Kolokoltsov and his buddies have been christened by the Solarian newsies."

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:
The graser torps wouldn't get through. They know the danger now, they feel they can find them.

Ok, how are they going to do this? It's the size of a LAC and at least 10 times more stealthy. They can't detect the drive, they can't detect it with active sensors, they can't detect it with grav sensors and it has already evaded the perimeter security. The MA's detection range is a light second, and that was done by people who deeply understood the stealth systems and drive.

They felt they could stop them at Manticore now that they knew what they needed to look for. I don't know how they planned to do it.

Assuming the same attack was repeated they would have a shot at it. But it's easy to saturate their ability to search. And even easier to drop toys en-route to the WHJ.

Loren Pechtel wrote:They felt they could stop them at Manticore now that they knew what they needed to look for. I don't know how they planned to do it.

They were talking about the hyper footprints of the Oyster Bay insertation. The same one they sent a few destroyers out to investigate for a week.

My guess is, they plan to have those destroyers search harder(swarms of recon drones with active sensor scanning), maybe use more vessels to search a larger sphere. Unfortunately, KZT has a point about how that strategy can be used against Manticore - just one ship(doesn't have to be a spider ship) can jump in and out all over the 2 light month radius, generating hundreds of real sensor traces that each have to be equally scrutinised.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
They felt they could stop them at Manticore now that they knew what they needed to look for. I don't know how they planned to do it.

They felt that they think they could prevent another attack of the same sort from succeeding.

But their whole prevention strategy boils down to: next time we think someone dropped out of hyper we're going to shotgun so many ships, and deploy so many Ghost Rider drones, you could EVA and jump from drone to drone back to Manticore.

With enough drones in space, and enough tin cans and light cruisers using both active/passive sensors, and GR drones looking, we know from the MAlign side that the Sharks couldn't possibly stay undetected because they directionally emit heat for stealth.

However, that's still not a guarantee that Sharks couldn't pull a repeat of the Yawata. If they dropped out at 2 light-months, like the Yawata did, and accelerated fast enough, by the time DDs/CLs could be ordered to that location and actually arrive, the Sharks might have gotten far enough out to stay undetected. It all depends on exactly how fast they can accelerate, and how long a response takes, and whether you played any shadow games, and just drop out of hyper long enough to summon the Manticoran response as bait before running away.