Medusa-C (The end of the SDP?)

Thank you for your reply Darrell

Your reply makes sense if you are using the old fashioned podnaught where the first strike throw weight is all that counts. The in story evolution of the Clac as a primary weapon clearly shows that deploying smaller combat units is becoming a more viable strategy.

Please note also the 'increased automation' and 'reduced crew' of modern ships.

Standard theory has a ship's defense overwhelmed by the shear number of inbound shots. Big hulls make sense for that.

My main conjecture and question is the concept of a ship that fires a very large warhead that has sufficient onboard stealth that it can slip past normal defense Undetected. - a torpedo.

If a ship is designed for precision and stealth it doesn't need to be big… in fact its better if its small. Like a mesan spider drive ship.

LACs are not capable of killing SDs run by anyone competent. See the slaughter by the peep badly beaten up SDs at BoM. So there is a fundamental issue with your assumption.

However, if you assume that all ships are equally unsurvivable (which is not necessarily true) then more hulls that can rapidly deploy massive amounts of weapons are at the very least much less likely to die with magazines full of missiles they never got a chance to fire.

The whole balance depends on factors we don't actually know and on assumptions made based on their concept of how future battles will likely run. If you assume another BoM is coming up then you might as well write off the participants and design ships that have the ability to deploy and control huge numbers of missiles, minimal crew and only nominal defenses.

topaz172 wrote:Thank you for your reply Darrell

Your reply makes sense if you are using the old fashioned podnaught where the first strike throw weight is all that counts. The in story evolution of the Clac as a primary weapon clearly shows that deploying smaller combat units is becoming a more viable strategy.

Please note also the 'increased automation' and 'reduced crew' of modern ships.

Standard theory has a ship's defense overwhelmed by the shear number of inbound shots. Big hulls make sense for that.

My main conjecture and question is the concept of a ship that fires a very large warhead that has sufficient onboard stealth that it can slip past normal defense Undetected. - a torpedo.

If a ship is designed for precision and stealth it doesn't need to be big… in fact its better if its small. Like a mesan spider drive ship.

CLACs are not aircraft carrier analogs. A LAC is only fractionally faster than the carrier(635g vs 430g in 1914 pd). Functionally, this is like having aircraft flying at 40 knots.

RFC has said he considers LACs to be more like torpedo boats. That makes the CLACs the space-going equivalent of torpedo boat tenders. TLACs, they should've been called.

The CLAC has not taken over as a primary weapon. They do provide great support to fleets in the form of anti-missile defense, but LACs have not yet demonstrated the ability to significantly harm an alert wall of battle. Yes, with surprise, as during Second Hancock and Operation Buttercup, they can pull it off... just. And certainly not without casualties.

First Manticore proved this when the RMN threw 2400 LACs, unassisted, at a battered Second Fleet and lost ~1500 of them for virtually no additional damage to Second Fleet's SD(P)s. They had also lost another 3,000 with Home Fleet prior to that desperate attack, proving maximum-range MDM fire can eat LACs too.

I think 2nd was said to mostly get kills with SD grasers, but I don't have time to look now. I have no idea why the LACs didn't roll to present their wedge as they passed close to the formation, but I don't refer to AAC as "that awful book" for no reason.

They were reserving MDMs to deal with 3rd fleet's LACs once they got done killing off 3rd fleet's ships.

Edit: 5th to 3rd

kzt wrote:I think 2nd was said to mostly get kills with SD grasers, but I don't have time to look now. I have no idea why the LACs didn't roll to present their wedge as they passed close to the formation, but I don't refer to AAC as "that awful book" for no reason.

They were reserving MDMs to deal with 5th fleet's LACs once they got done killing off 5th fleet's ships.

I figure the majority of LACs killed by 2nd Fleet's wallers were the Shrikes. To engage with their grasers, they have to expose themselves to return fire, however briefly.

I can't recall if it was a neat fly-by firing pass(with an imaginary gap drawn between opposing forces) or a messy interpenetration clusterfrak(Fourth Yeltsin).

The majority of the reason why the LAC's actually achieved almost no SD(P) kills in First Manticore, was because they had to get through the screen first. And the Havenite screen mangled them pretty badly, and they were travelling so fast there was zero time to re-organize for the "en masse" shooting Shrikes need to properly damage superdreadnoughts.

Yes, if a Shrike gets that "golden BB" angle, they can savage an SD, but with it's wedge and sidewalls up while also maneuvering, you need to coordinate with your entire squadron of Shrike brethren to hurt an SD, let alone kill it by attacking it as part of a whole Wing.

The Ferret's, and whatever Katana's may/may not have been present, achieved far more in their strikes on the screening destroyers and cruisers, which the Shrikes should also have focused on. Eliminate the screen so Sixth Fleet could engage with full screen and no crips, while Haven's Second Fleet has cripples and no screen.

The Ferret's, and whatever Katana's may/may not have been present, achieved far more in their strikes on the screening destroyers and cruisers, which the Shrikes should also have focused on. Eliminate the screen so Sixth Fleet could engage with full screen and no crips, while Haven's Second Fleet has cripples and no screen.

???

Second Fleet's screen was eliminated. It's not as if the LACs were holding back against them. All the heavy cruisers and almost all the battlecruisers were destroyed (with the survivors basically all write-offs).

Duckk wrote:

The Ferret's, and whatever Katana's may/may not have been present, achieved far more in their strikes on the screening destroyers and cruisers, which the Shrikes should also have focused on. Eliminate the screen so Sixth Fleet could engage with full screen and no crips, while Haven's Second Fleet has cripples and no screen.

???

Second Fleet's screen was eliminated. It's not as if the LACs were holding back against them. All the heavy cruisers and almost all the battlecruisers were destroyed (with the survivors basically all write-offs).

The screen was broken, yes, but I'd thought they still had enough to reorganize 'something' after the LACs broke through, and it wasn't totally wiped out?

The exchange with Home Fleet killed some of the cruisers by accident. The LACs finished off the rest. The only screening units left to Second Fleet were its LACs, who didn't have time to resupply between D'Orville's charge, the LAC strike, and engaging Third Fleet.

Duckk wrote:The exchange with Home Fleet killed some of the cruisers by accident. The LACs finished off the rest. The only screening units left to Second Fleet were its LACs, who didn't have time to resupply between D'Orville's charge, the LAC strike, and engaging Third Fleet.

I stand corrected then Duckk, I'd been sure Second Fleet's screen existed in some shadow of itself after the LAC strike, rather than being totally eliminated. Especially since the Shrike's had been so devastated passing through that they couldn't achieve anything on the capital ships that I'd sort of paired the two together, if the Shrikes were so crushed the screen must not have been totally eliminated, ergo screen exists.

Doctrine had been for Shrikes to follow behind the Ferrets when attacking light ships (screen) and to take point when hitting the capital ships. It's cold, but the Shrikes either should have dropped back to survive to attack the big ships en masse, or fired their grasers on smaller ships too. That would have had them rotated slightly to the SD's, which could permit rolling ship against the SD grasers.